Over the past year or so, on occasion, I will sometimes tease the boy about girls. Not in a mean spirited way, more like a 'she's kicking you for a reason' type of tease.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm firmly in the no way do you need to be having a girlfriend at this age camp. But he always laughed and made gagging faces when I would say something about A. pulling his hair or K. begging him for math answers.

This year, he says (with no prompt from me) that there are girls. Girls with crushes. On him, my boy. He's giggling the entire time he's telling me that he's heard from his friends that there are some girls crushing on him. So I ask him if there's some one who might be the object of HIS affection and he just laughs. NO DENIAL, NO GAGGING SOUND.

I call him out on the lack of gagging and he says that there is a girl. He refused to dole out any more information except more giggling and that, my friends, was that.

The next day he mentions a girl, M., who sits between him and his friend and I raise my eyebrows and say "M??" - He catches on in a blink and laughs and says "No, not M." and starts with the giggling. I tell him I'm going to keep throwing a name out there every once in awhile, until I get it right. And so for the next few days, I do. And every time it's a denial and some laughter.

I worried that he'd get sick of the name throwing out thing so I asked him if it bothered him. He says to me that he doesn't mind if I tease him, that's it's fun. And then he snuggled up next to me to watch Survivorman.

I feel like it's not long now, until I lose him bit by bit...to friends, sports and even girls. What two, maybe three or four years? And I just want to hang on so tight to every minute I've got.