Four.

Happy Birthday to my big little man!!  This officially marks your fourth year!  Each year I say time flies by so fast and while its only been four years....holy cow its been four years!!  From a tiny little helpless baby to a young boy full of energy, attitude, opinions, and spirit, I don't know where the time went and just hope the next four don't fly by as quickly.  Once upon a time huge, new changes happened back to back to back- eating solids, teething, rolling over, walking, talking, no more diapers...  and then at some point I started to feel like the big changes seemed to slow down, that they were spread out more and it was almost like I couldn't wait for a new thing to happen.  But once you started school (oh my gosh you're in school!!) I couldn't keep up with all the things you were doing and learning, and I realized once again that this is all happening too fast, that while you had passed the big stages of infancy, you still had a lot of new things in store.  You now tell me about things like best friends and girlfriends (what?!) and while it often is tough to get out of you what you did exactly at school, I know you are learning so many new things each day.  You're learning how to write, draw, share, and take on various characters from your favorite cartoons.  You're a master video gamer and a whiz on my iPhone, and you blow my mind when you talk about things I had no idea you knew about.  I love that while you may not be one of those no-fear kids who leaps off the counter tops, you have no problem letting me know just how you feel.  I adore the fact that you have beautiful, long hair and not a typical boy haircut and that you don't care what anybody has to say about it.  As exasperated as I get while its happening, I often look back and laugh when you stomp and get just so very angry at me because i'm not doing something your way like picking the red shirt instead of the blue shirt or picking the blue shirt instead of the ooooothhherrr blue shirt. You are the best at cheering me up when i'm down and are the sweetest, warmest, most compassionate boy I know and that lets me know I must be doing something right.  You always skip 15 when you count, you hate sleeping with socks on, you call the shower the quickly bath, and you still call me Mama - these are simply a few of the many, many things that make you you and why I will always love you with every bit of my heart.  I love you 21 my sweet love.