Thirteen

Ryland turned 13 in June and we spent the weekend celebrating the best we knew how in this COVID-19 state of things. Last year we started the tradition of family bowling for his birthday celebration and he chose to keep it going this year. It was easy enough to social distance in a nearly-empty bowling alley where we discovered that we’re mostly terrible bowlers. I think Isla won both games. This is roughly the third year in a row that I signed them up for the Kids Bowl Free program and I’m hoping we go more than just the one time (like last year). Fingers crossed! 

He was also able to hang out with some friends from school that he hadn’t seen in months. No pictures, since that was all his time. We ended the birthday weekend with a low-key family party, just the seven of us. I made a Stranger Things cake and found some Stranger Things/nondescript 80s party decorations (I wouldn’t normally go heavy on single-use party decorations ordered from Amazon but celebrating birthdays and other special occasions in quarantine is doing things to me), recreated Joyce Byers’s creepy alphabet wall from season one, and played some Stranger Things Bingo. We let him order a new video game and he’s been steadily working his way through Keanu Reeves’s filmography with Travis. His actual birthday fell on a Monday and we spent it swimming with friends and sharing the rest of his cake. 

Having a teenager is strange and wonderful. Some days he’s too cool for everything and other days he still loves Adventure Time and Phinneas and Ferb. He’s a helper and a people-pleaser but he’s also incredibly sarcastic and watches some questionable YouTube content that hurts my brain. I really can’t believe he’s entering his final year of middle school and it’s even more unbelievable thinking about what that year will look like in the midst of everything. I love seeing the people my children are becoming while still struggling to keep them close and let them hold onto their littleness as long as possible. Despite how difficult this “quarantine” life has been, it’s also been a special experience having the kids home so much, especially Ryland who spends every other week at his dad’s. The kids are getting all of this bonus time with each other that they may never get again. I hope we can make the best of the time we have left before this kid is driving and getting his first job. I say it all the time and it sounds like a cliche but time really does move unnaturally fast when you have kids. It positively flies if you have multiple kids. I legitimately don’t know where 13 years of my life went. But I’m not sad about them getting older. It’s a privilege to watch your kids grow into the people they’re supposed to be. Happy Birthday to my beautiful first boy. Welcome to being a teenager. May you be much easier on me than I was on my parents, please and thank you.