My current read....

Well "current" read is actually a little deceptive. That would imply that I get to read often and have a library of books at my disposal.

I honestly can't remember the last book I read. I used to read all of the time. Grisham, Clancy, Crichton, the newspaper.

And then I had kids.

I grew tired of reading and re-reading pages because I would go days in between chapters and forget what was going on. My short-term memory is shot. ( see my previous entry: http://lackrik.blogspot.com/2006/02/anyone-seen-brain-around-here.html#links )


My husband, on the other hand, has a book on his person at all times. Somehow he can tune out the chaos around him and read anything. And if it's not a book, it's the latest Popular Science or National Geographic magazine. He can disappear for 10-20 minutes at a time reading in you know where.......uninterrupted I might add.


So, I thought I'd try picking up a book again. I started to read a book that my dad gave my husband for father's day one year after we had boy #1 called "So you want to raise a boy?" by Cleon Skousen.

And of course, we continued the trend by having boy #2 and boy #3. I figured I could get some pearls of wisdom from the book myself. I grew up being the only girl with four brothers. You'd think I should know how to raise boys. I shouldn't be shocked to see them sit so quietly while their favorite tv show is on then instantly turn my family room into a WWF match when it goes to commercial. I should expect that I will be alternately used as a human rock wall or a trampoline. I shouldn't be at all surprised when I see rows and stacks of the most unlikely objects around my house. And I certainly shouldn't be alarmed at the constant state of the "boys" bathroom.

So I guess what I'm hoping to get out of this book is some reassurance that all boys are hyper, squirmy, rambunctious balls of energy. They are little experiments in the laws of physics. For example, I've learned a new meaning to the theory E=mc2. It really represents a child's energy level.
E (Energy) =m (mass) X c (curiosity) squared.

And I'm convinced that all boys contain the make up of both potential and kinetic energy. Potential energy in the form of "Look at me mom. I'm about to take your good dinner fork and go out to the sandbox and use it as a shovel".

Kinetic energy having to do with the mass and speed of an object ( the boy ) as they see how many times they can spin around before they get dizzy and smack each other on their way down to the ground. And of course there is spontaneous combustion. Not the literal bursting into flames kind of combustion, but the one minute I can sit still and the next minute I'm pretending to be a rocket ship kind of spontaneous combustion.....or think it's a good idea to wear milk boxes.

I'm only on chapter 5 where he talks about the two year old boy. And at my pace, I'll finish the book by the time they go on their missions.