Oh Kalvin, my sweet little birthday boy,

Happy Happy 4^th Birthday!!! You are such an amazing and special little boy, so sweet and curious and naughty all at the same time. And by naughty, I mean just that, naughty. Not mean, not bad, just mischievous. But you’re a boy and the truth is, I’d rather you be that way than any other way. So know that buddy.

So, four years old, here we go…

The night before your birthday as I lay beside you in bed, you said, “This is the last night I’m going to be three years old.”

“That’s right buddy, tomorrow you turn four.”

Your eyes welled up. “But I don’t want to go be a grown up.”

I laughed. “My little Buddha, you’re still going to be a little boy. No worries, you’re going to be a little boy for a long time.”

“Your little boy. And Daddy’s.” Then you buried your big wrecking ball head into my chest, snuggling Kalvin style.

I cannot express to you how much I love your little soul. You are so sweet, so sensitive, so empathetic, and so very thoughtful. When a little boy was asked to leave school, you really took it to heart, asking questions about him for weeks, trying to come up with solutions to allow him to stay. When a unicorn got his horn cut off in a movie, you screamed, turned away from the television into my arms, as if you were the one in pain. “The horse was scared, it was so scared. Is the horn going to grow back? Why did that mean person do that?” Or when the cows got out of the pasture and starting walking toward the road, you asked questions about it all night. “Are the cows okay? Did the farmer come out of the house to help them? Did the UPS man help them?” Then ten minutes later, “Are the cows okay? They didn’t get hit by a car on the road, right?” You are such a tender hearted little guy in a dense wrecking ball of a body.

You love your sister. You love doing anything she asks you to do, from getting pinky for her to playing Paw Patrol, anything she wants, you give. You loving helping me make smoothies and letting Timber out. You love your toolbox and special drawer. You love frozen fruit and trying new restaurants and trying new food. But you don’t like tomatoes or pineapple, you are very clear about those two things. You love building car ramps and obstacle courses with the wooden blocks. You love jumping on everything and everyone. And you love to be active outside. You are always up for anything, ready to experience something new in the world. If given the choice, you will always pick the new thing, you will always pick the unknown. The new restaurant, the new food, the new car. I cannot tell you what this means to me, I LOVE this about you, this adventuresome need to experience the world in its entirety instead of staying in the comfort of what you know. I love it. I hope you always retain that curiosity and wonder.

Everything about you is motion, both externally and internally, your body is always moving and your brain is always thinking such that when you sleep, you look like an entirely different kid. I must have over one hundred photos of you sleeping on my phone. Right now, you love playing doctor and dress up. You love helping me bring up the barrels from the end of the driveway and you love playing Grace’s ‘owner’ when she wants to be a unicorn, leading her around and hand feeding her treats.

You don’t have much patience for tv shows or movies lately, though you’ll spend some time playing Mechanic Mike or building your own cars. But the thing that I find most amazing about you right now is how much you love to ask questions. You want to know how the world works, not for attention, you really want to know. And you LISTEN to the answers, you retain everything and put pieces of information together from different times and different places. You listen. You amaze me buddy, you really do.

Sometimes you have trouble relating to other kids your age, and that breaks my heart a little bit. With adults you have no problem. You’ve really always been that way, always migrated towards the adults more than the kids. Your teacher at school told me that you have little crushes on two girls at school, but that you hug them and tackle them to get their attention, which they don’t like. We’re trying to work with you on playing with other kids. But in that same conversation, the teacher also told me you were asking her questions about reincarnation. She said you asked her if you’d come back as a baby, if everyone comes back as a baby or if some people come back as animals, and if you get to choose. She was laughing, a bit incredulous, as she told me the story. It doesn’t surprise me though. And so perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me that you relate well to adults. How many three year olds ask questions like, “Do you have eyes in heaven, and if not, then how can Gram T see us.” Not many kids are worried about going into a box in the ground, not because the box or the ground seem scary, but because you don’t want to be eaten by a horse (after you turn into grass). I mean, really. You’re not a dweller, or a worrier. You’re just a thinker. You want to understand which makes me think you’ll lead a very examined life, like your Momma.

Sometimes, you will ask questions for three hours straight. That is not an exaggeration. When we flew to Madison a few weeks ago, you had questions for everybody from the gate agent to the flight attendant to the taxi driver to the other doctors at the hospital where we went to meet uncle Jon, and that doesn’t count all the questions you asked me. You love your cousins, Meg, Kate and Sam. I was so proud of you during our latest visit, when you let them play your car game the entire time. I love how excited you get to go anyplace new, as I wrote above, you want to explore the big wide world, and that also makes me proud.

So little Buddha, you are curious and sweet and smart and funny. What else?

You love Timber and Aocrn, especially Acorn. “I just want to make him happy,” you say each morning when you ask to give him treats. You are like your daddy in that way, always wanting to solve problems for other people; always want to make other people happy. I want you to know little buddy, it’s very sweet and it’s very nice, but it is not your job. It is not your job to save anyone or to make anyone else happy. You can try, but in the end, people need to make themselves happy. Still, your empathy is one of the things I love about you. You care so much. The times you have seen me cry, you have cried too. “Please don’t cry Momma, please don’t cry,” you say, wrapping your arms and feet around me in a full body Kalvin hug (one of my favorite things on the planet). When you do something that upsets me, you really try not to do it again. For instance, yesterday, you wouldn’t get dressed for school. You kept running away (see naughty above), making a game out of getting dressed. The mornings are a bit crazy anyway, trying to get both of you up and dressed and fed and snacks and lunch and water bottles and snow gear packed. When I explained to you that if we’re late for school, then I don’t get to go to the gym, you thought about if for awhile. Then, five minutes later, you said, “Momma, next time you ask me to get dressed in the morning, I’m going to say okay so you can go to crossfit (your substitution) with your friends (your addition) and be a strong princess (your addition) because I know it’s important to you (you addition).” You are four years old buddy. And you put together that kind of train of thought with that kind of thoughtfulness, and it makes me so very very proud to be your Momma. And I will say, this morning, when I asked you to get dressed, you said okay right away. “Okay Momma, I’ll get dressed so you can go to crossfit because I know it’s important to you.” So proud buddy.

You are such a gentle soul with a little man raspy voice and laugh and a funny way of smacking your lips when you’re talking about something that excites you. You can be a bit spacey in karate at the moment, which is sort of funny.

To you, Daddy is everything. You love your Daddy so much. You two are kindred souls in many ways. You both like to make other people laugh. The way your brains work is the same too, very organized, everything in its place. The night before your birthday, I decorated your rooms while you were sleeping, including a giant balloon. It was big enough that it needed to be tied to something so I tied it to your red toolbox. At 3:30am, I hear the scream. “Momma!! Momma momma!!!” Of course, as always, I stumble out of bed, searching for my glasses, stepping on Timber and race into your room. You were upset, crying. When I  got you to calm down, you told me that you thought the balloon was going to carry off your toolbox. Goodness. So I retied it to the bookshelf and you got upset again. Again, when I got you calmed down enough to tell me what was wrong, you know what it was? I hadn’t put the toolbox back in the exact right place. And when I say exact, I mean, like, two inches. You like your world ordered, somewhat like you Daddy, but as I wrote above, you are so open to new experiences. But you and Daddy both share a naivety about the world that is terrifying. You both so want to see the good, you sometimes overlook that bad, and that makes me scared for you. But I also know you’re a resilient little dude. And I’ll do my best to help you with that.

My little guy, four years ago, you and Grace made me a mother. The journey has been wild and hard and beautiful, marked by gratitude and laughter and frustration and joy and just so much texture. You came into this world so free and vulnerable, showing your soft warm light and sweet earnest soul and little mudra sign. And you changed me. You narrowed my focus to what matters, you simplified my life in a beautiful way. Many things and some people got sloughed off because you made my time so very precious. And you made me take full adult ownership and authorship of my life, for where I spend my energy and what I allow to stick to me because it affects you too. I no longer have space for the bullshit because there are so many more important moments to be experienced. And because of that, my life has more clarity, beauty, and meaning.  You taught me forgiveness and resilience in those first months after evil touched our lives. You taught me how to be gentle with myself. You taught me about love, a different kind of love than I’ve shared before. You taught me about being pure and honest and open. You showed me my weaknesses and you loved me anyway. Completely. Purely. Like only a little Buddha can. “My tiny little Momma,” you say as you hug me. To be hugged by you is to melt into oneness, it is pure ohm. And I am so grateful.

I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting this week, for any number of reasons, and about what I want for you. You came into this world wild and free, your instincts fully intact. I think you were such pure light, you attracted darkness, but you shined right on through it proving love trumps all, proving light wins over dark. I love you for that my little man, so much. I want you to grow into a thoughtful, mature, emotionally intelligent, caring, open, compassionate, resilient human being, with motivations and ambitions, who isn’t afraid of the world but instead continues to see it as one big play ground. I want you to have manners, but I do not want you to be mute or docile. I want you to be bold and bright and courageous. And so I try to tell you the truth, I try to give you the tools to handle your sensitivity, I try to honor your need to understand. I try to answer your questions so you don’t have to guess. We have talks about death and dying because you ask the questions. We talk about how bad people go to jail, because you ask. You want the bad people to turn good, but I explain to you how some people are just plain mean and will stay that way. It’s hard for you to understand right now, you want everyone to be good. But I will not lie to you, I will not pretend bad things don’t happen, I will not pretend pain doesn’t exist. But I will try to give you the skills to be resilient and to navigate a life that is so overwhelmingly beautiful, despite its pain. You may not understand now, but I will try my best to give you both roots and wings, because in the end, I want you to fly.

I want you to always see Gram T. in sunrises, like you do now. I want you to sing and laugh and dance and be silly and wild and crazy. I want you to run around naked in giant happy circles singing, “I’m so happy. I’m so happy.” I love when you come home dirty because to me, it means you’ve had a great day. You’ve splashed in mud puddles, you’ve painted, you’ve eaten great food, you’ve been out exploring the world in all its sensory beauty. I hope you get dirty as often as you can little man. I won’t put you in a box, I will not dial you down because somebody else thinks you’re too much, too big, too loud, too anything. I won’t tame you, I won’t stifle you or your little soul. I won’t do it. And I’ll protect you from anyone who tries, while also trying to teach you to protect yourself. Or perhaps even better, teaching you that you don’t need to protect yourself because you are already okay. You are beautiful. You are whole. You are an amazing little boy. You will always have a soft safe place to fall in Momma and Daddy if you need it, so go play in the world.

So my handsome little dude, with your sweet tooth and blue eyes and awesome hair and dense little body and platypus feet, I love everything about you. Do you know that? I think you do. I love being your Momma. I am honored and brought to tears to be your Momma. Thank you for choosing me and Daddy. You have taught me so much, thank you Kalvin. I love you, Momma