Boys Will Be

... well Boys.
Here are some of the very boyish things they have been up to lately:
Some friends came and took my three older boys to play in the snow while Marc was working one weekend so that I could get a desperately-needed nap. During their snow adventure, the boys finally got to build a mutant snowman. They had drawn pictures of snowmen like this, but now it became a reality. They've never even read "Calvin and Hobbes". I guess boys are just born with ideas like this.

*Note: Roger, our friend pictured with the boys, is the oldest of 5 boys. He totally knows what he is doing.

For Christmas, we got a lot of new very manly dress-up items. They have been a hot item this last week. Here are all the boys dressed as "pirates" which apparently also requires a desert camo vest and a breast plate and shield.

It is fun to watch them act our their pirate play scenarios. Benjamin just runs around with his sword, thrusts it forward in a menacing way and exclaims "Aha!" "Ahaha!" then whacks you with it, giggles and runs away.
David John runs around and sword fights with Gabriel and Elijah until things got too intense for his liking. At this point, he suddenly falls to the floor declaring "I'm dead!" If I believed in reincarnation I would guess that he spent his former life as a possum.  After the declaration of death he assumes some sort of "dead" position. Sometimes this is the fetal position, sometimes this is a dead bug pose with arms and legs in the air and sometimes this means he is spread eagle on the floor. However, regardless of the position, his tongue is almost always lolling out of the corner of his mouth. Tongue lolling is a requirement for any good death scene.
Elijah, after witnessing David John's death inevitably issues a cry of anguish then points his sword dramatically at Gabe and yells, "You killed my brother!" Then he attacks. I keep waiting for him to say something along the lines of, "My name is Elijah! You killed my brother! Prepare to die!" but I guess we haven't shown them The Princess Bride yet.
Gabriel, for his part, always chooses to be the villain. He is definitely the best sword fighter and frequently disarms his brothers. Maybe that's one reason David John keeps dying. Anyway, Gabriel's tag line seems to be "I am going to get you! Bwahahaha!" He also makes a lot of manly grunts and says "Aargh" while fighting.
Frequently, this pretend fighting escalates into something more real and then we have to take a break, but it also provides me a good deal of laughs. I'm pretty sure we could put it on as a dinner theater production.

Wrestling, another favorite past time of our boys. After seeing some of the moves they come up with on their own, I have sworn an oath that they will never ever ever be allowed to see anything along the lines of WWE. The last thing we need is chairs getting involved.

Here are some pictures from yesterday. For a while, I thought they were taking a departure from their testosterone-filled play and exploring their feminine side. They decided to get a group photo of all of their stuffed animals. They spent quite a bit of time carefully arranging and tucking in the animals so that everyone was warm and cozy and so that each animal's face could clearly be seen. It was quite the undertaking. I got these two sweet pictures of the project:

Then, someone yelled "Let's smash it!"

They spent the next half hour wrestling on the couch and pushing each other off of the coffee table onto piles of blankets and stuffed animals which were now on the floor.

Oh my, I hope the world is ready for one more little Ricks. With brothers like these, he is guaranteed to be all boy.