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“The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”
Marjorie Pay Hinckley

This has been my parenting -- and life --  motto for many years.  I learned it from my mother. And when, years ago, I read this quote from Sister Hinckley, I knew what I had always believed was solid gold!  You can either put an early deposit on your padded cell or you can laugh at the lunacy of life.  And parenting will certainly present more than a few insane situations!  Plus, laughing burns more calories . . .

As the oldest of 7 children, 5 girls & 2 boys, I truly believed that parenting would be a snap for me.  Babies, kids, diapers, tantrums, runny noses, no sweat.  My youngest brother was only 4, for crying out loud!  And I always thought I would raise girls.  It's what I knew, with 2 girls, then my poor brother (who is the most sensitive husband, BTW), then 3 more girls, then a caboose baby brother.

And when my first child was born, a girl, I felt justified in my beliefs.  I knew I would be the most wise, patient, educational, empowering, spiritual, and endeared mother ever.  Then the epidural wore off.  Like the black wall of thunder clouds moving across a Texas sky (if you've never seen this, you've missed out), Reality began to approach my consciousness.  At first, I had actually forgotten that I had HAD a baby.  I was bit more focused on the whole "stitching my body back together" thing.  (Oh the list of things they don't really tell first-time mothers.  Discussion for another time.) Then there was the mountain to climb called "walking to the bathroom without passing out."  Oy.

Eventually, it was time to go home.  I was walking up the stairs to our tiny apartment, ahead of my husband, still focused on keeping all my body parts where they should be.  I had gone back into our bedroom to set something down and then came back up the 3-foot hallway to our living room.  I hadn't heard my husband come in with our baby, but there she was, just sitting there in her car seat, snoring (not really) softly as though she hadn't a care in the world.  (Because she didn't, that stinker.)

And that's when Reality jumped out and scared the bejeebers out of me. There was this, this PERSON sitting there in my apartment, approximately the size of an underfed chihuahua.  She terrified me.  But there was no going back.  No return receipt,  no take-backs, no changies, all sales are final. What on earth was I thinking!!!  I felt the psychic waves of her little mind reach out and grab my brain: "Woman, you have no idea what you have gotten yourself into."

And I didn't.  If I had known that that tiny baby would not only be my only daughter, but also be the easiest child of all my children to raise (well, not the first 7 days.  I should have taken note that her refusal to eat was actually a big red flag as to the nature of her stubborn streak.  Darn genetics), I might have hopped the first bus to Crazy Land right then and there.  But Ignorance is actually a beautiful, beautiful thing :D

Despite everything, I do love raising boys.  Holes in the wall? We have plaster.  Live snakes in the bedroom? We'll catch them. Probably.  Skateboards in the house because it's raining? See the above note about plaster.  No worries.  No one will love and protect his mother like a son.  No one hugs you with such unbridled happiness that it plows you over and flattens you like a son.  No one will share his half-eaten gummy worm with you with more genuine sincerity like a son.




Your daughters are your best friends, but your sons are your heroes :D

Jeny

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