Boy or Girl?

Some of you have seen this before, but since it goes along with the theme, I thought I'd post it here.

There was a point in time, in college, of course, when I seriously thought all baby clothes, 0 - 2 years, should be unisex. That way, during those critical formative years, people wouldn't readily be able to tell the sex of a child and thereby impose their gender biases on them. All babies would -- and should! -- be treated equally. Really, the baby doesn't care what it's wearing. Why DO people force their little girls to wear pink dresses? Three-month-old baby boys are NOT athletic superstars, so stop with the 'sportswear' already!

Of course, I didn't have a baby then. I didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

When I got pregnant the first time and found out it was a boy, a buying frenzy of all things blue and boyish ensued. I couldn't help it. Unisex was so not-fun! I got pregnant a second time, found out it was a girl, and for some reason, my daughter didn't own anything that wasn't pink or embroidered with flowers and butterflies.

But in the name of gender equality, I took pictures of my two babies in a unisex outfit at roughly the same age. It thought it was kind of funny. Can you tell which is the girl and which is the boy? No? And for some reason I want you to be able to! So much for my militant feminist sensibilities. (Most of you already know, of course.)

When girls will be boys?

Since I seem to love pointing out when my boy is a boy and my girl is a girl, I suppose I should be equally eager to point out when my boy is a girl and my girl is a boy. At least, if we enjoy gender stereotyping and choose to pigeonhole our children in that way. And apparently, I do.

Take, for example, my children's relationship to dirt and mess. Nicky has always been a very clean and neat baby. He did not spit up. He was not a violent pooper. You dressed him in the morning, and most of the time, he was in the same clothes at night. He has always been meticulous, dare we say feminine?, about not getting his hands dirty. Long before he could talk, if he had one speck of something on his baby fingers, he held out his hands imperiously, waiting for one of the servants to come wipe them off. You may wipe the royal fingers. . .

On the occasion of his first birthday, we gave him a piece of cake that was his to mash and smear all over his face as he pleased. He played with it a little, then gave me a look like, um, lady, you gonna start feeding me that cake -- WITH A FORK? He doesn't like the feel of food on his face. As an infant, when he learned to spoon feed himself, he also learned to wipe the corners of his own mouth with the spoon -- who are those ill-mannered babies with goop all over their face? Not MY baby. At least, not my first baby.

And to this day, when my kids come in from playing outside all day, Nicky is rarely worse for wear. A little dirt here, a grass stain there.

But Laney? My little girly princess. She has been something else entirely. We changed her clothes three times a day from the day she was born. I don't know if the diapers in Norway suck or what, but they could not adequately contain my daughter's output. She doesn't give a darn if she's got food on her fingers. Heck, she doesn't give a darn if she's got food all over her face, her hands and her clothes. And at her first birthday party, she dug into her cake with relish. She had cake all over her face. All over her high chair. In her hair. She knew how to enjoy a piece of birthday cake.

And today, when they come in from a day of earthworm hunts and other outdoor activities, my Laney is covered from head to toe in grime. Her face is covered in dirt. Her hair is covered in grass. Last night, she even had grass inside her clothes and underwear. I don't know how she manages to get so boyishly dirty all of the time, but she does. If I wanted her to be in clean clothes all day, I would still be changing her clothes three times a day. She gets messy when she eats. She gets messy when she plays. There is no prissy wiping of the hands for her.

When kids dress themselves

Submitted as further evidence that boys and girls simply come out of the womb wired differently.



Nicky, in his four-plus years on this Earth, has never cared about what he wears. Okay, that's not totally true. He did, for a brief period, insist on wearing a towel draped around his shoulders as a Superman cape, and he hates to wear shorts, even on hot summer days. Other than that, he doesn't really pay attention. Spiderman undies? Check. Socks pulled up to the knees? Check. Pants? Shirt? Check. Check. Good to go. I don't even bother asking him what he wants to wear. In the past, if I did, then he gave me this look, "As if I have time to worry about those things! That's YOUR job, Mom!"

Laney, on the other hand, has already begun to pick out her own clothes. Obviously, details like color coordination are incidental. She insisted on the outfit above. I picked out the leggings in the belief that I would actually get a matching dress over them. I was wrong. So very wrong. She had to have on those two shirts, and she had to have on those shoes. I could fight her on it and risk the impending meltdown or I could just let it go. She's two and a half. There is many a battle to be fought when you have a two-and-a-half-year-old in the house, and you must pick your battles wisely. And you will still lose. Often. So if that's what she wanted to wear, then that's what she would wear.

It amazes me to see how insistent she is about her clothes. It doesn't matter how it looks, it's the fact that the decision is hers. I've heard other mothers of young girls complain about the clothing battles they have with their daughters. It is inevitable that there will come a time when you want to put a sign on your child's head that says, "My mommy DID NOT pick this outfit. I like to dress myself."

Luckily, I heard about this struggle when my son was two. I had no idea of what these other mothers were gabbing on about, but I listened anyway. MY two-year-old never fought me about which shirt to wear. It was, of course, because my two-year-old was a boy, but I didn't know that it made that much difference at that age. Now, I know better. (I also know how to handle it, thanks to those who've come before. Pick two or three color-coordinated options, then let her pick one of those. Everyone wins.)

I realize that not every child wears every gender stereotype comfortably. There are fastidious-dressing boys in the world, just as there are girls who prefer Spiderman underwear to princess ones. It's just that my kids seem to fall into their gender 'roles' time and again without my having anything to do with it. Nicky likes trains. Laney likes bling. I had nothing to do with any of that. I have no doubt that with time, Laney will not be caught dead in lilac, red, and pink with silver shoes. Instead, she'll spend hours hogging up the bathroom trying to get her look just so and shrieking in frustration that she has NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, to wear! Really, I should enjoy this time that the fun of clothes is simply in the putting them on.

Why I dress the kids

It started simply enough as these things do.

Seven was a stay-at-home dad until Nicky was two, while I worked full-time. Luckily for me, I worked close to home and could come home for lunch and to nurse when he needed it -- Nicky, not Seven. One afternoon, when Nicky was two months old or so, I came home to find my husband in sweats and my son still in pajamas -- mismatched pajamas, at that. He had on the light-blue top from one set with the red and white striped pants of another. Didn't Seven have time to get the two of them dressed? Really, what did he DO all day long?

"Is that what he's wearing," I asked casually.

"What? He's comfortable," Seven said, irritated. You have to know my husband to know that he is a very patient man and not easily irritated.

I couldn't argue with comfortable, so what I said was, "Well, couldn't you put the matching pants on to that outfit?"

While what I thought was, "This is our firstborn son. He has a CLOSET FULL of adorable clothes that he's outgrowing by the second. What is so hard about putting a cute outfit on him and taking lots of pictures of him in all his cuteness? Why is he always in pajamas or the same two 'comfortable' onsies?"

Meanwhile, my husband said nothing and thought, "Who is this woman glaring at me? Where is my wife? We're not going anywhere. Who cares what he's wearing?"

The years passed. When Seven dressed the kids, it was for comfort. When I dressed the kids, I matched their tops to their bottoms. Sometimes, if Seven dressed them in something weird, I changed them. We didn't say anything about the kids clothes.

One Saturday morning, Seven very sweetly got up with the kids, got them dressed, and went down to breakfast, while I dozed. When I came down, Laney was in this.

The guys reading are probably thinking, "So? She's wearing pink." You girls understand me, though, right? Is that plaid with stripes?

So it just became one of those unwritten house rules. I get the kids dressed every morning, even weekends and holidays when Seven is home. Seven doesn't bother, because he says, "You're just going to change them anyway."

I think this is another example of how men and women are just wired differently. I know which top goes to which bottom of all the kids' clothes. My husband simply doesn't care. Gasp! DOESN'T CARE!

Of course, it could be a genetic thing. This was my mother-in-law's pick for an outfit.

While he looks so cute I could eat him up, what on Earth does he have on?

My kids are roughly the same age in those last two pictures. Is it just me or do they look like they could be twins?

Birds and Bees

When Nicky first asked me the question of why boys have penises and girls don't, I thought I was reasonably ready with an answer. He was three at the time and I wasn't ready to discuss any use of his penis other than for urination. I simply told him that boys had to have a penis so Mommys and Daddys could know if they had a girl or a boy at the hospital.

"Can you imagine if you didn't have a penis? Then maybe I'd have thought you were a girl! Maybe I would have put you in a pink dress!" We just dissolved into giggles at the ridiculous thought.

Done.

The question of girls and boys and anatomy has come up again, but it's taken on a different form.

"Do girls pee out of their butt?"

Of course, I understand why he would think that. How else could they pee, considering the anatomical challenges of not having a penis. And to the uninitiated, that's kind of what it looks like anyway.

Now that he's four, I want to give him a truthful explanation of anatomy. Yet, how exactly does one do that about girls? For boys, it's simple. The necessary equipment is dangling there for all to see. Girls are tucked away all neatly inside. My kids have seen each other naked. Both are very well aware that Nicky has a penis. At least, she's stopped trying to grab at it in the bath! He, on the other hand, is tugging on it every time it's exposed.

Both Nicky and Laney think she's all butt from front to back. Again, to the uninitiated, it kind of looks like that anyway. For now, I've just said that girls don't have a penis, but a small hole that's tucked away inside and pee comes out of there not out of their butt. I purposely avoided any discussion of the 'other place.' The explanation worked, but I could see that it didn't satisfy. Why do we need different parts at all? I could see he wanted more, but wasn't really quite sure what he wanted to ask.

And thank the gods for that.

I dread the time when I have to have a real discussion with my kids about their bodies--at least the private parts of them. Is anyone comfortable using the word vagina around their children? The kids know what Nicky has and what Laney doesn't. However, that Laney has anything at all is still shrouded in mystery. Luckily, Nicky knows that babies live in the tummies of Mommies, but it's never occured to him to ask how they got there. (And I say tummy, not uterus. Seriously, Nicky still struggles over the correct pronounciation of simpler English words, I'm not about to unleash uterus on him. Take that, childcare experts!)

When the time comes, I could go the German route. They apparently have picture books to tell the story. The images are very cute and child-friendly. But, let's just say, I think I might die flipping through pages of this book with the kids.

I am living in Europe, but I'm still a prudish American at heart.

What do you think? Would you use this book ? (Click on link)

Playing with Dolls

I have spent most of my adult life convinced that the differences between male and female behavior are largely due to social conditioning rather than biological impulse. I have begun to rethink that since having my kids.

Taking playing with dolls, for instance.

Nicky has never been interested in baby dolls. Once, when we were in a department store, he saw a baby doll laying in a stroller. I think it freaked him out. It looked like a baby, but there was something frightening about those vacant, staring eyes. He studied it for a little and then went up and smacked it in the face. Aside from that, I don't know that he's really ever paid attention to dolls.

Laney, on the other hand, has always been very interested in baby dolls. We bought her one shortly after her first birthday and she, baby, and a stuffed duck called gakk-gakk were inseperable. She carried baby and gakk-gakk everywhere. They brought out her inner-Mommy. She cuddled them at night and wrapped them in blankets to keep them warm. When baby fell on her little head, Laney kissed her booboos away. When we go out, she's concerned that baby have a hat on so she doesn't get cold, and sometimes she drops her off with me to "baby-sit". Baby needs to be cared for while she is chasing Nicky around the house.

I've heard Nicky play with baby once.

"Look, Laney," he shouted as he hurled baby down the stairs. "Your baby can fly!"

Thunk, thunk, thunk, plonk! Poor baby landed in a little heap on the floor while her towel 'cape' landed on top of her.

Let's hope that's not his inner-Daddy coming to the fore.

Social conditioning or biology? You be the judge.

Laney and Baby