Life With A Six Year Old Boy

Back when I first found out I was pregnant, I was sure I was having a girl.  Some of it was just a gut feeling and some was fueled by all those theories about how what day of your cycle you conceive determines the gender of the baby (I am a walking testimony to how those are SO WRONG).

We weren’t trying for one gender or the other, nor did I really have a preference, but I just KNEW I was having a girl.

Then I had an ultrasound and the tech announced that I was most definitely having a boy.  I looked at him in confusion and asked “Are you sure???” at which point he assured me that he. was. positive.

It took me a few days to get my head around that fact that I was indeed having a boy.  I started to panic a little -a BOY??? What did I know about boys??? (Actually, a lot.  The two families I had babysat for the most growing up both had three boys.  But I had temporarily forgotten about that.)  I kind of figured that MY boy would wind up being, well, less of the snips and snails and puppy dog tails type of boy and more of a renaissance man.

Once LJ was born, I settled into being the mom of a boy pretty well (at least in my opinion).  Other than discovering the hard way that certain boy parts need to be aimed in specific directions when diapering, there wasn’t too much of a learning curve during the infancy stage.

I did wonder what would happen as my baby boy became less baby and more boy.  I started to get a glimpse when, at the age of nine months, he became absolutely enamored with trains.  I had hoped to skip the whole Thomas the Train obsession that every other little boy I had seen developed.  I purposely kept trains out of the house and avoided the PBS show at all costs.

It didn’t matter.  The first time LJ saw a train, he was in love.  Not being one to deny my child a true love such as this, I gave in and Thomas entered our lives.  As more time went by, LJ started displaying more and more typical “boy” interests: superheros, power tools, cars.

I realized that I was raising the absolute epitome of a boy.  And I knew it was only going to get worse.

It all kind of came to a head this past weekend.  I was bopping around the house, picking up and spot cleaning when I entered LJ’s bathroom.  And found…..

I screamed.  REALLY LOUDLY.

No, it’s not real.  It’s one of several rubber snakes we picked up at the dollar store last summer in an attempt to get the rabbits to leave my herb garden alone.  If you soak the snakes in water, they are supposed to grow larger (and more slimy, I learned).

And so there you have it – life with a six year old boy. Fart jokes, rubber vermin, power tools…and snakes in the sink.

At least he likes to shovel!!