That face

That face

This face……….it is the face that makes my heart explode with joy.

It is also the face that belongs to a child that changes her clothes 16 times each day. Not only does she change the clothes, but she wears each set long enough to dirty it just enough for it to need washing.

As a boy mom prior to birthing Miss Mimi, I never had this problem. My boys were never really aware that clothes can match, and that if you wear something once and play in a sand pile for 6 hours, you might need to put them in the dirty hamper when you take them off. I am not even sure they know where the dirty clothes hamper is, since I usually find it stuffed under the bed, on the floor of their closet or worse, put back in the drawer.

The boy/girl thing is very apparent in regards to bathtime. When Mia gets out of the bath, she asks if she got all the shampoo out of her hair. With boys, you have to make sure they even used shampoo…….using soap takes longer and the goal in the shower is not to get clean, but to get it over with as quick as possible.

Girls dress up to go to the Hannah Montana movie, complete with scarves. Boys stick their finger in their mouth and pretend to barf when you ask them if they would like to go.

It would never occur to Mia to throw her Corolle baby up on the roof. The boys would do it, complete with mock “save me” cries.

Nor would she tie a string to a stuffed animal, attach it to the back of her bike and drag it down the road in an attempt to create a patient for her “surgery clinic”.

Mia probably would not launch her skateboard into the sewer, leaving her father to figure out how to fish it out from a crack in the sidewalk 12 inches high.

Boys would not climb into bed with their mom and say “Mom, can I give you a facial”. They would get into your makeup and mix everything around making a new color called “barf”.

Boy hugs and girl hugs are different. Girls snuggle up and tenderly stroke your cheek. Boys wrap their arms around you in a bear hug you that you know is going to end too soon.

Boys love their moms with a fierce protectiveness. Girls love their mom with a sweet tenderness.

The differences are most certianly there. They are not learned behaviors. They just are.

If boys are blue and girls are pink, I don’t see the individual colors. I see the most perfect color of purple my life could ever have painted across it.