He's becoming more.

I patted the couch beside me, and for once he came and sat down.

He is usually nothing but movement, always going, going, going, and feeling him sitting motionless beside me was disconcerting.  Even as a baby he was always on the go - crawling early, running before he walked.  So busy, so many things to do and see.

He leaned into me and we sat there, talking about everything and nothing for the longest time.  Inconsequential things, like something that happened at school and plans for the weekend, but for once neither of us felt the need to get up and DO something.  We are alike that way.  We both need to be moving or fidgeting or messing with something all the time, and neither of us likes to just sit.  To just be. Our minds are constantly going a million miles an hour, and our bodies struggle to keep up.

I felt the weight of him against me, sturdy and somehow so much more substantial than I remembered him being, and it gave me a sense of the young man he is growing into.  At nearly-eight-going-on-eighteen, he's in a weird place where things he loved just yesterday suddenly seem uncool, too "babyish" for today.  Toys are being replaced by video games.  Books read aloud are being replaced by harder, longer books that he reads to himself.  My influence on how he dresses or fixes his hair or spends his time is fading, slowly fading.  His need to spend hours regurgitating his day to me is nearly gone, and in many places and ways and things I've been replaced by his friends, who are a near constant influence in his life.

And I know this is the way it should be.

But with him sitting there next to me, still so much a boy, MY boy, it's hard to reconcile.  It's hard to reconcile that screaming baby, that defiant toddler, that active preschooler with this child who, sitting next to me on the couch, seems for all the world like someone he wasn't just yesterday.

He's outgrowing me.  Just a little.

And I feel equal parts awe and terror at the prospect.