Parents always say they don’t have a favorite child.
Everyone eventually learns that’s bullshit. I knew it earlier than most. I have four baby siblings, born anywhere from 9-12 years after me. And hell, yeah, I had a favorite.
Pretty Space Cadet Sister spat up on everything as a baby. She was not my favorite.
Obviously, Baby Screaming Sister was also not my favorite.
Boyfriend-Stealing Baby Sister began her life of crime early, starting with my stuffed animals. Definitely not my favorite.
My favorite was Baby Brother. Despite his rocky beginnings in the NICU, he was the easiest baby. The surgeons did such an amazing job putting his innards back where they belonged that the kid never spat up. (When he threw up, it was projectile vomiting on a Exorcist like scale, but that was rare.) He laughed easily, rarely cried, and thought I was the bomb.
Heck, with him I was the bomb. We built helicopters out of giant tinker toys. We shot each other with flashlights. We turned his cozy coup into a race car and won the Indy 500, crushing Future Lawyer Sister and Baby Screaming Sister. When I threw a comforter over my head and pretended to be “Amoeba Man,” (7th grade science had its uses), Baby Brother shrieked and giggled hysterically as I engulfed him. He would say, “Tan we pway Amoeba Man?! Pwease?”
Baby Screaming Sister, on the other hand, had screaming nightmares about Amoeba Man. By order of my mother, Amoeba Man was forcibly retired. Paramecium Man suffered a similar fate.
Baby Brother was all fun and no drama. I knew I didn’t want kids — not then, maybe not ever — but if I had to have one, I wanted a little boy just like Baby Brother.
Until I started babysitting for other boys. Seven-year-old boys, to be exact. They didn’t listen when you told them not to touch/ eat/ step on stuff, then broke/ ate the stuff that you told them not to touch, and then lied to their parents about having broken/ eaten the stuff. One seven-year-old boy locked my older sister in the basement so he and his younger brothers could pour chocolate milk all over the kitchen floor and make milk pictures.
After that, we only babysat for girls. Girls colored nicely. Girls played with My Little Ponies and liked to do our hair. Girls were positively restful, at least in our neighborhood. The only danger with girls was being burned by a curling iron. (Future Lawyer Sister learned that lesson the hard way.)
When Andy and I got married, our nieces smiled adorably and behaved perfectly (aside from the six-month-old who puked on my dress). Our nephews? Not so much. Pretty Space Cadet Sister’s son commandeered a bellhop cart and ran amok, overturning the water for the bouquets on my wedding dress (damn, that wedding dress took a beating). The other nephew had to be hauled out of the ceremony for yelling just before I walked up the aisle.
Years later, when I got pregnant, my Chinese-American husband upended thousands of years of cultural misogyny by declaring he wanted us to have a baby girl. I told him we were destined for a boy. He argued that I could not possibly know this, and angrily accused me of not wanting a girl.
“Of course I want a girl! I am a girl, and girls are awesome, and I feel like there’s so much I could teach a girl to counteract the harmful messages she’d get from the patriarchy and the media,” I explained. “Also, it would really piss off your dad.”
“Then why are you so sure it’s boy?!” Andy practically yelled. As if not having a girl would somehow be my fault, which was ridiculous since it was HIS SPERM that decided our child’s sex.
“Because I just know, is all. Because boys are exhausting and that’s just my fate, all right?”
“I don’t believe you,” Andy grumbled. “Baby D could be a girl.”
Secretly, I hoped I’d be wrong. Like Andy, I wanted an adorable, amiable little girl like our nieces. We both went into my seventeenth week ultrasound anxious to learn our baby’s gender.
Baby D had other ideas. Baby D curled up like a little cannon ball, hiding its genitals.
“Well,” said our special ultrasound doctor, “the good news is that everything else appears to be developing normally. Maybe next time we’ll be able to see if it’s a boy or a girl.”
Andy gave a massive sigh.
“Isn’t there anything I can do?” I asked. “We’ve been dying to know, and this kid has a couple of grandparents that won’t leave us alone until they know if their Number One Son is having his Number One Son.” (This was — surprisingly — a complete lie. Andy’s father had only called once since learning we were pregnant. The man had apparently given up on his son ever having a child. Either our pregnancy had stunned him silent or he was afraid to jinx it by calling.)
The doctor — another man — took pity on us. He suggested that I jump up and down and touch my toes while he checked on another patient.
When he returned, I was sweaty.
Baby D hadn’t moved.
“Damn it,” I said. “Obstinate already.”
The doctor tried to cheer us up by pointing out a hand. “See that? Baby is waving! Hi, Mom! Hi…oh…no, not waving,” he said with a chuckle. “It looks like your baby is doing something else, actually. Baby is pulling on another appendage. This behavior almost always means that baby is checking out his penis…and yes, there it is! Definitely male!”
Andy stared at the screen as the doctor moved the cursor around, showing us more views of our child playing with himself. I patted Andy’s hand and heroically refrained from saying, “I told you so!”
Instead, I asked, “Are you okay?”
Andy laughed, turned to me with a huge grin, and said,
“That’s my boy!”
I can tell you work in the entertainment field. You always leave us wanting more! I can hardly wait until we get to the name!
I think that’s a compliment, although I am personally always wary when it comes to people in the entertainment industry. 😉
It is a compliment from someone very remote from the industry. From the looks of the news, you have some horny dogs working there.
We do. God, we really do. Trump and Moonves are the end result of never being told no.
There are no words. I can’t even imagine being a young woman trying to work their way up (the right way with talent). So discouraging.
It is, indeed. Say no to a powerful man and the best thing that can happen to you is being labeled “difficult” and never getting work again.
PSCS is *my* favorite.
I get it. She’s pretty.
She is. And smart and sweet and thoughtful….
Awwwwww. Can we skip ahead to the ninth month already?!
We could. I think if I were as good at getting posts out as you are, we’d have been there ages ago.
I feel like I’ve been slacking lately. I guess it’s all relative.
My productive is your slacking.
aww his reaction was super sweet <3 Sing would die for a boy, but that's only because 'boys don't get pregnant, the worst that can happen is rubbing tofus' (apparently that's how HK people describe lesbian intercourse ;-))
You’d better hope you get a boy. A little girl would wrap Sing around her finger in a heartbeat, right?
I was surprised when my Chinese husband didn’t express any preference for a boy. Good thing, since we got three girls.
There’s some nice suspense with the untrasound, but it was doubly exciting (back in the day) to have to wait until the moment of birth to find out if it was a boy or a girl. Those first few months our girls had lots of yellow or green outfits.
Yeah, we painted the future nursery yellow. 🙂 I actually have lots of friends/ sisters that insisted on nothing gender specific, even when they knew they were having girls.
Lol, obstinate already. It makes me wonder what the road to having a kid will be for you and Andy since the two of you are headstrong too. Quite a few people I know here are very specific about not being gender-specific and are very touchy if anyone refers to their offspring he or she…’it’ would more be like it. Which I think is so refreshing.
Wow, we’re not even halfway to meeting your kid yet. You are a great storyteller.
Well, there’s a lot of negativity that comes with pushing gender stereotypes. Girls get messages about having to be pretty and likable or risk being unloved. Boys learn that being angry or even violent is more acceptable than crying. I can see where parents would want to raise a kid genderless to avoid making their kid conform to negative stereotypes on either side.
That is so true about pushing gender stereotypes especially at a young age. What I’ve noticed is a number of parents like to call their daughters ‘Princess’ and the boys, well, very rarely ‘Prince’. I wonder how this is acceptable, but it is.
My kid got a royal nickname, too: “Tyrant.”
You really got me wondering how your kid turns out.
I’m with 2summers… skip to the ninth month! haha! I can’t wait to hear more!
Did father-in-law do a dance when he heard it was a boy? And how did you know it was a boy–gut intuition?
Don’t worry, we will get to the Father-in-law’s reaction next post, promise.
Yeah, just intuition, I guess. I couldn’t imagine us having a girl. No idea why, I just couldn’t. It made Andy so mad…until he saw his boy.
Because of my aversion for anything girly ( don’t like make up or nail polish and I would rather spend non existent money on books and/or travel rather than purses or name brands or anything of he kind,) I always dreamed of having a little boy. My son’s father didn’t care for gender, although he wanted one of each.
My son is almost 2.5, and for now he is such a sweet and lovable little boy. 🙂 I could talk on and on about him 😀
Yeah, I’m not much of a makeup or nail polish girl myself (and I’m lucky that I don’t have to be, when I’m at home so much with just animals), although I do go for the occasional pedicure. I figure we will probably save lots of money on accessories, only to spend it on ER visits.
I always thought I would prefer having a girl but when I got pregnant I always thought of the baby as a boy. And yep, a boy it is. I bought clothes in every color except baby blue and pink and I would have done the same if it was a girl!
I know, right? I painted the baby room yellow. My one girlfriend is already insisting that she’s gonna help him paint it black when he’s a teenager.
I don’t have a baby room for the moment! Let’s see what we do when he outgrows his cosleeping cot…
So is it already clear your son is a goth or a metalhead? 😀
LOL. Nah, that’s just my friend insisting he will be one or the other. Or at least hate yellow.
I read a study that men have higher tendencies to become narcissists. Luckily I don’t live in the States and own a gun. Else, many people will be sorry that they are ever born into this world.
Are you ready to accept that he’ll wreck your gateway to heaven, sex will never be the same again and you’ll need to carry extra menstrual pads because after having a baby the monthly menstrual flow can sometimes be a little out of control – like sudden heavy flow for some women?
Men are absolutely more likely to become narcissists. Probably because they aren’t trained form birth to be worried about pleasing other people. But with any luck, I can train my child to put the damned toilet seat down, clean, cook (okay, maybe Dad better teach him that), do his own laundry, and express feelings of sorrow instead of rage. He will also learn about consent, white privilege, and that women are not objects that exist solely for his enjoyment.
He will go to gay weddings and not automatically assume that everyone is straight and cisgendered. I will talk to him about police brutality, Jim Crow, and how once upon a time, it would have been illegal for his parents to marry.
Then watch, the kid will rebel by becoming a bloody Republican.
Hahaha… Actually, even as a woman, I prefer the toilet seat to be up. This is because I found that the center of gravity is lower and the tendency to splash when taking a dump is less. Sorry for the gross description! 😉
But…so cold!