#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.

Cinderella

If you're one of the friends mentioned below, please don't think that this post is in any way written out of any offense whatsoever. IT IS NOT. It just got me thinking about what I want my boys to know about life and fairy tales.

**************************************************

Awhile back, a few of my friends were taking their daughters to see Cinderella. They invited me to go along with them. I couldn't because our afternoon was busy but I remember noticing that they didn't mention my boys. I thought one of two things.

1. It was an outing just for girls. No boys allowed.
2. For whatever reason, they thought my boys wouldn't want to go.

It hardly mattered because I couldn't go anyway and, if I could have gone, I'm sure I could have brought my boys. It's a free theater, after all. Well, I mean, it isn't free. But certain freedoms afforded to me by this country would, in fact, allow me to take them there. Not that I think my friends would have minded in the least.

Last week, I took my boys to see it at the dollar theater which, on Wednesdays, is the fifty cent theater (and you cannot beat that). They both loved the movie.

Today, I was talking about the fact that I'd taken my boys to see it and my friend, who only has girls, seemed genuinely surprised that my boys would want to see such a film.

I suppose I understand where the question comes from. Fairy tales and Disney movies almost always focus on--and title their works after--the heroine. The attention is given to the ballgown, the tiara, the glass slipper. The men are the supporting characters, underdeveloped and secondary to the feminine stars. He often doesn't even have a name. Prince Charming is the moniker given to Snow White's prince, Cinderella's guy and Sleeping Beauty's beau. Either that dude was a polygamist or some of these authors need to get more creative with their names. Where will my boys find themselves in these story lines? What will they learn?

Obviously, I think the stories could be a little more inclusive of men, develop the male characters better, give them names. But aside from these perceived failings, why do we live in a culture in which Cinderella is only for girls? Cinderella has been told and retold countless times by Basile, Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, folklorists, and playwrights (most of them men). It is represented in opera, ballet and theatre.

My boys loved Cinderella because they're children. The idea of a fairy godmother and magic and pumpkins turning into carriages fascinated them. A world in which they can transform their rags to riches is a world their imaginative little minds fully support. Matthew leaned over to me and excitedly asked, just before the clock began to chime, "Does the spell have to break?" As though his every happiness hinged on its lasting forever.

I want my boys to like movies that focus on strong female heroines just like I'd want my daughters (if I had them) to like films about football and dinosaurs. (Or dinosaurs playing football. I'm looking at you, Spielberg. There could be a real market there.) But more than that, I think that, in this film, my boys can find qualities to emulate.

This new version sticks with the general story line we're familiar with in the United States but adds a few different plot elements. ("Prince Charming's" name is Kit!) At it's core, Cinderella is the story of a girl who is kind and courageous though she suffers through dark abuses. It's the story of royalty falling in love with her for who she is and not what she can do for him. It's the story of a kindhearted monarch who will stop at nothing to find his one, true love. It's about the girl being found in a miserable situation by a stand up guy. He wants her...just the way she is. He wants to care for her and protect her but not because she needs him to, because he loves her the right way.

I want both of my boys to meet their Cinderella. (Although I hope, for her sake, that she isn't being horribly mistreated.) I want them to stop at nothing to find her. I want them to love her for her wit, her kindness, her tenderness, her tenacity, and her rags. I want them to love her when the carriage turns back into a pumpkin. I want them to earn her love, her respect, her hand.

We live in a world that says that boys shouldn't like fairy tales, that they should "age out" of Disney movies by the time they're four or five, that they should like movies about war and death and burping. My kids plenty like those types of movies too, don't get me wrong. But I'm going to ride the Cinderella train for as long as I can. Because in well developed heroines, my boys are often exposed to quality women. The kind I hope they find.

We need to stop thinking about Cinderella as a story for girls. The Brothers Grimm certainly didn't. There are enough knives, blood and pecked out eyes in that version to pacify even the manliest of men--and the strong, non-conformist women they've managed to woo.

Be Prepared

First off, I don't have a picture.

I did stand there and think, "I need to go get my camera." Troy's first question was, "Did you get a picture?" But, no. I did not run to get my camera and, thus, there is no picture.

Scout camp was this past weekend and, since our ministry is largely focused on Sunday mornings, when everyone else is camping from Friday to Sunday, we're only camping from Friday to Saturday. While this was a bit of a bummer for the Scout, it ended up working out well on account of the fact that said Scout had to hike in flip flops and it was really better that we just head home instead of attending the interfaith Sunday morning worship service in crunchy pants.

It turned out to just be the Scout and me because the Scout's little brother made a series of very poor choices that led to his mother threatening, "If you do not improve this attitude and make good choices at school today, you will not be able to join us for our camping trip this weekend." These threats have always worked. That Friday, they most assuredly did not.

The Scout's little brother made a couple of unwise decisions at school which led to the losing of the coveted hand stamp and the remark by his teacher that involved the word "awful." So. The mother was put in the rather unfortunate situation of following through or being that parent who merely spouts idle threats and turns out ungrateful, self-centered adult children who think the world revolves around them.

I'm not about to willingly send those kinds of man-children out into society.

So we stuck to our parenting guns and Troy had to stay home with the misbehavior. As the little brother clung to me, sobbing, just before I left with the Scout, my heart broke into a thousand pieces and I wanted to tell him to jump in the car. The whole thing had been a joke. Of course he could still go camping. But it was a lesson that he needed to learn so I backed the car down the driveway to the tune of the Scout sadly saying, "Poor guy."

Since it was just us and since it was just one night, we took our smaller tent and just one change of clothes. The Scout had one pair of sturdy shoes. As an after thought, I had thrown in a pair of flip flops for him and a towel, just in case.

We arrived at camp and set up. Or, I should say, I set up while the Scout kept wandering off to play with his friends. Some scout he is. We roasted hot dogs for dinner and then the Scout and his pack went exploring. It was getting really cold and, whenever he checked in, I asked if he wanted to put on warmer clothes. The answer was always no.

I traipsed off to the bathroom to wash a spoon in the sink. As I exited, I saw my friend, Morgan, standing at the spigot. There was a great commotion of boys around her. Standing in the center of the crowd was a boy who looked like he'd been submerged, from the tips of his sneakers to his arm pits, in sticky, gooey mud. The child was a disaster. Upon seeing the sight, I paused. In the two seconds that followed, my mind raced to several thoughts. Oh my goodness. That child has to sleep in someone's tent or RV tonight. And I'm so glad someone else is dealing with that. And then the last one, Praise God that isn't Garrett. It looked like a chocolate dipped strawberry. If the child was the strawberry and the mud, chocolate.

Just as Morgan aimed the hose she saw me and uttered the words, "Do you want to look at your son first?" Simultaneously, I had recognized the back of his head, the color of the top of his shirt, and had experienced the realization that this was my boy and he would be sleeping in my tent. The fact that there were no showers at the campground also pricked the front of my conscious thought.

He'd fallen into a huge mud puddle, struggled to get out, and fallen again. Mud was splattered all over his face and in his hair. His ears had chunks of mud stuck in them. The clothes were 100% covered. I thought about running to get my camera but he was already so cold that I didn't want to delay the process of cleaning him up. In the chill of late evening, we sprayed him down with very cold water until the stream running off of him ran clear. Standing outside of the tent, I wrapped the towel around him and stripped him naked. He was convulsing, his teeth crashing together in a chattering symphony that suggested my child is one part stupidity, one part accident prone and entirely boy.

I put him, nude, into his sleeping bag, pulled it tightly around him, and then climbed on top of his bag. I wrapped my arms around his sleeping bag with the wet head poking out and vigorously moved them up and down to warm him. Eventually, the shivering waned. Once he was clad in warm pajamas and a jacket, we put him inside my friend's tent next to a propane powered heater until his hair dried. Then we moved him next to the fire.

His clothes and shoes were still so wet the next day that he had to wear his flip flops until we left that night. This included a two mile hike which was, thankfully, more like a leisurely stroll on mostly flat ground. Apparently, when the scouts say to be prepared, they mean that one should always assume their personal Scout plans to ruin his clothing options within three hours of setting up camp.

My new scout motto: Always bring two pairs of shoes as you just never know when your son is going to turn up looking like a Fudgsicle.

FYI: Garrett is Still Alive

My children. They are made of sticks and stumps and dirt and bugs and exploration. They are part mountain goat, part wild man, part nature lover and all boy. Once a year, the Boy Scouts hold a scouting expo. It's designed, I think, to both encourage boys to join scouts as well as serve as a networking/social opportunity for those already involved. We currently fall into the former. But my boys need no incentive. They want to be Boy Scouts. (And, soon enough, that dream will be a reality.)

Today was the day of the expo. And this was one of the highlights.

Matthew, only five, climbed like a champ. He didn't make it all the way to the top but he got pretty close. When he was about halfway up, Troy and I switched places. Garrett was on the other side of the rock. So Troy came to watch Matthew and I went to snap a picture or two of Garrett.

Garrett scurried up this rock like it was nobody's business. Come to find out, by that point in the day, only five people had made it to the top via this side of the rock. Garrett turned out to be one of them. I told him if he made it up I'd snap his picture. 

So once he reached the upper limit, I positioned my camera. "Okay, let go..." the teenager holding his rope called up. And so he did.

And it is just no wonder that this child has a skull fracture. He probably has several. I don't really know what happened, exactly. When Garrett let go, he swung wildly to the right, dropped at least five feet (maybe more) before being "caught", swung like a pendulum back to the left, crashed into the rock wall, bounced away from the wall, crashed into it again, and then hung upside down as they slowly lowered him to the ground.

That's him, there. In the white helmet. Upside down. The ONLY reason I got this shot is because I'd already pressed the button to take a picture of him securely at the top. By the time my phone finally snapped the picture, he was at least five feet lower and upside down. I've NEVER seen the look he wore on his face while he free fell. It was a look that screamed, "I am going to die RIGHT now and the guy TOLD me to let go and now death is imminent." Except I don't think my seven-year-old knows the definition of imminent. So maybe his look conveyed more of, "DEATH! NOW!"

I didn't know what was happening, exactly. I wasn't sure what had malfunctioned or been operated incorrectly or what was going on but I started to lunge forward. I have no idea what I thought I'd do. There's no way I would have reached him in time if he'd continued to plummet. He was about 20 to 25 feet in the air. He probably would have bounced. But, well, he might have actually had a broken neck this time. And broken arms, ribs, cheek bones, clavicle. You name it, he may have busted it. The sky's the limit, really. Or, in this case, the ground's the limit.

My motto with these guys is that it's a fine line between keeping them alive and letting them live. I want them to live. I want them to suck the marrow out of life, to explore, to dare, to experience the rush of conquering fear. I don't want them to have regrets. If, in order for them to truly live, they must have an extreme existence, they may have it with my blessing. But my goodness, it's going to be a miracle if I manage to keep them alive.

Manure

When the Little Buddy was a bit smaller, he ate dirt. He ate kind of a lot of dirt. I mentioned it to the pediatrician. He didn't seem overly concerned. Later, it reached unfortunate levels and we began rationing the amount of time he could play outside. Because, see, every time he went out he ran straight to a muddy part of the yard and shoveled in as many fistfuls as he could before I scooped him up. He was tiny. His language was at a minimum. Still, when I asked if he could play outside without eating dirt he said yes even though the answer was a clear no. Then, when I asked him why he was doing it, the answer was a slightly less clear, "Ah dunno!"

He grew out of it.

A few days ago, we discovered an unattractive shade of dirt lipstick smeared around his mouth. His daddy talked to him about not eating dirt. I'm not sure why, but we didn't think much about it.

This afternoon he was playing in the yard. He came in with dirt in the corners of his mouth. Concerned about what is going on in his little life to make him turn to a lifestyle that will, one day, land him on an episode of My Strange Addiction, I decided to get to the bottom of it.

"Show me where you got the dirt," I told him, so calmly that I was actually pretty proud of my parenting skills.

He marched me right over to his old stomping grounds, the part of our yard that we've attempted to grow a garden in but mostly to no avail. We didn't even try this year. "Right there." He pointed to the dark dirt. The dirt that we bought last year when we were hardcore about getting our garden to grow. The dirt that isn't really dirt at all but is, in fact, steer manure. BECAUSE OF COURSE IT IS.

It's alarming how often I use my theatre degree in my every day life. I mean, really. Everyone should have to take extensive acting training before becoming a mother. Because listen! I didn't freak out AT ALL when I realized that my kid had been eating bovine excrement. I mean, I wanted to. I wanted to scream and stick my finger down his throat right then and there but I refrained. And people say dramatic training is worthless. Ha.

"Okay. How much did you eat?"

"That much," he said. "Right there." He pointed to a tiny mound of dark dirt. "That's where I spit it out."

"Wait," I said. HOLD THE PHONE. "Did you swallow any?"

"No," he shook his head.

"You didn't put any in your tummy?"

"No. Only my mouth."

"Why?" I asked. "Why did you put it in your mouth?"

He sighed as though our conversation was boring him to tears. "I was making a castle for the ants."

WHY DON'T THESE LITTLE HUMANS COME WITH A MANUAL? I mean, really. If I could just open up his guidebook and turn to the chapter that explains the correlation between putting feces in the mouth and making castles, I'd be golden.

Instead I just stammered, "What?"

"Mommy! See that! That's a castle FOR THE ANTS. I made them a castle to play in. Like at the beach."

The utter confusion was slowly being replaced by a dawning of enlightenment. "Okay and you put it in your mouth because..." I trailed off. He blinked his big chocolate eyes at me.

"I had to make it wet and sticky to build it right," he explained with a tone that said, Lady, everyone knows that dry sand does not a castle make. The wet stuff is where it's at. Come on! You're from California. YOU SHOULD KNOW.

"Alright," I sighed. I took his little hand and we walked back toward the house. Once inside, I bent down to his level, wiped his lips and told him not to do that anymore. "Matthew, that wasn't dirt you put in your mouth. It was manure."

"What's manure?" he questioned.

"Poop," I said bluntly. He seemed moderately disturbed.

I wish I could make this stuff up. In fact, in this case, I wish I HAD MADE THIS STUFF UP. Unfortunately, it's just another day. Because these boys--they really are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. And, if it's true that we are what we eat (or, at least, put into our mouths), apparently also steer manure.

YOU MIGHT BE THE MOM OF BOYS IF...

Reason #1

You're in the dressing room at Kohl's. See, you're speaking at a conference on Saturday and you feel like you need a confident new outfit. However, you didn't find anything in the price range you were looking for because, generally speaking, they don't make confidence exuding shirts for under ten dollars. Still, you made your way over to the bathing suits, saw the exact replica of the bottoms that a psychotic wave in Hawaii ruined when it thrust sand into them last summer, and decided that you must try them on. They're on sale and you have a 20% off coupon, after all.

So you find yourself in the dressing room with your kids, ages four and six. And you just might be the mom of boys if you have the following conversation.

Matthew: (Loudly. And when I say loudly I mean that the men in Lowe's could hear him. And Lowe's is all the way down the street.) YOU WEAR UNDERWEAR INSIDE YOUR BATHING SUIT?

Me: Shhh. No. But when I try on a bathing suit, I have to keep my underwear on.

Matthew: WHY?

Me: Because. Lots of people try on bathing suits. (Switching to a very low whisper) And we do not want to share our...selves with everyone else.

There were other people in this dressing area. I was suddenly very aware of this fact. Snickers escaped from other rooms. My face felt warm.

Garrett: (Suddenly) MOM! YOUR UNDERWEAR IS ON BACKWARD!

Me: No. It isn't.

Garrett: I think it is. For sure.

Me: Garrett, be quiet. I would know if my underwear was on backward.

Garrett: MOM! Seriously! It's on backward. I know!

Me: It's not backward.

Garrett: Then why can't I see the superheros?