wednesday was a short fun day at work. dean of students cleaned out much of what they had in storage, and i got a large box of crafts! :). it was an appropriate end to my work week, and a great beginning to my mini four day weekend vacation! whooh spring!
i took thursday off to do routine check-up stuff, yay health insurance! blood in tubes. eeeeeeek.
friday felt like sunday.
and then it was saturday, and i was like. what the heck, i feel like i should be at work.
i went home to visit my parents in san bernardino. it's hot there.
and then sunday my sister had her baby shower.
i still can't believe she is pregnant. it's going to be a beautiful baby. :). she won't tell anyone the sex of the baby, but everyone is betting on a boy. it's funny the way people were talking about how upset they were that they didn't know what sex of the baby was...
"what are we supposed to buy the baby?"
"i wish we knew so we could get cute little boy or little girl stuff."
"why wouldn't they want people to know?"
it's funny how knowing the sex of a baby matters so much. i tried to drop some challenging questions and suggest gender neutral gifts. there are actually TONS of baby essentials that don't require knowledge of the baby's sex, such as diapers, bottles, etc. but, it was difficult to get my point across. most of the other womyn at the table were older, with kids of their own, and some were also teachers at the elementary school that my sister works at. so all day i kept hearing stuff like, 'oh, the girls are always so good' or 'only the boys like to misbehave,' etc. it was also interesting to hear about the various parenting techniques...
i wonder what kind of parent i will turn out to be.
and now it's monday. yay! work again! whoOOhHHOO!!!
15 years ago
its funny because i hear that kind of talk at work all the time. "oh my boys ...," or comparing their daughters to their sons ... that kind of stuff.
ReplyDeleteits interesting that potential parents, and parents, and other people for that matter, can make such generalizations about the sex of their children. its interesting because, its not that their kids inherently are born with certain characteristics (girls are nice, they calm the boys down ... etc), they wish these things upon their kids. they expect these things from their kids, and act toward them and treat them expecting whatever kind of behavior is expected from a boy or girl. and then they'll talk about it like it was bound to happen, and not that, really, their parents really had something to do with it.
although, interestingly enough, i've most often heard of parents wanting to be surprised at birth, and not the other way around.
You'll be a gender neutral parent who will encourage their kid to do whatever they want, as long as its not drugs, dropping out, gang banging in the ie.
ReplyDeleteEven with gender neutral gifts, isn't it hard to find truly neutral gifts? Don't some diapers come in blue or pink, or bottles come with pink or blue accents? I think I had pretty gender neutral baby stuff as a baby. I think it all came in different shades of yellow. I really hope they were gender neutral and not racial specific.