My son turns thirteen tomorrow. 

Thirteen.  He's a teenager now.  That blows my mind.

He's gone from being a fuzzy-headed little baby to a toothless, tow-headed kid (toothless because he tried to ride his little brother's ride-on ambulance down the steps, knocking his front teeth out) who had an angelic little grin and who wanted blue hair so badly he agreed to take a shower every night (it was spray-on color: he got his blue hair and I got a clean kid), to a raven-haired adolescent who was ecstatically happy to get a pair of Tripp pants and a Cradle Of Filth T-shirt for his birthday.

He's grown a LOT in the past year, and it scares me.  He thinks that I'm old and that I don't know anything; he is, in other words, a typical teenager.  He wants so badly to be independent and I want so badly for him to retain some of the little boy I raised and not grow up so fast....but time marches on and so I have to watch my baby boy become a young man. 

I love you, son.  Happy Birthday.