WORDS BY ME | KATIE Z.

After six years into this mother of boys gig, I’ve come to know a thing or two. The biggest of which, is that I actually know nothing. But despite my utter cluelessness, I do have a few tips for my fellow halfway-to-crazy parents raising these tiny tornadoes called boys.

1. Watch out for little landmines of Legos…and pee.
   Seriously, they are everywhere, all the time. Keep your eyes peeled. And your feet covered.
2. The $300 noise cancelling Bose headphones are totally worth it. Invest in a pair.
   Just kidding, don’t. They’ll be broken just as fast as a $3 plastic squirt gun.
3. Destruction follows them, even in the least likely of places.
   Hey look, Leo carved his name into the front door, surprise!
4. Roughhousing is inevitable.
   You can talk in gentle tones, banish them to separate rooms, even threaten to take away their new Bose headphones! They are still going to clobber each other.
5. Hands will never be kept to the themselves.
   Never. Ever. Put it on the chore chart all you want. Ain’t gonna happen, sister.
6. Someone will always be the odd man out.
   When you have three, it’s inevitable. Two may play ever so nicely together, but don’t be fooled! They’re secretly plotting against the third.
7. As my 97-year-old neighbor, a mother of three boys herself, always says “Don’t worry, they grow up…in spite of you.”
   And you know what? She’s right.

There’s a house down the block from us where three boys are also growing up. Pre-kids-of-my-own, I used to see them – scratch that – hear them in their front yard. And man, were they loud, and wild, and mean to each other, and yikes! I was so glad I would never live in a house like that.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Nearly 10 years later, my house has the three loud, wild, constantly wrestling little boys causing chaos in the front yard. Those boys down the block are well into pre-teen years and their yard, is silent.

And I realize that, as much as I long for a moment of quiet every now and then, the quiet will come all too soon. Before we know it, these boys will grow up and grow on into their own lives.

And that kind of silence, will be truly deafening.