When boys come to play

Boys are different from girls. There. I said it. Can I even say that anymore? I like to think that I am just pointing out the obvious, but I know some would disagree.  Some would argue that "boys" and "girls" don't even really exist, as such, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't pee standing up without making a huge mess. Several boys who frequent our house also seem to struggle with that, but I know at least they are capable of it, just apparently unwilling to make the effort.

Of course, I realize that boys are generally different from girls, as far as behavior goes. Each person is his/her own individual and obviously won't fit every stereotype out there - or even most of the stereotypes out there. But there is this thing called testosterone, and boys generally have more of it, which generally leads to more testosterone-driven behaviors, which leads to people saying things like "boys are generally different from girls."

There is a quote by Flora Thompson, which says "One boy is a boy; two boys be half a boy; and three boys be no boy at all." In other words, the more boys in a group, the less work gets done. Of course this isn't always true, but it is frequently true. It's the reason my boss at the pizza place I worked at in high school, scheduled two boys to work alone together once and only once. After seeing the shocking amount of work that was left undone, she always made sure to have either 2 girls or a boy/girl combo working.

I also learned today that it's the reason my grandfather never took a coffee break after a certain day in 1952 - which equates to something like 20 years of working as a store manager without one coffee break. In that particular day, he left two teenage boys in charge of the store while he took a 15 minute coffee break. When he came back, one of the two boys had lost an eyeball. (Well, presumably he knew where his eyeball was, it was just no longer attached to his head.)

Which brings me to my case in point and the reason I started writing this post in the first place. Sam spent a week with his cousin Alex (during which, they had a great time  and behaved well overall, but at one point the two of them together decided to rub butter all over the banister going downstairs: two boys be half a boy.) Anyway, with Sam gone all week, Elena ended up spending more time playing with her cousin RJ who would normally be playing with Sam.

RJ was being very open-minded, and not insisting on conforming to gender-stereotypes in his play. When Elena and her friends were coloring Disney princesses, he hopped right in and started coloring with them. So sweet.

I'll let you guess which of these was colored by the lone boy in the room. I'll offer a brief description below each picture in case it's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at. I know it might be difficult, but I think most of you will be able to guess correctly.

Here we have Aurora, partially colored before the artist ran off to play something else.

Here is Tiana from the Princess and the Frog. I had to pull up a picture of her online to make sure all the colors were just right. 

And here is Rapunzel with her horse. What began as a fluffy white cloud in the sky was transformed into a thundercloud with lightning coming down to strike the horse, who is covered in blood with extra blood running out of his nose. The stream of green coming out of Rapunzel's mouth is vomit. And those little orange and brown things in the sky - I had to ask on this one - are butts with poop shooting out of them.

And just to prove I am being fair, I'll remind you of a similar post from 4 years ago in which Elena absolutely did not fit your "average girl" stereotype. You can read it again if you click here. 

Frankie's Messes

I might have mentioned that Frankie has been our messiest toddler so far. I can't guarantee this is true because it very well may be that I have just forgotten how messy the other kids were at this age. Nature has a way of tricking us into having more (thankfully!)

As Seth says, it's really actually impressive how big of a mess he can make in a very short period of time. I'll share a few examples of what our dining room looks like after he's eaten.

This first one is pretty typical. He doesn't like having a sippy cup at meals, preferring a glass like everyone else at the table. Inevitably his food ends up in his cup or his drink ends up all over his plate. He loves to play with his food, and very often I'm pretty sure only about 5% of what we feed him actually ends up in his stomach. 

 Here his is after his morning yogurt. This is quite a bit cleaner than usual, although this picture does not show all the yogurt on the chair and floor. You may also notice that he is standing in both of these pictures. Booster seats seem to be an invitation for him to fall on the floor trying to escape. And sitting is just simply not Frankie's style...unless it's on my lap while he spills my meal all over both of us. 

This one is worse than it looks. We had quinoa and broccoli for supper, and the kids got pineapple juice to drink as a treat. As usual his food ended up in his drink cup, and before I could stop it, the cup was dropped on the floor. (I can't recall if that was intentional or not.) This sticky quinoa/pineapple juice combo splattered across the entire dining room floor - spreading all the way under the table, up against the wall and into the crevices of the drawers and leaded glass on the hutch. It's red quinoa in case you're wondering why it looks so funny.

This wasn't at supper but while I was trying to prepare supper. Frankie has a tendency to decide he wants a smoothie at very inopportune times. I prefer to make him a smoothie when I can go outside with him and help him drink it without making too big of a mess. On this particular day, he was so insistent on getting a smoothie that I made him one to keep him happy while I was cooking. Sippy cups and smoothies don't mix so well so I just had him stay in the kitchen next to me. I was using a hand mixer which made him decide he needed to help by getting me another hand-held blender we have. When he tried to pull it out by himself he dropped a pyrex pan on the floor and it shattered. The crash scared him causing him to drop his smoothie. You may notice that not only was the floor covered in this mess, but the smoothie also splattered onto half of the dishes in the cupboard.

It helps to remind myself that we deal with all of this because he is healthy and therefore active, and for that I am very grateful. Mind you, I am aware that some people have children who are both healthy and fairly inactive, but for us this is life. And boy, do our kids provide us with a lot of stories!

Look who's riding bike!

It took him about 30 seconds to get the hang of it. To celebrate, we biked to the Dairy Queen where Grandma treated us to ice cream.

One of the benefits of having a Grandma who volunteers at a thrift store is that she has gotten great deals on all sorts of bikes, scooter and trikes so there are always enough to go around. Here's Sammy giving Frankie and Gabby a ride on one of Grandma's trikes.