Last night, when I got home, I was tired. And hungry. And ready to rest. I wanted some quiet time and some relaxation time. Did I get that? No. Am I complaining? No, though it sounds that way. What I got was something better.

As the night wore on I noticed my son was just all over the place. He was loud, getting into stuff, moving things, climbing things, just doing things. He apparently had a bunch of pent up energy that needed exhausting in some capacity. So as he was doing something he probably should not have been doing down the hallway I went to him and asked him “Dude, you want daddy to go thrash you in the bedroom?”. You should have seen those three year old eyes light up.

“Yes!” he said as he dropped everything in his arms and ran to my room. I unlocked the door (it is locked specifically because of him) and he ran to my bed laughing his head off. As he was about to make it on to the bed I tackled him, and the fun began. We wrestled, tickled, punched, swung, and punched each other for a food fifteen minutes before he said “Dad, lets play boxing.”. How could I resist that?

So we started wailing on each other. Not hard of course, but with enough force to know that we were hitting each other. He was loving every minute of it. Then we started wrestling again. And tickling. And thrashing. And then it happened… he ran into me trying to tackle me and I didn’t really notice until he bounced off of my shoulder. Looking down at him I noticed his lip was bleeding so I told him to hang on while I got some tissue for his mouth. His reply? “No dad, I want to keep playing boxing.”

I cleaned up his mouth anyway. Then we got to boxing again. And it was just after this that Sandi walked in with cookies and the fund and games stopped right then. It was a blast, but it got better this morning.

AJ decided he wanted to come into my bed this morning as I was waking up. I let him and went to take my shower. As I left the bathroom after finishing my shower I noticed he was under the covers. Then suddenly he threw open the covers trying to scare me. He wanted more.

Now this is where husbanding comes in to play. Men, if you have a wife and she is in bed sleeping when you come out of the shower and your son is in that bed wanting to fight with you while your wife sleeps right next to him, you need to make a decision. The wise decision in this case is to tell your son that you need to wait.

My son didn’t understand that. But we squared it up pretty quick and, to make the situation more top his liking, I laid down next to him and we talked. We talked about boxing the night before, about him waking his sisters up, about him wanting breakfast, about his dreams from the previous night, about his toy cars. I then told him how grown up he seemed, having this wonderful conversation with me at just three and a half years old. I also mentioned to him that in a few months, when he turns four, he will be able to start going to the church class room that Alaynah gets to go to, but how that since she will be turning six she will only be with him for about two weeks.

He then told me that he wants to go to her class so he can spin the wheel and play in the bounce house and all of the fun stuff in that room. But immediately after this he told me that he would go back to his three year old class since he would be embarrassed to go to Alaynah’s class. It was as we were talking about this that Alaynah came in and our conversation was totally dashed. But it’s all good. I had an amazing talk with my son.

And therein lies the moral of this post. Men, if you have a son, or more than one son, take amoment every now and again to have some aggressive, man time with him. He wants that, no matter his age, and he will love it. He will also love that you want to spend any time with him at all and he will totally cherish that moment and remember it. Even if he doesn’t let on to it. Let him hold your tools, or wear your safety goggles, or put shaving cream on his face while he watches you shave. Let him be a boy trying to become a man.

My son loves that time. And I, as a recovering young boy myself, really look forward to those moments, too.