The Awesomeness of Having Boys – A Scientific Study

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November 12, 2012 by Katia

Awesome and Awesome Jr.

Last week I had a conversation with my bestie back home, Tali, who has an absolutely awesome 9 year old girl. Tali mentioned reading 3 year old’s Halloween story blog post and commented ‘you and I live in such totally different worlds’. Not Israel vs. Canada, not the nuclear bomb threat vs. Pumpkin carving, but moms of boys vs. moms of girls. The inhabitants of my universe are pirates, creepy cowboys, monsters, bad shadows, super heros and creepy couches who live in haunted houses and dark spider web ridden caves. I don’t even know anything about my bestie’s world except that it’s purple, which is pink for sophisticated girls.

The following essay is a study about the correlation between boys and the awesome. The two subjects of the study are a 3 year old and a 3 month old and it’s all totally empirical. I also had one semi-subject, a 36 year old. I will illustrate some of my findings with a quote from Gertrude Stein and a Magritte painting and a lot of bad quality family photos.

Forgive me in advance, Team Girl Moms if some of the awesome things I attribute to boys are also ‘girl things’ and please send me your feedback to correct me.

Couch surfing

René Magritte, Ceci n’est pas une pipe, 1921 (Wikipedia)Magritte, Ceci N’est Pas une Pipe, 1921 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Awesome fact #1: Boys are repurposing masters. Theirs is the opposite philosophy to Gertrude Stein’s A Rose is a rose is a rose. In fact their view of life reminds me more of this painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe by Magritte, one of my personal favorites as a child. A sofa is a giant surf board, is a pirate ship, is a cave. And sometimes a monster. Bottom line is no piece of furniture or object is what it appears to be. To boys they are infinite potential adventures to you death traps. All I know is I shall never trust a sofa again.
• Awesome fact #2: I once heard a sentence that I’ve embraced and try to live by ever since. Stepping outside of your comfort zone brings growth. I am officially a resident of Outside of My Comfort Zone. My passport will confirm that. My comfort zone outsiderness is double: geographic and gender-related. As an only child raised by three women I don’t know anything about raising boys. As an Israeli I don’t know anything about raising Canadian boys. While my son is growing up, I’m growing. I’ve been presented with a lot of growth opportunities, for example, getting up close and personal with bugs. Some of them disgust me beyond words the others just scare me to death. Several times a day I hear the enigmatic phrase, mommy, could you chuck that web? (referring to a spider web). I’ve done some more growing in parks and our own back yard where I now play soccer and talk about trucks. One area I haven’t grown in yet is street hockey. If my son asks to play, he and his awesome teeth are on their own.
• Awesome fact #3: Boys fashion is undeniably much less entertaining, shall we say, than girls’? What’s so awesome about that you ask? Somewhere in the sea of drab grey and khaki corduroys and 50 shades of blue t-shirts my other bestie and mother of two boys, Anya, is so sick of, you will find that one item that will make your heart skip a beat.
  

  Florida, here I come!

  Like this Florida retiree sort of Hawaiian shirt. The photo here is an almost actual size. Or these vintage looking suspenders?

  

  1920’s here we come!

  The fact that these finds are so rare for us, Team Boy Mommies, makes the hunt much more thrilling. Like the hunt for good men. Like 36 year old. I would share a photo but he won’t let me. There, I said something very nice about you.  Smiley.

• Awesome thing #4: Boys make me lose calories. 3 year old never sits down for a second. He is too busy chasing vampires and pirates around the house. This is why all of his pictures look like that: 3 month old is 3 months old but he works out 24 hours a day and has been trying to sit up and walk ever since he emerged from the womb, holding his head up and looking surprised, therefore for him I predict much of the sameness. When I tried to explain the word nickname to 3 year old today I was the one to learn something new instead. They call him Racer Ben at nursery school. Awesome.
• Awesome fact #5: Boys make me Mister Miyagi. In our house things are constantly knocked over and go flying down – cups of hot chocolate, plates with food, deadly toys. I am not only protecting my territory but also the safe being of 3 month old’s head and so I’ve developed killer instincts. I catch things before they even start falling. Once at the airport in Israel, when 3 year old was 10 months old a bar tender was about to drop a tray with coffee and some croissants on me. I saw the whole thing happening in slow motion and caught it mid air. True story.

What are some of the most awesome things about raising your boy/girl that you feel are specific to their gender?

Bonus pic: re enactment of an awesome moment, 3 year old singing Hakuna Matata. For you, Marina!