Yea right.
My daughter is not made of sugar, or spice, or everything nice.
Of course she's nice. When she wants to be. She's entering the terrible twos though, for goodness' sake. She is generally hell on wheels. And damn if I'm not proud of her. As I've said, it's the girls that make the most trouble that become leaders.
The reality is, Celaya is more snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.
Her favorite books, the ones she asks for repeatedly, are about dinosaurs, elephants, giraffes, bats, monsters, and yes, a little troublesome pig. She does love Ladybug Girl; it's true. But even that sweet little girl gets excited about digging for worms, not playing with makeup or baby dolls.
This is, of course, not to say that she does not like baby dolls, makeup, or jewelry. She has her Auntie Tammy, her grandma, and her granny Sue to thank for that. And I think that's beautiful. They show her a side of life I just do not have to offer.
But when it's just us, her and me, she jumps in puddles, digs in the dirt, throws motorized cars around, and collects rocks and sticks.
And thank the gods, she has her papa and her uncle to reinforce those joys.
Just today, seconds after I walked in from work, she and I built a tower with her Lego blocks and she looked over at her Uncle Teno, who promptly said, "Celaya, destroy!"
She crashed down on her tower, ripping the pieces apart like a baby gorilla, with all the vigor and animation her little 24 pound body could manage, giggling the whole time. It was a scene straight out of Rampage.
So imagine my dismay when, just yesterday, I entered the toy section with Celaya in search of some fun little take home prize for being such a good (read: crazy yet manageable) girl during all of our shopping, especially after having been cooped up with a fever all week. The first aisle was full of toddler learning toys, Leap Frog, wagon, shovel, bubbles, musical instruments, etc. The next two aisles were an explosion of pink with a tad bit of purple mixed in. The following four aisles were clearly designed for boys, dark blues and black with a splash of red and green here and there.
I suppose this was the first time that I consciously explored the toy section with my child. Before now we had pretty much been limited to the toddler aisle. But now, honestly, we have all the useful things from that aisle and are ready to move beyond it, to older kid toys.
So as we enter the first pink aisle, I notice Celaya in a kind of daze. She reaches out for something called Little Pet Shop, or something along those lines. It is essentially a small carrier kit with tiny ponies, maybe an inch tall, that apparently belong to a pet shop of some sort. What, on earth, is my kid supposed to do with that? How does it relate to anything at all that she experiences as a two year old? Everything in these two aisles had something to do with being the societally accepted "little girl": makeup kits, dolls of all shapes and sizes, a kitchen, a shopping cart, a jewelry making kit, dress up clothes, you name it.
Before it all really registered in my brain, my husband came over to join us from another part of the store and take over playing with Celaya. I started to leave to get some shopping done in another section when I noticed the next few aisles of "boys toys." I turned back.
"Carlos, why don't you take her a few aisles down, to where the cool stuff is?"
He did. And they spent the next twenty minutes playing with trains, planes, cars, trucks, tractors, and all the other replicas of things she gets excited about everyday.
In the end, we bought her a helicopter, for under ten bucks, that lights up and makes sounds. She played with it the whole way home and woke up the next morning saying, "go see helicopter."
I do not mind if Celaya wants to wear make up when she grows up, or even if she wants to pretend now. She loves having her auntie put lip gloss on her when Tammy visits. I like that she gets excited to dress up in the silly fluffy outfits her granny Sue bought her for Christmas.
What I do mind is that the toy section, and life in general, designates what she is supposed to like, what I am supposed to supply her with, and the image she is supposed to fit or squeeze (or die trying) into as she grows.
Which means that I am charged with spending the rest of her growing years taking her over to the boys aisle, encouraging her to explore football as well as ballet, to put her barbies into monster trucks and splash her pink boots through the mud.
It is a much more active role than I had originally realized I would have to play in terms of gender norming.
Recently, I have been thinking about what general theme I want to have for Celaya's upcoming birthday party.
She doesn't know what princesses or ballerinas are. She doesn't watch TV, so she has no connection to Tinkerbell or Dora the Explorer. The books we read are not really based on a particular character, unless you count Olivia, and I do, but I think she is still too young for an Olivia party. Next year would be better for that.
I sat down to read to her before bed tonight, in the back of my mind reflecting on this gender issue I've been mulling over since yesterday, and as I was finishing up, preparing to put her in bed, she pleaded, "'nother one! Read 'nother one!"
"Okay," I agreed. "Which one do you want?"
"Dinosaurs After Dark," she begged.
So that's it, I decided in that moment, and began the planning in my head as I read the lines to my enamored child:
"Splashing through the fountains, and swinging from the cranes. Racing through the station, and playing with the trains. Underground and in the air, those dinosaurs played everywhere!"
We're having a dinosaur party.
No comments:
Post a Comment