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Our Boy


The child who made me a mother, is also most often the child who makes me not want to be a mother.  We go rounds.  I love him hard, but boy oh boy.  There are moments when I don't like either one of us.  

We recently had a camping high, followed by a hard post-camping crash.  If it takes three days to recover from a two night camping trip, we are going to either have to camp longer or not at all.  It's been ugly around here.  And it's also been precious.  How do they do that?! 

Between bouts of me carrying a screaming fifty-five pounder to his room and depositing him on the carpet, I've also witnessed what will surely be a sweet relationship between him and his baby sisters.  They loooooove him.  Nobody makes them laugh like he does.  They mimic his every move.  This week they all played race cars together.  I'm not sure who had more fun.  I'm going to pull the Mom-card, and say it was me.  Watching them filled my cup.  It was promptly emptied the next morning by more screaming timeouts...and then filled again by the sweetest smiles and words between the two boys.  

I am officially a yo-yo.  

I don't bounce back nearly as quickly as he does, but I'm working on it.  

Parenting continually makes me appreciate my parents more and those who are in much harder situations than myself - the single parent, the parents of a special needs child, the parents of a child with an illness.  How do they do it?! Superheroes.  

On an unrelated note, is anyone else way more emotional now that they have kids?  Or is it just me? The kid's books are just killing me.  I don't ever remember choking up over The Pokey Little Puppy's Christmas as a kid. And every time Blue Truck teaches the big dump truck a lesson or Red Truck rescues the poor stuck school bus, I have to distract the kids while I pull myself together.  "It's okay, boys. Mama just needs a drink of water.  It's just that Blue Truck is just so nice to everyone.... *sniff*"  It's pathetic.  I'm turning into my dad.  Shout out to Larry Wright and his Hallmark commercial problem... Maybe it's genetic.    

Perhaps our boy and his huge emotions don't fall that far from the tree.  He drives me crazy and he drives me to my knees.  He frustrates me and makes me proud.  He surprises me and makes me laugh.  He is goofy, hardworking, hard playing, and sweet.  He is exactly what we prayed for.  

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