We celebrated Landon’s 6th birthday on April 16! Six years of Landon. Six years of motherhood. Six is so young, yet it feels so long. Life before Landon feels like a distant memory in many ways.

Between the ages of four and six, Landon became a big brother, saw his dad die and moved to a new home. Any single one of those events is a giant life change unto itself; going through all three in such a short timespan has forced him to grow up too early in many ways.

But he’s still only six, and it’s important he do his job–that is, to be a child. To play, to grow, to develop, to learn through play, and, as he prepares for kindergarten this fall, to also learn in a classroom.

Reluctant though he is to tell me what he learns in preschool, I can tell he is learning by how he plays. He can identify letters and numbers with high accuracy. In fact, he was recently doing a sticker puzzle and told me he was looking for 22. I played dumb and asked him to point to which one, and he pointed to 22! We repeated this process with several numbers in the 20s, 30s and 40s. Landon won’t tell me what those numbers are if I’m “quizzing” him, but through his play he’s demonstrating just how much knowledge he’s soaking up.

Like his dad, he has a great interest in the sciences. He constantly asks about tornadoes, and we also talk about floods, hurricanes and volcanoes. Landon got a cool BrainBots Our Planet series for his Yoto player. I’m even learning from it, including the difference between a vortex and tornado.

Landon’s six-year well check has him in the 99th percentile for weight and 98th percentile for height (he’s nearly 4’2″!) His pediatrician, who remembers Landon as a 4-pound preemie, laughed and said, “He is built!” He really is one strong guy.

Landon’s birthday fell on a Tuesday preschool day. He got to take a special snack in and, for the third consecutive year, chose “dirt cake.” (We put dirt dessert in little flower pots and topped them with gummy worms Landon chose from local candy store Baldinger’s.) After school, I loaded our minivan with Landon and two school friends to come back to our house for an afternoon of play featuring Landon’s new trampoline! The simplest birthdays really can be the best. The house and yard was filled with the sounds of little boys playing and being boys.

Per Landon’s request we had hotdogs for dinner (I didn’t; I still don’t eat hotdogs) and then cupcakes. Then more jumping!