Ethan is six today.

Six seems so much older than five. Six is heading into bona-fide big kid territory. A five-year-old is what Ethan became in pre-school. Six has no connections with pre-school sensibilities.

Ethan is six today.

Will six still give me hugs and tell his teacher, “I love you?” Will six still hold my hand in the parking lot?

While Ethan struggles with his desire to be treated as a big kid versus his desire to be comforted as a little kid, I will go through my own struggles and decisions as a parent of a six-year-old boy. And not just any six-year-old boy.

MY six-year old boy.

My six-year-old who fearlessly holds his own while playing soccer with fifth and sixth-graders, also crumples with heightened distress at semi-benign movie scenes most kids his age wouldn’t necessarily find scary. My boy who reads at a third-grade (if not higher) level and actively asks for math problems to crack, cannot comprehend that bedtime means BEDTIME. I often will have to beg him to eat, but he will readily chew his fingernails down to nothing. His compassion allows him to weep at a tender story of friendship, yet he is very quick to blame others for his mistakes. He is a jumble. He is raw.

He is a six-year-old boy.

Ethan has been six years of challenges in parenting for me and Jack. Some of those challenges have been welcome, like how to foster his amazing brain, but some have been more… difficult. He has the energy of a tornado whirling inside a hurricane wrapped up in a fireball. Learning how to guide and steer (and contain) the chaos is constant.

Six years ago, right about now, I was becoming a mother. I was terrified and excited. I was confident and queasy. I was doubtful and elated.

Ethan is six today, and I am still all those things.