I felt kind of sorry for my oldest child this year, who turned thirteen. He's an official teenager now, and so far he's handling it well. We get the occasional grumpies and why-do-I-have-to's or the do-I-HAVE-to-go's, but how I can begrudge him that when I have all of those same feelings myself? Anyway, with getting ready for B.'s baptism which would occur the next morning, O. had kind of short shrift on his birthday.
I informed him earlier this year that I was now done with detailed, planned friend birthdays since he was older than twelve. Since I only did those on even-numbered birthdays anyway, his thirteenth was expected to be calm already. However, with trying to get ready for company, I was afluster with trying to get the house in shape and get food ready for the next day. While I had spent the day cleaning and organizing and going with B.'s class for a field trip up the canyon, I was still far from done when the kids got home from school. There was a checklist we were going through, and I was doing to make-up piano lessons for a pair of students whose lessons I had had to move from the day before. Yikes!
So, O. and his best friend made his birthday cake (they love doing brownies and cookies and stuff) with the bargain that I would frost it. Fair enough. When I finished teaching, I hurriedly wrapped O.'s presents and we met Justin and Pengbo over at a local Thai restaurant that O. had chosen to eat at for his birthday. He was thrilled at getting an mp3 player, an iTunes gift card, and the last Christopher Paolini book, Brisingr.
We didn't dawdle over dinner, however tasty it was, because I had to race with B. to get into a store that closed at 7 p.m. to try to find her a pretty white dress to wear at her baptism. There literally hadn't been any other opportunity to go find one. With exactly 19 minutes to get there, we raced down the freeway, sqawked at red lights and slow drivers, and screeched to a halt at the shop with 2 minutes to spare. We raced across the parking lot and into the store, grabbed the first four dresses we saw that would fit her, and dashed into a fitting room. Within 15 minutes we had our dress, a slip, and pretty tights. Kaching!
While we were gone, O. and his friend and the boys worked on my list, and O. and his friend scrubbed 20 pounds of potatoes and wrapped them in tinfoil for the potato bar the next day. What awesome boys! The house looked pretty good, and I quit worrying about having a sparkly house. I decided the most important thing was the ordinance that B. was participating in the next day, and the rest of it was just superfluous (don't you just love saying that word?).
O. got to have his friend sleep over, and the rest of us plopped into bed, pooped. O. was quite a trooper with all of his help. He and his friend stayed up watching movies, playing Magic, and who knows what else.
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