boys.

mine are growing so fast. 

i feel like it was just yesterday that i brought big man home from the hospital. i was so young and so scared. i didn't know how to take care of a baby. of course i could feed him and keep him clean. but how do you take care of child, really take care of their soul. you know. how do you really raise them up in the way they should go. (proverb 22:6) what does that mean when you are an 18 year old mother. 

the odds were against us from the start. you should have heard the snickering when my husband and i decided to get married after finding out we were pregnant. never mind the fact that we had been dating since the beginning of my sophomore year and we would probably have gotten married anyway. our very own friends made bets about how long we would last. sometimes, when i think about it, 18 year old me wants to laugh in all their faces, in 7 months we will triple the max bet of five years as husband and wife. take that. but in all honesty we have made it this far by GODS GRACE ONLY. thank you Father for taking such good care of us. 

but here we are fourteen and half years later, with a fourteen and a twelve year old sons.

my how time flies. 

sometime in the last year this boy 

has stopped calling his dad "dada." it's funny because for so many years it would drive me nuts that my 8, 10, 12, 13, year old "big boy" would call his daddy "dada" and then one day just like that he stopped and i didn't even realize it had until about a week ago. it was a hard realization. i cried. 

in a little over six months he will begin high school. i am pretty sure i'm not old enough to have a child in high school. now he's the one getting asked if i'm his sister. haha. his answer every time is "DUDE that's my mom." poor kid. i feel bad sometimes. i'm not quite sure why, but i do. 

he is starting to want to hang out with his momma more without being forced and talk to us more again without being forced. puberty is a five letter word that starts with a B and ends with an H. i love that this boys is hopefully moving out of the grouchy stage. which brings to my youngest. 

in a little over six months this boy

is going to start jr. high. in a little over three months, i won't have a child in elementary school anymore.  he is starting to make the change. his little body is working overtime to turn it's self into a man. who would of thought boys would get hormonal? i'm here to tell you friends that they do. he and i have been having growing pains lately. it's been difficult. i want to be angry with him for talking back and being rude, but it wont get us anywhere. (of course he has consequences. but it hurts my feelings and i want to be mad) the other days he says to me, "i don't know whats wrong with me momma i just feel so angry." his eyes welling up with tears. 

now, he has had "the talk" with my husband so he knows about all the physical changes that will take place and how things work etc. but i think what is so often over looked when children change is their emotions. so the other evening after we ate dinner we stayed at the table to discussed testosterone. it was fun. i wasn't sure how to put it so it went like this. 

remember that little lump you had in your breast (this happened to both of my boys) about six months ago and the doctor said it was no big deal and that it was just some extra hormones your body produced? well that hormone is called testosterone. right now it is floating all around your body, and it is telling your body it's time to go from a little boy (tears welled up in my eyes at this point) to a man. so your body is working really really hard to turn you into a man. sometimes when you have too much "hormone" you might feel sad, or really happy, or angry. but i want you to know that it is normal, and the best thing for you to do if you don't know why you feel the way you do...is to ask yourself what is really making me feel like this. is their a reason or is my body just working extra hard today to make me a man. God made us so very intricately.

by this time a little smile crept across his face. i figure that "i'm a man YEAH" was running through his head. he seemed to understand what i had said, and asked "is this why brother was such a jerk sometimes?" our last couple of days have gone so much smoother. Praise The Lord. 

if you are still reading this post you win a prize. i wrote it mostly because i want to remember, 

but also because maybe you'll find it helpful in some way or another someday. 

i'll say it again who would of thought boys would be hormonal. 

happy monday friends.