I have two boys. They are beautiful, wonderful, strong, awesome boys. I love them very much. And I DO NOT wish they were girls. Dylan wears pink because he chooses too, and because it suits him (and I expect Isaac will probably be the same). He plays with a toy kitchen and helps with the housework because he thinks it's fun, and he likes real cooking too. We paint our nails and he wants pink hair like Mummy's too.. but we don't do these things because I wish he was a girl. We do them because I see no reason why mothers shouldn't be able to hang out and have fun with their sons in the same way they would/do with their daughters.
Here's what I know about Dylan (well, just a few things anyway!):
- He is strong, yet soft.
- He is bold and beautiful.
- He loves pink, and blue, and red, and green, and orange, and yellow, and purple, and any other colour as long as it's bright.
- He likes to play with cars and he likes to play with his kitchen.
- He wants a dolls' house and a new car for his birthday.
- He doesn't want to be a man when he grows up, or a lady, he just wants to be "Dylan".
- He is, as yet, entirely undefined by his gender, and he's happy that way.
- He rocks.
So, if Dylan can be happy with himself, without being stuck in a box (pink, or blue?), why is the rest of the world so eager to stamp him down and label him? Surely we should be encouraging children to be free in this way, to be able to enjoy themselves and express themselves, without worrying that they will be judged or told they're doing it wrong? It makes me a little sad when I see small girls being told that what they're wearing or doing is too 'boyish' and when I see small boys being told they're too 'girly'. They're just children. Let them be.
There's a saying, isn't there? 'It takes a real man to wear pink'. Dylan, of course, would disagree. He'd say it takes a real *person*, because that's what he sees when he looks in the mirror. It's funny, really, that at not-quite-three-yet he's more open-minded than people I know who have experienced so much of life.
I'm glad that we're raising our boys the way that we are. Undefined by their gender, able to express their thoughts and feelings when they need to, able to wear whatever they like, whenever they like, and able to think and speak for themselves. Let them wear pink, let them wear dresses if they like, let them paint their nails and dye their hair and wear make-up when they're older, if that's what they want to do.
Boys will be people, after all.
Alright, so I am possibly, probably, The World's Most Useless Blogger. I have been awful busy though, planning a surprise birthday party for my now-twenty-one-year-old brother. I feel fairly safe in talking about it here because I'm not sure he even really knows what a blog is (he doesn't really know much about the interwebs at all, and is probably pretty much the only twenty one year old in this country that this is true of!) and even if he did it's unlikely that he'll stumble across this blog in the next twenty hours and discover what we're planning. Especially as he's off to Colchester Zoo tomorrow to be a Zookeeper for the day (yes, that's what he wanted for his birthday! Well, he actually wanted to swim with sharks but it's too far so he's going to play with meerkats instead). Although, just in case the highly improbable has happened and he is reading this: Hello JJ, sorry I spoiled your birthday surprise. Hope you had fun at the zoo and your legs didn't get chewed off by a leopard. I'll buy you a drink either way. Big hugs, lotsa love..
It's been hard work keeping the surprise party under wraps. Not so much from JJ, but keeping it off Dylan's radar has not been easy. We've had to talk in code whenever he's been around so that he doesn't catch on and go and blow the whole thing! I think we might have managed it, hopefully! Just got tomorrow to get through, several bazillion (OK, slight exaggeration!) sandwiches to make, a hall to decorate, balloons to blow up and tie together, a cake to transport (CAREFULLY) to the hall, and that should be that. Ha, I make it sound so simple. Oh, yeah, and we only have an hour to decorate. Eek.
Still, it will hopefully all be worth it when he gets there and sees lots of people waiting to celebrate with him. I doubt he'll even notice the balloons! I'm going to go and blow them up anyway though.. it might help relieve some of the stress.
All together now: deep breath.. exhale..
I forgot! I knew I would!
In my defence, there was Christmas. And New Year. And lots of other days filled with clearly Very Important Things. But here I am, I'm back, and I'm blogging. Consider it a belated New Year's Resolution that I will try hard to remember to write something regularly, even if it's just a little something..
I'll be back tomorrow, after an evening with my mad family I'll probably need to vent!
My boys are becoming friends.
Today they played together for the first time, on the living room floor with a toy bus. Dylan is so gentle with his baby brother, and so careful to make sure he's not missing out just because he can't get himself involved.
It's beautiful, really. I can see the beginnings of an actual relationship, now that the small one is becoming a person rather than a squishy little being. I hope they will always love each other this much.
I hope they will fight little, laugh often, and love ferociously.
I hope they will support each other, advise each other, and tell each other straight when things aren't going so well.
I hope they don't grow up TOO fast.
My lovely, lovely boys.
Today Dylan was sure he had grown a foot in the space of three hours. We took a bus to the shops, a double decker no less, and we sat at the top. Dylan wanted to sit at the front and hold onto the rail but he couldn't reach it from the seat. I told him that he would be able to reach it when he was a bit bigger and he decided that looking out of the window at the side would do for now. On the way home we took another double decker bus, but somehow the seats at the top were closer to the rail and Dylan realised he could reach it this time. He turned to me with this look of absolute wonder and said, "Mummy, I'm BIGGER!"
He was so thrilled I didn't have the heart to explain that the gap was actually smaller, so now I guess he thinks he's about six feet tall. Which is good really; I hope he always feels that way.
Well it's been fifteen and a half weeks since I decided on a name for this blog, and we now have a first post. That's progress, right? For me it is, anyway, organisation and motivation not being my strong points. Also, fifteen and a half weeks ago I had a baby and I may possibly have created this blog and then totally forgotten about it..
So here we are. We're the Hornegolds. There's me, I'm Mummy (seriously, my older son refuses to believe I go by any other name), and there's my lovely husband Stuart, and our boys. Dylan is twenty eight and a half (don't forget the half!) months old, and Isaac is (in case you hadn't guessed yet) fifteen and a half weeks. Here we are, look, being all intellectual at a Museum:
There's also Gizmo - our very loud, very eccentric dog - and Jasper - the cat who thinks he owns the world. I'm not entirely sure that Jasper thinks he's a cat though. He displays some very dog-like tendencies on occasion. Still, you don't have to be mad to live here and all that..
At the moment I am lucky enough to be a Stay-At-Home-Mummy to our two lovely boys, while Stuart goes to work as a chef in a pub kitchen. It's a funny old job for him to have because in the nearly-five years that we've been together I can count the number of meals he's cooked at home on the fingers of one hand. I expect by the time he gets home from ten hours of cooking for other people he probably just wants to be out of the kitchen for five minutes, and I do love to cook so I'm pretty happy to oblige. Plus, if I cook it's likely to be something with an actual recipe, rather than something concocted in the weird and wonderful depths of my husband's (slightly mad) brain.
So this is us. I can't promise anything we do is going to be particularly groundbreaking, or even particularly interesting. Currently the most amusing member of our family is definitely Dylan - he's at the delightful stage of Knowing Best about everything, and some of the things he comes up with are just hilarious, especially when delivered with the absolute conviction and seriousness that only small children can muster. Here is likely to become a place for me to gather my thoughts at the end of a long day, to record the wonderful things my boys say and do, and to keep note of all the things our family experiences. Hopefully one day the boys will be able to look back and be a) a bit embarrassed by all the things I've written about them, but also b) a bit pleased that they can see what they got up to when they were small.
I'll aim to keep this updated regularly, but I may forget (again) in which case, I'll catch up with you again in about fifteen weeks or so!
