A Teenager in The House

Yikes!!! There is a teenager in the house now. Wow time does sure fly. I cannot believe that Ryley is now 13. It seems like just yesterday when it seemed like we would never be able to have kids after 3 years of no hope. And then fast forward to today and he is 13 already. Sometimes I wish we could have a yellow button to slow things down a bit. However I am very proud of the young man that has developed before my eyes. He is cooking meals, has his own debit card, has not one or two but three jobs, he fairly responsible (I say fairly as after all, he is a teenager), he does well in school, and has a passion that he works hard at; baseball.

The scary thing is that I so vividly remember when I was 13. He has had one girlfriend, but she was too high maintenance for him, but was too shy to break it off; so his sister finally did it for him. He enjoys dances and loves music, reading, sports and of course video games.

Next year is grade eight. It is hard to belive that a year from now he will be almost in highschool. My instinct is to hold him closer to protect him from the world, but I have to trust that we have done a great job at preparing him for the real world and let him make his own sucesses and failures with us there to guide him if when he needs it.

Here are a few pics of the family birthday and one of his real birthday in Ohio with his ball team. They tried to give him the patty wacks, however he is one of the fastest runners on the team, so it didn't work so well.