So before they were born, and even into the first year or so of their lives, the wife and I often wondered about how they might be different. You know -- because one of them is a boy and the other is a girl. We had a unique opportunity to exercise all of our hippie tree-hugging intellectual curiosity about nature/nurture gender issues in a self-contained little social petri dish known as our house.
And we followed through on that. About everything is gender neutral. The room, the toys, if there's a doll, then there's also a ball. We don't push gender toys on them -- if Nolan wants the doll and Lilly wants the football, then big deal! We don't really care.
What we learned is that all that eggheaded garbage about gender differences being taught through upbringing is total fucking trash written by a bunch of 43 year old virgins who haven't earned a paycheck that didn't come with the logo of some northeastern university printed on it since they were born.
It's bullshit. Boys and girls are different. And I'm not just talking about the plumbing.
Tonight was a perfect case-in-point. I got home from work, and I was tired from whatever it is that I do at work. Momma was tired from running all over with the two rugrats. Nolan and Lilly had their dinner and had about an hour to kill before baths and bedtime. So momma and I took our respective positions on the couch to just be lazy bumps for a little while. We could hear Lilly and Nolan play in the other room.
They were playing with an old computer keyboard (you call it lazy parenting, I call it electronics recycling -- fuck off!). This is what we heard:
"Nolan! NOLAN!!! PUSH KEYS! Nolan do it! Push Keys NOLAN! No, Nolan! NO! STOP IT Nolan!"
On and on and on... She was nagging him. Wife and I soon realized that Nolan was facing his first male experience of being nagged to death by a woman he lives with! He wasn't saying a word, but she continued:
"NO, Nolan! Do push! Push Keys Nolan!"
For about five minutes, we heard this prattle continue. She followed him from room to room to instruct the boy how to properly play with his toys. As if he couldn't figure it out on his own. Shit, he has it figured out -- it's PLAY!
Eventually we heard Lilly say "No push! No Push Lilly!" We knew what happened. Nolan got fed up and gave his sister a shove. Nolan's had a bad case of the pushies for about a year now, and we've been pretty agressive in getting on his ass about doing it, but in this particular moment, the wife and I broke up laughing (keep in mind that the kids are in another room and can't see us). We had this mental image of Nolan pulling one of these:
Not that we'd condone that. But she was being very bossy!
So Lilly came walking into the room we were in, doing her best acting job to look crestfallen. She comes up to momma and says "Nolan hurt feelings." Not only is this undeniably adorable to the point of exploding, but it's also hillarious. Her feelings were hurt because Nolan finally told her to put a sock in it with all the nagging! Now, were his actions appropriate? Of course not, he's only 22 months old for christssakes, he's not going to have a whole lot of in depth analysis of gender based feelings at this point. His attention span tops out at 20 minutes of Dora, he's nowhere near ready to soak in some Oprah-level learnin!
When Nolan came back into the room, we asked him if he'd like to have another sister. I swear to god his response was this: He held up one finger and said "ONE!"
At the end of it we learned that we have a little boy and a little girl. And they act like it.
(not the best picture of Nolan, but it matches the other one)As a totally random aside, at the end of the night I taught them how to sing "Rico.....Suave" -- you know -- just for fun.
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