Like most parents, I always encourage my sons to share. Evan is such a giving person that he always shares his favorite toys, even if he’s playing with them. Colin, on the other hand, will decide that he really wants to play with the dinky car that is missing its tire and is at the very bottom of the toy box, only after someone else decides that they want to play with it. Of course, I find that frustrating, but I think eventually, he’ll figure out that it’s good to share.

Evan was making his Christmas list to Santa.
“Evan, this says that you want the Pokemon game for your Game Boy. You already have that,” I reminded him.
“No Mommy, I gave that to my friend at Kids Zone,” he said.
I of course was furious.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“He didn’t have one,” he said.
“Well, now you don’t have one,” I said in frustration.
“That’s why I’m asking Santa to bring me one.” He almost ended it with…duh.

Now, you understand that Evan can’t possibly get the game again. If that were to happen, he might one day give away the deed to our home or the registration to our car believing that we’ll get another one.
“These games are very expensive, Evan, and it’s not just yours. It was for you and Colin to share,” I tried to explain. “You’re going to have to ask your friend to give it back to you.”
He thought about it and didn’t like it one bit. “He’s going to be mad,” he said of his friend.

Later that night, David and I were talking about our dilemma.
“We have one who shares too much, and one who won’t share at all,” I said. “Can’t we just have mildly selfish kids?”
We both turned silent as we realized that they are very much like us. David will buy whatever any telemarketer or charitable organization is selling, while I always politely say “No thank you.”

They come by it honestly, I thought.
David piped up. “Too bad Colin wasn’t in school.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, he’d get that game back. It would probably be in a school yard brawl, but he’d win.”

I decided that I’d take the kids to see Robert Munsch, one of our favorite authors. He was at the Cohn doing a reading. I felt that in doing something fun in the afternoon, I would be able to justify spending my evening locked in my bedroom doing homework for the course I’m taking at the Mount. I bought them each a new Webkin, steeped myself a pot of tea, put on my jammies and instructed the boys to register their new pets on the web with daddy. I would tackle the 5 chapters of accounting reading we were assigned.
“Two hours,’” I told David. “Two hours is all I need kid-free. If I don’t come out in two hours, accounting actually bored me to death, so send help.”
After I read the first three pages, I heard the pitter-patter of feet coming up the stairs to my room. Colin sheepishly enters.

“Momma, can you come outside and play with me?”
“No Honey, I have homework to do. Can you believe even mommies have homework?”
“Can you come outside and play with me pleaaaassseee,” he asks again, thinking the please will make all the difference.
I felt bad, despite our great day with Robert Munsch. My justification failed. I sent him downstairs to his dad after I made him a sandwich. Then I went back to my reading.

After 2 hours, I returned.
“You finished your homework, Mommy?” Colin asked.
“No, I have more to do, but that’s it for now.”
“What was your book about, Mommy,” he asked.
I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. I know it was about accounting but I genuinely have no idea what I had just read. All I know is that I do not want to pursue accounting.

I was tucking Evan in when he asked, “Why are you in school, Mommy?”
Man, I do not have the answers to their questions tonight. There are so many reasons, I just don’t think he will understand them.

“Evan, remember the other day, we were on Google looking for Halloween costume ideas, and I spelled Halloween with one ‘l’ and you corrected me?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well, there is going to be a day when you are going to know more than me, and I would really like for you to be out of grade one before that happens.”
We both laughed!
Only, I wasn’t kidding.

As my kids get older, people will say things like “just wait until they get to be teenagers.”
Au contraire, mes amies. My kids won’t be able to get away with anything. I can assure you that if there was trouble to be had when I was in school, I had it. I will put my troubled, but very fun, adolescence to very good use.

For example, if I notice that I’m buying a lot of peanut butter, I will remember back to the days when after a party, my friends and I would split a jar. Peanut butter masks the smell of almost anything. When I check my kids’ backpacks before a night out with friends, I will question why they have multiple bottles of hairspray, and I’ll find out what they are full of. And no one will be going overnight at anyone’s house until the parents get a quick call from me. If my sons decide that they love the outdoors so much that they camp at Rissers Campground every weekend, I just might decide to camp right beside them. It would be fun to break out in some campfire songs. And trust me, no girl will ever be spending the night in our house and vice versa, even if it is on separate floors. I love my parents, but they were very naive!

However, I did not grow up in the internet age, so I’m trying very hard to be a savvy computer parent. So when my husband told me that he discovered that someone had been on boobs.com, I stopped breathing.

“Oh my God, what did he see?” I asked in horror.
“When could he have done that?” I scanned my memory.
“How does he know what a boob is?” We call our parts their real names in our house.

First things first…go to boobs.com. What did he see? I sighed in relief as I discovered that you needed a login and password. Thank God!! Wait a minute, what if he HAS a login and password? Hold on, maybe it was a babysitter, or my husband. Grrrr. I’ll need to ask Evan before I call a lawyer.

That night at bedtime, I told him that I thought that he had been on a web site that he shoudn’t have been on.
His embarrassed smile gave him away. Busted!!
I gave him “the talk” which I’m sure will be the first of many I have with him. He told me that someone at school said to go to boobs.com and that he had only gone there once. Sounded a little too much like a politician if you ask me.

“If you do things like that at school, Mr. Pottie won’t let you go to school anymore.“ I thought I’d hit him where it hurts since he loves school.
“Oh Mommy, you can’t go on boobs.com at school, I already tried.”

Later Evan asked how I knew he’d been on the site.
“Evan, no matter where you are, or what you do or how old you get, always know one thing- Mommy will ALWAYS know!”

My blogs are always lighthearted and for the most part, a bit humorous, but today, the subject matter is a bit more thought provoking. My intention is not to offend anyone, just to express my opinion which is something I allow you to do in response, even if you disagree.

My dream for my sons is for them to be good, caring, thoughtful men. To get a good education, fulfilling job, get married and supply me with some grandkids, and to live a long and happy life. I’ll be honest, in my dream, their partners are women, but if they weren’t, my dream for them would not change. Not in the slightest. I can’t express in words how it would hurt me to know if people out there felt that my sons would be less deserving of the rights of other people if they were gay.

In the past few weeks, there have been several letters in the Bridgewater Bulletin and Progress Enterprise, where people were expressing their opinion, which is their right, and stated that gay marriage and allowing two same sex names to appear on their child’s birth certificate is wrong. I strongly disagree which is my right. The writers have stated that this demoralizes marriage and what kind of an example does this set for their children. It is my opinion that heterosexual marriage has not set a really high bar when it comes to marriage. We pretty much demoralized the sanctity of marriage long ago. And as for gay parents not setting a good example, as far as I am concerned, the best example one can possibly set for their kids is one of compassion, love and understanding. Remind me, who exactly is setting the bad example?

I am a Christian, I love my kids and my husband and I think I have very strong family values. I also believe that people who are gay or Lesbian, black or native, overweight or underprivileged, should share all of the same rights as I do. If that makes me immoral, then so be it.

A less conventional parent might enter my home and pass out. While I refuse to allow my sons to have TVs in their room, I will admit that they probably watch too much. I insist that they go outside and play and they are involved in many recreational activities, but I concede that they do have all of the latest video games. And while they do eat some junk food, people are amazed at what my kids will eat (oysters, lobster, cauliflower, eggs benedict, just to name a few). People might disagree, but I think that we have a good balance.

One Sunday evening before bed, we were discussing how much fun we had on the weekend and our plans for the next weekend.
“How many sleeps until Friday, Mommy,” Evan asked.
“You know the days of the week, Evan, you can figure it out yourself,” I suggested.
Evan thought for a moment and put his hand up and started to count the days.
“Sunday, Monday, Happy Days, Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days, Thursday, Friday Happy Days, six sleeps until Friday,” he announced, proud that he figured it out himself.
I laughed. “How do you know the Happy Days theme, Evan? I watched that when I was a kid.” For your information, I watched it in re-runs. I am much too young to have seen it real time.
”Deja View, on channel 32. The Fonze is my favorite,” he told me.

Both Evan and Colin are madly in love with the Brady Bunch. Evan pretends he’s Peter, Colin is Greg. Cindy is their girlfriend. Not having sisters, they wouldn’t know that is not really accepted. Evan wants nothing more than to be Peter for Halloween. I don’t even think that I could find Peter clothes at Frenchy’s. I did try EBay but found nothing.

One morning I came down the stairs ready for work.
“Mommy, you can wear that dress on Halloween, you look like Alice,” he said enthusiastically.
Needless to say, I changed.