of Boys and Men

Poor Mark. He loves, loves, LOVES his girls, but I realized this weekend how much he'd enjoy having a son. My sister Kelly's oldest son, Eli (almost 10) stayed with us while she ran in the Ragnar Relay race. She was gone for 2 days. During that time, Mark really took to Eli. When Mark went downstairs to work out, he invited Eli to join him. He taught Eli how to do some pretty complicated push-ups from P90X and he taught him how to punch the punching bag. Mark invites the girls to join him when he works out, and sometimes they do for a few minutes, but Eli really liked doing this "man's work" with Mark. The girls usually fizzle out pretty quickly and have no interest in the punching bag. Eli stayed the whole time.

Mark also showed Eli his cool new knife he got for Father's Day. Mark picked it out himself- it's a knife Bear Grylls would be proud of and Mark is pretty stoked about it. Eli oohed and aaahed at all the right times. He was genuinely interested in it. Such a contrast from the girls' reactions: "Why'd you get that?" "Hmm. Nice." and "That could be dangerous."

I remember a couple years ago when I got home after a morning shopping garage sales and I happened to mention that one sale had a bunch of the Barbie-doll sized G.I. Joe figures for sale. He insisted we get in the car right then and go and buy them. I was shocked! He said he'd much rather see his girls' Barbie dolls date "real men", like the G.I. Joe guys rather than the effeminate Ken dolls he hated. And, secretly I think he just wanted an excuse to buy some boy toys.

So, Mark told me today that he really would enjoy having a son to share all of his guy things with. Girls just don't really care about guy things. I told him maybe we could adopt one, because I'm pretty sure my first ultra sound left no doubt that I'm carrying two more girls. But, I do have another ultra sound coming up, and I'll have to take another peek, just to make sure. It's more likely that Mark will have to make do with his daughters and one day hopefully their boyfriends and later, husbands will be interested in punching bags and knives. Until then, he'll be the lone man in a house FULL of women. :)