You can’t explain the difference between little boys and little girls unless you have one of each. When Lucy was born everything she did was “sweet”, “precious” and “adorable”. After Max was born more of my sentences included comments like, “what a toot!” or “he just seems to be so angry”, or “If he doesn’t get his way he throws a fit”. It was obvious right away that raising a boy was going to be different. Max throws. Max hits. Max bites. Max has tantrums. Max breaks things. Where Lucy never dreamed of even thinking about the crystal cabinet, Max was instantly drawn to it. Where Lucy would never consider disobeying, Max willfully breaks the rules.
Max has a different hug from Lucy, AND THAT is why I love my son. Lucy loves me and she hugs me but it always feels as if it is from fear, insecurity, wanting to feel she belongs. Max hugs me because he very purely loves me. He loves me in a deep, sincere, “I want to eat you up and that is why I bite you” kind of a way. I am his first true love and I feel that in his hugs and kisses. Yesterday when he grabbed both sides of my face and started kissing me all over in a frenzy of love I sat in that moment for as long as I could.

Soon enough Max will fall out of love with me and those kisses and adoration will be given to another person. A girl – a girl who has no appreciation of what she is receiving. And when he takes those brave steps towards his first kiss my heart will break. Don’t get me wrong, I will be sad when Lucy grows and starts leaving the nest too, but in a much different way. I’m raising Lucy to be a strong woman, to not make my mistakes, to make her own mistakes. But with Max it is all about teaching him how to love. If I do it right, he will be a wonderful husband and a wonderful father and that will be because he loved me first, he hugged me first, he kissed me first.

Thank you to Scribbit for the idea. Here goes my entry into the Write-Away Contest