January 2016: 64 months (5 years and 4 months)

Dear Patrick,

• Your father asked if you were winning the game of Connect Four against the computer. “Not even a little bit,” you answered without looking up.
• On Saturday 1/9 you came into our room like a ninja and crawled into bed without ever waking us up. But then - despite all those efforts - you said loudly, “I want to get in the middle and I need a pillow.” We humored you with a grumble.  Then we heard you say, “This pillow is hot.” I turned it over (basically in my sleep) and heard you say softly, “Oh, but it’s still not cold enough...”
• We love the game Trouble that Jono & Jen gave us for Christmas and we’ve been playing it after dinner on the weeknights. You have the players, who are Star Wars characters, talk to each other as they pass on the board. Everything about you is social.
• You like to crawl into pillow cases and be carried around the house like a “sack of Patricks.”
• Overheard from the basketball jump castle at the Pavilion as you and Rivers shoot hoops: “Three points for Gryffindor!”
• On 1/15 I asked you to leave your green dinosaur in the car and not take him into school but I assured you that he would be there when I picked you up later that day. You said, “Okay, but tell Dad that you’ll pick me up. Text him. On your phone.”
• As you walk around the house, we hear you humming the theme music from Star Wars to yourself.
• You like to eat the soup that your Dad makes with kale, carrots, potatoes and chickpeas, which is great since I feel like this is finally one dish that gives you good nutrition and we can all eat together. On 1/13 while I was working late, you helped cook that soup and apparently you sounded out the word “stock.” You are beginning to read a few small words. Its very impressive.
• “In this house you can pee in the shower,” you yelled to me from the other side of the glass wall. Thank you, Patrick. It’s good to know the informal rules of your own house.  
• You love to wrestle and you challenge your Dad to wrestling matches often. With me, you call it “hug wrestling” to possibly make it more appealing? On 1/17 Sunday afternoon you asked Spence when he arrived to our house, “Do you want to jump or wrestle?” Those are the two options when you come to play at the Byrds.
• Uncle Bunky arrived Thursday 1/21 before the snow came Friday the next day. We had a long weekend of sled rides and snowball fights. Your dad took you to Summit Elementary and you sled down that huge hill with the other kids in the neighborhood. You had one big crash where another kid took your legs out from under you but you recovered.
• When Michael sent your player “home” during a game of Trouble, you said to your uncle, “Bunky, you broke my spirit.”
• Tom and Charlotte Hope arrived in Greenville on 1/29 and stayed through the weekend with Omi and Pop. Bunky was your roommate - your first real sleepover. And because Tom doesn’t sleep late, he came to get you and carry you back across the street to play that Saturday morning! Charlotte brought you these magnetic disks that create cool shapes when put all together. We had so much fun that we didn’t bathe you for four days - there just wasn’t enough time for boring stuff like that.
• You told me that at school one day you were going to say something that was not nice but then you decided “to keep the words in my mouth.”
• Noticing your Dad’s bare back one morning you asked him, “Is that a tattoo...from dance class?” I couldn’t stop laughing. And you pressed further, “...from ballet dance class?”
• We’re more than halfway through Harry Potter. I like when the three of us pile on the couch in the living room and your dad reads it out-loud before bed. One night you interrupted the reading to say, “You guys are muggles, but I’m magical.” I think so too, Patrick. Very magical.