High School?
Ok, so I'm sitting at Borders and should be studying but I'm very distracted today. Colton will be registering for high school classes within the next month and it is definitely top-of-mind. The time with him has gone so quickly and I swear I don't know how that happened. I can vividly picture a day when he was a little guy and I had packed in 18 credit hours my second-to-last semester of undergrad so I could take a light load my final semester to look for a job. I had four term papers and two tests in the same week and had been up late several nights in a row trying to get it all done. He was two at the time and this particular morning I had gotten him ready for "school" and was trying to print out my papers because they were due that day. My computer locked up and wouldn't print the papers. I lost it! I picked up the phone and called my parents house expecting to get my mom, when my dad answered. I was crying so hard I couldn't speak and it took him a minute to figure out it was me. His first question was 'is Colton alright?' followed by 'are you alright' which only made me cry harder. Poor Colton was just standing there with his jacket on looking at me like I was crazy...he was right! My dad came right over and took Colton for the day and, while I couldn't get my computer to print, I did manage to save the files to a disk and print them at school. Crisis averted.
Now, I'm near the end of grad school (finally!) and Colton will be starting high school. He still looks at me like I'm crazy (he also has added the 'mom you're so stupid' look to his repertoire) but he is the one that helps me when the computer freaks out...or I freak out for that matter.
For those of you that know me well, you realize I'm totally anal when it comes to him and his education. You won't be surprised to learn that I've made an appointment with his middle school counselor to discuss his high school enrollment and classes or that I already have his high school orientation on my calendar. He's set his sights on attending MIT (wants to be an architect and they have a great program. Plus he's been receiving materials from them since he took the ACT as part of Duke University's Talent Identification Program). I've printed out MIT's freshman requirements so I can get him started working toward achieving his goal. Again I ask, where did the time go? This will certainly be an interesting chapter in our lives and one I'm excited to watch unfold. He is an incredibly intelligent, funny, kind and loving young man. As excited as I am to see what he does with his life, I wish I could go back just for a day to when he was small enough to wear feety jammies.