#boymom v #momofboys

There is a difference between being a #boymom and being a #momofboys. Hear me out. If you have one, two, or even twelve sons, but you also have a daughter (or twelve) you are a mom of boy(s). You have them. You inherently understand the incessant obsession with battles and bugs and tree climbing. You know about that sweaty boy funk that settles in around third grade and never really leaves. At least, not until they make their acquaintance with a lady friend who won't come over if the gym socks are strewn about, stinking up the joint. You commiserate with every other mom of boys who has no idea how she's gonna feed them in a year. Or has already accepted a second job JUST so she can keep food in the refrigerator. If you have just one boy to love and raise, you get it.

You get the snuggles. You understand the quivering lip when he's struck out one too many times and he just needs a hug even though there's no crying in baseball. You know the privilege of raising these sweet little stink bombs.

But a boy mom is something different entirely.

A boy mom doesn't have daughters. Not even one. And it makes a difference. We wear our hashtag boymom label proudly because there is absolutely nothing to offset the testosterone that flings around our homes.

When my kids were itty bitty, my friend was in the thick of raising her four children. She has three boys and a girl. She knows weaponry and air soft. She knows video games and how to interpret grunts. She told me that the only thing that saved her sanity was having that girl. When she was plumb sick and tired of picking 32 towels up off the floor, that girl's towel was hung nicely on its rack. When she'd had a day and the boys came in barreling over one another and seeing who could fart the loudest, that girl sat down next to her on the couch and asked if she was alright. When everything smelled, that girl came down the hall wearing Cucumber Lime lotion from Bath and Body Works. She didn't love the girl any more than those boys. It's just that when she needed a break from the grease and the grime, she took the girl to the mall or they got a pedicure. Or both.

She is a #momofboy.

I am a #boymom. Strangely, no matter how often I clean my toilets, when I get down at their level for a good scrub, my nostrils are infiltrated by the festering smell of pee. I can't find it. Everything looks clean. But my house will, apparently forever, reek of urine. It's not that a "mom of boy" doesn't have this problem, but she's also got a teenage daughter burning a Sea Breeze candle in the other room or a little one squirting tests of perfume on her dainty wrist. THOSE SMELLS BALANCE THE PEE, Y'ALL.

We boy mom's got nothin'.

We've got baseball bags with stinky shirts wadded up in the bottom. We've got dirt and snips and snails and puppy dog tails. We've got BB guns and footballs and athletic cups lying in the middle of the floor. We've got time snowballing toward the day they will walk through the kitchen with armpit hair, mumbling a one word answer about how their day was while they grab all the food in the pantry on their way to their smelly man cave bedroom.

And we have all the joy of these sometimes mama boys, these tiny men who cling to us when they're sick or when their pride is wounded, these bed headed little wonders who look like Tasmanian devils while they're awake but angels while they sleep.

The truth is that we love these guys--irreparable pee smells and all--forever and for always. We feel pretty proud of the fact that God said, "You will parent only what you are not. I trust you with this. Good luck and Myspeed."

But since we don't get to balance all that testosterone with even a few, blessed drops of estrogen, can you let us have #boymom? We'll just be scrubbing mud out of the carpet (again) while we await your answer.