This Little BIG Boy…..

This is G Man who is rising five.

Over the past few weeks it seems he has grown so much, it makes my heart swell with pride.

But lately, every time we call him our little boy, little angel, little guy, little lamb in conversation, he immediately corrects us with “I’m not little, I’m a BIG BOY. Every. Single. Time. Doesn’t miss a beat. This coming from my sweet baby, who still needs a band-aid for a sore finger breaks my heart. When did he get so big and how does he know, just now, that he is a little boy no longer? 

Who told him?  

He is learning so much, I cant keep up with him sometimes. He amazes me with what he knows already and what he is soaking in, absorbing and digesting. He has dyspraxia so we cant always tell what he is thinking as it is hard to get the right words out, but they are all there, just there waiting to learn how to enunciate them correctly. 
We are trying my little one, oops I mean my BIG boy. We will get there, I promise.
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These are some of the things that have blown my mind the past month or so…..

G Man can get dressed all on his own now. He refuses all offers of help. He gets his school uniform out of his drawer (or the clean clothes pile as case may be), get his jim-jams off and put them away, puts his T Shirt and shorts on, mostly the right way and will then get his shoes and put them on also. 

He gets his own snacks out of the fridge and can work a tetra milk straw off the side and stick it in the hole, all by himself. 

He can turn the TV on and change the channels, he knows my eee-pad better than I do and can decode the security on my phone and play my games.

I go to school pick-up a little bit early and peek in the window. He is joining in, laughing with the other children, concentrating hard, learning all the things a four year old needs to know and more. He has questions. Its amazing.

He pulls the plug out of the bath, making sure the flannels are out also, grabs a towel and gets his jocks from the drawer. (Gosh he was funny when he headed to the clean clothes pile the other day and I said No Honey, Mummy put the clothes away and your jocks are in your drawer. He puts his hand over his mouth, make a little squeak noise and did a little dance – I think he saw the funny side of this)

He is learning patience – we can do a project that may take a few days and some gluing and painting, all done when his brother is tucked up in bed for the night.

He tells me he loves me, just out of the blue and tells his Daddy he has missed him when he gets home from work. Makes my heart sing.

And whilst he has grasped the whole concept of pointing and saying “what’s that over there” whilst running to hide, he still thinks if he can’t see us that he is hiding. 
 It is for this reason, he is still my little boy.



Rising Five by Norman Nicholson

“I’m rising five” he said

“Not four” and the little coils of hair

Un-clicked themselves upon his head.

His spectacles, brimful of eyes to stare

At me and the meadow, reflected cones of light

Above his toffee-buckled cheeks. He’d been alive

Fifty-six months or perhaps a week more;

Not four

But rising five.

Around him in the field, the cells of spring

Bubbled and doubled; buds unbuttoned; shoot

And stem shook out the creases from their frills,

And every tree was swilled with green.

It was the season after blossoming,

Before the forming of the fruit:

Not May

But rising June.

And in the sky

The dust dissected the tangential light:

Not day

But rising night;

Not now

But rising soon.

The new buds push the old leaves from the bough.

We drop our youth behind us like a boy

Throwing away his toffee-wrappers.

We never see the flower,

But only the fruit in the flower; never the fruit,

But only the rot in the fruit.

We look for the marriage bed

In the baby’s cradle;

we look for the grave in the bed;

****************************************************************

He is five in two weeks. My baby is still four.

Please Old Man Time, go slowly, I beg of you.