Child is doing a Super12 high school semester this year. We encouraged him to take fun things that he *wanted* to take, rather than just packing his schedule full of things he *had* to take. So the hospitality classes and the world history and stuff like that pushed out 2 classes into Super12. But since that gives him more spare time at school than class time, he’s got time to do homework at school. At home, he starts digging into the other half of his life – being the Regimental Sergeant Major of his cadet corps. He loves it. He loves the part where he can look critically at the corps to find problems, and then noodle through ways that he can help solve them. It’s so great to watch him applying logic and common sense and critical thinking skills that we’ve tried to help him develop.

My evenings now find me committing my half thunk thinkythoughts to the SwearyParent Incubator, or pulling things out of the incubator into reallyreal posts. Or working on content for the cadet website, or chasing other resourcing/planning things. Or cleaning the kitchen, because that’s when it happens.

Somehow, Mr. GrownAssMan has developed the same work ethic as me – from 10pm-1am, you turn on the turbojets and get as much done as the whole rest of the day. And Mr. G.A.M. wants to hang out with me to talk about benefits or drawbacks of certain courses of action. Let me say that again: My freshly-minted Adult child wants to spend his evenings in strategy sessions with his mom. He speaks of his frustrations and his goals and his theories and his intentions. To his mother. And he shows me videos and we laugh together and we just talk.

I am close with my family – my parents and sister, but also my Auntie V and my cousins. We are a demonstrative lot. There are hugs and kisses at every visit. When Mike first showed up in my family, he didn’t quite know what to do when my aunts and cousins just wrapped their arms around him and kissed him. And he really, really didn’t know what to do when *my dad* wrapped his arms around him and kissed him. But Mike’s used to it now; He draws them into the embrace, too. I’m glad my kid has grown up with this around him and he is happy to plan and confide in me.

I like it when my co-workers trust me to troubleshoot issues, or call me into conversations to provide some feedback. But you know what? I like it even more when my son does it.

I know that’s rare, and I can’t even tell you how much I love this time. I’m not handling the not-quite-five hours of sleep this is giving me every night. I want to be a morning person, but holy hell, I sabotage my efforts like a boss.  It won’t be long before he’s away at university, and then deployed somewhere, and I won’t have these late nights with him anymore. Still, I’ll take this deal all day (and night) long.

I’m totally of the age where naps are an appropriate use of my time, right?