Officially the mother of a teen

As of May 2 I am officially the mother of a teenage son. Yep the boy turned 13! The weeks leading up to this event were more traumatic for me than they were for him. He took it in stride while I almost had an emotional meltdown in the card isle at Wal-Mart.

Honestly it all began when the talks of middle school invaded my home. First we did the middle school open house night. That was pretty traumatic for me. The thought of my baby wandering around that huge school. OH MY! Then when an entire row of teenage girls said in unison "Hi" I wanted to DIE. My son had officially become a babe magnet. Don't get me wrong...he has always had girlfriends-a steady stream of them. Never really without one but never seeming to be very serious about them either. Until recently! Recently the girls have been visiting the house and he is visiting with them and the number of texts going in and out of his cell phone is up in the 5,000 count. So the girl thing and the level of his seriousness with the girl thing is starting to make my stomach hurt. Couple this with the recent discovery of arm pit hair and I am in pure AGONY!

To add to the agony it seems as though overnight he developed this attitude! He has always been a little lippy...he likes to argue-maybe I could talk him into being a lawyer-but lately he has been responding with "oh my God" to everything. We tell him to take out the trash he responds with a suck of the teeth and oh my God. His attitude was so much so that I confiscated his cell phone and threw it in MY purse-which is sacred ground-no man shall enter-and didn't tell him when I would be returning it!

So here I am...the young age of 31 (almost 32) raising a teenager, an about to be teenager and a 10 year old. What am I thinking? You know what...at least once a week I consider boarding school a viable option. I now fully understand why in some species mothers eat their young -to save themselves from raising teenagers! I often wonder how in the world am I going to survive this? Not just him...but I have an adopted daughter who will be 13 in October. A couple weeks ago she informed me that she was going through puberty. She did this very matter of fact and called me from school to tell me so! UGH!

The upside of this insanity...that by the time I am 40 I will be all done raising children. Well at least the won't be teenagers anymore!