Birthday anticipation … can you remember that feeling? That the days could not come fast enough until you’d wake up and it would be your birthday. YOUR birthday. A special day all for you.
You would be one year older on that important ladder of years. 3, 4, 5 … oh, and then to hit the double digit of 10! Or even more exciting perhaps was to hit 13 and be, officially, a teenager.
Now, another year is just another year. They are all bleeding into each other. I literally can’t remember one year from another most days. Am I 38 or 41? And does it even matter? They all seem to feel the same.
But that’s not how it used to feel. It used to feel special.
I’d almost forgotten that this feeling had even existed in the first place. And yet, with Max turning five years old this week, I’ve been able to catch it vicariously from him. Every day he asks us, “Is it my birthday yet?”
It is hard for him to understand time. It is sooo slow in his world, despite it whizzing by in mine. “No, not yet honey. Not for a while now.”
But his anticipation is coming to a crescendo now. It is within a matter of days. DAYS! So, we have helped him understand the time by placing check boxes on the calendar, which he studiously crosses off each morning.
Invites have been sent, a theme has been picked, and special packages and postcards have started to arrive from Australia. Being able to taste these moments with him is priceless. And helps this nostalgic mama get through the forced acknowledgement that her baby, her very last and precious baby, is now a full-grown boy.
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