Fifteen (and two days)
Tuesday was Barney’s 15th birthday. I started to write a blog-post about it then, but I couldn’t think of what to say. You can only exclaim “how?!?” and “when?!?” so many times, and I think I’ve used up my quota.
So instead of repeating those question/exclamations over and over, I’m going to refer you to a previous blog-post, and then add a few comments. I was surprised that I had to go back four years to find this post – it doesn’t seem that long since I wrote it – but it says quite a lot of what I want to say now, so go and read it. And then come back.
From November 2005: My life changed
Being a mother is still challenging, still rewarding. I was right that the next few years would bring more parenting challenges: saying goodbye as he left for six months in France, supporting him as he did his first GCSEs and embarked on OU courses, sharing in his excitement when he first took the controls of a plane (and being very glad I didn’t know about it until afterwards!) – and then there’s puberty, of course, which isn’t a walk in the park for any of us. Barney is still all the things I said four years ago, except, of course, that he is now a teenager – well into his teens, in fact, only a year away from being considered an adult in many ways. He’s got stubble, a big deep voice, a bigger, deeper laugh. He’s as tall as me, which pleases him greatly (and his pleasure amuses me greatly).
He can yell at his brothers (and doesn’t realise how intimidating that big deep voice sounds when he does), and he can calmly rock a baby to sleep. He can complain that he has no clean clothes (apparently failing to understand that removing your dirty clothes from behind your bed is an essential part of the process of getting them laundered) and he can do a pretty good job of cleaning a bathroom. He could eat us out of house and home, and he can notice that I’m in need of a cup of tea and bring it to me without being asked. He’s a mass of contradictions, a mass of swirling hormones, a mixture of man and boy.
Some of you – those who’ve been there or are there now – are probably nodding your heads in recognition. And some of you, who only have younger children, might be thinking it sounds very confusing – and it is! I won’t deny that there are moments when I could cheerfully strangle him, but mostly, well, he’s fabulous. And he’s not quite sure how he should react when I say that kind of thing to him.
Barney, I love you to bits 
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Awwww…. i had a major taste of an unpleasant side of confused, boundary pushing nearly teen the other day. And *swallow*ed rather a lot. Congrats on making it all appear really rather magnificent!!!
Awwww indeed. I only hope I can make it look as easy
aaah, brought tears to my eyes. I do feel much the same about my own almost-teen, also hope I can feel the same after another couple of years of it!
I bet it’s a whirlwind of emotions: but what a joyous thing it must be to watch your baby slowly growing into a man! I so am enjoying our journey to that stage—and am glad people blog of the whirlwind to remind us there will be times we’ll want to rip our hair out–but it’ll all be worth it.
Happy Birthday to Barney!