Happy Birthday, Dear Buster

In reading this post, written last year on Jude's 5th birthday, I am compelled to say: What a difference a year makes!

Tomorrow, we'll don our best "Yaarrrrs!" and pirate costumes to ring in Jude's 6th year. We've got little wooden treasure chests to paint and bedeck with Dollar Store jewels, foam swords, a treasure hunt, and a plank to walk. Oh, and there'll be plenty of grog to go around.

Jude at almost-six looks like this:

• introduces himself as Buster (the name he wishes we'd given him at birth)
• draws robots and machines every day
• loves his "work desk", where he has an antique typewriter and globe, his Lego, and the occasional hidden snack
• built a cherry-pie-making-machine out of Lego (because that's his mama's favourite)
• still turns the thermostat up too high, because he loves dials
• has been officially diagnosed as having a delay in his receptive language, indicating a learning disability that will need monitoring and accommodations in the years to come...and which might explain WHY he keeps turning the thermostat up even though we've told him many times not to. Then again, it might just because he's an almost-six-year-old boy)...
• "wishes" a lot: to be a paratrooper, to go to the moon, to own a submarine, to snowboard and hiphop dance, to play the fiddle and the drums
• greets everyone he meets politely and enthusiastically, as well as appropriately for the occasion (e.g. on Mother's Day he shouted to our (male) neighbour: "Happy Mother's Day, Don!")
• loves his rubber boots
• almost always makes a weird face when the camera comes out
• wants to stay up "till it's dark" every night
• likes ketchup on everything
• is growing way too fast for my comfort level

Jude...I mean, BUSTER is a quirky kid. He's a little different (or so I've been told). Sometimes it's hard to understand what he's trying to say, or has a hard time understanding what we're explaining. He's also musical and wildly creative, quick to anger and hard to soothe out of it, but partial to lots of cuddling and affection. I wouldn't change him for the world.

Lots of love and wishes come true on your Sixth Birthday, my son.