Lisa Walsh Photography

Recently, The Youngest has greatly entertained us with his “karate”, which is much like watching your 6 year old have a seizure while standing up.  He’s never taken a single karate lesson, although we’ve asked him if he’d like to.  (He always says “no”).  To be completely honest I hope he never changes his mind, because it’s incredibly amusing to watch his arms flail wildly for 2 or 3 minutes like they’re not even attached to his body.  And he sometimes smacks himself in the face, which causes me to have an asthma attack from all the laughing, especially if I’ve had a few glasses of wine. That’s the kind of nurturing Mother I am.

The other night, just before bedtime, he came down in his pajamas to say good night to me.  For some reason unknown to me he almost never wears the pajama top that goes with the right pajama bottoms, so when I saw him wearing pants that fit with a Thomas shirt from about 2 years ago, I just about lost it.  His belly was hanging out beneath the shirt and it was as tight as spandex and I knew I had to get Junior out so I could blog it.  Poor kid.  Being related to me is no picnic.

Even funnier was that he went ahead and did his karate routine in front of the camera, knowing he was going to be on the internet.  It’s not the same unless you see the routine in person, but our video camera doesn’t work and I’m not due for a 5D Mark II for another year or so.

Up until about 10 days ago it was completely normal to find The Youngest in our room when I woke up, either sleeping with a throw blanket at the foot of our bed, or on the floor between Hot Husband’s side of the bed and the wall.  As cute as it was I couldn’t help but think to myself that he will be 7 years old this year, which has to be too old to sleep with Mom and Dad.  Right?  So one night (about 10 days ago) I told him he needed to stop coming in our room or I was going to put a baby gate up in the doorway to keep him out.  I felt so mean and un-motherly until he looked at me and told me he’d climb over the gate.

I was going to come up with some in depth plan to keep him in his bed, but for some reason he’s just stayed there ever since that night.  It’s both sad and nice to wake up in the morning without him there.

Last night, when I got home from my shift at the gym, he was still awake and watching TV with Hot Husband.  Although they usually read before bed, he told me he’d elected to stay up and watch a show on the History channel instead.  A few minutes later Hot Husband called me over, and this is what I saw.

He’s getting so big so fast that moments like these are becoming rare.  This will be one of my favorite images of the two of them for a long time.  He looks so peaceful.

P.S.  As I’m writing this blog post I could hear him crying in the other room.  When I called out to him to see what was wrong, The Oldest came in and informed me that The Youngest had swore at him and he said he threatened to tell me about it, which caused The Youngest to cry.   So much for peaceful.