Noisy boys

I love having a house full of boys. Yesterday was a school holiday, so we invited two of the boys' preschool friends over to play for the afternoon. They were loud, messy, and full of scatological humor. But you know what? I love it. They played the Captain Bones pirate game, built a couch-cushion fort, made weapons out of tinker toys and engaged in an all-out war in our living room, made play-dough Sponge Bob characters (I pulled out the play dough at some point in the middle of the war), held hot wheels car races, and glued and colored and cut construction paper to make various craft projects. (My favorite being a shampoo bottle with soap dripping off the sides -- all made out of construction paper and glitter glue!)

Was it messy? Yup. A lot of work for me? Absolutely. Noisy? You can't even imagine. And yet we'll do it again soon. I love having the boys' friends here. I love providing a home for them where their friends are welcome to come over and be themselves. And at five, that means noise and a mess. I did make them clean up after every activity, which was not very popular. After about an hour of play, I reminded them yet again: "You need to clean up all the tinker toys before we can do playdough!" To which one of the boys moaned and said, "Oh! Not again!" Of course, this same boy gave me a big hug when he left and thanked me for letting him come and play. I must not have been THAT mean.