I have an 11 year old male living under my roof. I know intellectually that I birthed this child but he wears men’s sizes, has hair growing over his lip and he is gigantic. The child I gave birth to looked like this:

Isn’t he cute? He is only one day old here and he looks perfect. I was in labor 29 hours and then pushed for two.He came out looking like a c-section baby. My daughter on the other hand WAS a c-section baby and came out looking like she’d been through war. I’ll write about her another day.

I can’t show the boy’s picture now because apparently when they become people, it is polite to get permission before you plaster their picture all over the internet. And I won’t even ask because I’m quite certain I know the answer. It’s very annoying. As is most everything about this 5’7″, 135 pound man-toddler living in my house. He is getting to the grunting stage. He takes breaks from grunting to yell things at me like, “I AM NOT YELLING AT YOU!” Recently, I asked Facebook for some advice on parenting books and one of my so-called “friends” wrote:

A good friend of mine is a middle school teacher and she says both teenage years and toddler years are developmentally appropriate stages of asserting independence. If you want to know how to deal with the teenage years, think of them as toddler years + 10; where 12= 2, 13 = 3, etc.

She said it so glibly like she didn’t just tell me I might as well check myself into the psych ward now. I remember very clearly that day when he was 3 and I was standing at the top of the stairs, my robe on, my hair crazy, screaming to my husband about our son, “ONE OF US HAS TO GO!” I’m not even ashamed of that moment. It was real.

And now we have to go through it again?! I’m just going to pretend that’s not true and see how that plan works for me.

Anyway, he is big and with a big body comes growing pains. He used to wake in the middle of the night crying in pain from all the hard work of becoming a giant and I’d get him a hot pack and rub his back and let him play with my hair and sing and it made it better eventually. It would be a little creepy for us both if I attempted that now, so after months of him complaining that his knee has been “HURTING FOR A WHOLE YEAR! I AM NOT YELLING!” I told him I would take him to the doctor.

Side note: My daughter had cancer. She is fine now but the only reason I ever go to the doctor is if I think it could possibly, remotely… be cancer. It’s not that I’m particularly worried it will be cancer, it’s just that I know it happens to people just like me and my kids. If you have a cold and a sore throat and a headache you can suck it up. We are not going to the doctor. Persistent knee pain? Let’s go make sure it’s not sarcoma!

So that morning he says, “YOU SAID YOU WOULD TAKE ME TO THE DOCTOR.” I promised him I would make an appointment after I dropped him off at school and that afternoon he was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatter disease which is so boring I won’t even link the Wiki definition but it’s basically “knee pain in 11-year old boys”.

To be on the safe side though, an x-ray was ordered and the following conversation took place.

Him: AN X-RAY! WE DON’T HAVE TO DO THAT TODAY!

Me: Yes, we do.

Him: WHYYYYYEEEEE?!

Me: Stop yelling at me.

Him: I’M NOT YELLING AT YOU I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY WE NEED AN X-RAY!

Me: After the x-ray we’re going to go run errands.

Him: THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE!

At that moment I remembered what my friend said about the teen years. How it’s the toddler years + 10. And suddenly I saw him like this…

And I thanked God once again that He made my son cute. Because some days that’s all he has going for him. For today though, it’s enough.