- Kids do funky things to the space-time continuum. On the one hand, it seems impossible that two whole years have past since YM was born. On the other, I can't believe it's only been two years. Parents will know exactly what I mean.
- Having two children is not twice as hard as having one. It's four times as hard. It's a geometric progression.
- Gender is not purely a social construct. I swear he came out of the womb different from his sister, and many of those differences play into traditional gender stereotypes. He's already had significantly more injuries than his five-year-old sister, for example. At present, he has a black eye, a brownish-yellow knot on his forehead, and a nasty looking burn on his upper lip that makes him look a bit like a street tough. And Miss Goddess and I are certainly not ones to willfully reinforce those stereotypes. I do all the cooking, there are no sports channels at our house, and yesterday we painted YM's room a nice lavender color. But still...
- A parent's love comes from some weird inexhaustible supply located who-knows-where. I thought I had used all mine up with Older Monkey, but apparently not.
Please join me in wishing the little guy a happy day and an injury-free year. And, if you happen to be in the Greater Hawtch-Hawtch metropolitan area, join us at the zoo this afternoon. We'll be the tired looking intellectuals following around a two-year-old kid with a black eye.
[NOTE: actually, it's a momentous day in our house for another reason as well. Today Miss Goddess makes her worldwide media debut. Well, maybe not worldwide; she's a guest on a local college radio show about architecture and design. Still a big deal, though. She's a brilliant muralist and decorative artist and a charming conversationalist as well, but she's pretty nervous. I, on the other hand, am confident that she'll dazzle them the way she has dazzled me for the past twenty years.]
3 comments:
Parents will know exactly what I mean.
Somehow I also know exactly what you mean and I'm not a parent. Either I have enough friends who are to understand or I just have a sympathetic imagination.
And about gender differences...how do you know it's not just a personality difference that you're attributing to gender? I ask because I was a kid like your son. There's a fabulous Easter picture of me as a small child in a bright sunshine yellow dress with a not-so-coordinating garishly blue and purple shiner.
Oh, and happy birthday to Younger Monkey, of course!
Dr. V -
Perhaps you're right. Certainly the differences between my kids rarely correspond to traditional ideas of gender. It's just irritating that, in this case, those people who told us that "boys are different" can now say "See? I told you so."
I have no doubt of your sympathetic imagination, BTW. And I hate it when people say things like, "You don't have kids; you wouldn't understand" (though I must admit that the things I didn't understand before I had kids were many and various). :)
Thanks for the well-wishing.
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