let's hear it for the boys

I've never quite understood the fascination that the male species has with throwing rocks into water. It seems to happen every time guys are around a body of water surrounded by rocks. They can spend hours throwing rocks in. My experience with this comes mainly from my teenage and young adult years. But today I realized it is instinctive...something inherently part of being a male. Parker and Reid, who is barely old enough to throw, spent nearly an hour throwing rocks into the water, laughing and congratulating each other on their awesome splashes.

We took an unplanned trip to the dog park this afternoon. I mention that it was unplanned only because I had no camera and no towels. We had to be out of the house for a little while this afternoon and Chief, my dog, had to come with us. There's not a lot of things to do when you have a dog in tote...especially a dog as big as Chief. He's about 140lbs, slightly too big to carry Paris Hilton style in my over sized and over priced (I added that for Traci's sake) Louis Vitton bag. Chief thoroughly enjoyed the freedom to run leash-free and the boys were ecstatic about all the dogs that came to greet them.

After a little time enjoying his romp, Chief discovered a murky Ohio pond (and Ohio has some of the murkiest ponds/ lakes/ rivers in existence) and went bounding in. Parker and Reid would have followed suit had I let them. The pond discovery was what led to the afternoon of rock throwing. Reid is fearless and made several attempts to jump in after his rocks. I made several attempts to stop him. He did end up falling into the questionable water and wet from the waist down. He tried to make it look like an accident, but I'm not convinced that it was. Parker came out with muddy hands, feet and knees. And Reid was muddy from his nose to his waist, and wet and muddy from his waist to his feet. After a full blown lie-down-in-the-mud-and-cry tantrum on Reid's part, I got the boys, Chief included, out of the dog park and loaded back into our now slightly more rugged SUV. And although I came unprepared with a camera and towels, I did have hand sanitizer and bathed the kids in Purell before handing over pretzels and sippie cups to my mud monsters.

In all seriousness, days like this make me glad to be having another boy.