I am a Mom of Boys

I am a mom of boys. 

Photo credit: Heidi Lynne Photography

This is a really weird thing for me, even though as of yesterday, I’ve been a mom of boys for an entire decade. {What in the holy hell? How is that even possible??} But, seriously. I am one of three girls in my family. My sister has a daughter. My sister-in-law has a daughter. Before I had kids, I said that if I had boys, I was sending them back. 

Then I start popping out boy after boy after boy.

I was positive that when I had my first big ultrasound that it was going to be a girl. 

Nope. 

Then, we decided not to find out what we were having the second time. I thought for sure they were going to show me little Lyla Marie in that operating room. Nope, Connor Ray was born. {Side funny story: we had decided that if it was a boy, his middle name would be Ray. But Dave wanted it to be spelled Rhea, after his great-uncle. I didn’t like that spelling, because I thought people would mispronounce it Ree-ah, and they’d call him Diarrhea. It wasn’t until two days before my scheduled c-section that I actually said it out loud, mispronouncing the middle name. Connor Ree-ah. Say it out loud, and you’ll get it. I almost named my child after an STD. Awesome.}

Anyway.

I decided when I got pregnant again the third time that I really wanted to find out if it was a boy or a girl, because I thought, if it ended up being another boy, I would have the teeniest, tiniest twinge of disappointment, just for a second, and if I did, I wanted that to happen in an ultrasound room, not a delivery room.

Sure enough, the technician told me it was another boy. And a really crazy thing happened. 

I wasn’t in the slightest bit disappointed. In fact, I was really, really excited. And when I saw Mason for the first time, I knew that, without a doubt, this was the family I was supposed to have.

So I am a mom of boys. 

I have learned more about construction vehicles, dinosaurs, and sports than I ever thought humanly possible.

I have learned to roll with the punches {quite literally}, and break up fights over wiffle ball games in the backyard.

I have learned to be prepared, always, for blood, bruises, broken bones, concussions, scraped knees, and baseball pitches to the face.

I have watched a doctor staple one kid’s head and sew up another one’s face and wished with every fiber of my being that I could trade places with them to take away their pain. 

I have walked into a girly aisle at Target to buy a birthday present and broken out into a cold sweat, feeling like I am in a tiny local grocery store in some obscure foreign country. I know in my heart that these are toys, but I cannot figure out for the life of me what on earth they are actually used for.

I have learned that stuff is going to get broken in my house, pretty much on a daily basis. I would love to have a beautiful coffee table with candles, vases of flowers, and trays with pretty things in them. Instead, my coffee table currently holds a Sports Illustrated Kids, a football, a Lightning McQueen computer, a golf ball, and a pair of dirty socks.

I have learned to {mostly} overcome my fear of dirt and sweat.

I have learned that a single M&M can make a kid’s entire face look like they face planted into a vat of chocolate.

I have learned that hands are pretty much always sticky, even 15 seconds after a bath.

I have learned to not buy anything white. Ever. For any reason.

I have learned to not spend a lot of money on throw pillows, because they will inevitably become bases in an indoor baseball game.

I have learned to buy socks by the truckload, because for some inexplicable reason, there will be a hole in them every time they take them off. Doesn’t matter if they were brand new out of the package when they put them on that morning, there will be a hole.

I have had to explain the “point” of soap, which is: so you’re not the smelly kid at school. Literally. I had one kid tell me that they “didn’t get” soap. 

I have learned to not expect any pictures to contain three smiling boys, all looking at the camera.

I have learned that when they smile at me or pick me flowers or ask me to snuggle with them or tell me I look pretty, my heart fills with a joy I never knew existed.

So no, random person with no sense of what is or is not appropriate to say to a total stranger: I am not going to “try for a girl.” But thank you for being hideously inappropriate and assuming that my life is incomplete because I only have boys. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it, and you never will. But I can tell you with absolute certainty, this is exactly the way my life was supposed to be, and I will never cease to be grateful for these amazing little men that I have been blessed with.

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