Poor Antonio

"Poor Andy!"

Growing up, my grandma used to say that all the time!!!  We would all roll our eyes and laugh and tease Grandma that Andy must be her favorite.  You see, Andy was the 6th grandchild and first boy.  For the first few years of his life, he was surrounded by girls!  Although I don't remember, I'm sure we tried to make him play dress-up and all that princessy, pink girl stuff.  In the end, Grandma had 14 grandchildren and half were boys, but she never stopped saying "Poor Andy!"  No matter what he did, he could do no wrong in her eyes!!  Drove us all crazy, but Grandma saw the best in all of us, (even if I never heard "Poor Lisa!")  :)

Fast forward more years than I'm willing to admit and now it is me saying it, but instead of Andy, it's "Poor Antonio!"  The boy is the fifth of six grandchildren and the only boy.  I have a small, o.k. maybe not so small, collection of pictures of Antonio in sparkly shoes, head bands, and beaded necklaces.  The poor kid (see I'm doing it again!) has played every single girl game his cousins and sister can think of.  He doesn't complain, but he does often play by himself!  I kind of see my grandma's point now!

See!  We had to take a picture of the boy with pink Minnie ears!

There are certainly quirks about raising a boy that my sisters don't have to deal with have the joy of experiencing.  I'm pretty sure they haven't had to tell their daughters to, "Quit dancing around and aim!  I'm not cleaning pee of the floor again!"  I'm also pretty sure they didn't hear, "Well he's excited!" as the doctor was delivering their babies!  (Little boy wood still creeps me out!!)

He's almost 4 and we've already been to the ER because he wanted to help trim the hedges and I wasn't quick enough!  How he didn't lose his finger, I'll never know!  He yells things like, "Mommy!  I'm going to go bang the tree with my stick!"  (Don't worry.  It was much more innocent than it sounds!)  He takes his pants off all.  the.  time!  He will tackle anyone silly enough to sit on the floor and wrestles like he's waiting for the call from the WWE!  He never, ever stops moving!  

It may not be easy to be a boy in our estrogen-overloaded family, but there are perks!  When we went to Disney World, Antonio did have to suffer through seeing every single princess known to man, but he got a lot of attention from them!  Several gave him a big, lipstick kiss on the forehead and all of them made a fuss out of our little prince!  

He talked about Cinderella and that kiss for days!

Even though he hears, "Poor Antonio!" a lot, I think he's a pretty lucky little guy!  And I'm beyond blessed to be his momma!