"What am I going to do with him?" asks Andreae

You've read about Andreae here a bit (you've maybe even found my blog through hers, called With the Crickets), since she's a longtime friend I admire very much. She's a veritable crafty/kitchen/literary goddess; no easy feat when you're a mother of two (and one of those is under two years old), with just 11 weeks before you become a mother of three. She's a real butter pecan, this girl... so sweet, she agreed to be a guest blogger for me, as part of my boy celebrations.

While there's technically only a day left in Celebrate the Boy month, I'm stretching it out for one more week, since I was a week late in starting. There are two more giveaways left, and one is another Munkeh, so please stay tuned. For now, though, for your reading pleasure, here's Dreae...

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Before my son was born, the only child I knew well was my daughter, who is about as girlish a creature as you will ever meet. She loves princesses and fairies and bunnies and ballerinas and sparkly things. She is shy and she bites her nails and she's very smart but doesn't always speak up. She likes running races against herself, but refuses to compete with others. And if it seems like this is pure socialization, let me tell you that she's been this way since she way born, much to the amazement and bemusement of her women's-studies-degree-almost-finishing mother.

And then along came the boy. I knew he was a boy as soon as I knew I was pregnant, and began saying to myself, "What am I going to do with a boy?" By that time, I knew all about girls, or at least about one particular, archetypal girl. But a boy?

And what a boy he is. Here is a child who will climb on a chair to get onto the radiator and perform a perfect downward-dog pose with his feet on the windowsill and his hands on the dining room table, before my horrified eyes. And he's only seventeen months old. When I prevent him from standing on the piano or licking electrical outlets or throwing his blocks through the cat door and down the basement stairs, he actually yells and stomps, and when he's quite put out he'll get on his hands and knees so he can smack his head on the floor and then look at me accusingly. Since he's never spent any amount of time with anyone but his immediate family, I can say for sure that this is not learned behaviour. I've never once gotten on my hands and knees and smacked my head on the floor in rage. Never once! When he's annoyed and I hand him some toy or a sippy cup or whatever to distract him, he'll hurl the thing to the floor, and if he doesn't think I've reacted with enough pity and concern, he'll pick the thing up, look right at me, and then hurl it to the floor again.

And yet, he gives the most enthusiastic hugs, throwing his arms around my neck and hanging on with all his might. He hugs toys, too, and kisses them, and insists that I do the same (then he throws them on the floor, but at least there's hugging first). He loves his sister fiercely, and insists on coming with me to wake her up every morning, kissing her before making off with some choice item from her stash of jewellery or her spangly dress-up clothes.

While his sister was talking up a storm at his age, my boy's vocabulary is limited to "mom-mom-mom-mom," "da-da-da-da," "sis-sis-sis-sis," and "deh!" said the way you would say, "there!" after having accomplished some small feat. Placing something heavy on the coffee table: deh! Handing one of us a shoe from the shoe rack: deh! Pulling clean laundry items, one by one, on to the dirty floor: deh! Deh! Deh!

He torments the cat. He runs away when I try to change his diaper. I make towers from blocks and he smashes them, yelling triumphantly as he does it. He eats all day long and scales every vertical surface he can. He pulls hair and snatches eyeglasses. He flirts with the ladies in shops. He sneaks chocolate. Every day, he amazes me and breaks my heart a hundred times.

He's someone about whom other parents remark, "My goodness, he's such a boy?"

What am I going to do with him?