Five.

Attention King Soopers’ Shoppers – I apologize profusely if you were subjected to my shameless display of nostalgia and longing in the baby product isle this week.

It’s just this – my kid turned 5 on Sunday.

FIVE.

How the actual eff was the kid in this picture, which CLEARLY happened just a blink ago, now 5 full years old?

I have been a damn mess pretty much my whole life the past week or so – reminders of his completed babyhood have been everywhere.

As I cleaned out some toy bins to prepare for the onslaught of superhero crap birthday gifts that would need storage, I stumbled on this old friend:

This is Pocket Bert.  Toddler Jr loved Bert so much that we had Bert in varying sizes – Pocket Bert got his name because he resided in the pocket of the diaper bag, there to comfort and amuse Jr at a moment’s notice.  Oh how he loved Pocket Bert so.

:::pause to make Pocket Bert do a dance while humming  “Doin’ the Pidgeon.” :::

Sniffle.  Whimper.

Andplusalso, stop what you are doing and behold this picture of his tiny baby cuteness that TimeHop threw at me this week.  (Well, don’t stop what you are doing – keep right on reading the awesomeness of Reluctantly Suburban, but pause to take in that smoosh.)

I can’t even so much that I can’t even EVEN with that one.  All of them, actually.  I can’t open TimeHop without a box of Kleenex stationed next to me.

So it was inevitable, I guess, that as I was grabbing some groceries this week, I found myself at the end of the isle of baby products:

I knew I shouldn’t – but I ventured in.

There it all was – tubes of diaper cream both awesome (Purple Desitin) and pointless (Butt Paste,) and gas drops and washes for tiny people with sensitive skin.  Jars of liquid fruit and veggies, delicious little “puffs,” and the Baby Mum Mums that I used to order by the case from Amazon since the stores weren’t carrying them then (oh sure NOW you have them, King Soopers.)

Bottle parts and teething rings and liquid gold Jr’s expensive special formula…. Itty bitty, teeny tiny diapers that used to be too big for him in his first few weeks of life.

It was that last thought that got me – that was in the first few weeks of him and I…  we were together in his nursery, high above the busy city below, figuring out all of those crazy products and what we needed to do…  now there has been 5 years of him – and of me as his mom.

BOOM – grocery store ugly cry. Waterfall of tears.  I could almost hear the PA announcement  “Wet (and sloppy, and crazy) clean up, isle 16!!”

I walked the length of the isle slowly, taking it all in and having a good cry (if there is a “good cry” to be had in public, FFS, Keri.)

Then I went and got him a new Super Friends straw cup and a box of the shortbread cookies shaped like doggies that he loves so much and collected myself (kinda) before checking out.

Then, for some reason, the Catalina coupon dispenser shot this puppy out at me after I paid.

Diaper coupon.

But my son is 5.

FIVE.

“Wet clean up near the crazy crying lady at the U-scan.  Bring Tissues.”