Your first born is always your practice child, your learning curve. So many firsts to thrash out between you. It only seems like yesterday he was a cheeky, chatty, lively toddler, we’d happily spend our days out and about or snuggled up on the sofa, catching up on Teletubbies.

It was just the 2 of us, while Daz was at work, 4 years my baby and I. and he was the best company a mum could wish for. My inquisitive boy, my little friend, my best cuddler. We did everything together and nothing apart. He was my 1st stab at motherhood and ignited something in me that I never knew I had, a love I’d never knew existed. I could be any where in the world, just as long as I had my boy.

Now he’s morphing into a man, the teenage years spent behind a bedroom door, hiding your baby and changing them into something new and beautiful. So much now goes on behind closed doors. The little boy, full of questions and in need of your persistent protection now questions your word, only reveals what he wants you to know and buffers your attempts to protect him.

Conversations are reduced to instructions;

do your homework, tidy your room, come off the computer.

His bedroom, a cocoon while you have to wait patiently for the butterfly to emerge. But will he emerge a butterfly? What if he’s a moth! No one really likes moths, do they! I’m crossing everything for a butterfly.

Yet every now and then I get a reminder of my little boy, the moments of disorganisation where it’s clear he still needs my guidance or when we chill on the sofa, resting his foot on my knee. Our roles have switched, he’s now the one to reach things from high places for ME.

My little boy’s helping ME,

It’s a change I have to accept. He still needs me, I know, but for more practical things – lifts, money, food. I guess though, I’m still his protector, of sorts.

So my boy is growing up, Ok, I accept it. He’ll be someone else’s soon but to me he’ll always be my little caterpillar.

My Teenager. My boy.

This post was first published in January 2015, I’m happy to say we’re through the other side and I’ve got my butterfly.

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