I don’t hug you enough, this is my confession, and I’m sorry I yelled at you today. It made perfect sense to me when I told you to get in the car that it was time for you to get in the car. Your two loops around the house on your bike before getting into the car made perfect sense to you. A jaunt through the muddy orchard before getting in the car made perfect sense to you. Capturing the cat for a good cuddle before getting in the car made perfect sense to you.

You’d think I’d be better at this by now. Loving my little boy. You aren’t my only little boy. There are five of you. Eighteen years of raising little boys and I still yell at you for doing what little boys do.

Like when I yell, “Aim for the water!” Though I remind myself to patiently and lovingly and gently say, “Aim for the water, honey.” But goodness gracious for the love of your mother, aim for the water! The toilet is not a tree. You don’t just pee on it. Aim for the water inside the toilet bowl, son.I ask myself does it really matter that your bathroom smells like the lion’s cave in Munich, Germany? That zoo we went to years ago in winter where the stench of urine made me cry. It’s true, I’ve cried while on my hands and knees scrubbing your bathroom. Not because I’m an emotional wreck of a mother, though sometimes I am. But because of the smell of pee all over the place. And because I feel sorry for myself sometimes. All you boys and none of you can hit the toilet water. I just don’t get it.

“Make them sit down and pee like you do,” a friend advised me years ago. “This is what I do with my son. He pees just like me and there’s no mess to clean up.”

“Over my dead body,” my husband said when I shared this brilliant idea. “Your friend may not be cleaning up a mess now, but when that boy’s a teenager, she’ll be cleaning up a mess. That kid will end up in therapy. Our boys will not pee sitting down! They are boys for crying out loud!”

Sometimes I repeat this all snarky to myself when I’m mopping up the bathroom for the umpteenth time that day. “Our boys will not pee sitting down! They are boys for crying out loud!”

Sometimes I just have to sit down and cry out loud while raising you boys. When you fell twenty feet out of that tree, I had to sit down and cry out loud. “The branches hurt me,” you sobbed in my arms.

“The branches you hit on the way down probably saved your life,” I reassured you.

A week later there you were back up in that tree. “I won’t fall again,” you promised. “I’m better at climbing now.”

“I’m better at driving now,” your 16 year old brother promised me after wrecking his car. The second time.

“Your son’s lucky he didn’t get hurt,” the tow truck driver said as he hoisted the ruined car off a ledge. The same thing the highway patrolman said at the scene of the first accident when your brother wasn’t hurt.

“I don’t believe in luck,” I told the tow truck driver. “I believe in the grace of God. If I believed in luck, I’d be a lunatic by now.”

Some days my heart can hardly take raising you boys. I’ve kissed so many boo boos it’s a wonder my lips still pucker. And worse than kissing boo boos is not kissing boo boos. Your older brothers no longer let me kiss their boo boos. They even hide their boo boos from me.

The day Joey came home from the neighbors all quiet and huddled down in front of the TV where he didn’t move. I should have known something was wrong with one of my boys all quiet like that. All still like that. All calm as could be like that. It shouldn’t have taken a phone call to clue me in that Joey was hurt.

“I’m sorry about the motorcycle accident at our house,” the neighbor said. “We washed his wounds really good. I hope he’s doing alright.”

We don’t own motorcycles for this very reason. Boys and motorcycles are like wind and fire and just throw in a little gasoline while you’re at it. Joey’s wounds made me sit down and cry out loud. When I pulled up his shirt, I couldn’t believe it. “Where is his skin?” I asked in shock. It was all scraped off your brother’s back. He was a bloody mess.

This is what you boys do. Usually right before picture day. So not only do I feel like a bad mom when you boys get hurt, there’s proof I’m a bad mom when you boys get hurt because everyone sees the pictures with your skin scraped off. Or your face bruised up.

“I promise those scrapes and bruises are from him playing,” I’ve told the doctor far too many times. Thank goodness the doctor is old school. When he examined your little brother the other day, the doctor said, “He goes barefoot a lot, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does,” I admitted, swallowing hard. These days moms worry about being reported for scraped and bruised and barefoot little boys.

But the doctor just smiled. “I like that. He’s a boy.”

“He’s a boy.” I’ve heard five times in the delivery room, and a thousand times after this from well-meaning folks trying to make me feel better. Like when your brother hit that baseball across the living room and it smacked me square in the forehead while I worked on my laptop at the kitchen table. An egg-sized lump between my eyes for three days. Three days of people saying, “Well, he’s a boy,” after I explained how my son made me into a cyclops with his line drive in the living room.

A few months ago, I even went to the skin doctor to have a spot checked on my hip. A little blue thing that wouldn’t go away. “It’s a permanent bruise,” the doctor said after looking at it, which was reassuring since it wasn’t cancer, but on the other hand, I didn’t know you could get a permanent bruise. “I have five boys,” I explained to the doctor. “Well, that explains it,” she said with a laugh.

Just yesterday, your little brother lowered his head, and charged across the room right into my leg like a bull. Like my thigh was a red cape or something. It knocked me to my knees. I think they call this being speared in football. I’m pretty sure I have another permanent bruise now. Just like my body is permanently altered after birthing and nursing five boys. Not to mention two sisters before this.

I confess I miss your sisters. Miss braiding their hair and painting their tiny toenails when they were little like you. Now I spit in my hand to fix your hair, and sit on you to clip your toenails as you scream like a banshee. I don’t do this because I love you less than I love your sisters. Sometimes I love you more.

There’s something about little boys that little girls can’t do for their mommy. When you or one of your brothers tell me I look pretty in my dress, I believe you. I’m not sure I can say this about your sisters’ compliments. Little boys say it like it is. What’s going on inside you and your brothers isn’t a mystery to me.

Then again, maybe you are a mystery to me. I will never understand why you have to hold onto your pee wee like it’s a runaway horse. Your pee wee is not going anywhere. It’s attached to your body. “Get your hands out of your pants,” I’ve said more than I’ve ever reminded you to say please or thank you.

“Stop farting on your brother,” comes in second place, and third, “Why are you peeing on your pirate ship?” Okay, I’ve only asked you once why were you peeing on your pirate ship, but numerous times I’ve asked, “Why are you peeing on that toy, that tulip, that lizard?”

It has never crossed my mind to pee on a lizard. Women are not wired this way. We pee in the toilet water. That’s it.

I confess all your peeing drives me crazy. “Do they always do that?” Your sister asked the other day when you boys lined up outside to pee off the front porch while she was here for a visit.

“Yes. Do you see that dead spot on my lawn? They all pee there.”

“Why don’t you teach them to use the bathroom?” Your sister said as if it’s my fault your runaway pee wees rule the planet.

“Are you kidding me?! I’ve spent half my life teaching your brothers to properly use the bathroom! I should be crowned Queen of the Toilet or something!” Okay, I didn’t say this out loud. But I really wanted to say this out loud.

So here is my last confession: I’m praying your smarty pants sister gives me ten grandsons just like you.

P.S. Check out Miss Kay’s Corner for her new Peach Crisp recipe. It’s delicious! Miss Kay made it for us using our West Butte Orchard peaches and it was so tasty!