Thirteen seems like the age for a practice-teenager. Fourteen seems like the real deal. At 10:14 this morning, Alex became the real deal (while he was suffering through PE, running tag lines in the gym, a torture Char found suitable all things considered.) We picked the kids up from school this afternoon and took them to see the two houses we wanted them to see, and then two more that the Realtor had lined up (Alex did have veto rights, because I wasn't making him suffer on his birthday) The kids all wanted to see more, but I finally put my foot down because like it nor not, Alex was not going to spend what was left of his birthday measuring potential bedrooms. We gave him the decision of where to go for dinner (Red Lobster, that's my boy) and then sat back and watched in amazement at the sheer volume this kid can eat.

Birthdays mean no limits; a kid wants to order a second meal he can. He did, and polished it off and was looking for more, but decided to leave room for the nearly half a birthday cake he intended to wolf down.

We were honestly surprised that he didn't seem to mind being dragged to look at houses today; even though he's on board with the idea of moving, who wants to spend their birthday looking at real estate?

We learned why later.

After we got home he opened birthday gifts; a loaded Amazon gift card from Rachel (Alex reads like we're going to run out of words sooner rather than later) and an MP3 player from Kevin. Char and I debated over what we wanted to give him; we're fairly anal about the amount of time the kids spend online and we keep an eye on where they're going online (and I shut the router off at night to remove temptation; we trust them but we were kids once, too.) Alex has never abused his online privileges and he has to spend time online for school projects now, tying up the only computer the kids are allowed to use.

We got him a laptop. He's earned the right to be trusted about his judgment (but, he also knows I have ways of tracking him. And randomly, I might.)

He'd opened his gifts and we were all sitting at the table watching him inhale cake, when he came out with it.

He asked someone out for Friday night, and she said yes. Just a movie, and perhaps a burger after. She has a curfew, it will be an early movie, and her father is only going to say yes if he gets to meet both Alex and his chauffeur. She's a freshman and only 14, in case we worried about a repeat of the 16 year old. And if we want, Char and I can tag along as long as we're in a different theater.

We did say he could date.

I agreed, but we're not tagging along because I doubt he meant that.

I think he had a decent birthday, but now the countdown to 16 begins. He's already thinking about the car he's going to buy.