Jayna: 5

Dear Jayna,

Yes, I know it’s been more than three weeks since your fifth birthday, but look at it this way: I didn’t write your brother’s annual letter until more than a month after his seventh. Basically, I’m early. You’re welcome.

As I see it, the biggest challenge in writing this letter to you is that I really should be writing two letters: one to my sweet, adorable, charming, lovable little princess of a daughter, shown above, and one to the fire-breathing, demonic, she-devil from hell that in recent months has often inhabited your body:

However, in the interest of time — and in an effort to overshadow with cherubic imagery your incubus-like behavior — I shall try to write to both of you in this single correspondence.

Your fifth year of life was an eventful one. You spent a second year in preschool, and because drop-off during your first year of twice-per-week attendance required a team of surgeons to amputate you from the body of the parent dropping you off, we decided you would best be served by repeating the two-day program rather than moving on to the three-day program. Surgeons were still summoned for most of the school year, but we were able to lay them off by spring.

Unfortunately, easier drop-offs notwithstanding, spring also was around the time you made the decision that, rather than comply with any type of parental plan/request/directive, you will turn your little body into an incendiary device and lay waste to everything within a 10-mile radius anytime we ask something of you, tell you what to do, or generally try to, you know, parent you.

A simple “Jayna, time to put your shoes on so we can go outside” can instantly cause sustained screams that shatter tempered glass, furious foot stomping that shakes homes off of their foundations, animal-like grunts that replace normal speech (“Use your words, please,” we beg you to no avail) and hysterical sobbing that would lead an eavesdropper to believe we were slow-roasting you over an open flame.

There was a time when you would throw these fits and I would pick you up in an attempt to comfort you, but I soon realized that doing so would almost always result in your flailing feet connecting with my package, an occurrence that would elicit from me a reaction not at all conducive to comforting you. I’ve since learned that my best bet is to just get away from you until your fury diminishes.

On Tuesdays this summer, I have been taking care of you and your brother while Mommy works. On more than one of these Tuesdays, your endless refusal to cooperate with me about anything at any point in the day has made me question my already questionable sanity, and your very vocal conveyance of your displeasure with everything I suggest/ask/tell you to do has made me fantasize about jamming knitting needles into both of my ears.

Seriously: I am ill-equipped to tolerate your constant outbursts and uncooperative behavior, and I am convinced that your screaming and crying causes a chemical reaction in my body and brain that makes it nearly impossible for me to keep from completely losing my shit. Thankfully, I haven’t completely lost my shit … but that’s still a pretty low parental bar for me to set for myself … which is why I have just begun making a concerted effort to remain calm and steady and set a good example for you and your brother instead of modeling for you both the “Really Close To Losing My Shit” method.

And speaking of you and your brother: Could you guys please stop bickering and fighting nonstop from sunup till sundown? PLEASE? Seriously, just name your price, and I’ll pay it.

More of this:

Please. I beg of ye.

This week has been perhaps the worst of this summer in terms of you and your brother fighting with each other over everything. The level of dedication you have to tormenting each other would almost be admirable if not for the fact that it makes me want to have a taxidermist stuff and mount you.

I have discovered that the secret to getting one of you to suddenly take great interest in a toy that you’ve not so much as glanced at for months on end is to have the other of you touch it. It is at that point that the life of the toy’s owner suddenly depends on the reclamation of said toy, at all costs. In one particular “Almost Losing My Shit” moment, I may or may not have told you that, unless you paid for them, all the toys in this house are mine, and that if you did not stop your ceaseless bickering and shrieks of “Mine!,” I would put all the toys in a pile and set flame to them … and I sometimes act so crazy that I’m pretty sure you believed me. And, like most flawed solutions to chronic problems, that threat’s efficacy ended in less than five minutes.

To be fair, although instances of your peaceful coexistence have become less frequent, you two often do enjoy each other’s company … and, much to our surprise, when Mommy and I returned home last night after dining out with some friends, your babysitter told us that the two of you were really sweet to each other at bedtime. (I wanted to hook her up to a polygraph machine, but your mother felt we should take her at her word.)

But getting back to you: I will admit that, because you, during the first few years of your life, were so relatively low maintenance in comparison to your brother, you often got short shrift from your mother and I while we expended most of our energy trying to defuse him before he detonated yet again. Thus, I kind of feel like you’re entitled to a stretch of unruly behavior … but you better hurry up and get over yourself, because that feeling? It has just about worn off, and I fear it will soon be replaced by a feeling that stun guns aren’t necessarily a bad thing to employ when trying to modify your child’s behavior.

Of course, I’m sure it’s no coincidence that your undesirable behavior has been most intense in the weeks and months since we told you we were selling the only house you’ve ever lived in and moving 350 miles away, to a new house, and a new school where you don’t as of yet know any of the other children. I’d be upset, too. I’m trying to keep that in mind when I feel tempted to stuff you in the microwave, and I’m bracing myself for what I expect will be your and your brother’s highly challenging post-relocation behavior as our family tries to get acclimated to our new environment.

Now, when one strips away your horns and fangs and claws and serpent-like tail and cloven-hoofed feet, one finds an incredibly cute and lovable little snuggle bug underneath … and, lo, how I delight in her presence and shower her with affection on those rare occasions of late when she deigns to grace us with her presence. But she’s no fool; she knows that if she doesn’t make an appearance every now and then, her satanic alter ego is going to get her ass shipped out of town.

Fortunately, it was the happy, smiley, joyful you who showed up for your fifth birthday party, which you decided to have at the germ-and-chaos factory known as Chuck E. Cheese … and that was a relief, because life with you has been such a crap-shoot as of late that I had resigned myself to the fact that you would burst into a crying fit and burrow into your mother’s body when that big-ass rat came out to create lots of birthday hoopla. Thankfully, you were totally into it.

You are aware that your mother has a vicious mouse phobia, right? OK, just checking.

You are funny. You make hysterical faces, and when you laugh, it is perhaps the most delightful and infectious sound I’ve ever heard.

You love to dance, and you love to make me dance with you. Let’s make a deal: I promise to keep dancing with you whenever you ask if you promise never to grow up and drive in cars with boys and go to college and drink and make all my hair fall out. Pinky swear. (You like to pinky swear.)

You again participated in gymnastics this year, which you still love, and are very good at. You are deceptively strong, and can go hand over hand from one end of the monkey bars to the other. Whereas your brother has always been a bit clumsy and unable to completely control his huge-for-his-age body, petite little you are incredibly in tune with yours. Gymnastics seems like a great outlet for you, and we plan to get you into a new program once we make the move to Pennsylvania.

Ah, yes, the move to Pennsylvania. Surprisingly, I am more worried about you adjusting to our relocation than I am about your brother, who has certainly expressed some mixed feelings of his own, but has overall been pretty upbeat and positive about the move. You, however, are mostly not in favor … though I have been able to elicit some excitement from you by reminding you that, because your bedroom will no longer be situated on the second floor of a tiny little non-dormered Cape, you will finally be able to stand up — and, therefore, jump — on your bed. (Normally, I’d be the “Don’t jump on the bed!” guy, but if the promise of being able to bounce your 40-pound body up and down on a bed is what it takes to get you to go along with this move, then by all means, you may bounce until your heart’s content.)

More important than finding you a new gymnastics academy, however, is finding you a new preschool, which definitely feels like a make-or-break piece of the puzzle for your happiness in the wake of such a huge transition. Unfortunately, while you would have been in a great three-day program here, we (and by “we,” I mean Mommy) have been unsuccessful at finding a preschool that offers anything less than four days per week, and have mostly been confronted with five-day programs. Frankly, we don’t think you’re ready for that.

And I’m sure it’ll all work out, and we’ll get you into a good preschool and a good gymnastics academy and a good bedroom and shower you with as much love as two parents can … but part of this whole parenting thing is the Endless Worry.

And worry I do … for there is nothing more precious to me in the entire world than my beautiful little daughter, and I just want to take good care of you and make you happy and keep you young and innocent and sheltered and safe for as long as humanly possible … because, despite your frequently unpleasant behavior as of late, when you wrap that little body around me and hug me tight and give me a smooch and say “I love you, Daddy,” you make me feel so lucky that I’m your father.

I love you, Sweetie.

Love,

Daddy

———

Past letters:

• Jayna: 4 years
• Jayna: 3 years, 8 months
• Jayna: 3 years
• Jayna: 2 years
• Jayna: 1 year 3 months
• Jayna: 1 year
• Jayna: 11 months
• Jayna: 10 months
• Jayna: 9 months
• Jayna: 8 months