This boy pushes me every day. He keeps me on my toes. He teaches me that being a mom isn’t a walk in the park. Raising him up to be who we desire for him to be takes a lot of patience, a lot of hard decisions, and not taking the easy road. It’s not “parenting from the couch”. He’s such a good kid, and we are incredibly thankful for that. But we still work daily on fine tuning things–building his character, guiding him to be a good friend, a good decision maker, a good son and brother. Daily, we try to steer him away from electronics, and in pushing his independent abilities. Whether that’s reading, playing or being a good big brother by leading an activity. We encourage him to “stay on green” at school, to make good choices about who to sit with at lunch and what kind of things are “okay to say when joking with a friend”. We frequently have to apologize and comfort him when his feelings were hurt when someone said what he was eating in lunch was “disgusting”, or when someone “accidentally” pushed him down and smacked his head into a window on the bus and he cried. This boy makes me worry every single day that I send him to school for seven hours without me there to be his mom. He makes me daily question whether I should be sending him to school at all, or keeping him home to keep his heart where I want it.

Every day, he makes me grow.  And everyday, I love him so.