Overheard in the high school band room:
“My mother blogs everything. You might find yourself on the Internet.”

Overheard through child’s bedroom door:
Tween reading my blog out loud to his friend, followed by, “My family is funny.”

There are mountains of blogs detailing the adventures of pregnancy and parenting UNTIL those children become teens. At that point, many bloggers turn their focus to personal hobbies or quit posting altogether. The reasons are valid. They don’t want to tell the stories that their children could someday tell for themselves. The things that teenagers do just aren’t as cute or easy to talk about as the things that babies and toddlers do and say. They don’t want to embarrass their children. Then, there are those of us who just keep on journaling. We know that our teens are perfectly capable of telling their own versions of the stories on their Facebook pages. My children are an important part of my life. I don’t WANT to avoid writing about them. We may have to write things through gritted teeth or with a hard earned sense of humor, but why would we keep written records of our lives only to a certain point? Writers write. Bloggers blog.

Noah recently complained that I blog more about Sarah than I blog about him. I do because I understand her ridiculous hormonally driven behaviors and attitudes. I do, because watching her making the mistakes I made frustrates me and drives me to drink blog. Noah, on the other hand, bewilders me. I have been a parent for more than 18 years and I am still struck silent by some of the things that adolescent boys do. I don’t know how to blog about my son abusing himself to Markie Post (Just kidding. He doesn’t know who Markie Post is). I don’t know how his mind works. I only know that he is incredibly compassionate, bright and sensitive. I know he feels forgotten and under-appreciated as the middle child. I just don’t want him to feel like he isn’t good fodder for blog posts. Or, maybe he should just stop keeping score of blog posts.