It's Good To Be the King

I'm scurrying around the kitchen preparing dinner. Peanut beckons me from the playroom.

"Daddy, will you please play with me?"

How can I resist when she asks so nicely?

"What do you want to play?" 

"Princess dress-up."

Despite my mental and masculine hesitation, I am yet to decline this royal request. For no dad of a daughter should be above donning a tiara, some plastic clip-on earrings, and a feather boa if need be. (Unfortunately for you, no such picture exists. Shockingly.) Getting in the princess groove is how we throw down in my kingdom, from time to time. (Thankfully, this is only make-believe because I would make an ugly woman.) I do it because it makes her laugh. And because she ought to know that it's ok for a boy to get his princess on if that's his thing.

But the one major perk of raising a little princess, is that most of the time, I get to be the king:

King DKL

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THE PEANUT GALLERY: Play Ball

A couple of years ago, I bought Peanut a tee ball set. It wasn't something she asked for. I just thought it would be fun to smack the ball around the backyard, and to ingrain in her a love, or at least an appreciation, for the national pastime. (And the Yankees.) I had no intention of training her to be a baseball or softball prodigy, and then living vicariously through her. Besides, Peanut's game attire erased any delusions I may have had of her earning a sports scholarship:

3 year-old Peanut, batting in her tutu

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Rise and Shine

"I want adventure in the great wide somewhere... I want so much more than they've got planned." -Belle from Beauty and the Beast

I have a bone to pick with Disney. A big bone.

This morning I opened my refrigerator to get me some unsweetened almond milk for my cereal. (Yes...almond milk. Lactose is one of several things I can't tolerate. bullsh1t is another.) That's when I caught her. Belle, and her dirty little secret. She may be the Peanut's favorite princess. But I have my doubts about how much princess she is after I surprised her with my pre-dawn breakfast run:

What the hell is this?!

Talk about morning wood. If I weren't so confused, I would have been impressed. I mean, she's awake and loving it. Just look at that smile on her face. Even more impressive when you consider she accomplished that in the cold climate of the fridge. What had her so excited? The almond milk? The Greek yogurt? Upon further inspection I noticed that when the door is closed, Belle is face-to-face with the butter. Whatever turns you on, sweetheart.

What is perhaps most bizarre about Belle's plastic-straw erection is that it's facing up, like the wrongly-repaired statue of David in The Goonies:

What the hell was the Disney design team thinking here? No matter which way you turn it, this cup is uncomfortably inappropriate. Put the straw in the back, and you're drinking out of her a$$ like the human centipede. In any other position, it looks like a catheter. Or worse, a colostomy tube. This is product design fail at its very worst. And my daughter drinks out of this cup. Requests it.

After this use, I'll be sure to bury this thing in the cabinet so it's out of the Peanut's sight and hopefully out of her mind. I just cant get it out of my mind. Just like Ken's bizarre mangina:

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Gender Gap

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. " ~Dr. Seuss

When you found out you were going to be a parent, what was the first thing you really wanted to know? Boy or girl, right?  Whether you found out before the birth or at the birth, that's the one thing we are all dying to know. (I personally don't see any point in waiting - but that's for another post.)

Now imagine being so excited about your baby boy or girl, loving and nurturing that child for three or four years, then sending them to a school that refuses to identify your child by gender. Nobody - not the teachers, not the principal, not the other students, refers to him or her as "him" or "her." A preschool in Sweden is doing this. They're referring to the kids as a group, as "friends."

Sorry, friends, I just don't agree.

While I also don't agree with enforcing gender stereotypes, I can't support flat out ignoring gender. What about potty time? Will everyone have to stand to pee? Or sit for that matter?

My daughter is being raised in a house where her father does all of the cooking and most of the kitchen clean-up. Her mother pays the bills and is better at fixing most things. It's up to the parents to teach their children that it's ok for boys to cook and girls to assemble patio furniture.

At her school, there is a boy whose favorite color is pink. There's nothing wrong with that. There is another boy who loves dance class. I find nothing wrong with that, either. Nor is it wrong that I carried my baseball cards in a purse when I was a boy. You can read about that here. Those kids are busting the stereotypes, and I'm pretty sure they're doing it all by themselves.

Even the inflatable pool is princes themed

But sometimes, the stereotypes find the child. We tried to avoid the whole princess craze with our daughter. Didn't introduce her to them, buy her any toys or books or show her any movies with princesses. We weren't making a political statement. We just felt like they were a little cheesy and a lot cliche'. Well, guess who is fascinated by princesses anyway? We've got the nightgowns and the books and we watch the movies all of the time and when she plays dress-up daddy has to be the prince or the king.

Her choice. Naturally.

This past weekend, we were headed to a birthday party for one of her classmates. The boy had chosen a Spiderman theme for his party. As we drove there, my daughter volunteered, "Daddy, I hope there are girl superheroes at this party, like Wonder Woman."

My Feminist Superhero

Our little women's libber, perhaps? We probably won't know for a few more years. But she did get a pink Batman painted on her face at the party. Sorry... Batgirl.

These are her politics, not her parents'. Not that we disagree with them. During dinner one evening late in October of 2009, my wife and I were discussing the race for governor in New Jersey, and we asked our daughter, "Are you a Democrat or a Republican?"

Halloween 2009



"I'm a cupcake," she answered, because that's what she was dressing as for Halloween a week later.

A cupcake. A princess. Wonder Woman. Sweet, strong, independent. All words that describe my daughter. All things she chose. Based on gender? Probably. Based on nature or nurture? I think mostly nature, with a little bit of unintended nurture.

Because I knew she was going to be a princess the minute I found out we were having a girl.

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