Some friends wished Mark a happy birthday, but even more people offered me condolences. You've got a teenager now was the common theme. Brace yourself.
To those people, I say, HA! Anyone who knows Mark knows he's had a snotty teen attitude since he was five. I'm not going to tempt fate by saying, "How much worse could he get?" Instead, I'll just say that my dear son has spent the last eight years lovingly preparing me for his teenage years. (Translation: He's always had an attitude, now he just has an excuse for it.)
But I digress. It was Mark's birthday, and we started the celebration as we always do--with donuts. He scarfed down three before I could even wish him happy birthday.
Mark's kid party is next week--laser tag and pizza with his friends. So this week, we held his family celebration. We invited our family and extended family over for lunch.
It was a perfect day to celebrate outside--sunny and gorgeous. We feasted on deli sandwiches and laughed a lot. Mark chatted a bit during the meal, but was more interested in sending objects flying across the backyard--footballs, basketballs and soccer balls--with his friend Sean and our little friend Corban. Lunch was good, although you had to keep one eye on the lawn to avoid getting hit in the head.
After lunch, we busted out the birthday (cheese)cake, which Mark had requested. Turns out inserting birthday candles into cheesecake results in a cracked cake, but the surface stayed intact long enough for Mark to blow out all his candles. Didn't matter much anyway--we just filled in the cracks with raspberry sauce. (Poor Corban was a bit distressed by all the smoke!)
I bought Mark a funny hat to wear, but forgot to give it to him. I remembered exactly one minute after all the photos were taken.
"Your hat!" I yelled, racing into the house for it.
"Oh yeah," my mom answered. "Go get his dunce cap!"
I reminded her it's a "birthday hat," not a "dunce cap." But it's nice to know I won't be the sole reason he goes into therapy as an adult.
Mark cleaned all the candles off for us, which I appreciated. Then he gave his best "smoking birthday boy" pose, which I didn't appreciate as much.
Then it was the boys' favorite part--time to rip into the gifts. Mark got a lot of cash and gift cards (score!), a cool blue sweatshirt, a Dodger's iTouch case and some Silly Putty. I gave him new skinny jeans, and then we listened to Uncle Brad rant for 20 minutes about how boys should not wear skinny jeans. (It was funny to watch the whole party ignore him!) Mark tried them on, and I was stoked--if it wasn't for skinny jeans, my skinny son would never have pants that fit him!
The boys went back to tossing things around the yard, and the adults slowly said their goodbyes. I wasn't sorry to say goodbye, though, because the party never ended. Instead, it slowly morphed into an Oscars party. That's right, we did as good party goers do--we pulled the leftovers out of the fridge, and started round 2. We watched the red carpet arrivals and the bad speeches, and feasted on a second round of sandwiches, dips and cheesecake.
So, happy birthday, Mark. Thirteen freaked me out a little bit, because of the teenage thing (OK, more because of the being-a-mom-of-a-teenager thing). But I handled it okay, right up until Mark blew out the candles, and my friend John said, "Wow, 13...only three more years till he's driving!" And then I had a bit of a panic attack...
But I survived. Let's just hope I can still say that at the end of Mark's teenage years...
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