Boy Observancies & a Haircut From Home

I love having a boy. I had some step-brothers come & go through the years & having a brother was (usually) fun. There are some differences I & I assume every parent of both have noticed between boys & girls. They just can't be handled the same way. Victor does better during school w/ a varied routine, chores mixed in w/ school. He needs exercise & lots of it! I had to figure it out the hard way.

Sitting down doing our daily drill of flashcards during math he was so frustrated & had been corrected so many times for attitude I sent him to his room. (Not for punishment, for the sleeping bag.)Well it just made him madder as he thought he was going to be punished. That anger had to come out! So I told him to bring his sleeping bag in the stuff-sack & instructed him to punch the answers. He really tried to kill them initially, but was giggling by the end. Especially as the answers got slower & the bag would spring back to punch him back. The sleeping bag became part of our math routine after that.

 When Victor imagines, his make-believes are generally more of what he's seen in movies whereas the girls are always happy to make up their own. This doesn't bother me too much, I remember doing the same thing w/ books I had read. He's a stickler for following it exactly though. We were at the park & he was playing a Magic Treehouse game but quit as soon as they started playing a book he hadn't read. He likes to know & follow a script.

He is a pretty good big brother & enjoys spending time w/ his sisters but in limited amounts. He's a private person & I try to give him a couple of hours to himself to decompress in the afternoons. It doesn't always happen but he knows if he doesn't get his free time it's usually his own time mismanagement that is the cause. He is very S-L-O-W doing anything. He has very lately developed the habit of stroking his beardless chin as he very thoroughly thinks of an answer to a question put to him.

As the spring progresses he's been wanting to hold on to his hair despite of the increasing heat. He works, plays & sweats hard. Mike & I have been trying to get him to want to cut his hair but no dice. This is the longest it's ever been & being called a hippie doesn't bother him. (Why would it?) It's driving Mike nuts but I figure if longish hair is the worst thing he'll get into, no big deal.
I did persuade him to undergo a trim so I could get some hair cutting practice. It looked good on one side or the other if you didn't study him too closely head on. I don't think there's a picture, I'll post if I can find one. I think he was pleased, I was awarded w/ a "Good enough for your first try" along w/ refusals to get it fixed. We cut his hair out on the deck, him w/out a shirt on & it was sweaty. All of the hair was sticking to him. Looking down at his hairy chest he was proud to announce, "Hey! Girls look at me, I'm becoming a man!" His sisters weren't too impressed.