Boy, oh boy

During birth and recovery Mrs. Chicken is having guest bloggers. Today's guest is Erin from Mama Said No, a blog I haven't had the chance to read. However, I read her guest post and felt compelled to make a post of my own.

In her post she says "I’ve eventually gotten used to my little boy. I even *gulp* kind of LIKE him. He is dirty, and he pees standing up, and he (quite thankfully) likes baseball. I can throw a baseball. I regularly step on wayward hot wheels and Thomas the Train, and I constantly find rocks in the lint filter of my dryer"

I read that and thought "does she have Ms Thang at her house too?", minus the "pees standing up" thing. But really, I have most of the rocks from the schools driveway in my house and she is always a dirty mess (she let me put her hair is "big girl pigtails today and she is super cute), she is more rough and tumble than her brother and generally, aside from her dresses, not a girly girl at all.

When I was pregnant with The Boy, I found out as soon as I could what I was having. I don't like surprises and simply wasn't going to go there. During the ultrasound, my son was very obviously a boy. He was very obviously proud of being a boy as well, with his hands behind his head and his knees open, giving him frog legs. I was thrilled beyond belief. Boys are awesome and boys I understand. Life was good. I had my boy and went on my merry way.

Then I got pregnant with Ms Thang. I hoped and wished and prayed for another boy. No way did I want a girl. I was so insistant that I wanted a boy, that I had myself convinced that was what she was. Until the sonogram. When my daughter was just as uninhibited about showing that she was a girl as my son had been about his. Everyone in the room with me was thrilled. TB wanted to call his paw-paw and tell him that he was having a "baby sitter". Everyone except me. I didn't cry then because I would have looked like a jerk but I did when I got home and I did for several weeks after, every time I thought about how I DIDN'T want a girl baby.

Girls are mean and scary and they are strange and I didn't want to go there. Despite more than a few months of hoping and wishing that the sonogram was wrong, that was exactly where I went. As a baby, she had a very unfortunate habit of crying all the time. All I could think was "what have I gotten myself into?" TB was such a nice, calm, easygoing baby. Once she started to get a personality, she seemed so girly to me. Even from a young age, she was obsessed with shoes and bags and babies and all kinds of girly stuff.

Then she got older and gained herself enough attitude for 5 kids. She wasn't a girl so much as she was an amazon warrior, scaring the hell out of anyone stupid enough to cross her. Now, she asks for "girl toys" (which we don't call them that or restrict them in that way, but you all know what I mean) like Barbies and dolls but the toys she actually plays with are the swords and the lightsabers and the train table. She loves to play in the dirt, she hates to have her hair messed with (we've been working on the hair issue and it is getting much better), she loves her dresses, etc.

As scared as I was about having a girl and as much as I dread her teen years (good lord, can you imagine her on a killer hormone surge!!), I'm really glad that I got her. She taught me a lot about being a parent and despite all her issues (seriously, I'm glad that she can take care of herself but she has to learn to be nicer), I wouldn't trade her for anything