pump up the JAM

 remarkable and noteworthy date in our family recently passed, and while it may make me appear as a terrible mommy and and even worse mommy blogger, I did purposely wait to write the post for a whole eleven days.  I have a good reason, though!  Honestly, what good is a blog post about your first born child turning A WHOLE FREAKING DECADE OLD without pictures?!

See?  I told you I had a good reason!  With his birthday party this past weekend, I now have the pics to commemorate our handsome guy's tenth birthday celebration.  Just look at him- even with the "tween teeth," he's one good looking kid, huh?

While you may not get to bring in cupcakes to the lunchroom when you have a summer birthday, you do get the joyous experience of having your birthday parties at the pool.  (And your parents get the joyous experience of not having to plan anything beyond some snacks, some drinks, pizza and cake-- after that they say, "Go swim!")  This year was very similar to last year, with a bunch of funny kids hanging at the pool for a couple of hours, hoovering down pizza like it's going out of style, splashing and laughing in the pool, and generally making me sit in wonder as I simply observe.  (I think I now rank 10 year old boys as a subject interesting enough to be studied just like gorillas... I felt a bit like Dian Fossey as I watched some of the boys interact in their natural habitat...)

I was happy to see a cool mix of friends able to join JAM and us-- a nice group of boys and girls, which made me happy for whatever reason, and all of them really great kids.

The cool thing about having his birthday party almost two weeks after his actual birthday was that it made for one last hurrah to summer, since the following day brought fewer smiles to his face but a huge, GIGANTIC one to mine!

School is in session, my friends.

After a long and drawn-out drama about a potential switch to JAM's school placement this summer, the Friday before school started finally brought the final, and GOOD, news.  With a mere 67.5 hours until he needed to be seated at his desk "ready to learn," we heard the official word that the county approved his transfer to stay at the school he has attended for the last four years.  Can you say YAY??  Hubby and I could, and we have over and over and over again in the last few days.  Happily, we continued the tradition we started back in 2003 with the obligatory-first-day-of-school-picture-in-front-of-the-official-school-sign-so-as-to-be-able-to-see-exactly-how-much-you-grow-from-year-to-year.  Since I'm a dork, we have a last-day-of-school version of that picture for each year as well.  Here he is, in all his fifth grade glory.

So happy, happy tenth birthday, JAM.  Just like it says in a picture book that you used to love (that your siblings still adore!), you definitely wear me out.  But, you also crack me up, and you have been known to warm my heart.  (Mostly, you crack me up.  You, my dear son, are a funny guy.)  Ten is proving to be an interesting age... tweendom isn't a cup of tea... for either of us, but I'm hoping we can make it out to other side of this hormonal highway with an even stronger mother/son relationship!  For now, I'll have to learn to live with some eye rolling and wait for the laughs that come at some point every day.  We love you much, dude.


Way too young to have a TEN YEAR OLD child,