I'm really fairly sure we've been treating kiddette the same way we treated kiddo at her age. Same foods. Same bed/bath routine. Same more-or-less unstructured playtime. The three major differences: Pink clothes (with an occasional side of purple). Full-time daycare at an earlier age. And full-on exposure to Boy World.
Thomas. Planes. Trucks. Running. Throwing. Climbing. The absolute preference for sneakers over any other type of shoe. The sheer joy of running around the house shrieking at the top of your lungs. (Which they do every night. Earplugs. Someone buy me earplugs.)
And yet despite all that, kiddette has somehow morphed into ... a girl.
She puts her plush Elmo in her booster seat and gives him a drink from her sippy cup. (I have drawn the line on her sharing food with him.) She brings her blankie over to him on the floor and covers him with it. If she's sitting on my lap while I eat, she monitors my food intake: "Eat? Yes? Good? Yes!" She is instantly drawn to stuffed animals. She proudly wears her fairy wings. She is a serial hugger and insists on goodnight kisses.
Kiddo did none of this. He ignored stuffed animals in favor of toys with wheels and gears and battery-operated noises. He demanded we sit at the train station and wait for a train to go by so he could watch. He figured out how to turn on the Christmas lights at his first daycare provider's house, and then kept turning them on and off over and over again, because he could. He didn't pay much attention to what I was eating, unless he wanted some.
To be fair, he's still a pretty good hugger.
It's kind of amusing to watch, this very boyish boy and this very girlish girl. And kind of reassuring, in that clearly they are wired to be into what they're into and I shouldn't stress about imprisoning them in gender roles or trying to subvert the gender roles or whatever it is we're supposed to be doing these days. They'll be what they'll be.
Of course, toy guns and play makeup are still not allowed in this house, but that's just being reasonable.
Thomas. Planes. Trucks. Running. Throwing. Climbing. The absolute preference for sneakers over any other type of shoe. The sheer joy of running around the house shrieking at the top of your lungs. (Which they do every night. Earplugs. Someone buy me earplugs.)
And yet despite all that, kiddette has somehow morphed into ... a girl.
She puts her plush Elmo in her booster seat and gives him a drink from her sippy cup. (I have drawn the line on her sharing food with him.) She brings her blankie over to him on the floor and covers him with it. If she's sitting on my lap while I eat, she monitors my food intake: "Eat? Yes? Good? Yes!" She is instantly drawn to stuffed animals. She proudly wears her fairy wings. She is a serial hugger and insists on goodnight kisses.
Kiddo did none of this. He ignored stuffed animals in favor of toys with wheels and gears and battery-operated noises. He demanded we sit at the train station and wait for a train to go by so he could watch. He figured out how to turn on the Christmas lights at his first daycare provider's house, and then kept turning them on and off over and over again, because he could. He didn't pay much attention to what I was eating, unless he wanted some.
To be fair, he's still a pretty good hugger.
It's kind of amusing to watch, this very boyish boy and this very girlish girl. And kind of reassuring, in that clearly they are wired to be into what they're into and I shouldn't stress about imprisoning them in gender roles or trying to subvert the gender roles or whatever it is we're supposed to be doing these days. They'll be what they'll be.
Of course, toy guns and play makeup are still not allowed in this house, but that's just being reasonable.
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