That Teen Dream Thing

Posted by Vulnadia on Nov 12, 2008 at 12:43 PM I know it's been a year already, but I am still having trouble acclimating to having a teen in the house! I know, I know, it's not as if I have a different child or anything, it's just that he is a teen now and it would seem that when the day comes that makes a child a teen, a switch somewhere gets flipped inside them and they are just, well, different! We have had a year of watching our son learn all about dating habits and the rights and wrongs of it and the ins and outs of it and such. I have marvelled at how grown-up his relationships are and how he and his girlfriend at that moment had actually sat themselves down and outlined a plan for their relationship month by month so that they could allocate time to re-evaluate their situation and mutually agree if they should proceed with the relationship, which lasted about three months on this plan, but was very interesting to follow! I have a bathroom full of smelly-good soaps and deoderant and cologne that my child bathes in incessantly! You know he is going out and ready for his day when the cologne comes wafting down the stairs long before his teen-dream body ever sets foot on them! We have transcended from the days of action figures and transformers into electric guitar dreams and guitar lessons to go with his photography knack that he has been honing. I have a wall full of super neat photos that he has concocted at Renzi for me that he really despises me having framed and displayed, but they still are up there for all to see! His birthday and Christmas approach and I am torn on what to get him. Everybody is, actually. He wants an electric guitar to supplement his accoustical. He has been taking piano at school and doing fabulous with it. His guitar lessons at Renzi were enough to get him interested enough into buying every self-help learn-to-play-guitar-at-home book from the half-price bookstore. We have long since learned to watch for amps and keyboards that come complete with headphone jacks installed! Now the birthday party is upon us and the dilemma begins. What to do? Do we have the giant sleepover again like last year? Or, should I allow him to invite everyone he can think of to the party and have it out at the haunt building and let him have a real party? I am trying to take it one day at a time with this whole teen-thing aclimation that I am supposed to be going through. Obviously, my assimilation is nowhere near complete!