Boys vs Girls

Well, I have not posted in a while...with the move and a new computer...and just life being busy with six children (I will try to do another post to fill in the gap this week) I just have not had time.  But, I started looking at fixing the computer issues that kept me from posting this week.  Just in time to write this post!

Yesterday was a prime example of how different life is with girls and boys.  The top seven differences between girls and boys:

NUMBER 7:

Girls get excited about going to art museums....boys go because girls are excited!  I heard about a museum that was having their 90th birthday in downtown San Antonio.  There were going to be lots of fun children activities so I thought it would be fun.  We arrived and walking around viewing art from all over the world!  It was great but then we made an important discovery...which led to the next revelation about boys and girls.

NUMBER 6:

Girls get excited about going to a SECOND art museum in the same day....boys go because they hear there is free food!  We found out we were at the WRONG museum and so we went to the other side of downtown to find the right one.  The celebration was fully underway and we had a great time.  We did have a great lunch and went around to the various arts and crafts booths.

NUMBER 5:

We arrived home and the boys went off to play.  If you did not realize it, the difference between boys and girls does not change as we get older!  Michael is working the night shift right now (His last day on that shift was last night...woo hoo!)  and this means he needs to sleep during the day.  He still thinks he needs 7+ hours of sleep to make it through the day (crazy thought!).  While he is on this shift, Zaira has been struggling with her own night time sleep schedule...staying up until all hours of the night.  I rarely get more than 3-4 hours of sleep.  Both of us were exhausted from the full day of walking and keeping up with children in art museums!!  So when we got back, we told the children to play quietly and we were going to get some rest before doing something fun in the evening (We thought we were going to go swimming!)  Michael (adult BOY!) actually slept for two hours!  I, on the other hand, fought with two-year-old so I could close my eyes for thirty minutes before making dinner!

NUMBER 4:

I had also asked the boys to clean up the house (basically do their chores) so we could do something fun after dinner.  The boys decided this meant play on their computer.  Zaira helped me clean the kitchen, so we could make dinner!


NUMBER 3:

Dinner was a simple and light meal....BLTs.  One of the biggest differences between boys and girls is FOOD!  I am perfectly happy with a slice or two of bacon...I add avocado to my sandwich to make it more filling.  Zaira is right there with me...keep it simple and light!  But the boys think a BLT should be BBBBBBlt....heavy on the BACON and forget the rest!

NUMBER 2:

So...we finished dinner...Michael checked out the the rooms the boys were supposed to clean and it was a mess, so we did not go swimming as planned.  One of the other things I did instead of sleep was look into geocaching (We are planning a road trip and I thought this would be fun thing to do along the way!).  There is an app for the phone and I found that there were caches right by our house.  As a girl, I saw this as a way to see if we could have fun finding coordinates and we would have the dog walked for the evening (dual purposing!); however, I also thought about all the dangers involved in going into an unknown area digging around tall grass and trees....police stopping us for trespass, snakes, wild animals, pointy cactus, etc.  The boys saw this as an exciting adventure...hunting for lost treasure and without a care in the world!  They did find the treasure and we headed home for the evening.


NUMBER 1:

AND...that trip back home is what brings us to the biggest difference between boys and girls.  I back track a little in the day to say that I spent about $100 on clothes for Zaira so she would look adorably cute for the summer.  This is not hard to do because first of all I think she is always adorably cute, but also because it is so easy to find adorably cute clothes for little girls!  The boys could care less about cute clothes and would have them completely dirty before a picture could be taken even if I tried.  Zaira put on a little fashion show in her cute new outfits.  Just to prove my point, the fun of the evening ended with a trip to the ER for Edward smashing his fingers into the massive hinged gate of our community...taking off the tips of two (almost three!) of his fingers.  There was blood all over him and the house (Do you remember the old Family Circus cartoons?)  Instead of spending $100 on cute clothes for him, we spent the money for his ER trip!  Thankfully after a four hour stint at the emergency room, as well as 7 shots...3 x-rays...and 16 stitches...he will keep his fingers and will need to see a surgeon this week to fix the breaks. What a crazy night!  Funny to think I worried about all the dangers of walking through the woods and he was hurt 5 steps from our front door! Life is funny sometimes!

And so you can see that there is a difference between raising boys and girls.  Thank God I love these little rascals!  Because they make my heart stop in more ways than one most days!

BONUS DIFFERENCE:

If a girl gets hurt she runs straight to Mom (or Dad) to tell them they are hurt and want the hurt fixed!  When a boy gets hurt, he tries to hide the accident as long as possible hoping he does not get in trouble for whatever he was doing wrong at the time of injury!  Also, he will go out of his way to not walk in a straight path from one destination to the another even to save his life (In this case to get from the front door of the house to the sink to "wash away the blood," Edward did a Billy trail (from Family Circus cartoon) to get there causing blood drips all over our living room and kitchen!  We are still finding drip spots after three days!

UPDATE:  Edward was out of the little finger splints in two weeks.  We now call his fingers "Frankenstein fingers" because you can see the stitch marks along the cuts.  He will have scars to remember it by but I think he will be OK.