A Wiser Boy -- and Mommy

Yesterday my oldest son was talking about expectations. He was saying sometimes you expect something to be one way and it ends up being different. Rubin is a 5-year-old kindergartener and was talking about how he thought he and his friends were going to play Transformer Tag at recess(which, by the way, is a game he made up himself), but they ended up playing a different game instead. He said he expected the other game to be boring, but it ended up being really fun.


You see, he had the opposite experience a few weeks ago when we went to a train show. We mainly went for my second son, Graham, who is extremely into Thomas the Train right now. Graham has Thomas the Train trains, sheets, pajamas, pillow pets, toothbrush and toothpaste, shirts, and probably more I can’t think of right now. The show advertised to give kids an exciting ride around the room on Thomas the Train. Both boys talked of nothing else for days before the event!

We got to the train show and headed immediately for the opposite side of the huge room where the big Thomas awaited. Of course, we found out the line stretched all the way across the room, starting clear back at the show’s entrance. But we persevered and waited in the line with the promise of a ride on the glorious Thomas the Train at the end.

Finally, after a 40-minute wait, it was our kids’ turn. They clamored excitedly into the train car and were off!

The train slowly chugged around in a small circle, reaching a thrilling maximum speed of one mile an hour! 

The whole ride probably lasted less than 3 minutes.

Graham smiled happily the whole time, but you could see the disappointment on poor Rubin’s face. He climbed out of the train car, a wiser boy than the one who had entered it.

The reason I was thinking of this is because I’ve had a blah couple of days and decided last night that I would be done with that today. No matter what, I would be cheerful and productive today.


At 6:30 a.m. my alarm went off (aka baby Uriah woke up); and even though I was dead tired, I remembered my expectation for a positive day. I decided to play his favorite game, “Pop Goes the Weasel.” The game is played by bouncing Uriah on my knees until the "Pop" part of the song where I lift him over my head and then bring him back down to my knees, where we both laugh hysterically. Today I bounced him to the tune, then lifted him over my head, and said, “Pop!”


And then I felt a PLOP on the top of my head! I lowered the baby as a crazy amount of spit-up dripped down all sides of my hair and onto my shoulders. I entered the shower a wiser mommy than the one who had woken up this morning!

In the "Moms with Boys Club"

When I was young, well younger, I used to imagine what my family would be like when I was older. I pictured myself with several daughters. I could see us playing with dolls and toy horses, braiding various styles into our hair, shopping for dresses; my imagined list went on and on. You hear people sometimes describe themselves as good boy-mom or a good girl-mom. Well, I was for sure a girl-mom! I was a fairly moody teenage girl and I felt this would mean I could easily identify with my own girls’ problems. And let’s face it, girl clothes are so much cuter than boy clothes!


So here I am, six years into marriage, with three BOYS. Instead of dolls and dress-up clothes, the toys around my house are dragons, dinosaurs, trains, and light sabers. There is constant noise in my house. My husband and I even had to make a rule that there would be no roaring at the dinner table because the boys would not stop to eat!


But despite all the craziness that is associated with boys, there are a lot of great things about them:


• When we are on a hike and there is no restroom, it’s not a problem!
• I never have to blow dry their hair after a bath, in fact most of the time I don’t have to do anything to their hair at all!
• They generally don’t care about what they wear. I could dress them in plastic bags and I don’t think they’d complain!


I have noticed there is a secret club I now belong to – apparently it is the “Moms with Boys Club.” When I go to the store with my little guys I inevitably see another mom with only boys. It only takes a second to figure out we are in the same situation and instantly we are friends. Most of the time we don’t even have to say anything to each other, a smile and a knowing nod are enough. We are definitely comrades on this child-rearing journey.


One frazzled mother of two crying boys waited in the checkout line next to me the other day. I handed her two suckers from my purse and she smiled and asked, “Does it get any easier?”


“Definitely,” I lied.


Sometime in the next few years I will try for another baby and perhaps I will get my wish for a baby girl, but for now I’m happy living in the chaos and commotion that comes with three boys!