Being part of a family with boys and girls is fun.  Yes, it has it's trials, and there are times when I tell my Dear Man it's time to rethink this parenting thing.  I don't do that very often, not because those times don't arrive that often, but because Dear Man is quick to remind me that he had warned me that babies stink and they bite.  This is his standard answer to any of us who request to bring a living thing into the household. 

Dear Man and I did not set out to be a large family.  We had Girl 1 and we wanted to end it right there!  Girl 1 was and is deeply loved, but she had these moments where Dear Man and I were not sure we had done the right thing in procreating.  It's painful to watch a two year old yank her ankle socks clear up to her knees and then roll them down to her ankles.  She was insistent that this was the way they had to be worn.  We chose our battles, and decided that The Battle of the Bulging Ankle Socks was not one that would help us to win the war.

Then we met a large family and I came  to the conclusion that we needed a sibling for Girl 1.  Enter Girl 2.  I was thrilled to have two girls.  I have only one sister and my mother was never keen on little boys.  She especially detested little boys that came from parents who said, "Boys will be boys."  To my victorian mother this was no excuse.  I now realize that this is because she didn't have to raise them.  There is no excuse for rude behavior, such as armpit musicals,  but it certainly takes a little boy to think of it to begin with!

With Girl 1 and Girl 2 firmly established in our household, I thought that was the end of it once again.  Then I met a little boy named Jake.  We lived in Hawaii at the time, and I was hosting a home party.  One of my guests was the mother of two teenage daughters and Jake, then 4.  She brought Jake along because he was in the same pre-school as Girl 1.  (A short stint we soon repented of.)  Girl 1 and Jake went off to play.  After awhile they came back and Jake was holding a gecko.  He showed it to me and I commented on it and then asked him to put it outside.  Instead, Jake slapped his hands together and squished the gecko!  Jake's mother nearly lost herself in her own humiliation, and took Jake home.  I was fascinated!  What made little boys so different from little girls? 

I wanted a little boy.  Dear Man told me that if there was anything I wanted to know about little boys just ask him, he had been one and he had two brothers.  This wasn't good enough, I wanted to experience being the mother of a little boy.  We became foster parents and evenutally adopted Boy 1 and Boy 2.  I like things to be even and geometrical.  We were now a family of three males and three females. 

I was not disappointed in Boy 1.  He is all boy.  He once wanted to poor honey all over my car tires.  "It will attract the bugs and when you drive down the road it will squish them."   It seemed to him such a simple solution to those pesky insects. 

 My mother-in-law tells me that it's uncanny how much Boy 1 is like Dear Man, even when Dear Man was Dear Boy.  It has been fun to see Boy 1 and 2 think, and act.  Girls are fun to have in the family, but boys kick it up a notch.

The boys have given the girls experiences they would have never had with just each other as girls, just as the girls have given the boys experiences they wouldn't have had without sisters.  The boys have dressed up as girls, been part of tea parties, and have learned to love a girl the way a every girl wants to be loved.  With undying devotion.  The girls have learned to have a car crash or two while playing house, appreciate the opportunity to learn by examining dead things, and are gaining patience. 

I once asked my Papfather if he was sorry that I was not a boy.  He told me, "No.  You can always put a girl on a motorcycle, but you can't put a boy in a dress."  I may have rode motorcycles, but I still thought like a girl in the way I handled the bike and in the way I crashed. 

Yes, boys and girls are different.  They are blessings every one.  God knew what he was doing in creating them. He saw that Adam needed a helpmeet so he created Eve.  What good would it have done any of us if Eve was still female but thought just like Adam?