Boys will be boys

I sort of never thought I would have a boy.  After having two younger sisters and then two daughters of my own, it seemed that life was destined to surround me with females.  I was fine with that; I love little girls!  What could be more fun than picking out dresses, painting fingernails and doing hair?  I always passed by the boys clothing section, glad I didn't have to try and pick out things I liked amongst all the giraffes, airplanes and firetrucks (for the record, I like none of those themes!).  The selection for baby boys clothing was miniscule in comparison with the girls.  And one time I made a mistake of taking a detour down a boys toy aisle: wow, I was so out of my league!  Do they really enjoy playing with tiny cars, little legos and transformers??  I had to run to the girls' section to reassure myself that the dress up clothes and Barbies were so much cuter and more fun.

So then I got pregnant with Jameson and instead of a third girl he turned out to be our first boy.  Infant dresses and pink ruffles were replaced by rompers and onsies.  The purple nursery was turned into a sports theme.  And slowly we opened our lives to the color BLUE.  But although he was a boy, as a baby it doesn't really matter; they are all the same.  They all eat, poop and sleep and don't do much else.  Now that he is growing up I can see differences between him and his sisters.  It's fun, but at the same time it's scary because I realize I am totally out of my element.

First of all, he is so much bigger than either of the girls were.  At about 25 pounds he and Serena nearly weigh the same despite being fourteen months apart in age.  This is just one reason why I am ready for him to walk!!  He also eats like crazy; the boy is a bottomless pit.  I don't think I have ever seen him full because he will never end a meal himself.  If I don't cut him off, I think he would continue eating until he exploded.  He is eating us out of house and home already.  He is also very rough already and it must be all the testosterone in him or something!  He loves to hit and thinks it's just hilarious.  He also throws things all the time.  I've been trying to ignore him lately because I found that when I acknowledged what he was doing and told him "NO" he thought this was so funny and laughed at me while he threw something else at my head.  I know he is doing it for attention so I try not to give it to him.

Jameson has no fear.  He climbs up on the couches and will fall off head first and pop back up no worse for the wear.  Last week he did a complete somersault of the couch and thought it was pretty cool.  I swear this boy is going to fall out of a thousand trees when he gets bigger!  He also loves to climb up the stairs.  We keep a gate at the bottom, but sometimes it gets left off and forgotten about, like last night for instance.  Richard had just come home from the gym with the kids and I was busy cooking dinner.  A few minutes went by and I heard a noise from Jameson, the kind of noise I could tell was coming from upstairs.  I dropped my cooking spatula and ran to the stairs and sure enough, the gate was off and there was Jameson at the top getting ready to crawl down.  I swear he made noise just to call us over so he could show us the cool trick he did.  I raced up the stairs, calling to him the whole way to distract him from putting his hand down the next step and taking a tumble.  When I scooped him up he just smiled at me, thinking he was the coolest kid ever I'm sure!  No fear.  The problem is that all his unused fear is transfered to me and I am doubly worried about what kind of trouble that kid will get into.

He's starting to take more and more steps as he becomes more confident in himself.  He hesitates to let go, but when he does he can get about four to five steps before falling or reaching whatever he was going for.  I love experiencing the first wobbly steps with a new walker.  I am anxious for him to put it all together, but it's a fun process.  He'll be running along with Calli and Serena soon I'm sure!  For now, I am just happy he is finally getting there.  I know babies who walk before one year old are early, but both my girls were taking their first steps around 9-10 months and walking proficiently by their birthday.  I knew that wouldn't be the case with Jameson so it's nice that he is even getting started this early.  Can you believe our little boy will be ONE in exactly a week from today?  I sure can't!  At this time last year I was one day over my due date and wondering why I always got stuck with the babies who didn't want to leave my uterus.  I was so hoping for a May baby (we already had a June bug and I thought it would be cool to have April, May and June babies).  Jameson had other plans for us and thought he wanted to be born in the cool month of June along with his biggest sister and grandmas.  As we approach the date, I can't believe a year has flown by, but I am also glad.  It is so nice to be out of the infant stage and getting some sleep again.  I've broken Jameson of his 5am bottle in the last few days and even put him down without his bedtime one last night.  So this means he is down to just one bottle a day when he wakes up in the morning (at a decent time!).  I am so looking forward to the fact that I have just one more week of washing and dealing with bottles, hurray!!  It has been a LONG time coming.  We had bottles in this house for two years, with a brief two month break between Serena and Jameson.  I will not miss those things one bit.  I will miss having a baby, just a *little* bit.  Although I think it does get easier to care for them as they get older, babies are just so sweet and innocent and pure.

Now if only we could get rid of the diapers...

Off to change Jameson's second poopy diaper of the day before I've even had my coffee.

Boys will be boys...