Rob at 16

16.  I am still having a hard time wrapping my mind around that.  How did he get to be 16?  Yet in other ways, Rob has grown emotionally so much the past year that it is evident that he is on the cusp of young adulthood.

The picture in this post is not from his birthday but it does represent his chosen party theme, which was piano.  We made a cool mural of music notes with our faces in the centers and K did a really awesome cake. I need to find where she loaded up the pictures so I can share them!  His birthday was supposed to be quite different from what actually happened. His best friend was going to sleep over last Saturday, which was Rob's big day.  But starting Wednesday, I got some viral thing and got progressively sicker as the week went on.  I even missed 1 1/2 days of work and I think the last time that happened was back in the big ice storm a bunch of years ago which dovetailed with my having pneumonia!  LOL

K called off the sleepover as we did not want to infect another family and then I felt doubly terrible as I woke Saturday essentially healthy.  Weak and kind of woozy but no longer truly ill.  I could do party prep and shop and take care of the kids etc.

When I spoke with Rob about how sorry I was that things got messed up, he was genuinely nice about it.  There was no sullenness, no tears.  I said that I would bring he and Chet to the movie of his choice for Saturday afternoon so that there would be something special that he could be doing.  (also the littles were inside out wanting to decorate and we did that while the big boys were out)  He was really happy with that--movie times are not all that common in our house. We are a DVD or on demand bunch of folks so it still has a high cachet to go to the cinema.

I am so proud of my son.  He has learned to share himself through his music.  He also  speaks more than he ever did and while not ever one for being talkative, he has a really funny sense of humor.  He has lots of friends from lots of different walks of life and seems comfortable in who he is.  He is almost at the point where he can have things in his bedroom like books and such.  There still can't be a lot of them or he will "forget" to sleep, but he has been able to have one or two favorites and  a clock radio this year.  In the past, even the clock radio would have been cause for being awake all night long.

He is starting to make plans for what he would like to do as a young adult, what he would like to study, where he would like to live.  He is starting to make more realistic choices, no longer saying his career path is in the NFL and looking towards other talents and interests.  I am so lucky that he is my son!