The Boys’ Names

Nothing I’ve ever done has been as exciting or terrifying as raising our three boys.  They’re my constant companions for adventures great and small, so a lot of what I write will be about them.  I’ve decided to not use the boys’ real names here, which will be problematic because so much of what I have to say revolves around them.  So what to do?

Originally, I planned on just using numbers…#1, #2 and #3.  But I didn’t want to create a coat-of-many-colors situation with the oldest and definitely didn’t want to have all the middle children out there start subconsciously identifying with #2 (which is worthy of its own post….I mean, get over it people—at some point you’ve gotta stop blaming your birth sequence for how weird you are).

So I decided that we should go the Indian route (casinos, not computers) and name them according to their individual characteristics.

Henceforth and theretofore the boys will be known as (in a random order to confuse and frustrate the middle children reading this):

PlaysWithFire—PlaysWithFire does just that.  And he’s really good at it.  Given some supervision and direction, there’s nothing wrong with kids playing with fire.  I think it’s good for him to learn responsibility and Megan enjoys him getting the fireplace roaring when I’m not home.  He’s all about doing whatever seems to be the most dangerous or adventurous.  He may not be able to finish climbing the 20’ fence he saw today, but that won’t stop him from begging to try.

KicksTheBall—KicksTheBall will play anything and does really well at everything he tries.  He learned to walk dribbling a soccer ball around the living room and slept with one until he was almost three.  There’s a lot more to KicksTheBall than just playing football in the front yard, but the name does sum him up very well.  He’s a man of action.  He’s a doer who’s always the first to volunteer for whatever needs to get done, whether it’s a trip to buy groceries or feeding the dog or making a sandwich for me to bring to work for lunch.  He gets things done, kicking balls just happens to be one of his favorite things to get done.

ReadsTheBooks—We can’t get him to stop, not that we’ve tried, but we couldn’t if we were to try.  Anything is fair game from corny knock-knock joke books to books about black holes from the bowels of the grown-up section of the library.  ReadsTheBooks taught himself to read before he was five years old.  Nobody believes us, but the cashier in Home Depot who watched him figure out “EXIT” for the first time knows it’s true.  ReadsTheBooks learned his alphabet pretty quick and as soon as he realized that reading words was just a matter of putting the individual sounds together he was off to the races.  “Ehhh…..cks….EhCks….i…t…t…t….EhCks…IT….EXIT!!!  Daddy, that sign says EXIT!!!”

So there you have them.  Three boys and a dog named Blue.  I tried to give Megan an Indian name and she was VERY unimpressed with everything I came up with, so I thing she’ll just stay Megan.