conversations with my tween

earlier today, larry and i were having a conversation about how adorable one of my friends is. now, i promise you that this is not a normal type of conversation for us to have. i don't even remember what sparked it. BUT as we were talking brendan was sitting at the table doing some homework and i hear his little voice pipe in "I agree with that". larry and i kind of looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and instantly knew that this was one of those opportunities. you see, brendan doesn't really talk about girls very often. so when he happens to be willing to talk, we JUMP at the opportunity. so we asked him what liked about her and then we ran through a few more of my friends to get his opinion. it sounds a little bizarre, but it was a great way for us to get an idea what he thinks makes someone cute. and it also gave us a chance to talk about the important things when choosing someone to date - which completely terrifies me to think about but i know that the day will be here before i know it. and these are all things that we have talked about with him before. but can you even talk about it too much? and usually when we do we talk about girls his own age and he gets super embarrassed. but this was less intimidating to him. he is at the age where i feel like we are standing on the shore of uncharted waters. which course is he going to take to get across and how much influence are we going to have on those decisions? will he make the choices that we want him to make? there are bound to be hard times and tears, but i HOPE that he continues to talk to us about things. and i hope that i can follow my s.i.l.'s advice and just brave the waters the best we can and love him through whatever happens.

and don't even ask me who he thought was cute because i'll never tell!!