Mothering Mayhem: Life with the Wild Boys

Hola, Wild Boy friends and family. A SUPER happy Mama coming to you this afternoon from La Casa de Testosterone, because all my guys are FINALLY home. Summer means a lot of things here in la Casa, and one of the biggest is Summer Camp. Gabe is a Cub Scout, Gavin is a Boy Scout, and both of them have summer camps to earn all kinds of patches and merit badges and have all kinds of boy fun. Gabe goes with the Cop for four days, Gavin goes alone for ten days. This is the first year they were at separate camps, and of course camps overlapped so for four days it was me and the animals. That went as well as could be expected (not well at all), and then the Cop and Gabe came home and I had some degree of peace. But not my Gavin. He was gone for ten days. Ten days. This was our first time apart with him not with a family member for more than a night. And he was gone for TEN DAYS. While I know that most parents would delight in this kind of break, I was FRANTIC. Lets try to remember how ...

Hola, Wild Boy friends and family, and a very happy Independence Day from la Casa de Testosterone. We are spending today recovering, since our happy little town does it's celebration on the 3rd of July to allow the more adventurous souls out there that want to be crammed elbow to elbow with strangers and trapped in cars for traffic snarled hours to see larger shows in bigger cities that opportunity. Me? Not so much. I like our small town show. I like being in the park, and seeing everyone, and by the end of the evening expanding our blankets to allow for whatever tribe of children settle down with us. This year was only slightly different. The Wild Boys are old enough now that girls rarely settle down with us anymore (although they do manage to casually walk by giggling with frightening regularity). Also, my attention is divided between two different dangers - Gabe and his friends courting finger loss and major burns, and Gavin and his friends being pulled in by the lure of t...