My Buddy and Me

My little burrito baby Teague will be 10 in a few weeks. Ten. An entire decade of Teague!

Every single cliche runs through my mind when I think about his birth up until now. As time passes I see first-hand what a short time we actually have with these amazing little humans in our homes. At 10, he'll be 5 years away from driving a vehicle (thankfully with a parent) and in as few as 8 years, he will be leaving the house to hopefully go away to college. As parents, we have the bittersweet privilege of raising a child and preparing them to one day leave the nest, all the while knowing that this piece of our heart will, in fact, leave the nest.

Teague is still excited to see me when I volunteer at his school. This, I'm told by other parents, will be ending shortly. He also reaches for my hand when we walk to/from the car. As each day passes, I try to store up those precious hand holds because I know this too will end soon.  I'm thankful that Sean's job affords me the option of having a flexible job. This allows me to spend Teague-filled vacations and summers.  Though we were both ready to return to Colorado after two weeks on the road for Christmas break, I do really love the time we spent together as groupies, following the squadron from winter training to their nationals competition and holiday demos. 

During a recent snow day, Teague reluctantly agreed to watch The Parent Trap with me. Though I prefer the Hayley Mills old-school version, it was a more recent movie starring Lindsay Lohan (before the poor girl became a train wreck).  The premise, parents have twin girls and then divorce. Each parent separately raises a twin and neither know about each other until they meet up at summer camp.  The twins then devise a plan to switch places to meet their other parent. In one scene, the character Annie was asked to describe her father, to which she replied, "He's kind of like my best friend. We do everything together."  Teague looked at me and said, "That's kind of like us."  Oh my heart! 

That moment is one of my favorites and will be filed away for his teenage years, when he's way too cool to ride in my mom-mobile.

Vegas, baby!