Sigh. Seriously?

A question I get asked a lot by expectant mothers when they find out they are having a boy and discover I have 3 girls and 1 boy is “so are boys really that different from girls?”. My answer?

This is my adorable, sweet Eli.

He is ALWAYS on the move…

The last few days have been a bit hard for him, he found a bag of his dad’s chips and discovered sharp points are a bit more difficult to swallow than his regular baby food cuisine ( a lot of gagging and throw up involved before I could find, vacuum up and dispose of all the offending chips he had scattered throughout the house) – “where was I” you ask when the initial spreading of chips was happening? Downstairs. (For less than 5 minutes) putting a load of laundry in and out.

Then on Sunday he grabbed the cord to the flat iron and yanked it to the ground where he promptly tried to pick it up and burned the fingertips of both hands (resulting in blistering 2nd degree burns), these have since popped and we are in the process of keeping them clean (0n a little boy who likes to pick-up EVERYTHING) and healing them - “where was I” you ask? I was  2 feet away taking hot curls out of my hair for church. (The whole thing happened in the time it took me to try to reach for the flat iron as it fell to the ground and grab Eli to pick him up as he burnt his hands (10 seconds).

Which brings us to today…

I thought it would be such a neat treat to paint Liberty’s nails today – it’s been hard on her to have her older sisters back in school. Eli hovered nearby watching and wanting to hold all the things we were using to make her nails beautiful and I felt I was terribly successful in keeping all these things from him. When I was finished, I had Liberty stay still on the couch while her nails dried and I ran upstairs to use the bathroom (less than 5 minutes). As I go to head downstairs I get a whiff of this overpowering smell of nail polish and looked at my hands to see if I spilt any on me, then Eli began to whine…

Seriously?! The next hour involved trying to clean Eli with minimal success (why couldn’t I have used the blue nail polish like Liberty asked?!),

calling Eli’s doctor to see how I should get the nail polish out of his burns - which the good doctor, with an unsuccessful attempt not to laugh, said would act as a good barrier to infection and to leave it alone (why couldn’t I have used the blue nail polish like Liberty asked?!),

cleaning the floor with nail polish remover – before…

Halfway there…

When I had to take a break to call Crystal for another bottle of nail polish remover, clean up Eli (again) – because he had discovered if he held the Windex bottle up-side down cool blue stuff comes pouring out until he slipped in it and hit his head, and clean up Liberty’s “accident”, who had dutifully waited on the couch for her nails to dry and had been asking me for the last 15 minutes if she could get up ( not knowing the reason for her insistence was of a bathroom nature, I kept telling her to wait hoping to get most of the wet polish up before Eli walked through it again…) Sigh.

Are boys different than girls? A little bit.

Last night - Don, Autumn and I stayed up watching Mitt’s acceptance speech as the Republican’s Presidential Nominee and I loved watching Ann stand regally and ladylike as Mitt proudly pointed out “here is a woman who could’ve been successful at anything she wanted to do” and she chose the better part, to be a mom to her 5 boys. She looked serene, sane, and put together… What a beacon of hope on days like today she is, when I feel aged 20 years and positive everyone will be able to see the pink nail polish that won’t come out of the creases in my hands. That what I’m doing is important, that my serene-sane-put together days are coming and that I’ll miss this time of pink nail polish with all my heart.