Birthdays, Basketball, and Bouncing

Yesterday my first born child turned 16. Matt is 16. Can't believe it.

I started off by ruining his day with a bad haircut. I've been babysitting my friend's 5 kids so I've been unable to even think about running errands until at least 3:00 when Matt gets home from school and more usually 4:30, when Connor gets home. Which leaves me about 30 minutes to get to businesses before they close. And up here it takes about 15 minutes to get anywhere so, I haven't gotten a lot done for the past 2 1/2 weeks. Poor Matt has needed a haircut all that time. For one reason and another we didn't get it done Saturday either--just too many things to do. So, we decided that I would cut his hair in the morning before he went to Seminary. Everything went just fine until I went to trim the hair over his ears and whoops-the clippers slip and there goes the hair over his ear. I felt SOOOOO bad. I tried to even it out but I didn't do too good a job. Now he's got a story about his mom scarring him for life; "She sent me to school on my 16th birthday with a haircut that looked like a blind man did it! And I could only hide it with my hat until I got to school-then I had to take my hat off!"

The evening went a bit better though it was busy. I had to leave Connor with seven of the kids for about 15 minutes until Mary got there to pick up her kids. I was very nervous that something would happen in those 15 minutes and I'd never forgive myself. But he was alright. Steel and I took Matt to his Fencing class, went and picked up Matt's choice of pizza for dinner (Papa Murphy's because "the cheese is better"), dropped it off at home and then took Steel to his first ever Basketball practice.

He loved it although he was a little confused about how to listen to his coach and follow directions. Doesn't surprise me as he has difficulty with this at home as well. He was so excited. He loved it. They did running, dribbling, passing, and shooting. He loved the running because he got to run backwards and that's his thing. Passing he did pretty good at too. Dribbling he totally stunk at, lol, but he got three baskets in a row when he started shooting. Ah well, it's his first time and we'll get lots more practice. But honestly, you should see the kid play volleyball with his dad--it's in the genes.

So after Steel was done at 7pm we drove across town and picked up Matt and then went home to eat pizza, blow out candles on the birthday cookie, and open presents. Before you all think I'm a horrible mom for not throwing him a big ole 16th birthday bash, I was willing to but Matt didn't want one. So if he really did want one and just didn't tell me, that's on him. ;0)

The other shocker for the day was going up to check on Cole after I laid him down for a nap and finding him standing up in the crib, bouncing. Yeah, can someone pleeeaaassse tell the kid he is only six months old! And Matt said he climbed up the two stairs onto the landing yesterday while I was out shopping for birthday stuff! Crazy. I don't even want to know what is next.