What Boys Do

Boys are physical.  They wrestle, they fight, they shove and push.

It is how they show love, it is how they show anger.  It is what they do.  

As a mom of boys, I have to be on the look out for when someone gets pushed too far 

and it turns into a fight, but mostly it is all fun.  Even the fights are learning experienced of how to deal with someone hurting you and not retaliating (that is a hard one to learn).  

But when Harvey and Julius don't have anything to do, they often break out into wrestling.  

It doesn't matter where we are.  At the kids elementary school, when we brought the new chicks in for show and tell, in line at the post office, at a family gathering, they don't care, they have each other to play with.  They don't out grow it either.  

Rez and Ocean still wrestle. 

 

And my brothers, when they get together they still wrestle (at least they did a few years ago).  

They also pass their skills on down to the younger generation.  This was called "Knee Sumo".  

My mom told me that her brothers would wrestle (she had 4) and when they were at their cousins house, a family of girls, the little girls (cousins) would get so upset and run in to tell the adults that the boys were hurting each other.  No, they were just wrestling.  

I don't think you get this in a family of girls.  When we went to Rez's 5th grade graduation, there was a little boy about Harvey's age that only had 2 older sisters, sitting next to us.  He wanted to be friends so he asked Harvey, "Do you want a hug?"  Harvey just looked at him like he was crazy.  And I thought, he is probably thinking, "No, but I will wrestle with you."

When you are a girl amidst all the boys, you learn to wrestle.  I have 6 sisters and 4 brothers, but I was born between the boys.  I have a brother just older than me and 2 just younger than me and I was always the wrestling partner. 

I remember my brother just younger than me and I would play "mercy".  We were all over the floor trying to get the other person to say "mercy", but were very evenly matched, so our "mercy" battles would go on a long time.  It was good training for being a mother of boys.

Here we are last summer (I was pregnant with Zelda).  I don't think I will challenge him to a Mercy match any time soon.

Daphne is very tough.  She can take down her brothers when she needs to and my niece that lives in the same house with her little brother and 3 boy cousins also can hold her own on the battle field.  Here they are at a recent family get together.

I love my boys.