Griffin has been taking much delight in all things that zoom lately. If there’s a plane in the sky, he’ll find it. If there’s a school bus coming down the road, you can bet he’ll point it out. I decided it was high time we took a day devoted to transportation.

Let me just begin by saying that I have so much respect for folks who, either by choice or not, get their little ones around using public transportation. A car affords a freedom that I’ve been taking for granted, especially in the winter, and I realized this morning as we were rushing to catch the 9:14 bus that life would be a lot more complicated if we didn’t have our own wheels. That being said, I also really enjoyed taking public transportation with Griffin today. I got to engage with him about what we were seeing out the window in a way that I simply can’t in the car, and more importantly, we got to look at each other and interact with other people, which just doesn’t happen in the insulation of our own car.

Anyway, we received two free Metro Transit passes when we moved to St. Paul (sign up for a land line and, in addition to getting lots of unwanted phone calls for people who used to have your number, you get all kinds of free things in the mail!), and with his sudden interest in zooming vehicles, it seemed like the perfect excuse for a field trip. Fortunately, we live just a block from major bus routes, so arranging to get to the airport was as easy as a web search and walking two blocks to the bus stop.

As the bus pulled up, Griffin waved and said, “Hi, Bus!” We got on and he was beaming with excitement. We rode through our neighborhood, down across the frozen Mississippi, and arrived at the Light Rail station. A small wait afforded us the opportunity to explore every nook and cranny of the station, and then the train pulled up! We got to ride through tunnels, past lots of different colored houses and stands of trees, and finally arrived at the airport, where we disembarked. It took a little creativity to find a place where we could watch the planes (post-9/11 has made it very difficult to find a place to watch, I found out), but a couple of trams and moving sidewalks lead us to the perfect place to have a snack and watch planes take off. It was perfect.

We had a great morning together (and it was free!). Griffin got to explore his new passion, and I realized that maybe we need to be taking the bus more often, not just because it’s better for the environment, but because it might just be better for me and Griffin, too.

Even before Griffin was born, I was disgusted with how horribly gendered all of the baby clothing out there is. Trucks for boys and butterflies for girls; blues, greens, and browns for boys, while girls have every color of the rainbow. I tried pretty hard to put him in gender neutral clothing from the beginning (which mainly consisted of stripes) but as he has gotten older, it’s getting harder to do. It seems like anything interesting looking (and not bloody expensive) is either made for boys or girls, not both.

It’s not that I don’t want Griffin to be a boy, whatever that means at this age. It’s just that I hate how important it is. He’s already going to be getting plenty of messages from others (and maybe subconsciously from Andrew and me) about what boys and girls are supposed to do and say. I want him to like what he likes for as long as possible before he’s aware of the “supposed to-s” and they inevitably influence his thoughts.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because of four pairs of pants I bought for Griffin from the girls’ section. First off, since he’s a cloth diaper wearing kid, he needs at least a size up to fit his gianormous butt, and secondly, many boys’ pants are made of really stiff material (corduroy, jean, etc) which aren’t very generous with the diapers or freedom of movement. Many girls’ pants are made of stretchy cotton, which is perfect for his butt and doesn’t necessitate buying too-big pants, plus it accommodates his desire to run around as fast as possible. How perfect, right? Wrong. Girls’ pants are…well…girly. Actually, I would consider them way more FUN than boys’ pants, but if I were being honest, most people, including me, would look at them and think “girl.”

So living up to my standards for myself, I bought two pairs of rainbow striped pants, one green with multi-colored polka dots, and one brown with multicolored cutesy forest animals. They’re super fun and bright, and I think they’re great. They have been part of his rotation of pants for a while now, and I’ve been surprised how much of an indicator they are for gender. Most people refer to him as a girl when he wears them and then get embarrassed when I reply with the pronoun “he.” I try to make it clear that I don’t care if they think he’s a boy or girl, but one woman even went so far as to say, “Oh, of course he’s a boy! Now that I’m really looking, I can see that masculinity in his face!”

Most surprising has been the development of Griffin’s preferences as he solidly stands in toddlerhood. Andrew or I will dress him in some other pants, and if he catches sight of any of the four pants from the girls’ section, he gets incredibly excited and signs wildly to help put them on. He smiles big as we change him into his preferred pants and giddily prances around the house. I love to see him happy in his ability to choose and am delighted that he finds pleasure in such bright colors and patterns.

But this is a blog post because I feel like what I’m doing in buying girl pants for him is a statement. I suppose it might also be so if I put a girl in cargo pants and truck t-shirts, but somehow that doesn’t seem equivalent. I was actually prepared to have a girl to whom I would tell, “You can do anything, wear anything, be anything! You have the whole world at your feet! Pink or punk, whatever you want!”; give her a childhood much like my own where I was encouraged to build and fix things, play sports, cook, bake, and play with whatever interested me. While the pinks and princesses are certainly overwhelmingly popular with girl marketing, it seems more mainstream if a girl isn’t wearing pink or has trucks or prefers dinosaurs over dollies. I wasn’t ready for the fact that while I certainly would be supportive of my son wearing fairy wings in public, much of the people around me would not be.

As I read and hear about other parental struggles, I’m coming across many more parents distressed about their boys being teased and ridiculed about “girl” things than the other way around. It makes me wonder what is going on here: What is it exactly that people are afraid of? If I’m not concerned about my son wearing girl pants, why should you be? But here is where I get tripped up in my own thinking as I take it one step further: Would I put Griffin in a dress? Would I put clips in his hair? Would I buy a sparkly princess shirt for him?

The answer to all of these questions would be an emphatic YES if he wanted them (and frankly, it would be that way with a girl, too). But my intention is not to use my son as a way to make a statement; I just want him to be who he is. By giving him the choice to wear rainbow pants and play with magic wands, I feel like I’m saying, “You can do anything, wear anything, be anything! You have the whole world at your feet! Pink or punk, I love you for who you are.”

Being the full-time parent of a toddler has its ups and downs. Lately, it’s been a battle of the wills for me and Griffin. I usually win, but my sense of humor flies out the window as a result (so is it really winning?). I’ve learned that patience is generally a prerequisite to maintaining my sense of humor, and the Battle of the Wills drains my fairly large supply of patience rapidly. Take, for instance, yesterday in the late afternoon: after a day filled with temper tantrums and plans gone slightly awry, I logically knew it was funny when Griffin pulled my pants down and gave me a raspberry on the butt while I was bending over to wipe up the juice he deliberately spilled on the floor. But in the moment, all I could think was “Andrew, please come home soon, or so help me, I am going to throw this kid through the window.”  Toddler parenting seems to be the ultimate test of whether you can go with the flow. I find my most successful days are ones where I’m not married to my ideas of what should or shouldn’t happen and I pay close attention to Griffin’s hunger, energy, and mood; my least successful are when I have a rigid agenda despite Griffin’s mood or think Griffin is going to love doing x. y, or z, but instead has absolutely no interest what-so-ever.

So this morning was a success as the stars aligned to allow for an impromptu project with my kiddo. After Andrew left for work, I noticed that the back door in our kitchen has a good one-to-two inch gap with the floor and is a huge heat-loss problem. I decided it was time to make a draft snake! I had several old sweaters just waiting for projects, as well as a buckwheat-filled bed pillow that proved to be not as comfortable as I was hoping, so I had the supplies. Griffin was fascinated watching the rotary cutter (from afar, of course), and under careful supervision, he actually really enjoyed sticking pins into the sweater material while I pinned the seams. He became my helper at the sewing machine, putting the pins back in the box as I pulled them out. The best part of the whole project was making him in charge of filling the snake with buckwheat hulls. I let go of any anxiety with making a mess (that’s what vacuum cleaners are for, right?), and just let him have fun. The end result was practical (no more leaky door!) and fun for both of us. And now every time he walks by the door, Griffin says, “sssssss!” and gives the snake a hug.