Alright so, while I was eating my cookies and looking at pictures from yesterday I thought about the major freak out my son had over being ‘dirty’. We were playing with the hose in the garden and when he got mud on him he flipped. He did the whole I’m dirty dance and started to whine and the whole nine yards. At first, I was annoyed…shouldn’t boys just be okay with being dirty? Then, I thought about it and I realized that his Dad and I don’t necessarily agree on the theory ‘kids get dirty, it’s what they do’. We’ve battled about silly things like this before. He was raised in the kids are seen and not heard kind of family…where I was raised in a ‘these are my kids and they are awesome’ kind of family.

So, yesterday I jumped in the mud to show him it was okay. So, my question is ‘how do you make a boy, a boy’?

When I was a little girl my Mom was a ‘neat freak’ and by the time I was in Kindergarten I had mastered the art of playing and not getting a speck of dirt on my purdy dresses. But, once my teacher told my Mom I had to have ‘permission’ to get dirty, she let me have at it. My Dad and I planted a garden in the backyard and maintained fruit trees together…like he’s doing with my son now…but, I had the liberty to muck myself up and take a bath. In my opinion, I had amazing parents and a pretty rocking childhood…

In my reflections of yesterday and the amazing mud fight we ended up having before Easter dinner, I wonder how I will manage to maintain a healthy sense of ‘boyness’ in my son while fighting the fight of two different perspectives on kids and how they should just be kids…without ACTUALLY fighting.