Shower Power!

So, I've only been the proud owner of a new blog for a couple of weeks and already, I'm a bad blogger. I promise to be better. **crosses heart**

The day I found out I was having a baby boy, I honestly was devastated. Not because I have some crazy thing against boys (obviously I don't or I probably wouldn't have ended up pregnant in the first place!) but because I am a girl. Not just any girl, a G.I.R.L. The girliest kind of girl. I don't like dirt, or bugs. I like shopping and getting my nails done. I don't know how to play football, and the one time I tried to play soccer, I kicked the ball in the wrong goal. So, I danced my heart out all through my school years to avoid having to be enrolled in P.E.

The first couple of people that I told I was having a boy did nothing to alleviate my fears. One looked at me and said "oh, well he's definitely going to be gay." I have nothing against gay people. I have great guy friends who are gay. However I was insulted!! Not because my son may or may not be gay someday. But by her assumption that somehow, me being his mother was going to MAKE him that way. It all seems rather absurd, but when you're 20, single and pregnant, trust me, the fear is real!

A couple of months later, I told another (TOTAL stranger) that I was having a boy. She of course does the ever popular "ring check" and asks me if I'm married. I say no and immediately she says "oh, your son will have an Oedipus complex for sure. Better start saving for therapy!" This totally freaked me out for obvious reasons. At this time I was on bedrest so the internet was my only outlet to the outside world. I looked up EVERYTHING I could find on Oedipus complexes and whether or not they were linked to single motherhood in any way. So far, not. **phew!** So I did the best to push all of that out of my brain and focus on my baby. I've done a fairly good job of that over the past two years, but we've recently entered on new times where our gender difference is starting to become real.

For so long he's just been my baby, and I've been his mommy, and it didn't matter if I was a boy or girl as long as I fed him and blew bubbles on command. But now, we've entered the realm of potty training and body parts and boundaries, and everything's changing. He's starting to come out of his gender-neutral bubble and it makes me so sad. I'm not sure how to deal with the replacement of my baby with a little boy. All of my fears are back, and the voices in the back of my head are piping up again. The ones that talk about Oedipus and the fact that I probably am too girly to raise any kind of rough and tough little boy (which is exactly the kind of little boy I've got). He has a male "role model" in my dad, but I don't expect my dad to go running around with a football anytime soon!

But, someone's got to teach him. So, I suppose I should learn to throw that football perfectly, and pray that he doesn't ever want to play soccer!