These boys of mine keep me on my toes. I never knew how much I’d enjoy being a Mom to boys, but now I can’t imagine it any other way.  Sure, there’s lots of boogers, pee and fart jokes, but there’s a whole lotta love and adoration there too.

Last week, Jude hops in the car after school and proudly announces that a girl (A GIRL!) came up to him at school and told him that she likes him. (Which, as an aside: bravo to you, Unnamed Girl. That took guts!)  We all marvel in this for roughly five seconds until Archer pipes up in the backseat: “WELL, DID YOU KISS HER?!?!”

Jude: “NO! ARE YOU CRAZY?”

Ahhhhh Fifth Grade.

Archer wakes up at the crack of dawn and does not stop talking until he forcibly is put into his bed for nap and/or bedtime. I remember when he was a baby and he would jibberjabber nonstop, and very realistically. Like he KNEW what he was telling us and we were the fools who couldn’t figure it out. And now? Bless it – we can definitely understand. He wants to know what is for dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, and dinner the following evening. When is Christmas? When will his next birthday be? Where is Santa? Is that my school? When do I go back to school?

I fear that left to his own devices, he may grow up to be a bit of a Mansplainer as he tends to interrupt Other Peoples’ Stories (primarily Jude)  and butt in with a completely irrelevant tidbit of information that sounds plausible but is completely made-up. This especially happens in the presence of the older kids, and sometimes girls. LORD HAVE MERCY. And help me not to lose my mind.

Poor Nickels. He is a walking target for Archer’s sudden need to hug and squeeze and kiss him from head to tail (WHY).

And finally, a cautionary tale about Small Boys & Legos.  On Sunday morning as we were all getting ready to walk out the door for church, I see Archer pick up something tiny and red off the floor and IMMEDIATELY stuff it up his nose. WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS? WHY!?

He starts immediately crying about having put “gold” up in his nose. What?! I couldn’t tell what it was exactly but I knew I’d seen something go up there. So, naturally, we laid him down, turned on the light on Simon’s iPhone and I got the tweezers – because I couldn’t think of any other way to do it, in the heat of the moment.

At first, we had to go through quite the Booger Forest and then I thought maybe I was wrong, like maybe I had mistaken him putting something up his nose. But no! I finally saw a small sliver of something red and thought “OMG he’s put a shard of glass up there.”

Finally – finally! – I extracted  A WEE TINY LEGO RUBY out of that child’s nostril.

So the moral of this story is … uhhhh. Don’t stick things up your nose. Ever.