5 years of Percy Jones

Our lovely son Percy is turning 5 years old. I would say the time has flown by, that seems the sort of thing people say but I'm not sure thats true really. The time before we had him seems like a lifetime ago. He's changed from a tiny helpless baby into an school boy. But we've also changed, from clueless 28 year olds who live in a tiny house in studentville and know nothing about babies, to real grown ups in a grown up sized house with 2 kids.

It's crazy to think in another 5 years he'll be 10 and he might be as tall as me.

So this is a little letter to Percy: 5 thing I love about my 5 year old.

1) You are so kind. OK sometimes you're bad at sharing toys, but you often offer to share your sweets. The way you help Eric out with things he can't do is adorable. Yesterday you wanted to give him a big hug because you hadn't seen him for most of the day. You are the loveliest big brother Eric could ever have.

2) You do your own thing. I think peer pressure hasn't got to you yet and I hope it will remain that way for a long time. And yeah you like some stuff that a lot of kids your age like, Paw Patrol, playing train tracks, etc. but you will also make up your own games with cards or imaginary games or telling stories with puppets. You like to arrange your Duplo animals into pens of animals that won't eat each other. You've recently started liking break dancing, and you're future career ambition has gone from "building an ice church for the penguins" to break dance teacher.

3) You ask good questions. I mean not all of them are good actually some of them are annoying like just endless whys. But some are interesting like "when we die does are house die too?" and "do ice creams don't like snow?" or "why is jelly wibblely?". You're quite interested in God and life and death and actually I feel like I can explain anything to you and you're at the perfect age to understand it at face value it not be a big deal. Like "does X have 2 mummies?" yeah. oh right ok. The other day I explained the pill to you because you asked, and it's actually easy to say "mummy takes a tablet that means she won't have a baby in her tummy because we haven't decided if we want another baby yet".

4) You are a rule follower. This is a weird one because I'm totally not a rule follower, I once took my pat rat to a clarinet lesson with me. My rules for life are "better sorry than safe"and "only break one law at a time". Maybe you're rebelling against me, but you like rules. You once came out of school and the first thing you said was "I can't have anymore sugar today because I had cake for lunch".

5) Your positivity. You're still young enough to be enthusiastic about little things. Sometimes you are not that impressed by quite impressive things, but I love that you are still excited by "cushion world" which is when I let you bring all the cushion and duvets downstairs so you can roll around on them.