Cat's Parenting Journal

Friday, January 21, 2005

MOU: Dishes, trucks and penises

Often, people tell me that Otter's liking for trucks is a "boy" thing, that it's evidence of some underlying innate gender difference. That seems silly to me, for two reasons.

First, I believe that so much subtle socialization goes on, even with tiny infants, that we have virtually no way to effectively get at any supposed innate difference underneath current American society. For example, studies have shown that adutls handle babies differently based on gender; girl infants are held with more delicaacy, as if they're more fragile; boy infants are handled more roughly, as if they are somehow less fragile. Differences like this in how we treat infants make it seem implausible that we can blithely attribute observed gender differences to some innate baseline tendency.

Second, what the heck would be the evolutionary point of male mammals liking motor vehicles? Do they make them more fertile? Do they affect their penises in some ways? Has evolution progressed so quickly, given that trucks and cars were invented pretty recently, on the evolutionary scale? What exactly would truck-preference tie to, in a less industrialized civilization?

On that note, does having a penis affect one's ability to play with a truck? Is my son discreetly playing with his truck by pushing it around with his penis?

Vent over.

That said, Otter loves more than trucks. His two other favorite toys this month are the doll stroller that he pushes around at daycare and the dishes his maternal grandmother bought him for Christmas. The dishes are a fabulously complete plastic set, with pans and pots and cups and plates and a rolling pin; measuring spoons, a colander, teapot, ice cream bowls, utensils and a cutting board--almost anything a toddler with a serious plastic kitchen hankering could ask for, plus a pastry cutter and a juicer.

This morning, amidst his ravenous requests for another banana, an apple, vegetarian turkey slices, some bread, some O cereal, some soy milk, a cracker, more veggie turkey, Otter spied his box of dishes upon a shelf he couldn't quite reach, and switched his pleas to "Dishes... dishes...... Dishes!...... DISHES!" while yanking to try to pull the whole box down onto his head.

I'm sure that his love for dishes is just as unlikely to have anything to do with his gender as his love for trucks.

That said, as a feminist, I do like that his toy choices aren't all traditional "boy" choices. The me in my head is dancing around saying "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah" to cardboard cutouts of various published proponents of the "boys just like trucks" theories. Petty, undignified, and highly satisfying on a cold January day.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Here I am, back from my jaunt to Hawaii: aka rotavirus part 1

Okay, not really. I am back, that part's true, but not from Hawaii. We did do a round of mail visits for the holiday season, but soon after that we plunged into what we have been told was probably Otter's introduction to rotavirus.

While rotavirus sounds much like a medical gardening tool, or a gambling disease, it is instead a nasty little organism to be introduced to your digestive system. By "you" here, I mean a small child, as once you've met and conquered rotavirus as a child you are generally declared immune. But on that first date, you get pretty ill--vomit and fatigue and "so on"--by which of course I mean explosive diarrhea.

So for several days Otter lost fluids in various picturesque and messy ways, I washed many many many baby clothes and many many cloth diapers, and G and I traded spells with Otter in the living room. For the first day or so Otter wanted to be held whenever he was awake. After five or ten minutes of being held, he would go gradually go more and more limp and more and more heavy on us, and we would realize: oh, yay, he's asleep again--on my arm and my left hipbone and perhaps the TV remote as well.

So G and I took turns being the bed of choice for our small one, with the non-bed parent getting to do things like laundry and dishes and changing the DVDs in the DVD player and fetching snacks and beverages and blankets for the "bed" parent.

So went the first couple days, punctutated by attempts to get Otter to wait until at least a couple hours after vomiting to nurse or sip water, and by a couple visits to the pediatrician's for reassurance.

More later.

The best blog I've read this year

As someone who survived infertility en route to getting our Otter, and as someone from a adoptive family, I sometimes find myself browsing fertility-related blogs.

This one, Chez Miscarriage, is brilliant. The writer should be given a book contract by someone, pronto, as her writing is moving and illuminating, and of course therefore addictive. Expect to spend quite some time reading back archives if you dip in to try an entry or two.

I am deeply saddened by all she's had to deal with, but also inspired. It continuously astonishes me how many many many fabulously reflective and insightful people ought there have and are working with fertility issues. I can't argue that those two things are related--I'm sure some of us must be real clods, just by the odds--but it does seems such an untapped taboo area; lots of Internet chat and forum-posting and blogs, but not enough talk "IRL" (in real life).

G and I have talked about writing some about our experiences with Otter-conception. And I push myself to make sure to tell people--even casual strangers--that we had to try hard for him, that it was an assisted conception. I'm sure I've made some a bit uncomfy--but I just so desperately wished that I'd known more people's different paths to parenthood in real life, had more sense that it didn't just happen for everyone else instantly the "traditional" unassisted way.


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