18 Years

Did you think I was done with this blog site?  So did I!  It turns out that I’m feeling a bit nostalgic today, on Spencer’s 18^th birthday.  I spent some time this morning going through the old blog posts and reminiscing about small Spencer, parenting, and life in general over the past 18 years.  And thinking in cliches like ‘Time flies!’ and ‘They grow up so fast!’.

It seems fitting that my last blog post was about Spencer starting kindergarten.  A lot of life has happened since November 2011.  And in the process of life happening, Spencer grew up.

It would be way too much effort, and way too boring, for me to outline every milestone, achievement, and challenge that Spencer and we as a family have experienced over the past 13 years.  So, I’ll focus on the ‘where is Spencer now’.  Literally, Spencer is spending his 18^th birthday with his dad on a beach in Mexico.  Lucky kid.  In the other sense of ‘where’, Spencer is in his senior year at Chamblee High School.  Not excelling but managing to get through to graduation.  And I’ll leave it at that.

I am so proud of the person that Spencer has become.  My favorite things about Spencer are that he is genuine, kind, thoughtful, loves animals, respectful, not materialistic, has positive self-esteem and is generally comfortable in his own skin.  He has almost never been affected by peer pressure and is comfortable doing his own thing, even if it’s not what everyone else is doing/wearing/saying/etc.  I have always been grateful that Spencer did not inherit my shyness, which was debilitating for me as a child. Of course Spencer has his challenges…but don’t we all?

Spencer has been accepted to Kennesaw State University and plans to start there in the fall.  He’s going to try living in the dorm and see how that goes.  KSU has a great video game design program, which is what Spencer wants to do, so this is an exciting opportunity for him.  It’s going to be a huge transition, and I’ll be there to support and encourage him the best I can.  I know he’s legally an adult now, but I’ll never stop being his mom.

A few other things about Spencer: he loves hats (not ball caps, but many other types of hats), he’s into movies and video games, he hates organized school events (like dances…no prom for this senior!), he’s not athletic (although he does like to do the occasional short hike), he’s around 6’2” tall (taller than his dad), and he likes to play bartender (don’t judge…the kids in Madmen were mixing their parents drinks when they were 10!).  He has been in private piano lessons since around 6 years of age and is a pretty good player.  Farewell and Sealed Vessel, piano recital December 3, 2022 Up until last year, he also played the clarinet in band (one year he even played bass clarinet).  Spencer is looking forward to traveling internationally (he loved visiting Ireland last summer) with the Iberian Peninsula toward the top of the list.  Perhaps I’ll do some of that future traveling with him.

And that concludes my final blog post.

I love you, Spencer Aaron!  Happy 18^th birthday!

Kindergarten!

Well, this isn't the longest gap of time since I have posted...but it certainly has been a while.

Anyway... Spencer started kindergarten at our local public school, Idlewood Elementary in August. It has been a busy few months of school. We have had 2 field trips, a kindergarten class performance, a book fair, a book character costume parade, a pajama day, a fall festival, a PTA meeting, and I'm sure other things I'm not remembering. Spencer is enjoying school and has a fantastic teacher.  A lot of what he is doing in kindergarten is review from last year (kudos to his preK teacher!), and he is now doing 'advanced' homework that his kindergarten teacher sends home for a few kids in the class who are beyond the current material. He is also already at the reading level that they want the kindergarteners to be at by the end of the year. Yes, I am bragging but I figure that's my right as a parent :-) (And I try not to do it too much or too often.) On the less brag-worthy side of things there have been a few behavioral incidents (the most recent was because he was not listening and was laughing at the teacher when she asked him to do something or reprimanded him...that resulted in the teacher actually walking him to the car at after school pick up so she could talk to my mother-in-law about Spencer's behavior).

Spencer dressed up as his favorite book character, Jack from the Magic Tree House books, with his teacher at the book character parade

We walk to school every morning. Between Fred and I (and once our neighbor when we went out of town) Spencer has been walked to school every single day of school so far this year. I love that we live so close that we can walk. We started out walking with 3 other neighborhood families, but families slowly started to drop out of our walking group. We now walk regularly with one other mom and her son, though several mornings it has just been Spencer and I. I hope to keep up our walking streak throughout the winter...except in the case of rain (I'm not quite that hard core).

 Overall we have been really happy with Spencer's school. It's a large elementary school with ~900 students (~120 in kindergarten). It is a Title I school, which means over 60% of the students qualify for free or reduced price lunch and therefore the school qualifies for special assistance and takes part in special programs aimed at ensuring 'that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments'. So, basically it's a low income school. It is ethnically (though not necessarily racially) diverse with students from various countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. There is a high percentage of families that don't speak English, which is one of the school's biggest challenges (especially since there is not a common non-English language spoken by families). Spencer is the only white kid in his class (and one of 5 white kids in kindergarten). I love it, and he hasn't noticed :-) Many of the more affluent families in our neighborhood take their kids to other schools, usually schools in wealthier areas north of our community. There are so many benefits of going to our neighborhood school. I'm so glad we decided to give Idlewood a chance.

Oh, I almost forgot...Spencer also lost his first tooth! It happened so fast...I was brushing his teeth on Sunday night and it was very loose (so loose that it alarmed me! I wasn't expecting it) and the next day it fell out while he was eating lunch at school. They sent it home with a cute little certificate and the tooth fairy left him 4 quarters.

Not a bicycle riding prodigy

A few weeks ago a friend/classmate of Spencer's (we'll call him 'T') told his mom he wanted to do bicycle riding as his sport. So T's mom organized a series of bike riding playdates with friends at a local middle school track.

We were the first to arrive at one of the playdates. We got Spencer's little kid bike (with training wheels) out of the car. We fastened his Cars themed helmet, and away he went down the track. V e r y s l o w l y. There was just enough light breeze to keep him from making forward progress. But it was a flat, smooth surface so with a little coaxing and pushing now and then he made it around the track in nothing near record time. But he made it.

Then Spencer's friend T arrives. It took me a moment to recognize T, since from a distance all I saw were 2 adult bicycles. I was wondering where T's bike was. As they approached, I realized T was actually on one of the adult sized bicycles. Now, mind you, T is a little guy. A few inches and a few months behind Spencer. But T came flying around the track on his bicycle, no training wheels, real helment (sans cartoon characters), and flew around the track in near record speed. T's mom saw the look on my face as I watched her bicycle riding prodigy ride laps around poor Spencer, pedaling his heart out trying to go forward against the light breeze, looking so...young...compared to his peer. She helpfully offered that T's older cousins do a lot of bike riding and T had spent time with them and learned from them. I'm not sure if that made me feel any better.

Spencer was done after 1.5 laps, and quickly got distracted by a dog. We'll be at the next bicycle riding playdate...I'm hoping that eventually some of T's bicycle riding enthusiasm and skills will rub off on Spencer.

The Socks

When Spencer is tired he becomes overly sensitive, melodramatic and emotional.

Tonight he decided he wanted to wear his plush Toy Story slippers to bed instead of socks. I said that was fine and put his socks on the dresser. So he gets into bed and I start reading him a story. A few paragraphs into the story he gets very sad and starts to cry. So I ask him why he's crying.

Me: Spencer, why are you crying?
S: I miss my socks!
Me (laughing a little bit): You mean the socks over on your dresser? But you said you wanted to wear your slippers to bed.
S, more sad: I know but I miss them!

I start laughing harder, then...

S: I miss the bottoms!
Me: You miss the bottoms of your socks!?
S: Yes! I miss the bottoms of my socks! They have that sweet little word on them! (He's sad and crying in earnest as he says this...I mean he really misses the bottoms of his socks with the 'sweet little word'!)

I'm laughing really hard, and he is upset that I'm laughing but can't help but laugh so he's laughing and crying at the same time.

I get up and get the socks. I bring them to him. The word on the bottom is 'Hanes'. He points out the 'sweet' word that he missed so much and swaps his slippers for his socks.

Maybe I shouldn't laugh at these sentimental outbursts. I know he's sensitive, and he was just really tired. But seriously, how can 'I miss the sweet word on the bottom of my socks' not crack me up?

Halloween 2010

Another Halloween, come and gone. It seemed like an entire weekend of festivities, starting with his school party on Friday and ending in an evening of trick-or-treating on Sunday. He had a great time at his school party...they had a pinata, a costume parade, crafts, and broom races (his favorite thing though was poking other kids with his plush pterodactyl head). He was all smiles all day long.
On Saturday morning we bought pumpkins, and after having brunch with a few friends we got to the business of carving. Spencer wouldn't clean out his pumpkin...he said it was too 'slurmy' (his word for slimy/gooey/slushy/etc). Which is weird, because he loves mud, dirt, worms, bugs, etc. Oh well. I think he pulled out 2 seeds and I did the rest. He did however draw the face on his pumpkin this year. He did a pretty good job, too! I let him help with the carving a little (no, he was not using that huge knife...just the small, nearly harmless carving tool).For trick-or-treating we met up with several neighbors as we have in years past and went through the neighborhood as a group. It's a lot of fun for the kids and the adults. Spencer and a little 4-year old girl from down the street (in an amazing Dorothy outfit...she had sparkly red shoes and Toto in a basket) were the stragglers, but they were ok with that. I enjoyed listening to their 4-year old chit chat as they walked down the streets with candy buckets in one hand and holding hands with the other. And a few pictures from our annual trip to one of the area corn maze/fall fun farms. We went with some friends to a really fun place called Corn Dawgs. This particular place had a tunnel slide going through a large hill. At first Spencer was hesitant, but after the first time going down by himself he turned into a sliding maniac and wouldn't stop! He must have gone up and down that slide about 15 or 20 times on his own. He just kept sliding down then running back up the hill to do it again...it was exhausting just watching him.

The beach

Earlier this month we spent a week at Topsail Island, NC. We stayed in a beautiful house on the beach with 2 other families. My 13-year old niece was able to come out from Colorado to join us. Spencer did well on the 8-hour drive there (our new portable DVD player definitely helped...at home we still limit TV, but on an 8-hour car trip anything goes). The house had a kids room with 2 sets of bunk beds, and Spencer surprisingly chose a top bunk. I was a little concerned since it was his first experience sleeping on a top bunk, but he loved it and maneuvered up and down the ladder with no problems.

He slept moderately well, though toward the end of the trip was tired and cranky and asking to go home. (Historically he hasn't slept well at all on these types of trips.) Of course, now that we're home, he keeps talking about the beach house and how he wants to go back. He's decided it's too long of a drive though so we'll fly next time. I told him the other day that there are new families taking their turn at the beach house and we don't know them, so he said we need to have a 'meeting' with them so we can know them and stay at the beach house with them.

We arrived at the beach Saturday evening and of course the kids (Spencer, my niece and our friends 4-year old son) went right in the water, clothes and all. Sunday was a beautiful day and we spent a lot of time at the beach. Monday I woke up with a sore throat and headache. By Monday evening I had severe chills and felt like my throat and head were on fire. It pretty much sucked. I was sick for several days, and wasn't truly well for the rest of our time at the beach. Spencer checked on me often, asking in a very soft voice 'Do you feel better, mommy?'. It was very sweet. With the help of ibuprofen I managed to rejoin vacation on Thursday. On Friday we visited the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital which was very cool. It's a really great place and they do great work for the sea turtles. If you ever make it to Topsail Island (which I recommend) you should definitely check out the sea turtle hospital.

I heard that Spencer's favorite beach game was 'sneak attack'. I didn't really see this since I missed so much beach time. But apparently Fred and Spencer would stand or sit in the surf and wait for a wave. Once in a while a larger wave would come over them when they weren't expecting it: sneak attack! Spencer still talks about 'sneak attack'. He loved the wildlife...we saw dolphins several times, pelicans, and different species of sand/beach birds (which he loved chasing). One evening we spent half an hour following a crab down the beach. It would disappear in the surf and we'd see it's eyes poking out of the water. And of course we came home with quite an assortment of (mostly broken) seashells that Spencer collected.

I think everyone else had a great vacation and no one seemed to catch my illness (I am very proud of my infection control measures!).

Our beach house, the Lucky Leaf

Blah blah blog

I was contemplating discontinuing my Spencer blog. I'm not a very good blogger, I don't update in a timely manner, and am not sure anyone would miss it. But then I heard from a few folks who do actually read it (in addition to the 2 or 3 people who I know read it because they leave nice comments :-) And I went back through old posts and realized what a gold mine of memories I have in this blog. Things that I had forgotten about. Things that didn't make it into the baby book (I'm even worse at updating Spencer's baby book than I am at updating this blog site!). I may even print off the blog pages and put them into a binder or something, just in case the Internet disappears or eats my blog site.

Blogging is a fascinating thing to me. It amazes me that some people are so good at it that they make a living. Many of my friends blogs are very well written, funny, interesting...I enjoy them immensely. These are my regular, favorite blogs (in no particular order):

http://motherloadshow.blogspot.com/

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

http://www.machilli.blogspot.com/

http://www.sforsting.blogspot.com/

http://ilpiattoblu.blogspot.com/

http://herbadmother.com/ (see also http://blog.beliefnet.com/theirbadmother/)

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

http://katie-adventures.blogspot.com/

So, I have decided to keep this blog alive, probably at the same pace and level as it has been. Stay tuned for some summer beach stories and updates!