Buying clothes for a little girl.

With the impending arrival of our little urchin we've begun to receive en mass all of the relevant accoutrements. One thing I've learned in this process: girls wear pink. And honestly, I've taken a bit of negative stance towards all of the pink now assaulting our babies dresser. I realize that I need to develop a deep love for pink, make some sort of peace with it in the next two months or it's going to be a long ten years.

Why is it important to embrace pink? Because almost all little girls are bald. This makes it awkward for other people when they are trying to identify the sex of your baby. Putting a little pink bow or a nice pink sweatshirt on the child allows them to feel very comfortable with their own gender. No mess ups here. No stories later in life of looking exactly like a boy and blaming your parents for not having the foresight to just put you in a pink dress and be happy about it. Also, I've always imagined our little girl as bald, mostly, so if she comes out as one of those freak kids with lots of hair I'll probably just lop it off anyway. One of the main pieces of parenting advice that I think I'll hold on to is this, "It takes a lot of work to make a child being born all about you, but if anyone can do it, it's you!" That's the type of encouragement I live for.

Ex:
Baby crying at 2 A.M. for the seventh night running.

S: Will you get the baby?

M: What about my needs?

S:I'll stab you in the eye with an ice pick.

M: A simple please would have sufficed.

I realize though that this whole pink clothes thing is just the last vestige of some boyish aversion to that particular color and that it's time to get over it. It's time for me to accept the fact that little girls wear pink clothes and that it is sanctioned as cute and respectable, and that I should just get used to it.

Anyhow, when I was at Babies R US today, yet again, I tried to buy this little zip up sweater that said little monster on the front, with the accompanying picture of a brontosaurus. I've always thought of the brontosaurus as a peace-loving creature, so I'm not sure the sweatshirt was entirely accurate, but I forgave it because it was insanely cute. It was also for little boys. This occurred after I tried to insist that a blue seat was totally gender neutral and that S needed to stop subscribing to such strict gender stereotypes and color and that her lack of imagination in this category was probably going to contribute to some real significant problems down the road with an exceedingly younger and progressive generation on the rise. Needless to say, we did not buy the blue seat.

So I decided to venture past all of the little monster outfits to the other side of that vast vault of American capitalism, and I was nearly floored by a wall of pink. What choice did anyone have? Little girls wear pink. Here's the trick, I've discovered. You just have to look at each outfit as an individual item, and unless you're Attila the Hun (I realize I'm making what perhaps may be a gross mischaracterization here, he may have been a wonderful man who loved playing Yahtzee with his kids with some sort of modified sheep's bone) you're going to think the outfit is pretty damn cute. However, if you step back, and view the vast horde of pink, blinding panic may ensue. It's important to just stop and look at them by themselves, overcoming that natural sort of shame that you've always associated with wandering around in a land of pink clothes.

And as I looked all through the section, picturing a bald fat girl with chubby arms in various pink polka dot outfits, I came across a little hooded zip sweathshirt that struck my fancy. It was black, with little butterflies along the arm that I thought a good marker could cover up, a butterfly adorned the chest as well, an inoffensive green, and I took it up to the register to buy it. Black is the sort of pink that I could get used to.

P.S. If you happen to have read this and have sent us a gift that is pink, know that S is a big fan of pink, and that babies dressed in black is probably a bit too morbid anyway.