What with meetings and birthdays and impending parental visits, I�ve been having trouble settling down my brain lately. Even yesterday�s killer yoga class, which had me in contortions I didn�t think were possible, didn�t quite do it for me. I�ve been sleeping, more or less, out of pure exhaustion but the dreams have been odd.

First there are the conference dreams (elgan, perhaps you�ll enjoy this one). Last night I attended a new music concert with P., a composer friend from my first years of grad school who now lives in Turkey. As we watched, the atonal music turned to a semi-discordant minor key rendition of �I�m a Little Teapot,� processed to sound like it was coming out of an antique radio. While the orchestra was playing, another composition student, whom I saw in passing at the conference I just attended, was sitting in a large box at the front of the stage pretending to row furiously. Or maybe drive. It was hard to tell. It was apparently part of the piece somehow.

Then there are birthday dreams. As always, as we approach AJ�s birthday, I start to miss the baby AJ a little bit. It�s not at all that I don�t love the bigger AJ as much, but that I want all of him to be there � baby and big boy and all the stages in between. Last night was a baby anxiety dream. Some of the details were fuzzy and there was a friend there who tends to show up when there when I�m feeling guilty about something � it�s a friend I used to be close to but have lost touch with. We went to my grandmother�s house and I found that there was a baby there all alone that I�d forgotten I was supposed to be taking care of. It was screaming. I felt horrible, but immediately started taking care of the baby and it quieted down and everything seemed like it was going to be okay. I�m not sure I want to analyze this one too much.

In real life, though, AJ is very invested in separating himself from baby AJ. He asks a lot of questions about his baby self, what he liked and didn�t like, what he was like. But it is as if Baby AJ is a person he used to know but doesn�t remember. Today we had big boy agendas. We went in search of some final party supplies � last minute decorations, a small helium tank. We also found on our travels a pretty spectacular Spiderman umbrella for him, which he has been opening and shutting at every possible opportunity, placing all household knick-knacks in grave jeopardy. Even better, though, we bought him a wallet.

The wallet has been a big deal. It marks his turning five, because at five he is finally old enough to get his own library card and at five he will start to receive a small allowance. AJ picked out not a colorful or action figure adorned wallet, but a sober brown, manly trifold. I think he chose it because of all of its pockets and because it is a real grownup wallet. After we got home, he started asking what he could put in there. We put in a club card that came with a game he likes to play. We put his school picture in the see-through ID pocket and pictures of his cousins in the photo section. He staked out a pocket for his library card and then we grabbed one of my husband�s business cards to put in another pocket. Then we decided AJ needed some business cards of his own. I happened to have some blank business cards on hand from printing some up before the conference, so we pulled out the template and tried to figure out what to do for AJ. We put his name and his phone number and my email, since he doesn�t have an account of his own yet. �What should we put for your job?� I asked him. �Five-year-old kid?� �No,� said AJ slowly, as he thought. He finally selected �Solar System Expert� and we printed up a batch. He found a special pocket just for business cards and, after giving one to me and one to his dad, he tucked them away very seriously for future use.

Despite the big boy trappings, however, the wallet is essentially a surrogate stuffed animal. It sat next to him at lunch. He took it into the bathroom with him and explained to it how to wash its hands (even though it is deficient in that part of its anatomy). He is now taking a nap with it. And I am sure that next week, when we go to the library to get his library card, the wallet will share the moment with pride.

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