I was reading an article that week about
how parents might find the teen years frustrating in part because they are
having trouble letting go of the wide-eyed child filled with wonder stage. I have noticed for a while
now that I enjoy talking to my son about more adult-y topics and our
conversations show me how deeply he thinks and feels things. His sense of
humour is great, and his compassion for others gives me hope for the future.
I am enjoying getting to know him in a whole new way. We bump heads on
occasion about attitudes and pushing limits, but all in all, I am confident in
the outstanding, independent person he is and will become. I want to
focus on appreciating his current stage of life, instead of mourning a past one
and consequently being resentful because he isn't a docile five year old
anymore. I'm not saying teen years can be all sunshine and rainbows, but
I also think perspective can dictate whether they are all storms and
hurricanes. But what do I know? I have been the parent of this teen
for all of 8 days now!
I wasn't sure how to 'do' Archie's
birthday this year. My little ones are happy with the family bellowing
out the Happy Birthday song, eating some cake, and opening some presents.
The older the kids get, the more difficult birthdays are to navigate for
me. Friends: Do their families like us enough to break up their
weekend to bring their kid out to wherever the party place is and hang out for
a couple of hours? I am always worried the answer might be "no"
and no one will show up. Thus far, that hasn't happened, but you never
know. Especially since we seem to be at a transition stage in life. Yes,
I suppose people like us, but do they 'like us' like us? So I feel wary
of inviting people.
When my folks mentioned wanting to camp
with us this fall at Dauphin Island, I jumped on the chance to turn it into a
crazy camping birthday weekend and scheduled it for the weekend after Archie's
birthday. *That's* what we'll do for Archie's birthday! Camping!
Because we just don't do enough of that, right? :-)
Lydia has this odd 'rule' that one does
not turn the next number year until the birthday person has had their cake.
I don't know why or how she came up with this, but Lawrence was six for four
days before his birthday party took place. So she kept insisting to him
(and anyone else who would listen) that he was still five because he didn't
have his cake yet. She did the same thing to me when I turned forty.
So you can bet that she kept telling Archie that he was still twelve
because he didn't have his cake. My mom, anticipating this, had them make
birthday cupcakes that morning while I was at work. Lydia *still* gave
him a hard time because the rest of the family didn't have the cake yet.
Archie took this in better stride than Lawrence did!
Since we were camping on Thursday night
and wouldn't be at church on Sunday, I couldn't get out of work on Wednesday.
I left early to take Archie to lunch for his birthday. Here he is
butchering his sushi with chopsticks. I guess he needs to do sushi more
often to develop better chopstick skills!
While I would have preferred to spend the rest of our afternoon together
doing fun stuff, my responsibilities called and we had to run stupid errands.
I had to cook the church dinner and buy the food for camping and the
shrimp boil, as well as a few other errands. So I drug him along for all
that. I promised a trip to the bookstore for next Wednesday since the
little ones would be at Mom and Dad's. I did let him pick out the cake
for the church dinner. I put candles on it and the Wednesday Night church group
sang Happy Birthday to him. The little boy in the picture next to Lydia
is her little friend, Courtland. Oh, and P.S. This cake still did not suffice
as *the* birthday cake, because we didn't do presents afterward. Alas,
Archie was still twelve according to Lydia.
Phillip wasn't at church due to car issues
and I had to pick him up at work. It was on the way home when he asked
how my day was that I realized I had done very little of what *I* wanted to do
that day. I had misspent the vast majority of my time and felt resentful
that very little of the day had gone to the person who I wanted to spend it
with. Action minus passion equals obligation. With the exception of
the lunch I enjoyed with my son, all of the day went to obligations that I did
not feel passionate about. Something I will keep in mind for the future.
Archie is enjoying his new (to him) laptop
computer for his birthday. He got it a month ago due to the impending
demise of the other one. It is feeble and hanging on by a thread. I
didn't want to wait til it keeled over and died, because I'd like to reinstall
the operating system to see if that revives it enough to use it as a back up
computer to watch movies on or whatever.
We did make it to the bookstore for
birthday browsing on the following Wednesday (yesterday). He bought the
Nicholas Flamel book series. I found a Jerry Reed cd and the Liberty Kids
cartoon series, so the bookstore trip was a success. We spent a few hours
there and enjoyed ourselves. I wish I had the time and attention span to
read all the books I found interesting! Perhaps that will come one day. Or I'll
be like the guy at the end of the Twilight Zone episode that the whole world
blew up except for the library and him. He finally had time to read all
the stuff he ever wanted. Then he stepped on his coke bottle glasses.
He finally had the time, but then he couldn't see.
The birthday campout post will be coming
soon.
1 comment:
That's funny. I just rediscovered Jerry reed a couple weeks ago and have been listening to him on youtube.
Post a Comment