He's Changed!

As my daughter and I walked to her school yesterday she said "He's changed!"  She was talking about her brother!  She is upset because they used to play together all the time. But now he barely pays attention to her.

I told her that yes I had also noticed that he has changed.  He is now a teenager.  He wants to fit in and be cool.  Or at least be a little cooler than he was.  He is one of those boys who is obsessed with playing on his DSI.  He loves to make animated cartoons and wants to be popular on the animated cartoon website he is a member of.

Here he is two years ago.  You could already see the young man starting to come out.  But now all those teen changes are occurring.  I can empathize with my daughter.  My brother and I were about the same age difference as my children are.  We did so much together when we were young, but that first junior high year "He Changed!"  He listened to head banging rock-n-roll and was always hiding out in his room.  He no longer thought it was cool to hang out with his little sister.  I was always jealous of the girls he dated, they got more of his time than I did.  Now I realize it's just a part of life.  You grow and you change.  Then it was hard.

Here he is my little boy, very much more grown up than I'm ready for.  And he has changed, and he is still changing.  It is wonderful to watch and yet scary.  There is still a very young side to my son.  The want to stay a child side wars with the teenage hormones.  The outside is developing, while the inside is not always sure it wants to be that way.  He does still do stuff with his sister but it is not the same. With all the change our family has gone through in the past few years, this change, the changing of my children I think might be the hardest.  Because it means that soon they will leave.  Although I've been told the teenage years are made hard so that you want them to leave.  I'm still not sure I'll get to that point.
I've been looking for articles about how to adjust to a big move.  A cross country move.  How do you move forward and go on.  My one advice for any one would be not to sit and compare your new surroundings to your old surroundings.  I'm trying hard to just learn and embrace this place called Utah.  Here is an article I found about "Adjusting to a big move."  Though I don't think the move they are talking about is as big.  Because they tell you to invite old friends over for a house warming.  I can't do that.  No one is going to drive 4 days one way to visit me.  I have to make all new friends.
I have finished reading the book "The girl next door."  by Elizabeth Noble.  I connected to the book on so many levels it was not funny.  I think it is just because of the move, and the adjustments that my family are going through.  One other quote I liked was " Loneliness was physical too..."  I felt that so much while my husband and I were apart for 4 months.  The physicalness (not sure this is a word.) of being lonely.  There were so many times when I desperately needed a hug and there was none.    Not a hug from my children, but a hug from my husband.  Where I really just needed him.  And he wasn't there.  And the late night phone calls did not help.  Even this past trip for him was hard for me.  Here I am in a totally new place with hardly anyone I know and no comfort when I needed it.  I think my husband just got annoyed when I was calling him, he never realized just how much I really needed him.  I don't think he realizes at all how much I've really needed him these past few months.  How absolutely physically alone I felt.  I look at him, and he has aged.  We have an 11 year gap between us.  I now realize, that those years could cause me much loneliness in the future.  It scares me.  And yet I wouldn't trade our love and good times for a younger spouse.  I'll take the years I get and be happy.