It's A Boy

This past week we found out that our child due in June is in fact a boy.

Aaron and I are both happy with this, even though we didn't have a definite preference either way.  My husband is happy because he was worried about having two daughters and treating them differently...though why this makes a difference I'm really unsure.  I get his feeling...but I'm having a hard time understanding why I do.  I'm happy because I feel like having a boy means it will be easier to decide if we really don't want to do this again.  Then again, having another baby to "get a boy" is really an odd concept...but again, I feel this way without understanding the feeling.  I mean, they're children not collectors items so I'm a bit annoyed with this feeling, to be honest.

Why is this male?

This also has me puzzling over my ideas about gender neutral parenting.  With a girl, it's easy to say "she can wear anything she wants!" and ignore what gender it was intended for.  Before she was able to make her own choices I obviously chose clothing based off my own preferences and that included a mix of "boyish" and "girlish" clothes.  Now with a boy, I'm fine with my son choosing a pink play skirt or to have barrettes in his hair...but what about before he has a choice?  Is it hypocritical for me to purchase exclusively boyish clothing for my son before he is able to put in some input?  Of course, a lot of clothing was purchased for us by others so I didn't pick a lot of stuff out myself...but I feel weird ignoring the girl clothes in favor of boy clothes when I object to things being divided in such a way.  Then of course there is the fact that I tend to like boy clothes better.  Plain jeans, graphic tees, sneakers...those or typical boy fodder and can be worn by anyone despite gender.  I like that sort of thing and wear it myself.

And then you throw the color pink into the fray.  Pink kicks you in the teeth and screams "VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA" via your optic nerve.  It's just a color.  A lighter shade of red...but I dislike it for me, my daughter, or my son.  That's not to say I wouldn't allow either of my kids to wear it, but I'm certainly not picking it out for anybody.  I wish I didn't have these negative associations with something so stupid as a color, but I do...and I'm trying to figure out that means for me having a child with a penis.

I know boys and girls do end up being different in the end, we're wired differently.  However, I'm trying not to let my ideas about it cloud my means of raising my children.  So how far do I take neutrality here?  Do I put my son in my daughter's girly hand-me-downs?  Purchase a whole new wardrobe of boyish stuff?  Dress both my kids in totally plain basic pants and shirts with no gender messages at all?!  I'm trying to figure out where this line is...and it's really hard to define.