The Second Teenager

Handling "party" to-do's for a son who becomes a teenager is a much easier task than when planning a little kid's birthday.  For him, as long as he would receive his coveted gift (a camcorder), the rest was just icing on the cake.  And all I had to do for the cake (it was consumed just by our family) is bake it in a 9 x13 pan and get out my package of candles and pick out the formerly used "1" and "3" and add some regular candles and a trick candle that doesn't completely go out and the cake decorating was done.

And instead of having friends over, he wanted to take a group of guys to the indoor skatepark for a session (or "sesh) and some camcorder filming.  Which Hubs did while I stayed home and frosted that cake and watched TV.

As previously mentioned, Middle Son was called The Mayor at our house because he waved at everyone on our street.  Having friends was always important to him.  Before he went to school he had imaginary friends who were brothers and we'd ask him straight-faced questions about them and he had stories to tell us.  When Kindergarten came along he was friendly to everyone in his classroom--more than I ever knew.  In Kindergarten during an awards ceremony (you know, best attendance, etc.) he won Mr. Citizenship in his class.  I had no idea and was so proud.

In 2nd grade we had moved to a new school and he had a teacher who liked to put on performances just in the classroom to enrich learning.  During a regular parent-teacher conference she told us about a presentation the class had just done.  As they began to plan and practice this presentation, our son met privately with the teacher because he was very concerned about one student who was mute (for some reason she did not speak at school)--how was she going to be part of this presentation just like everyone else?  The teacher asked him what he thought they should do and he said that for her part she should hold up a series of posters with her words on them so that she could participate.

Our Middle Son is one who likes little kids--and wants to be a babysitter to earn extra money (Hubs has helped put the word out to to her teachers but no takers yet).  There is a first grade boy down the street who adores our Middle Son.  Last year when he was in Kindergarten this little boy became very sick and had to stay in the hospital for a week.  We planned to visit him and asked our Middle Son to go with us.  Without hesitation he said he would.  When we arrived at the hospital I was pretty much a mess.  I had to look at the walls and pretend to be very interested in the architecture through tear-filled eyes.  This was before we even arrived on our neighbor's hospital floor.  But our son just sailed on through, went right up to the little boy once we arrived to his room and gave him a new toy and showed him how to work it.

I often feel like our Middle Son doesn't get as much attention as the Oldest gets for being the first to experience new things (and gets reprimanded the most), not does he get the attention the youngest gets (nightly bedtime reading and more from me).  Maybe because he is in the middle it makes for good problem solving.  Anyway, it helps a lot to think of positives such as easy party-planning, and what makes him so special, and not think of how he has grown an inch in a month.