12th Birthday

My baby is 12, my brain just balks at the foreignness.  It still thinks he's 6.  He walks in, just a shade shorter than me, with his starter mustache, his untrained hair, his big feet.  A man-child just as prone to walk outside in the dark to get something from the car alone as he is to crawl up in bed with me to sleep because something scared him.

I watch him grow.  He's like corn in a drought, the way it sucks up what rain and water it can get, the stalks groaning with the effort of growth.  His feet and hands were comically too large, then his legs grew and he shot up taller.  A year ago he was heading toward pudgy and now I keep having to buy longer pants in smaller waist sizes.  His knobby boy knees are no longer wider than his thighs, he runs in full strides, confident of his strength.  He loves to race against his own time, trying to be faster than he was last week or run more laps around the house.

This year he only wanted a couple buddies to spend the night and work on various building projects, so that's what I arranged.  I think he's feeling a little morose about missing out the group birthday song!

I am feeling a little morose myself, about having just one year left with a kid, then it's all teenagers and they will all be taller than me!