Sparkly Shoes, Footballs and Hello Kitty

Yes I am behind on my blog... I have like five topics coming up for you all soon.

I want to address one thing we have been dealing with here in South Bend. As you know, we try to be progressive, and not do things like gender stereotyping. You might remember my blog a year ago when we got Cruz a pair of "girls" shoes from Walmart. Cruz's New Shoes

He wore those shoes until they wore out, he loved what he called his "Bubble Shoes" (they had pink bubble like circles on the sides). They were subtle, didn't attract a ton of attention and he rocked them out.

Well two recent happenings have all of this on my radar again to discuss. If you missed the memo, we had a baby girl 11 weeks ago. Yes, ahhhhhhhh... she is cute, she is a girl, she has short hair, and wears her brother's hand me downs... so guess what, she gets called a boy a lot. Do I care? Naw. Does her mom, I don't think so.

So someone might ask, maybe don't put her in boy clothes and people will know she is a girl. We don't put her in boy clothes, they just happen to have footballs on them, or a basketball, or just not be obnoxiously pink. So to be a girl, she has to be visible from outer space in something shocking pink? Or because her hair is short, we need to have her in a headband she hates 24/7? Not my ginger, she is cute, she is a cute girl, and yes even in an outfit with footballs on it.

Now onto my boy... well his mother took him to Target the other day. They weren't even shoe shopping, and he asked for sparkly shoes like Claire (a daycare friend). She had some new sparkly pink shoes, and he wanted some. So mama got some for him, with a huge hello kitty on the front. Yep, pink rhinestone slip on shoes. She sent me a pic from the store, I thought it was cool. The following day, you guessed it he wanted to wear them to the mall. With his ripped up jeans, and begging for quarters to ride the automated corvette... he ran around in his "sparkly shoes" and drew a lot of attention.

I saw the stares, I saw the ear whispering... what are they doing to their son?

Well what we are doing is loving him all the same, whether it is in the mini-cooper-car (as he calls the automated corvette), Bob the Builder tractor, destroying his new jeans rolling around outside, or in his Hello Kitty Sparkly Shoes.

On Monday he was excited to show Claire his shoes, and she had hers on, they posed for a pic together for me. Too cute.

My son will be judged his entire life by others, with or without sparkly shoes... he doesn't need his mom and dad judging him now and telling him how he "should" be or what he should like. So hopefully you won't either, and will stopping judging your kids (and others).