Where the boys are

Ours is a house where Go Bucks is an acceptable response to any question.
Where the basketball hoop is drilled into the drywall across from the couch.  Where the trampoline rests right in the middle of the family room and a new swing set hangs next to the fridge.  Where the dining room table can be the center of tent city all day long.
Our house is also loud.  Imagine drawing a bow of testosterone against an instrument of energy.
Boys live here.

Raising them is a continuing education for me.  I am hugely invested in maintaining a close relationship with both boys as they grow, though the intersection of our interests feels fairly deserted sometimes, a stark place with some empty seats.
They love jumping and shooting hoops and dodging nerf darts, and I look forward to running.  Away from our house.
They love creating ships with Lego bricks and driving trucks across the floor and describing, in detail, every single Angry Bird in existence and reading books about superheros who give wedgies.  I am deeply ambivalent about most of that.  I'd rather write a little bit, maybe about what they like to do, maybe with noise-cancelling headphones on, instead of do it with them.

I find myself getting schooled over and over again.  The boys pencil me into plans I don't have any part of making - trips into the woods, games of hide and seek, rounds of ridiculous knock-knock "jokes."

I know I could never waste an encouraging word on them.
And I can always find ways for us to connect.  I just hope I always, always can.

Their lives are so full of things to go and do and look at and isn't that lucky.  I am learning.
And I wonder if there is an associative power of awesomeness.