What Little Boys Don't Understand

It is the 4th birthday of my first born child and also the end to 2013. I feel like I have grown so much this year and watched my babies grow even more but I am leaving this year in hopes of more. One thing I need more of is patience and understanding of BOYS. Believe me, two boys entering my life in less than 13 months, I got a crash course in them but the more they grow, the more I think "why do they do what they do??!?!?!". Which made me realize today that there is so much on the opposite end of that. Here are a few things little boys don't understand about us mamas... 1. Your destructiveness will never make sense to us. While we accept that anything nice we own will probably end up in pieces, we will never understand the need to throw, stomp and destroy whatever you can get your hands on. Not out of anger but out of sheer joy in watching things "come undone". I know, I have watched your faces light up as you shatter flower pots, throw rolls of toilet paper in the toilet water and pee on my new couch. 2. No girl will ever be good enough for our babies but we really fear those girls that have mothers making them so high maintenance by 3 years old that their wardrobe costs more than our family vehicle and a constant pout is plastered to their spoiled faces. Our prayers for you have many versions of "please Lord bring them humble, down to earth wives" in them. When you do finally decide to date at 30 years old, I have fantasies of earthy, talkative girls who come from families of 10 or more children that know what it was like to share rooms with multiple siblings and cooked and cleaned for their parents throughout their lives. Lord please! 3. Looking at you makes us fall more in love with daddy. My boys look just like me. When I look at their faces I see me through and through. But their mannerisms, their expressions, the way they breathe is so much my husband. And is it possible to watch these perfect beings doing what they do as children and not love their dad more because he made them half of who they are? 4. Your small acts of kindness fill us with such hope and pride. Opening a door, picking a flower for us, kissing our cheeks... Nothing swells our hearts or gives us hope that chivalry will continue in the future quite like these things. 5. Your bodily functions are just as bad as anyone else's. I remember the days when it didn't bother me because they were my sweet babies and it was just poop. But suddenly something changed and now I have as much fear sometimes of wiping your butt as I do of letting you do it on your own and the mess that entails. In other words, this is only going to get worse so please don't try to increase the gross-out factor on your mom the older you get. 6. Being a mom to multiple sons is a whole different world and we secretly hope you get this payback plus some someday. As my boys whipped circles around me at the grocery store today, one fell hard and hit his face on the dirty floor and the other was busy bunching up a loaf of bread on the shelf. I in no way downplay what being a mother to daughters is like... that is something I do not and may not ever know with the tears and drama that come along with it. But being a mother to more than one son is absolute insanity sometimes. I regret ever looking at moms in this position before I had my own and thinking "why are you letting them do that?!?!?!" because boy oh boy am I getting my payback. 7. No matter what you do or how hard the day is, you have taught me a love that exceeds any other type of love I know. I could stare at you forever. Every time I hear one of my friends is pregnant, I secretly hope it's a boy because there is nothing quite like the bond of a mother and her sons. Being a mother to you boys is such a blessing and what I have realized is that you get out what you put into it just like anything else in life. This is the most important job I have been given and I treat it as that and cringe when I see others treating it like a burden or a joke. I know my boys have no clue what it takes to be a parent but what I do hope is that someday they do and not for selfish reasons but so their children can be raised right.