Mothering Boys

Motherhood is full of great joys,
'Specially with my three young boys.
They jump in the air,
Off my couch and my chair.
I wonder why we even buy toys.

(What?  It's a limerick--see more motherhood limericks here.)

I really try hard to embrace being the mother of three boys.  We hope for additional child(ren), and I would love for a little girl to come along, but the fact remains that my first three are boys.  Thus I've spent a lot of time pondering what that will mean about the way our days will play out as a family.

Immediately after finding out that we were having our second boy I signed up for the ladies' craft day at church to make a set of campfire roasting sticks.  Because camping will be something we can do as a family with boys, right?  I might as well be prepared.

I don't believe in strict gender stereotyping (my boys have plenty of dolls and a play kitchen as well) but I do have a little bit of nostalgia for the little boys of yesteryear.  Running around outside, playing in a creek, catching tadpoles, and sailing stick-boats down the current. 

I almost cried the first time I had to put a band-aid on Owen's little knee. (Tears of joy for what a good little boy he was being.)

For Christmas last year we almost didn't give gifts from Santa (that is a topic for another day) but we realized Jeremy's sister, whom we were visiting, lived right by an IKEA.  On Christmas Eve we were at IKEA picking up a gift that Jeremy and I had wanted to give Jonas, and we came across their indoor rope toys.  I had fallen in love with the idea of doorway swings while overseas, and I knew that with my brood of boys--and the perfect crossbeam in our house separating the "old" house from the "new" house--that my boys' Christmas morning just got a little more interesting. 

 So they got a rope swing--which they love.

 And the family gets a kick out of watching them.

 And they got a rope ladder, which Jonas loves, and Owen can sometimes be persuaded to play on if it's "Jonas' turn" on the swing.

But a lot of the time Jonas is content to use the bottom rung of the ladder as a swing as well.

And I am content watching my boys "be boys" in only the best ways, while I make dinner to the side.  But I get just a little worried when Wyatt let's me know that he's getting nimble enough to play with his brothers as well.