And so begin the Teenage years!

We have a teenager under our roof as of this past Monday.  Things will never be the same.  Connor turned 13, and he is quick to remind us that he is now a teenager.  Puberty, however, began to creep in over the summer, so we were more or less prepared, I guess.

The now healing black eye on the new teenager is the result of he and his brother (who has a knot on his forehead) jumping on a neighborhood kid's trampoline with more than one kid on at a time.  Sam's foot smashed into Connor's head and Connor's whatever caught Sam in the forehead.  Both boys had been prohibited from jumping on said trampoline due to an earlier incident that resulted in injury.  Must have slipped their memories,.....

Our new teenager has been awfully grumpy as of late.  I'm not sure if this is due to the new state of being or just the usual ups and downs of kid who is often unstable.  Probably both.  Oh joy.

I have a feeling that this kid is going to be a bit harder to contain in the little bubble he's lived in all of his life due to being bipolar and Autistic.  He's never had much interest in venturing out into the world of peers or even, very often, the neighborhood.  Times they are a changing....

This year he joined his first after-school club and went to his first party since kindergarten.  These were milestones that we were thrilled about.  However, this is a child who we can't lose sight of in Wal-mart since he wanders off to follow whatever catches his attention at the moment.  The coming years will be fraught with new and, for his mom and me, uneasy concerns. 

But, for now, we are getting used to the newly evolved teen who is grumpy and sleeps most of the weekend.  In so many ways he's just a typical newly- minted teen.  Come to think of it, the teenage years are an emotional roller coaster ride that Connor is already familiar with.  He's been riding an emotional roller coaster most of his life.  This might just be old hat to him.

Yep, the birthday boy is growing up.  His voice is deeper and he's taller than his grandma.  It seems like only yesterday he was a little fella flying around the house in his Spider-Man costume.

Double Digits and Rainy Sundays

A rainy weekend is winding down. We needed the moisture. I can almost see the grass, shrubs and flowers growing and deepening in color from 3 days of constant rain. It's also 73 degrees. Love it! Makes me think that fall and winter can't be that far away.

It's been a lazy Sunday inside. Reading, gaming and watching TV have been the activities of choice. Not to mention snoozing...as seen with Bear laid out on the end of my bed.

The rain began Thursday evening with a downpour about 30 minutes before we were to attend our first middle school open house. Along with many other water-logged parents we slid or swam into the school to run the kids' schedules. Connor is a 6th grader this year, and his transition has been much smoother than we could have hoped for. Although he ran away from school ( didn't get far as he didn't know the way home) the first day it's been uphill ever since. He decided he liked his teachers and the place wasn't that bad. Truth be told, his middle school has a top-notch special education program that will build on and expand the progress he's made in the past two years. We're delighted!

After a rocky summer and a month-long stint in Day Treatment we've gotten Sam more or less back on track for the start of 4th grade. A growth spurt and competing emotional issues resulted in a complete revamping of his medications. To his delight he became a member of the double-digit club when he turned 10 on Labor Day. I guess I've forgotten how exciting and monumental that can be for a kid: The decade milestone.

It's been a busy start to the school year for me. I've worked almost every day for the past 3 weeks. That's a good thing! I'm also out of the cast and working on being back to normal in the foot department. Still some residual tendon issues due to a summer spent in the air cast, but they are working themselves out. I've also noticed that the elementary schools opened their doors to an influx of coughing and sneezing. The classrooms are already hotbeds of germs. Large bottles of hand sanitizers and boxes of Kleenex are as common as pencils and paper.

It seems that Labor Day is the starting gate for the end-of-year sprint. I'm already seeing Halloween decorations and candy appear in stores and in the catalogs that have begun clogging the mailbox. Time flies this time of year.