{Originally published on The Little Jobber and titled, I Don’t Mean to Scare You.}

If you have recently welcomed a boy into your family, or you are pregnant with a boy, or you have any interest in making a boy a part of your family sometime in the future, you might want to skip over my posts for the next few . . . years.

In fact, you may want to stop reading this blog. Just close your browser completely and never come back here. Forget the url. Lose my email address. Pretend you never met me. Dodge me when we happen to be shopping at Hannaford at the same time.

I will be sorry to see you go, but I will understand. I don’t want to scare you with my reports of the destruction and grossity grossness of boyhood. Well, toddler boyhood. Conal’s toddler boyhood, anyway. I don’t want you to think that boys are hard to handle and that they do crazy, scary things. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression of life with a boy.

Not all boys relish in the hard-core boyness of boydom. So, don’t worry! You know how on those diet ads they’ll say something like, “Results not typical” when the spokesperson has lost like a hundred pounds? Well, that might be similar to what’s going on here. You know, maybe my tagline should be, “Destructive and gross actions not typical.”

Unless they are . . .

But they might not be! I mean, I’m sure that not all boys think it is hilarious when their moms suction the mucus out of their noses and, at the end, they do a super-quick head turn so the string of mucus slaps across their faces, nose to ear. Sure, some boys think that is funny. Some boys think that when the nose suctioner thingy comes out, it is time for fun! But, not all boys do. Of course, I don’t know these boys. I only know the boy who thinks mucus suctioning is a great big joke fest.

Similarly, not all boys like to get dirty. They don’t all like to lick their dirty hands and then rub those spitty, dirty hands on their faces. No! They don’t all like to do that! It’s not fun for all boys!

But, again, I don’t know those boys. I only know the boy who thinks that licking his dirty hands and then rubbing them over his face is second in the Whoopee-doo Fun Times list only to mucus suctioning. Or, as we have recently learned, hiding the remote in very bad, bad places. Or, possibly, smooshing cottage cheese or ketchup in his hair. Or shoving his mouth full of food, only to turn around and pull the food out. Or throwing his mom’s cell phone away. Yeah, those are all right up there on the list, too.

Anyway, the bottom line is, I don’t want to scare you. But, these are the things that happen around here and you can be pretty sure I’ll have more of the grossity grossness and destruction to report. If you need to move on, I’ll understand. Just, you know, if you do dodge me at the grocery store? Don’t give me the evil eye. I’ve got my hands full over here.

Editor’s Pick by Amanda from The Wink. I have three daughters and have been blogging about the for as long as I’ve known what a blog was. I don’t have boys, don’t have friends with boys. Felice, the author of The Little Jobber , lives in my neck of the woods, is passionate about running and has a writing style that feels comfortable, familiar, like visiting a friend whose rhythm I can return to no matter how much times has passed. Reading this particular post delighted me with its exploration of terrain I can’t even imagine. Whether you have boys, girls or cats, I promise that Felice will make you nod, smile and go back for more. See the post in its original glory here.