I grew up in a family of girls, three sisters. I have all nieces. My first child is a girl. And now, at thirty, I find myself discovering the world of little boys.
When I heard the phrase, "Boys will be boys", I used to think to myself that this was a fancy way of excusing poor parenting skills. Now, I'm beginning to think that there might be something to this. It truly frightens me though. What exactly is this half of the species capable of, that I may not be expecting?
This morning, while sitting at the breakfast table, my three year old son begins singing his newest song: "Everybody, look at my peanit (three year old for you know what)." He then proceeded to make it available for all of us to see. I couldn't believe what was happening!
Now, this brings me to my next epiphany. Who in their right mind thought that little boys underwear should include a hole for poking out their parts? I mean really! Why encourage this behavior? I must say, women who mother sons have a much better understanding of men, then they could have before having had a son. I never had a brother, so I'm not sure if the same is true of sisters of brothers, but I'm afraid, for my daughter's childhood's sake that it probably is true.

I'm sitting here on my bed on a warm (soon to be hot) Sabbath morning. Listening to my four month old coo, and the three and five year old conversing in the shower (nicely nontheless). We just finished breakfast in Mommy's bed, a Sabbath morning tradition that no one in this household would dream of getting rid of. It often results in needing to change the sheets before sleeping in the bed again, but it's a small price to pay for the joy of having everyone in my bed for breakfast.

When I was a child, we would climb into my parents' bed for the occasional ticklefest or a Sunday morning wake up of my parents. After the Northridge earthquake, my sisters slept in my parents' bed for several weeks. Even now, we climb up with our children in tow to chat with my parents late at night. But I don't ever recall eating breakfast in bed with my mommy.

My parents have a California King sized bed, which is why three generations of people can still hang out on it when necessary. My parents crawl into bed and don't see eachother again until morning. Our bed on the other hand is a full size bed, otherwise known as a double bed. Some would argue that it's size is barely sufficient for two people, much less a family of five having Sabbath morning breakfast in bed. But the tradition lives on! It keeps us close, literally.

So, this week I discovered vacuum seal storage bags! Why has no body bothered to recommend these to me already. I am shocked and amazed at how much space is taken up by AIR. My girlfriend with no children, and therefore, no storage problem, commented that they' ve been around forever. But no one ever suggested them to me. So now I can pack twice as many clothes into half as much space.
This solves the problem of storing outgrown clothing that the children will pass down to the next sibling. But I guess it won't solve the problem of their over abundance of clothing that fits.
I did find myself wondering what would happen in I used this storage method for stuffed animals. What would the removal of air do to the stuffed animal? Would they ever be able to regain their original shapes? Out of a fear of turning teddy bears into monsters, I'm not going to persue this one, but it probably would add quite a lot of space to our home.