It's a ???

It's no longer a secret.  While we went down to Florida, Nick convinced me that we should tell my mom the sex of the baby so that she can prepare (i.e. shop 'til she drops).  My mom has been disappointed and had dropped a bit of a guilt trip every chance she got.  She thought I knew the sex all along and was just not telling her which is not the case.  Nick did know all along but I did not.  Nick did really well not slipping at all.

So, it's a girl! We really were not "wanting" anything but a healthy baby.  However, I must admit that I am excited because it will be different.  I was very happy that Liam was a boy because I wanted two boys and I think 3 boys this close together would have been fun too but now I get something different.  Perhaps the best thought/feeling I had when I found out was that now Nick may get the chance to walk his daughter down the aisle one day.  I thought about this when we attended our good friend Tim's wedding. That's when I realized that the father of the groom doesn't get much credit.  I try to stop myself from looking too far into the future b/c as I mentioned in a post over a year ago, it's not good to have expectations like this for the kids.  I shouldn't plan their lives out for them.  But given the cultural scripts, it's hard to do.

I've always said that if I had a daughter I would feel like I would be constantly fighting the world.  I still feel that way.  I feel the world is so patriarchal and full of all the wrong messages for girls that I will have to constantly be on guard to provide the environment that I want for our daughter.  I know that Nick and I are on the same page about how to go about raising a girl (at least as far as we can foresee).  But I know that the world around us doesn't see it that way.  I don't like that girls are more likely to be praised for their appearance rather than their achievements or intellect.  I feel that's something that I will always have to be aware of and control for.  Think about that next time you talk to a girl....is your opening sentence, "you look so cute" or "how's school going?"  I still have to stop and think about this myself when I see a little girl.  

I'm just gonna throw this out there now at the risk of offending someone but there are a lot of things that I see at stores that I hope never make it into my house.  Example from Costco this weekend:

There are so many things that I find wrong with this I won't go into detail here.  But, this is definitely on my "black list" of gifts to give to little girls.  I thought a baby and a stroller was bad and now they've made it a double stroller WITH a changing table. Urgh!
Nick and I (and the boys) went holiday shopping this weekend and for the first time I looked through the girls department of the stores we went to and to be honest I was disappointed.  There were so many outfits, accessories, shoes, etc. that are SO impractical.  Don't get me wrong, there were cute things but there's a line between cute/appropriate and cute/restricting/impractical/cruel and that doesn't happen for boys.  I also found it a little disappointing that it's really hard to find anything that is not pink.  Personally, I'm not a big pink fan.  I can handle a little pink but it seems like baby girl/girls' departments are just overly pink.
So, that's my rant on girls' stuff for now--I'm sure this will be a continuing theme as she grows up.  I know at some point there's going to be a post on Disney princesses and why they're on my black list too (not all but most)--this I'm sure will be a hard fight down the road.

Anyhow, back to the original purpose of the post.  We really are very excited to have a girl on the way.  Gavin is excited as well.  He told us from the beginning it was a girl, "Gremmy" of course.  He said he is going to be a good big brother and he will protect both Liam and Gremmy (not her actual name- just the name Gavin has assigned her for now).  His exact words were "I will keep them safe. I won't let them hit their heads on the floor."  :)