His Favorite Girl

I've spent enough time around kids, mine and other people's, to notice that when it comes to how they feel about the opposite sex, age has nothing to do with it.  Nor does the sex of the child.  They are either all about it or they find it embarrassing or even disgusting.

My boys fall somewhere between embarrassing and disgusting.  It's not that they don't like girls.  Far from it.  Some of Ben and Mitchell's closest friends are girls.  But if anyone even hints at the word "girlfriend," or raises an eyebrow when a girl gets flirty with them, or teases them in any way about girls, they get embarrassed and shush you.  Big time shushing.  And add in some serious eye-rolling too.  You get the picture. Ben more so than Mitchell, probably because Mitchell is just better at ignoring anything he doesn't like.  

But because they have been good-naturedly teased about it and just exposed to the whole idea that a friendship between a girl and a boy might someday have more involved that they don't quite get, they now use that knowledge as just one more thing to torment each other with.  

When they tire of more tried and true forms of pestering that start to loose their irritating effectiveness, they now toss in girlfriend comments.  Any time one of them wants to bug the other, they just claim some girl is his girlfriend and off they go!  

Jack doesn't get what all the fuss is about.  He is just recently even aware that girls are not just boys wearing girlish pink!  But because he listens to everything going on around him and soaks up all his brothers do like a sponge, he's jumping on the girlfriend wagon as well.  But he's all about it!

Riding in the car a couple days ago, he was playing with his phone.   Normally, he is playing a game on it, but this time, he was pretending to talk on it.  He was chatting away and I asked him who he was talking to and he said, "Oh, just my girlfriend."  I asked who his girlfriend was and he said, "Oh mom, it's you of course!  I'm talking to you because you are my girlfriend!  You are my favorite girl so you're my girlfriend."

He might be the sweetest boyfriend I've ever had.  I'll overlook his age and general lack of personal hygiene.  I'll be his girlfriend until he decides to break up with me.  

Girlish

As many of you know, we generally like to do things "dude style" around here. After all, one lone female is not enough to balance things out so I've let go of some of my more... optimistic hopes in raising kids: things like never having pee on the floor, drinking out of cups rather than straight from the carton or faucet, a neat and tidy yard free of all the random sticks from the entire neighborhood, wearing pajamas to bed rather than nothing, and peace and quiet at any time of the day. I'm dealing with those things. I'm adapting. And constantly picking up sticks.

As Jack gets older and smarter, he's picking up on and embracing dude style as well. But he has taken it to a new level by defining its polar opposite: girlish. Anything he suspects his big brothers would frown upon is labeled "girlish," like, "Mom, if I wear those red pants, its ok! It's not girlish!" Or, "I don't want you to snuggle me right now, mom, it's too girlish." A couple days ago when I asked him to talk on the phone to a loved one he ran away yelling, "I can't!! Talking on the phone is too girlish!!"

Good point, Jack. You win that one.

The Message

I am a light sleeper. I can't tune anything out, even in my sleep. So when my kids are out of bed while I'm in mine, they rarely surprise me. I hear their shuffling feet long before I see their sleepy (or not-so-sleepy) faces.

This morning, before the sun came up, I heard jack shuffling toward my room. So when he peaked in, I was ready. What do I mean by "ready?" I had pulled my covers over my head and pretended to be asleep still.

Jack was undeterred. He pulled the covers down and said in my face, "Mom... Wake up sleepyhead... I need to give you a message. I really need to give a message..."

Turns out his message was simply that he wanted to get out of bed and watch cartoons much too early. I was kinda hoping for a more original message. I've actually heard that one before. Quite a few times actually.

Never Too Old to Learn

Jack knows a lot. For example, this morning on the way to school, he informed me that bears really are the best at playing hide and seek. I didn't even know that!

A few minutes later, after some more deep thought, he asked me if I remembered that my keys were broken. When I assured him that I did indeed remember that, he said "you know, all you need is a teeny washing machine to fix those." Again, something I just didn't even know!

Executions

Ben and Mitchell are buds.  Best buds.  If asked who their best friends are, they both claim each other are.  They usually play wonderfully together and come up with some pretty fantastically imaginative games to play.  Sometimes Jack is invited to join.  Sometimes not.

All it takes to mess up this relationship though is the addition of a third kid.  Suddenly, sides are being taken.  Good guy and bad guy roles get handed out.  Competitions begin.  Battle lines are drawn.

The boys had their adorable cousin staying with them all week and I began to here a lot about exclusions.  Two of them would gang up on the other one and loyalties were constantly changing.  I just couldn't keep up anymore and banished them to the basement to figure it out.

It did begin to get funny though as Mitchell tried to assimilate the new word "exclusion" into his vocabulary.  He kept coming to me, defeated, complaining that once again, Ben had executed him.  Poor kid.  He was executed repeatedly over the week.

Bilingual

Jacks gloworm plays frere jacques and he loves to sing along to it (and make me stay in bed with him until gloworm cycles through his loop of 5 or 6 songs until it gets back to that one so he can sing it again for me.  And then again.  And then one LAST time...)

When he asked what the words meant and I explained it was in French, he seemed to be satisfied, even pleased with that explanation.

But now he thinks he speaks French.  Every time he doesn't understand what someone says to him he says, "Are you talking in French?" And just the other day, his brain got ahead of his words and he started to jumble up his sentence.  He stopped talking, laughed, and said, "Oh mom... Did you hear me talking in French?"

Am I a Mean Mom?

I saw a commercial today that made me wonder: am I a mean mom?

Here's the commercial:

A smiling mom (we'll call her "nothing better to do") is happily washing her windows.

A little kid (we'll call her "stinker") comes running up to the window and puts her grubby little hands all over the newly cleaned window.

Nothing Better To Do then laughs and bends down and snuggles and kisses Stinker as if she has really made her morning and the picture fades away.

What?! Is it just me, or is that just plain crazy? Please tell me I am not the only one who does not find Stinker adorable. Things turn out a bit differently for my little stinkers when they pull a stunt like that.