Dear Carter,

Today you are five. Not possible.

You are tiny. You are mighty. You are one of our greatest gifts in this life. You are more loved than you know, and I marvel at you everyday. At your humor. Your stories. Your bravery and joy of thrilling adventures, but your hatred for losing.

You love junk food. You could eat candy and chocolate and ice cream till you were blue in the face. . . but you struggle to eat regular food. I have no idea where those genes came from. Errr. . . okay, okay. . . sounds a little bit like someone else I know. You do love bread product though, so you’re happy to eat waffles and pancakes, bagels and toast (as long as there is no crust).

You are incredibly active and you could run around all day. You love soccer and gymnastics mostly, and I love watching you do both of those things. You are going to be one talented boy, I can just tell. You also love math, and are always asking us math problems—nearly everyday you ask me what something plus something is. Or subtraction, or some other math related question. You know all your letters and you can write them all and count up as high as you can go until you get too tired to keep going.

You have such an incredible memory, that I am constantly astounded. Your ability to memorize is unreal—you know all the books of the bible . . . all of your cubbies verses PLUS all of Brayden’s sparks verses. You know words to a billion songs.

Your imagination is amazing. You can play with anything, anywhere, and keep yourself occupied for quite some time. Still, your most prized possessions are all of your tiny toys. Your little gogos, microfigures, squinkies, teenymates and army men. That hasn’t changed in awhile—you always have been drawn to little things. You also love pokemon cards and have a binder full of them where you have them organized by “energy”, whatever that means!

You are such a joy. You are obedient. You are LOUD (not an overexaggeration). You love superheroes, star wars, pokemon, bakugan, beyblades, legos, ben 10, ninja turtles and all very boy kinds of things. But you also love Beanie Boo’s, which I think are a little girly, but hey, who cares. You love coloring with nice markers and when I print pictures out for you from the computer. You love rough housing. You love babies. You are a good friend. You can get along with mostly anyone. You are LOUD (oh, wait. . . did I already mention that?) You still only weigh in the lower 30’s, but we are finally moving up to 4T clothes. Yay! You love vanilla ice cream, you don’t like cake. You love watching tv shows, but don’t really like watching movies because they are too long.

You are going to be tiniest one in your class, but you don’t lack personality, so that will more than make up for it. I imagine your teacher will comment on how you are “so darn cute” on the first day of school but then will see that not only are you “so darn cute”, but that you are “so darn funny” and “so darn bright” and “so darn we can’t get you to stop talking”.

You sleep in longer than your brother (thank goodness!), but you have a harder time going to sleep than him at night. You love that you share a room with him and don’t like when he has sleepovers. You adore your little brother as well, and sometimes you think he’s a little older than he really is. You tell me that you can’t wait till he’s older so that you can wrestle with him. And the other day you told me you wanted more babies in the family. Three sisters. Oye.

We love you so much, Carter Joshua. You light up our lives! Happy birthday.

Love, Mom