The Girl BoyThing

As I have grown it has become more and more apparent to me that I am an incredibly lucky person.
I used to think not. I used to think I was cursed.
EVERY year in elementary school I'd spend most of my allotted money at the winter carnival at school on that damn cake walk, DESPERATE to win my very own cake.  I never won.  Not one year.  I was sure I was cursed.
And then there were the bad room draw numbers in college.  If you didn't go to a teeny tiny liberal arts school I'll spare you the details, but it basically meant last pick of the rooms on campus.
You know what?  That actually worked out.  I ended up with the best roommates ever Junior year, in one of the coolest triples on campus.  Things were starting to look up.

Now as an adult?  I'm pretty sure I have some of the best luck.  I found an amazing man to share my life with, we have three beautiful children and a full happy life together.  Things are great.  And after seeing this video I feel even luckier.  That I don't even have to think about this gender stuff for the most part because I have been surrounded by the most amazing men in the world.

You see, I was the second born of four girls.  I never knew what little boys were like.  Sure we had tons of dolls and Barbies and dress up clothes and pink stuff, but we also had Tonka bulldozers and trucks, a full sports bin in the garage with bats and balls and gloves and equal opportunity parents who made sure we all knew how to change a tire and sent us to college with a toolbox in hand.

Until this video, it honestly never occurred to me to think differently.  That perhaps there really are people out there who believe that because of the girl and the pink and the dolls, we maybe aren't as smart, or challenged, or capable.

I take particular offense because I'm that girl they speak so harshly of.  I am a homemaker, by choice. I got a bachelor of arts degree from a great school and most days I don't use that education in the traditional sense.

I am raising two little girls, and a baby boy and am asked often if it's different with our baby.  Of course it isn't.  He's a baby.  And when he's big enough to hold a crayon and smash play dough and stir ingredients in a bowl and finger knit and sit on my lap to sew, he'll do all of those things just like his sisters.  He'll also wear their scuffed up unicorn and smiley faced helmets and zoom on their pink bikes.  He'll always be running to catch them because MAN they're fast.

I hear that a lot too.  That now that I have a boy I'll know what rambunctious is, what rowdy is, oh boy, you just wait!  No waiting necessary thank you.  Anyone who has met my first born knows that that girl can keep up with (and outrun, out climb, out wit) just about any boy.  I'm not bragging, it's truth.  Her preschool teachers tell me it's so.  That girl walks up to the "Crew" in the block area and bosses them around and they LISTEN to her.  They do what she says.  She's a force.

So they're girls, but that's one of the last thoughts that cross my mind when I look at my two older children.  They are beautiful smart capable excited interesting little people and I know without a doubt that they can do whatever they put their minds to.

They can look into microscopes and crunch data and solve complicated questions like their daddy, they can become a household chef, creative madwoman, mama extraordinaire like their mom. They can do anything and everything in between.  And you know what?  It's all worthy.

I don't dislike that video.  I guess I get it now.  I've taken for granted that my gender was never an issue for me, that I always knew I could do anything I set my mind to.

Perhaps I'll get Ainsley that fun engineering set for Christmas, it looks like a cool toy.  But I don't for one minute think that a toy can define a child.  Pink or blue, domesticated or logical or physical.  It's a toy.  Its the way we raise our children, the people we surround them with.  That's what really matters.

Thank you dad.  Thank you Bop.  Thank you Uncle Bert and Mr. Beck and Mr. Coady and Mr. Orstad and Mr. Rogers (8th grade science teacher, not dad) and Wendell Arneson and John Saurer and Professor Durocher.  Thank you to at least 27 other men that I've left out.  Thank you for being strong sensitive men who never gave me a moment's pause over my preference for pink, who let me grow knowing that I was capable and that my choices were many.  For being feminists without me even knowing.

Thank you Mom.  Than you grandma and Gram.  Thank you Aunt Gail and Kelly, Mrs. Rondesdvedt,  and Karen Cherewatuk.  Thank you to all of the women who showed me first hand, how amazing women are.

 And thank you to my husband, the father of my three beautiful children, you are the best role model, the most supreme advocate, that I can imagine for them all.

I am the luckiest, and I'm happy to say I'm pretty sure my kids will be too.
I hope the same for yours, pink or blue.