Boys

After having three girls, my husband and I were unprepared for the drastic change it would be to have a boy in our house.  

Mack's first words were  "vroom vroom."   On rides in the car, he could spot a wheeled thing from 500 yards away. From the backseat of the minivan, strapped into a carseat, he would rip the binkie out of his mouth and enthusiastically call out, "VROOM! VROOM!."  Occasionally the rest of us wouldn't see anything with wheels and would wrongly assume that he was just randomly making that sound.  But he would continue relentlessly until someone else in the car correctly validated the vehicle he had spotted. A few times, we had to really STRETCH to identify what he was looking at...

 ...well, they DO have wheels, so they MUST go "vroom vroom," right?  

We played the "vroom vroom" game for a LONG time...until he got older and started identifying cars by make and model.  Notoriously, on even the shortest of road trips, Mack will call out (still from the far reaches of the backseat of the van) "There's a Dodge Viper!"  "Hey, we just passed a Pontiac Grand Prix!"  And he has been on a personal quest since he turned 7 to spot an actual Bugatti.

But it's not just the cool cars that he's interested in.  He knows minivans.  He knows SUVs.  He knows domestic and foreign.  He knows the difference between a Peterbilt, a Kenworth, and a Mack truck (hence, his blog name.)  

(The girls NEVER did that.)

A few weekends ago, we had an unusually warm Saturday, so Mack assembled a crew of about 10 neighborhood boys and they spent the ENTIRE day in our backyard building a fort.  He came inside once and said, "OK we're going to need a few things...a hammer, some duct tape, and pocket knives"...hmmm...apparently this is no ordinary fort.  After 6 straight hours of non stop construction, they had only finished the foundation!    

(The girls NEVER did that.) 

early stages of construction

the Foreman

Tonight, Mack decided to make alternative sleeping arrangements for himself.  Normally he sleeps on the bottom of a very comfortable bunk bed.  

But tonight he's sleeping here...

yep, in a box...seriously...

(the girls NEVER slept in a box...although Spell Girl did go through a phase where she was sleeping UNDER her bed instead of IN it.)

So, tonight, as I'm watching my little boy sleep in a box, I am so grateful that I have three girls AND one little Mack!  How incomplete would our lives be without his influence?