Gosh, I love 'em.
I love to see them across the dining table. I love to watch how they eat their breakfast - bacon first, always bacon first.
I love to listen to their boy voices floating down the hallway at night after they've been tucked in; silly poem recitations, conversations about knives, Poker, and chest hair, belly laughter in the dark from bunk to bunk to bunk, sometimes for an hour.
I love to watch them in the woods, climbing, searching, completely lost - in imagination.
I love to watch them near the river, decisively cutting the devil's throat. (A must-do activity for boys where very thin rocks are thrown on edge, straight into the air, then upon their swift descent, they slice the surface of the water, the devil's throat, with nary a splash.)
I love this one. He's precise. Very precise and orderly.
Need to know the time? He'll tell you exactly, sometimes even down to the second.
After explaining to him one day that it was okay if he just wanted to round the time to the nearest five minutes, he replied, "Mama, I'm an exact type of person." That he is, and good thing, too. Imagine, for a moment, just where this world would be if there were no precise, exacting people in it.
Uh-huh. I sure love this boy.
I love this boy, too. He usually looks like this, triumphing in great accomplishments.
Most other times, he looks like this, triumphing in great silliness.
Now, I wouldn't say that this boy is especially precise. But determined? Maybe just a little. Okay, a LOT! And when that determination is channeled in the right direction, amazing things happen. I mean, can you imagine for a moment, where this world would be if it weren't for very determined people?
Uh-huh, I love this boy.
And this boy? I love him, too.
He's not determined, except when it comes to changing his clothes several times a day, and he's not precise, except when he's wearing a hooded sweatshirt. If it has a hood, you must wear the hood. This is written in his little book of laws.
One other thing about this boy, I'm not sure if he can have his picture taken and chew gum at the same time. We've got the closed-mouth chew going on up there in that shot, now let's try it again.
Try it again and see:
Nope, can't do it! But, that's okay, because can you imagine just where this world would be if there were no gum-chewing people in it, who wear their hoods up on a sunny day?
Yep, I love him, too.
These boys.
It's not every mama who gets to have three.