Living with Boys
By Tiffany Lewis

Living with boys means you set out on a jog and end up standing in front of a construction site for 20 minutes while a Caterpillar dumps dirt.  Living with boys means you have to teach your son not to spit on the floor, not to spit on you, not to spit on the couch.  Living with boys means you go through a lot of food.  And most of it ends up on the floor, or on their shirt.  Living in a house full of boys means you do most of the cleaning, but can’t tell it’s getting done.  You spend your days talking about fire engines and outer space, and your nights picking up balls and sneakers.  When the Sears catalog arrives you sit down as an entire family and ogle over the circular saws, riding lawnmowers, monkey wrenches and pressure washers.  You realize that before you had boys you didn’t even know what a monkey wrench was.

Living with boys means less crying, more yelling.  Nothing pink in the closet unless it’s been stained with Jell-o.  You chase forklifts at Home Depot and hang out in the tool aisle. Everything is “cool.”  You take vitamins to build strong muscles.  There’s no push to potty-train because a boy could sit in a dirty diaper all day.  Sometimes your house resembles a dirty diaper.  It always smells like one.

You tell your boys scripture stories, and the only things they internalize are the bows and arrows and knives and swords.  You never realized the scriptures were so violent.  You begin to edit the Ammon-chopping-off-arms story.

The cameras and computers have been placed on the highest shelves possible.  Your 18-month-old knows how to work the DVD player.  You are not surprised.  The can opener has become a makeshift power shovel, your favorite tweezers are in bed with your son, who insists they’re his forklift, and you haven’t seen your salad tongs in weeks.

As a mother of boys you are a living jungle gym.  Affection is expressed in tackles and tooth marks. You have to set down ground rules for how long your son is allowed to pin down his little brother.  You get excited to see a cement truck, even when you’re alone.  You suddenly realize you need to brush up on how a car’s engine runs.  The bottom of the stroller is filled with sticks, sand and rocks.  You know your pediatrician’s number by heart, and you’re on a first-name basis with the ER technicians.

In a house of boys you worry because you know your future is doomed with video games, Saturdays at the church tying knots for Cub Scouts, and that in-your-face obnoxious stage that lasts from about age seven to seventeen.  They will morph from Bob the Builder to Harry Potter to Star Wars to Lord of the Rings, which means you will, in the span of your life, be attacked by tool belts, bewitched by wands, chopped by light sabers and Hobbitsed from head to foot. You can foresee broken bones and knocked-out teeth.  These “little angels” racing around in their Spider-Man underwear will probably burn down the house.

And you sit on your crusty, food-covered couch long after those boys are in bed.  You pick up a Cheerio off the floor and pop it in your mouth.  You flip through “The Truck Book” and hum “The Wheels on the Bus.”

A house full of boys.  You realize you wouldn’t want it any other way.