Last week was my birthday, I just turned 40!  I’m 40 and a mom and somehow I still don’t feel “all grown up.”  Maybe I never will.  Is that the big secret about being a grown up? 

I got a book last January from a friend called “The 52 Lists Project.”  It’s a year of lists, a new list for each week of the year.  I started filling it out all full of excitement for the new year on Week 1.  The end.  I never made it past that first week.  So this January, I pulled it out again, found that all the goals I’d written for last year were still relevant.  I added more to list 1 and kept writing the lists each week.  Last week the book prompted, “list what you’d like your life to look like in ten years” which seems perfectly relevant as I enter a new decade.  

The thing is, I don’t know what I want MY LIFE to look like in ten years.  I can think of all sorts of things for Owen.  I’d like for him to be on track to graduate, get his diploma, and go to college.  I’d love for him to have an idea of what he wants to do when he “grows up.”  I realize this is unfair considering he will only be 17 and I’m much older than that and still haven’t figured it out.  I hope he can be independent and live on his own one day.  More than anything, I hope for him to have a life filled with love and joy.  I have so many hopes and dreams for Owen, but maybe when I became a mom I stopped thinking about how to hope and dream for myself.  

Well, I’ll think about what the next 10 years look like in my imagination…  I have to, I’m already falling behind on my lists project again and it’s only February!  In the mean time, one of my biggest wishes came true, one that I wouldn’t have even thought of if I’d been asked the same question 10 years ago.  Owen sang Happy Birthday to me!  All by himself.  

10 years ago I wasn’t even a mommy.  Even if I had dreamed of having my kids sing to me on my birthday it still wouldn’t have compared to this.  I wouldn’t have imagined that I’d have a child with special needs.  I couldn’t have known the fight for him to learn how to talk.  I simply would not have known how incredibly sweet and special this moment would be for me.  

Fingers crossed 40’s are even better than my 30’s were.  Also, the first week in February was when we got Owen’s diagnosis, I’ll write about that very soon.  

Happy 2018!  (I know I’m late, perhaps 10 years from now I’ll be the sort of person who is on time!)