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Boys are different from girls. This is a truth I have only really understood since having kids. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not had enough on-the-ground field experience. Boys and girls are just wired differently.

With that in mind: I had to give Henry a little anatomy lesson this morning (he is my youngest at age three). I found him perusing his eight-year-old brother’s Justice League book, which Liam had purposefully kept away from him. Henry was intently studying one page, so naturally, I went over to see what he was looking at. It was a picture of who I presumed was Wonder Woman’s nemesis — a scantily clad woman with an extraordinary bosom.

“What are you looking at, Henry?”

Henry removed his thumb from his mouth, nodded at the picture and said, “Sheeth got big hipth.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “Can you show me where her hips are?”

He pointed at her exploding pectoral area and said, “Right there!”

“Those are her breasts, Henry. Her hips are here, just like your hips are here,” and I grabbed him by the hips and turned him away from the picture to face me. I smiled winningly at him. He immediately squirmed away to look at the book again.

“Well, Mommy, then sheeth got big breathts.”

I sighed. So much for distraction. “Yes, Henry, she does. And I think that’s enough Justice League for today.”

A boob man at age three.

I quit my job.

It’s true.  I walked away from my flexible, pays good money, takes me cool places job that I like very much.  As my mother said once and thought repeatedly:  What makes a person give up her good government job in a failing economy ON PURPOSE?

Clearly the answer is:  I’m crazy.  Totally bonkers.

But even so, I gave my decision a lot of thought (mostly while consuming alcoholic beverages and driving my car–not at the same time, mind you).  I have three kids.  I am overwhelmed with love for them and by the little details of their lives, my husband’s life, our lives together.  My life is so intertwined with theirs that I am less aware of “it” and the details of “me” than I used to be.  And I am a self-centered person.  I was going to say that I am a little self-centered but when one is self-centered, it isn’t a half-way kind of thing.

All parents make choices, big and small, every day.  This blog is about one woman’s choices.  This is my story.