He turned 12.
It was a pretty simple occasion, per his request. 2-dozen chocolate chip cookie dough filled cupcakes, dinner at Chilli's, and cashing in about a year's worth of allowance to finally get an Xbox. Those were the highlights.
Since his birthday was on a school day, and he wouldn't let me bring cupcakes to him at lunchtime, I decided he should at least wear all new clothes, head-to-toe, to school that day. Even if no one else noticed, he'd feel celebrated.
As it turned out, his new shoes were too hard NOT-to notice. He got to tell lots of admiring 6th grade boys that his new shoes were for his birthday. My plan worked!
We are so glad to have Henry in our family, taking us into this new and uncharted territory of parenthood. I couldn't ask for a better middle-schooler. At least for now, he's making my job pretty easy. And now he's perfectly outfitted, and can't wait for his upcoming basketball season.
Which leads nicely into talking about Halloween.
Speaking of basketball...
Henry was a basketball hoop for Halloween. Which felt like a huge breakthrough in my opinion, since he's wanted to be a scary guy/zombie for the past four or five years in a row. I liked that he was willing to "think outside the box" with me this year! But I was kind of sad that he didn't want to trick-or-treat with the rest of the family. He just felt like he was too old. Sigh. But it was nice to get to trick-or-treat knowing the our house was still being hospitable to our neighborhood trick-or-treaters.
The rest of the crew...
Jane was Hermione, Ruby was a Witch Princess, and George was your grumpy grandpa.
He took his role very seriously, trick-or-treating in an old-guy voice all night long. And he fun all weekend long trying out different old guy one-liners. Good times. Collectively, they brought home over 12 pounds of candy! What in the world am I going to do about that?!
For a moment, I thought my heart was softening towards my least favorite holiday, when I felt compelled to decorate my front porch in a festive way.
I'm still totally charmed by my black crow forest, but as soon as I had to stay up til 3am one night, sewing a witch princess costume, I remembered why I do not like this holiday, in general. But we do it for the children! I don't think they actually know that I don't like Halloween.
While we were out trick-or-treating, Jane asked me what my favorite holiday was. I said, "probably Christmas." She said, "Oh, I thought it would be Halloween, since you love going on family walks". She was commenting upon the fact that we were all out together as a family (minus one brooding middle schooler), walking around our neighborhood, on a crisp autumn night. Really, what's not to like about that?!
