Boys Will Be Boys

I remember my daughter, Ryan, running to greet me one afternoon when she was 18 months old with a fistful of flower petals in her little palm. She - and her father- were beaming with pride. "How beautiful!" I dutifully exclaimed, before she pretended to sneeze and scattered the petals all over the floor. Like snot. So much for father-daughter bonding.

Definitely a guy thing, and it soon lost its charm, but now I have three - no sorry, four of them in the house, and the times are getting ugly.

As we recently sat down to a family meal - all six of us at the table and the dog at our feet - Ryan and I were entertained by a cacaphony of fake belches from all sides of the table. Okay - two fake belchers; Andrew by now has mastered the art of the real thing. It would have been disgusting if it wasn't so funny. The little guys are obviously so proud of themselves. And they think they're hysterical. Belch. Hysterical laughter. Belch. Hysterical laughter. They could have amused each other for hours. The were like toddler versions of a fraternity house. I finally put a stop to it, imagining them all in ten years, each of them the size of my husband, doing the same thing. Lovely.

I've never understood humor based on bodily functions - the so called poop and fart jokes. But it seems to be ingrained in my men at least. How did it start that when I asked one of the twins if he had a poop in his diaper, that he turns to me and says, quite clearly, no, MOMMY has a poopy? And laughs and laughs and laughs. I just don't get it, but the boys consider it the height of entertainment. A "who tooted" dialogue can go around for hours. "Matthew tooted." "No Aidan tooted." "Ryan tooted." "Andrew tooted." You get the level of sophistication at our house. I still don't get why I'm always the punch line, but it has the rest of them rolling on the floor - and Ryan rolling her eyes. Thank God, I have one girl.

I'm waiting for puberty, but so far Andrew isn't impressed with the boy- girl thing. When we recently let him watch Pirates of the Caribbean, the last one, we were worried about graphic images of gore and violence. He hid it eyes for a few scenes at the end - the ones where Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley make out. "I just can't see this AGAIN," he exclaimed in disgust.

But there ARE signs. At the swimming pool the other day, a family of four joined us at the kiddy pool. The parents looked to be about 45, the teenage daughter about 16and then there was a two year old granddaughter, I'm going to assume was the 16 year old's niece. Both women - mom and daughter - were strikingly beautiful. Really, I could barely keep my eyes from them. And they had breasts the size of Dolly Parton. I tried not to stare.

My boys were checking out the family too. I figured they had their eyes on the two year old. But no. Aidan finally walked over to me and very somberly reached up to grab my breast. "Booby", he stated, and then stared back over at the family, still holding on to reassure himself that he too, had some, if a small part, of the treasure.

Whatever. I still think our family can take them on the fart jokes.