girls v. boys

of course, we spent the last four days with family, blake and franz alike. we kicked off wednesday with rachel and dinner, then made our way over to the blakes to see jason and shannon and their two kids, landon and kelly. then thursday at the blakes, friday at the franzes and saturday was a mixture of both families.

there are two main differences between the two families: food and gender. the blakes eat because it's the holidays; the franzes have holidays to eat. and though there's different reasoning for eating, there are always dirty dishes.

a more subtle yet important difference is that the blakes grew up as three boys and one girl and the franzes grew up one boy and three girls. nevermind that people are now married and things have evened out a bit more, conversations still run in the true fashion of male-female communication.

for instance, last night at the blakes we spent about 30 minutes debating height among the boys: is paul taller than eric and is jason really 6'1? after much debate they decided to get out the tape measure and the level and mike blake measured each of his boys. tom had to be measured three times because he didn't believe he was really that much shorter than the other boys. and indeed the first measure was inaccurate, only showing that he's 5'11 and 1/2 instead of his true height of 5'11 and 3/4. rewind to saturday afternoon and the jewelry party that my sister rachel had while my dad and uncle watched football. a bunch of women came over to my mom's house and hung out talking about and trying on different necklaces, earrings and bracelets. the conversation ran along the lines of babies, mothers and clothes. and we're not even girly girls.

when we played poker at the franzes the girls dominated the mood: lots of laughter and talking about (and enjoying) old memories. meanwhile, when we play games at the blakes there's more debate about cheating and rules and when the boys reminisce there's more conflict about accuracy of story-telling than laughter about the fact that one of the boys actually pooped in the bathtub.

we'll see how wyatt adjusts to the holidays and his different families. certain things are a given: he'll keep eating like a champ and be a true competitor at most things. and maybe one day he'll be able to take on abbie when she pokes him in the eye.