Six Boys and Us

My good friend, Angie over at Keep Believing, and her family spent New Year’s Eve at our house. Angie and I have known each other since college. She and I were roommates, and her husband was my husband’s roommate. You might remember reading about our husbands' pet slug in my post on Selective Hearing. Yes, we still married them. Angie is outnumbered 3 to 1 as well, and her boys are the same age as my boys.

Angie and Brian have been our New Year’s Eve couple since before the Millennium. Once we started having children, they became our New Year’s Eve family. This year, Angie brought her brood to my house. Six boys under one roof together? There were only two ways that the convening of two male-dominated households (MDH) could have turned out – crazy good or crazy bad. It turned out to be crazy good and the boys brought in the New Year with a bang, literally:



This was what we called “kid New Year” which occurred at about 9:55 pm. They didn’t care that it wasn’t midnight, and loved running around outside in the dark and cold banging pots and pans. We monitored their progress by the light up eyes on the Spiderman slippers.

The boys got along wonderfully, so much so that the grownups got in several rounds of Euchre with few interruptions and no bursts of crying before the boys were corralled into bed. I think my theory has been wrong all of the years. I’ve always thought that having more kids would just make my job that much harder. But, with two 6 year olds and two 4 year olds in the house, they pretty much took care of each other and wanted little input or participation from the adults in the house. Maybe I should have two more boys? Maybe not.

I have always thought my boys were two of the most well behaved boys around, but Angie’s boys behaved like little angels. I’m sure she has some deprogramming to do; her boys picked up a bit of my boys’ video game trash talk. They also learned (or did they know this already?) how much fun it is to jump off of the top bunk bed onto the mattress below. At least Luke was gracious enough to remind them of the rule of only one person on the ladder at a time as they were climbing to the top to attempt another stunt without breaking any bones. We are nothing if not a safety conscious family.

Finally, adult New Year approached. I was ready, as I wanted to go to bed after midnight (which I did, 2.5 hours later). The clock read 11:59, and we heard the pitter patter of little feet. After the boys were tucked back in, we did our adult countdown to New Year, which for us officially began at 12:00:33. A very apropos time for a house doubly outnumbered.