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beetigerSo, I've got this baby. And it's got a penis, the main function of which right now is to spout urine impressive distances whenever I get the diaper off. It's also got XY chromosomes, since we happened to check when we were getting genetics work done for unrelated reasons. So, even though we'll be happy to change our opinion on this if he tells us otherwise, we're working on the assumption that he's a boy.
Baby clothing comes in pretty much five colors: blue, white, yellow, green, and pink. And certain culturally gendered decorations only show up on certain colors of clothing, like the correspondences in some big magical text or something. Ducks and farm animals, and insects (including bees) and astronomical features are gender-neutral, and thus show up on the yellow/white/green stuff. Bears and wild animals and dogs and cars and construction equipment are somehow male, and thus show up on the blue stuff only. The pink stuff displays flowers, and hearts, and princesses, and the words "pretty pretty", and cats. And here is the problem. Though I'm willing to be moderately nonstandard on lots of stuff, I'm not quite up for dressing my infant boy in pink, but I really really would prefer he have feline decorations rather than canine and ursine ones. Rar! He does have one jumper with a lion on it, which is the closest I could get. But I really want a onesie in a deep deep purple, with an applique of a sprightly housecat with a mouse caught in its jaws, with the text "Mighty Hunter" under it. That's what I want.
A note to the relative who sent us the blue blue card showing the baby boy sitting by a computer, thinking of a car, a plane, a baseball, a sailboat, and a duck, with the caption "You've got male!": adding a note that you were "tickled blue" about the new arrival is not only serious overkill, but implies that when you heard the news, you stopped breathing.
Also, a note to the US government, when you guys aren't busy protecting heterosexual marriage or something: This whole breastfeeding objective as part of the Healthy People 2010 initiative is pretty cool, since we pretty much know that getting people to breastfeed their babies for 6 months or a year is really good for American health, especially in minority communities. However, if we're making women go back to work after 2-3 months because that's how American corporate culture structures maternity leave, and the economy stinks too much to expect companies to go do better on their own, telling pediatricians to inform moms that breast feeding longer is a good idea isn't going to do squat.
Baby clothing comes in pretty much five colors: blue, white, yellow, green, and pink. And certain culturally gendered decorations only show up on certain colors of clothing, like the correspondences in some big magical text or something. Ducks and farm animals, and insects (including bees) and astronomical features are gender-neutral, and thus show up on the yellow/white/green stuff. Bears and wild animals and dogs and cars and construction equipment are somehow male, and thus show up on the blue stuff only. The pink stuff displays flowers, and hearts, and princesses, and the words "pretty pretty", and cats. And here is the problem. Though I'm willing to be moderately nonstandard on lots of stuff, I'm not quite up for dressing my infant boy in pink, but I really really would prefer he have feline decorations rather than canine and ursine ones. Rar! He does have one jumper with a lion on it, which is the closest I could get. But I really want a onesie in a deep deep purple, with an applique of a sprightly housecat with a mouse caught in its jaws, with the text "Mighty Hunter" under it. That's what I want.
A note to the relative who sent us the blue blue card showing the baby boy sitting by a computer, thinking of a car, a plane, a baseball, a sailboat, and a duck, with the caption "You've got male!": adding a note that you were "tickled blue" about the new arrival is not only serious overkill, but implies that when you heard the news, you stopped breathing.
Also, a note to the US government, when you guys aren't busy protecting heterosexual marriage or something: This whole breastfeeding objective as part of the Healthy People 2010 initiative is pretty cool, since we pretty much know that getting people to breastfeed their babies for 6 months or a year is really good for American health, especially in minority communities. However, if we're making women go back to work after 2-3 months because that's how American corporate culture structures maternity leave, and the economy stinks too much to expect companies to go do better on their own, telling pediatricians to inform moms that breast feeding longer is a good idea isn't going to do squat.
