Middle School Embarrassment

 Grady has officially hit the pre-teen years. He's been saying for ages that he won't be a moody teenager like Peter, but he's starting to get his own set of teenage foibles.

Pretty much any question you ask him is answered with "yeah, sure, why not". I've started calling him on it and NOT doing what that thing was unless he answers with a yes or no answer. Or saying "I don't know, why not?"

Then we've got the middle school drop off. It's true that I didn't have to drop Peter off at school very much, but this year involves dropping both of them off AND picking them both up. We've got it down to a pretty solid science. We follow the buses between the high school and the middle school, we listen to a bit of the morning radio show, we look for the kid sitting in a car ride-on toy - eating his breakfast and watching the buses go by.

Peter's drop off is harrowing only because there are a ton of new drivers going through the lot. They cut in front of people, they see a parking spot two aisle over and cut across everyone to grab it, and parents in the drop-off line trade places with their permit-driving teenagers when they get to school.

But other than all that, Peter says goodbye and walks into the school.

At the middle school, Grady's started whisper-scowling at me saying "mom, can you please turn down the music?! I don't want to be known as the kid in the music car!". I think it's pretty funny because I don't have it that loud and I'm not even singing with the songs.

This week, the kids were at school on Thursday so the middle school had some Halloween activities and a lot of kids dress up. Grady wore his costume.

Picture this: a kid dressed up in a sloth costume. Not just a sloth costume. He has a hoodie on UNDER the sloth costume since it's pretty cold. So he's a very poofy sloth. A poofy sloth, grabbing his stuff to get out of the car, whisper-scowling at ME to turn down the music so he's not embarrassed.

I just laugh and roll my eyes. The whole 6th grade seems too cool for school now. I go pick Grady up and if I wave to him, he will only give me a little micro-wave. Same thing with the rest of the kids in his class. They're all too cool for adults and waving, and obviously pop music too.