Five things I love about parenting boys

I love being a mum. I suppose the things I love about my two boys will be completely different from the things you adore about your offspring, but certain things link us all together: we're all bonded by the initial puke and insomnia, through to the ‘what? No, of course you can’t have a tattoo’ stages of parenthood. However different our offspring, we’re all destined to travel the same path. I love this about parenting. Whatever stage you’re at and however different you are, there’s always going to be some point when you go ‘oh yeah, been there’.

So here are my top five fabulous things about being a mum of boys.  

Boy hugs

I’m not completely sure as I don’t have a girl, but I think boy hugs are probably slightly different from girl hugs. Boy hugs tend to be a bit hard and fierce, a bit ‘half nelson’ rather than soft and snuggly, but still I’m sure they mean as much. As boys get older, you tend to get your affection in different ways. Gone are the days of snuggling under the duvet on a Saturday morning (they’re too busy going up to their rooms balancing enormous bowls of cereal and five pieces of toast), but I’ll get my hair ruffled while I’m sat at the computer (‘alright Smelly?’) or told a playground joke I probably shouldn’t hear. These little things mean I still belong, and I’m still ‘in the gang’ even though I don’t need to wipe stuff or do up buttons anymore.

Mad conversations

Who else can you have ‘if I weighed 50 stone’ conversations with, or chats about what would happen if everyone in the whole country suddenly woke up with Tourette’s? Boys have an unceasing ability to go off on random tangents, and dinner time conversations are much richer for it.

Pride

Sometimes it’s the little things that make my heart swell: sitting in my room and hearing the most beautiful guitar version of ‘I believe in a thing called love’ twirling whimsically around every stair before reaching its tendrils out to me at the top of the stairs, a lovely comment from another parent who's had them around for tea, or maybe that chest-bursting moment when they do their bit in the school play… it’s what makes parenting worthwhile.

Laughter

While shopping for new school shoes, my youngest mentioned that the left toe of one shoe was a bit uncomfortable. Removing his sock to examine the problem revealed a toe nail of such epic proportions that Godzilla would have been mighty proud. It was like a spade. I only stopped laughing when I worried I’d maybe wee myself if I carried on.

Fibs 

However wonderful they are (well, they do have my genes), small boys tell large fibs. The entertainment value attached to the long rambling stories explaining exactly why they haven’t washed/changed their underwear this week/cleaned their teeth/created that sticky mess on the carpet/made that smell are worth having to get a bit cross afterwards. 

Now in the interest of fairness, I should probably challenge a mum of girls to give us her five favourite girl things, but I’ve just got to pick this sticky thing out of the carpet first. What is that?