Holy Cow...

Jeff mentioned something to me today that really made my heart skip a beat. In his roundabout way, which I won't even try to repeat, he finally got to the point that he and I, as parents, only have about seven years left with a child in the house. Can you believe that we'll be empty-nesters in less than a decade?!? Where in the world did our time with Jordan go? It seems like yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital.

Here are a few things that I was looking forward to when we got the house to ourselves:

• - Peace and quiet
• - An extra room (unless he wants us to keep his)
• - No fighting over the washer/dryer
• - Being able to up and leave at any time I want, even for weekend getaways
  
• - No food mysteriously missing, when I had planned on using it for dinner
• - No messes that I didn't create

After being around Jordan for 11 years, here's the modified list of what I'm looking forward to:

• - An extra room (unless he wants us to keep his)
• - Being able to up and leave at any time I want, even for weekend getaways
• - No food mysteriously missing, when I had planned on using it for dinner

That's it. I removed:

• - Peace and quiet - Jordan has never been loud (his friends are, not him)
• - No fighting over the washer/dryer - He does his laundry on the weekends and I do the rest during the week so we never fight over that
• - No messes that I didn't create - Any mess he creates, he cleans up (with the exception of cinnamon sugar spilled on the counter - he loves to leave that for me to clean up). Sometimes he even cleans my messes.

Although I'm good with going out and leaving him home alone for several hours at a time, I've never left him overnight by himself and won't for a few more years.

It's strange to consider him leaving home, going to college, and getting a job. When we used to bring the subject up, he'd burst into tears. Now he just stoically dismisses the idea as too far in the future to be worthy of any worry at this time.

While I look forward to having a consistent amount of bread and milk in the house (for some completely inane reason, he absolutely loves toast and eats a ton of it), I will miss having him around. At this time, here's some of what I like a lot (not everything - that would be too long of a list) and will miss when he is on his own:

• - With him being taller than me, I'm thoroughly enjoying having him reach things I cannot
• - I like his willingness to bend over and pick up what I clumsily drop and am too lazy to immediately pick up
• - I love watching him cuddle our cat and treat her like she's his own personal child (and chastise anyone who treats her differently)
• - I love his enthusiasm to pay for his own things, like his video games, and how much more he enjoys them than if I had paid directly for them

He's a great kid (soon to be a teenager - yikes) and I hope that he continues growing emotionally and mentally so that he becomes a most wonderful adult. I look forward to knowing my son in ten years.