Look who’s 2 months! He actually turned 2 months a week ago, but I wanted to get the stats from his doctor visit.
This little chunker is now 13lbs 2oz and 23″ tall. He jumped up from the 40% to the 70% for weight in the last month so he may not be a monster baby yet, but he’s working on it!
We’re just starting to get “real” smiles out of Wesley which I gotta admit is pretty damn cool. He’s more and more alert, making eye contact, and usually sleeping about 5 hours at night. Basically he’s a pretty darn good baby–he even survived his 2 month vaccinations like a champ!
And now for your monthly rant:
I’m not a crazed feminist by any means. Quite frankly I believe there are differences between the sexes, but “different” doesn’t mean “superior.” For either gender. I recognize there are common preferences that may be used for targeted marketing (ex. a lot of little girls do like pink), but I am sick to death of overly stereotypical advertising. This means that nothing brings out my feminist side quite like looking at baby gear.
Men Are Not Idiots
At least, they’re no more likely to be idiots than women. A lot of baby commercials portray men as completely incompetent. I even have seen onsies with the head/arm/leg holes labeled and “Dad, you’ve got this” printed in the center. This sort of thing makes me feel downright twitchy. It’s not cool to assume women can’t use power tools, or code, or be athletic, and it just as not cool to assume that men handle babies (or cook, or sew, etc). In fact, dads can be pretty badass.
There’s More to Life Than Gray
Whenever I would look at baby clothes and sort them by “gender neutral” everything would be gray. Gray with sheep. Seriously? There are lots of gender neutral color and pattern options, how did it get limited to gray? And apparently sheep are the only “neutral” animal? If you’re trying to find gender neutral options, your best bet it to search under “boy” because that usually seems to mean “not pink or floral”
Which brings me to….
Gender is Not a Color
I was searching Amazon for pacifiers the other day and rather than list the colors as “blue/green” and “pink/purple” they would be listed as “boy colors” and “girl colors.” There was even a set that had a fox on a blue background and a raccoon on a tan background that was labeled as “boy colors.” Is it that hard to label things by color or pattern and leave gender out of it? Maybe your little girl likes cars. Maybe your little boy likes pink. These things don’t have to be gender specific. I have to give a shoutout to Primary because a while back I saw an advertisement of theirs that said pink wasn’t just for girls and showed a bunch of adorable little boys rockin’ some pink.
That all being said, I don’t think children need all gender neutral clothes and gear. We definitely dress Wesley in a slightly more “boyish” style and if we had had a girl I would have fully embraced pink and ruffles. I still wanted a gender neutral base wardrobe and accessories/gear though so if we have a second kid we’ll have plenty of things to reuse.