It's still growing!
This was the longest week. A trip to Canton, lots of work meetings, slow recovery from that flu...I did get to visit my favorite fabric shop in St. Lawrence County. I wanted to find things for quilt for the sprout and Z's twins. The twins were easy, but I got confused and hung up on whether sprout is a girl or boy. So I decided to wait til after the 30th, when we have our big ultrasound to make any decor decisions.
Which leads me to the question...girl or boy? I have a feeling that says girl. Bill says boy. He really wants a boy. I find the idea of having a preference troublesome. With very few exceptions (we have two of one and want the other, for example), almost every reason I have heard for wanting one or the other are based on gender stereotypes. And for every
reason I can think of one example where the expectation was not the real outcome...the girl who hates to dress up and go shopping, the boy who is not rambunctious, the non-Daddy's girl, the boy who doesn't want to go fishing, the girl who does, etc etc.
Of course that doesn't mean I don't have a preference, which I won't share, but that I feel BAD about having a preference and when it comes down to it, my preference is based in some ideal of what girls and boys are.
3 comments:
I wonder how much of what little girls and boys like is what we expose them to. Richie loves trucks but is that because that is all anyone buys for him.
I think that it's okay to have preference as long as YOU know where it's coming from. I wanted Peep to be a girl because I've loved having a daughter and because I wanted to break a familiar pattern in my family (older sister cares for younger male offspring). John, although he ultimately didn't care, was curious to experience a boy bc we have a girl already. Also, he grew up in a house of women exclusively.
And Sophie is a great example of what you're talking about in your post. I wanted a boy when I was carrying her bc I'd raised my brother and thought it would make more sense to care for and raise a boy again. I bought her as many matchbox cars and trucks as I did girly toys (more, probably), but she is as girl as I could ever have dreaded and that's fine.
I think it's unrealistic to be a mom and repress your draw to one gender over another. And I don't think it means that you fall into some evil camp of stereotype.
I have also been waiting for July 30th so I can decide what style of sweater to knit for your babe. Jesse and I are finishing up a sweater each for the twins in gender neutral (very 70's) variations on brown, green and orange.
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