And with that, birthday season is a wrap!

"Boys are sons until they're married, girls are daughters until they're buried, ."

I take exception to that. As close as I am to my precious, wonderful daughters, I must admit I have a different kind of bond with my son.

Perhaps its because he is my only one; perhaps its because his size allowed me to pick him up and hold him on my hip much longer than I was able to with my girls. Maybe it was because he let me do just that and they didn't. I don't know. But I will say that of all three of them, he is the most like me. Of course our different genders give us some very different looks and personality traits, but of them all, he is the one I see myself in. From his soft heart, to his perceptiveness of situations and other people's reactions, his need to plan things out and be secure in his surroundings before he is comfortable; we come at the world in a very different way, but react to it much the same.

Now my baby boy is eleven years old.

In case you're wondering, no I didn't forget to blog on Owen's birthday.

The truth is: we were busy. Not "I had to work" busy, not "the laundry had to be done" busy, but honestly, truly busy - spending time with our birthday boy. He is at an age where conversation is interesting rather than an excercise in manners and word correction and his humor keeps me cracking up all day. It was a Saturday and it was a day spent entirely with him. It was so nice to watch him show genuine gratitude for the gifts he was given and to realize how fortunate he is to have some great friends around him.

Even his party was relatively stress free compared to years past. Gone are the days of a dozen kids climbing the walls, wrecking the house and leaving me cleaning up their trail for days. Gone are the expensive and pointless loot bags I always dreaded having to be creative enough to make and the opening of countless spiderman toys (not that they weren't all appreciated at the time!) Now we can enjoy watching him and his buds being pals, chasing eachother with nerf guns and taking turns on his newest video game. We order a pizza, cut the cake, open gifts, and send them down stairs. Done!

I say this every year, but it never loses its truth: I am so shocked another year has passed. As I watch all my kids grow, I am incredibly proud of the great people they are becoming and so absolutely, positively, grateful they are mine :)