On Raising Boys

Breathe, Mrs. Smucker.

So I looked out the bedroom window this evening and there was Jenny dancing around the yard talking to herself. Well and good. But then a movement off to the left caught my eye.

There was Steven crawling along a branch of the walnut tree, I'm guessing 15 feet off the ground. He was on the underside of the branch, with his feet and hands over the branch like an orangutan. When he got to the trunk he swung his feet off the branch and over to the trunk where they mercifully latched on and he shimmied up and into the nest of branches right there.

I watched all this happen without trying to make it stop because I knew if I yelled and startled him he was more likely to fall.

I also put together that he had climbed out his bedroom window and onto the carport roof and then monkeyed his way up the branch, and it was not the first time this had happened.

I also knew that if I told him he could no longer do this, he would find something more dangerous to do.

This is what it is like to raise boys.

Quote of the Day:
"'Jordan' wanted to carry something to the van so I gave him a carton of eggs. Then on the way out he wanted to walk along a berm and I was like, ok, that'll be good for his balance, and I didn't think. . . and sure enough he fell, right on top of the eggs. And he was like, 'Mom, this is wet!"
--my brave neighbor lady who took her three young children grocery shopping today and lived to tell and even laugh about it