The International Language of Moms and Boys

Around these here parts I'm known as MomQueenBee. In parts more southerly, though, I have become known as the Reina de Burbujas, or the Queen of Bubbles. That's because I was the Benevolent But All-Powerful Monarch of the bubble jug  last week at Children's Haven International.

The guy in the group who has a lot more experience with kids than I do had brought along the giant economy size of bubbles for the kids to play with while we were outside in the evenings and his thought was to just put the jug on the table and walk away. Ha! HaHa, even! What occurred next was a scramble of such soapy intensity that I had to wade in saying sternly "NO ONE IS GOING TO PLAY WITH THE BURBUJAS IF WE CAN'T ALL PLAY WITH THE BURBUJAS NICELY!"

I haven't been a mom for 28 years for nothing: I parked myself next to the bubble jug, firmly (and arbitrarily) setting the personal limit on bubble blowing at five dips of the wand per turn for each child, and for the next four evenings I kept track of how many wands'-worth each child had blown already, determined who was next in line for a turn, and refereed whether each turn counted. (If not a single bubble emerged, either due to faulty blowing technique or mis-dipping, it did not.)

I was in my element. And if you don't believe me, look at the face of Juan, shown above, who had just told me "I've only done one!" to which I replied "No, you've done four." He wordlessly showed me what he thought of that (completely correct) judgment:

Just as with my own Boys, I was the meanest person ever in the world and the preschoolers were cheating cheaters who would cheat. It made me positively homesick. So I swooped him up and nuzzled his neck, and we were friends again, just as I would have done with my own boys. 

Moms and little boys are pretty much the same in any language.