Happy Birthday to my new Teenager

Having a son who just turned 13 requires a special kind of birthday cake. With dripping blood, soccer carnage, mutant dinosaurs and bugs, tiki symbols and candles that don't go out. Oh and four layers. Yes, four cake layers, which also means four frosting layers. Yum. Had to stabilize with drinking straws punched through. Looked pretty impressive though. And you should have seen how big his eyes got!
We are just getting used to him being a teenager, although it has been sneaking up on us for a while. It certainly hasn't happened suddently, overnight. But there is a difference in how he carries himself, more self assured and confident. And a marked increase in attention to grooming (hah!). He's a booger around his little brother, but on his own he is quite fun to be with.
Yesterday we had an errand to do and he wanted to go spend his birthday money at the mall. On the way we started talking about cars and he mentioned how he really wanted to save up for a Scion XB. So I took him to the dealership, and we picked up all the info brochures, a free cd of thumping music, and sat in one of them for a while to twiddle all the knobs. It was so cute, I went to get in on the passenger side and he did too. I put my hands up(yes up!) on his shoulders looked him in the eye and said "driver's side dude"". Got a big grin from that one.

He is turning into a wonderful separate human being slowly but surely. Which is thrilling and painful at the same time.