On entering the double digits

Despite his parents' desperate attempts to arrest his development (and perhaps thereby forestall their own obsolescence), Kid #1 turned ten years old over the weekend. He celebrated with a sleepover party that featured a trip to a Mongolian barbecue, an intense game of dodge ball, a showing of Shrek 2, and a night of staying awake in the basement telling jokes about farts and butts.

Ten is a tough age: still kid-like enough to want to feel close to mom and dad, to want to have big and obvious signs of parental affection ... but proto-adolescent enough to become sullen when offered a children's menu or kid's cup at a restaurant, and to attempt through the strategic shutting of doors and wearing of headphones to create private space and independence. And the moodswings: I don't envy the boy for the little hurricanes of havoc his small surges of hormones are causing, and I'm sure that it is an odd experience to see that your body is elongating so quickly that almost every day you are reminded of how distant you now are from the small child you once were ... but damn, if this is a taste of what true adolescence is like, then Sergeant Stern's School for Young Men is looking like a pretty good option (you mail them your child just as he enters his difficult phase; they send him back in a few years as a well disciplined and obedient soldier) (downside: he will also be a killing machine).

All joking aside, I realize how fortunate I am to have had a decade with this amazing child proto-adolescent. I even look forward to the next decade, with all it will bring. He tells me he is going to live well into the triple digits, so I'm expecting we'll have a long time together.