Because Girls Aren't the Only Nurturing Ones...

My little boy is a nurturer.  He's *usually* gentle with the younger babies at church (although once in a while we think he is in danger of hugging and kissing them to death).  He likes to take care of Mommy when she is sick.  He's been praying for a baby sister for over a year (about the time he was articulate enough to pray on his own...looks like God will be answering that prayer in the affirmative come July, yay!).  He *gasp* likes to play with baby dolls.

Don't get me wrong, he is a man's man when it comes to building blocks, cars, trains, tools, more cars, running, balls, being loud, more cars, superheroes, and more cars.  But he has a baby doll that he loves.

If you've been reading my sporadic blog over here, you probably know I crochet...and that I like to crochet baby clothes as gifts.  Well, I have some of my old baby dolls in the attic, hoping to pass them on to Bitty Bear when she, you know, is born and grows big enough to play with them.  Sometimes I bring them down to model the clothes I'm crocheting, to make sure I got them right, you know.  Well, about a year ago, the Bear found one of my baby dolls and claimed it for his own.  It is a beautiful, big doll that looks like a real newborn (I used it for my Baby Boot Camp and breastfeeding classes when I was pregnant with the Bear, too).  When the Bear found the doll, we were trying to grant his wish for a baby sister, and we wanted him to know how to act around babies, so we let him keep it.  I found a doll bottle, and we dressed it in some of his old clothes with ducks (because he also loves ducks).  He named it Kit (came up with that on his own; we don't know anyone named Kit, and I've never read him any American Girl books...we might have watched an episode or two of TailSpin...).  Anyway, Kit changed genders a few times, but I think it's finally been established that Kit is a boy, and the Bear is Kit's Daddy, and I am Kit's Gannyma.

For a while, Kit alternated between sleeping in the Bear's old infant car seat and in the Bear's Lightning McQueen bed.  But we're going to need the car seat for Bitty Bear, so Kit needed a new bed.  Mommy searched Walmart and Toy's R Us, and guess what?  All doll beds are pink.

We've never told the Bear he can't like pink because he's a boy, but he came up with that idea on his own (he really likes purple, though, after blue and yellow).  Plus, pink would totally clash with the Bear's red race car bed.  So Mommy and Daddy painted it.

Now it looks like this!

We just used some primary colored acrylics on the pink part (ok, they chip quite a bit, even after applying a spray-on sealer).  Then we glued leftover McQueen and Mater fabric from the Bear's valances to the cardboard mattress. Yay for a boy doll cradle!

I post this, not because I'm proud of what a great job we did, because I'm seriously disappointed with the paint flaking off onto the carpet and Kit's poor little head...and the bed is slightly too small for the doll, so sometimes it falls apart if we're not careful.  I post this because I hope someone in the toy manufacturing biz will see it and think to make at the very least, some gender neutral doll beds.  I mean, even if my boy is the only one who is Daddy to a life-size newborn doll, I know there are little girls out there who pretend to have doll sons as well as doll daughters.  Or maybe not anymore, but there were boy baby dolls when I was growing up.  And some girls just don't like pink as much as others.

There's going to be some pink in Bitty Bear's room.  We painted her closet pink tonight.  But I've never, not even as a kid, liked the mindset that everything for girls had to be pink.  And as the mom of a very well-rounded little boy, I don't like the mindset that every toy that is about nurturing or parenting has to be marketed to girls and be pink. Please tell me I'm not alone?  Someone, please make some toys for future big brothers and future daddies, too!