You all know that I have boys. I am the only girl and I have wholeheartedly had to embrace all manner of boy related activities that I have never before experienced in my life. However recently it feels like I am seeing the differences between the sexes in ways I never have before.
I’m not being sexist nor am I trying to generalise but I talk from my experiences as a mum of boys and the only woman in my home. Friends who have little girls that I have had the pleasure to spend time with say that their girls are content to just be. A classic example of this was a barbecue at a friends house last week. She has a boy and a girl. Her daughter sat around the table eating chocolate ice cream and conversing with the adults. Our son’s collectively ran around screaming, climbed to the top of the play house, splashed each other in the paddling pool and made a new carpet out of pop corn.
I must have said about a hundred times ‘this is my life’ and it’s absolutely true. I live in a bubble of screaming, wrestling matches, Lego and food fights. My toiletries are used to make magic potions, we get through at least two liquid soaps a week due to potion making and washing Lego (yes that’s a thing) my ornaments and pretty things are used as targets for Nerf guns, there are piles of old wrenches, tools and bits of old bottles around the house that the boys have excavated from the garden and I’m never more than 30cm from something that’s come from the sea whether that be a crab shell, claw, shells or bits of stinky cuttlefish.
With half of the house being a building site we have become a world of wonder to the boys who don’t just walk out of the new extension but swing like monkeys on the scaffolding poles. They try to climb the ladders, they pile up bricks to make dens and give the poor builder palpitations worrying about the aspects of health and safety. The poor cows who are now out in the field at the bottom of the garden keep staring into our garden and I feel the Mummy cows looking at me and thinking what I am ‘those boys, they never bloody stop’. I wonder if it is a sign of madness when you start to communicate telepathically with cows? Anyway I digress.
The boys are already showing signs of having no clue what girls are about. Nate and I ventured into a clothes shop last week and had to walk through the women’s section before reaching the kids clothes. Nate loudly gasped and said how rude it was that the mannequins weren’t wearing bras and how boring girls clothes are. No fucking clue of how many hours lots of men spend shopping with their partners. I have a lovely dressing table which when I first got I savoured filling the drawers with all my make up, toiletries and girly things. I can’t however use anymore space on the table itself than about a five cm gap because it’s always covered in lego, bogies, racing cars, shells, books, make up bits I didn’t leave there that have been stolen and used for war paint by the boys and all manner of other boy related crap that has no place on a dressing table.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just give in and get rid of anything girly because the time it would save me in cleaning up what they wreck would be immense but I still hold on to needing some girly stuff or I will lose my sanity (she lost it ages ago I hear you say!) I’m not really sure what the point of this post is other than to offer solidarity to any other mums out there who right now and sat in the middle of a game of volleyball in the living room, who have shouted at least three times today about putting the toilet seat down, cleaned up wee from around the side of the toilet and had to shut the fridge because apparently boys are far too busy to close doors.
I love them, they are my life and I would never be without them but I know now and can say without doubt or reservation that one day someone will say referring to one or both of my boys ‘Men! I will never understand them!’ Those people will have no idea how hard I have tried to get them to understand the opposite sex, to take on board how different we are and to show respect.
Must dash as my latest Ideal Home magazine is being ripped up to make paper planes. Much love xxx
tiredfromwhitstable 