I have always been very vocal with Griffey and Adam and my students that I do not like gender stereotyping. I hate that our society has denoted certain colors are boy colors and certain colors as girl colors. It is annoying when I look in the toy section and see pink rows and blue/gray rows.
I have always made sure Griffey feels comfortable choosing from all the toys and not just the "boy" toys and same with clothes, activities, tv shows, ect. Griffey has loved Dora and Thomas and loved his Dora shirts as much as his monster truck shirts.
However, Noah and Natalia are sooo much different than how Griffey was! It is very interesting to see. Since I ultimately want my kids to choose their interests for themselves, I don't want to push them into gender roles, but I also don't want to push them so far in the opposite direction that they don't feel comfortable liking gender stereotypical things around me.
Last month, we took the kids to Toys R' Us to get a feel for what Noah and Natalia might like for Christmas. I handed both of them a baby doll. Natalia instantly embraced it and started singing, hugging, rocking, and patting it's back. Noah, on the other hand, started biting it's face and then grunted as he threw it to the ground.
We ended up getting Talia the doll because it was so cute seeing how attached she was, but I also feel like I need to tell everyone, "We tried to give them both one. Noah didn't want it." Just to make sure they know I am not pushing them into gender roles.
I don't have a lot of experience with this because Griffey always liked everything. Noah is very brash and destructive. He grunts and hits and throws toys. He loves playing catch and throwing balls.
Natalia, on the other hand, loves headbands and bows and smiles when she puts one on. She sings all the time and will hug and rock any stuffed animal or baby doll she finds.
I think it is just important I always make sure they know that they have any option of clothes, toys, activities, etc. and that it is also okay if they do choose gender stereotypical things.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Christmas 2014
Right now, we are enjoying our 2-week Winter Break in Arizona. We stayed in Phoenix this year because we are trying to save up money to come home, to Oregon, permanently as soon as we can. We feel like we have put in the time here that we had planned on and will start the process of looking into when to come home.
We don't have an exact timeline yet. Every time I pray to know when to move home, I get the answer that we need to go to the temple, so that is what we are going to do this week.
It will definitely be a big, scary move because our school ends in May here and schools in Oregon don't typically hire until the late summer, like August. We will be leaving secure jobs where we have already proven ourselves and become comfortable for the hope of finding a job in Oregon. Scary!
Anyway, even though we weren't around family for Christmas, we still had a nice time. We bought a tree from Costco because it was from Oregon. We had soooo many presents from all our family. It was incredible! I had to write down who bought what so I wouldn't forget because we were so spoiled!
On Christmas Eve, we went to another family in our ward's apartment. Jared and Ashley live right next to us in our apartment complex and have two young kids. They were also far from their family in Idaho, so we had a delicious Christmas Eve dinner complete with a ham and my grandma's frozen mud pie. I made the ham and I am so proud of myself because it was my first time!Then we played Christmas Bingo and then Natalia and Noah both had meltdowns because they are both teething.
On Christmas, we just hung out at home and watched Christmas movies and played with our new toys. Griffey got a bike from Santa and legos, clothes, socks, a mirror, and tons of other stuff. I was impressed that Griffey was so willing to get rid of a lot of his old toys to give to other kids. He is such a sweet boy.
Griffey helped me deliver presents to two of my students who were definitely in need and he even donated 5 stuffed animals to them.
We have been enjoying our winter break by laying around and relaxing and also by deep cleaning and purging all the unnecessary stuff we have. It is so nice to have all this time!
We went up to Camp Verde the day after Christmas to stay at my friend, Rum's other house. It was cute and all decorated for Christmas. We planned to go to relax and get away from the big city. We made frozen pizza and rented some redboxes and were ready to hang out, but then both babies started freaking out. Noah spilt pizza sauce on the clean carpet and they were both trying to tear down all the breakable decorations, like candles. Then Griffey was acting up because I promised to do Legos with him but then I had to make dinner and feed the babies and figure out how to work the dvd players and baby proof the house and feed myself and a million other things. Griffey became vey whiny and wasn't listening and the babies started crying because they were teething so I just started packing up. I couldn't take it. I didn't want to do this all night. Oh, and the heater kept short circuiting so it was freezing there and we forgot the pack-n-plays, so the babies were going to sleep on the floor.
So, I packed everything up and told them all we were leaving. We left at 7 at night and it was supposed to take 1:15 minutes to get home.
There were two accidents on the 2-lane freeway, so it ended up taking over 3 miserable hours to get home.
I was annoyed, but then I realized that we still had well over a week of vacation, so I got over it pretty quick.
Now our Christmas tree is down and the house is looking pretty polished which feels nice. I have about 3 things to get done in the next 7 days, which is awesome! I love Winter break and wearing work out clothes all day and sleeping in! It makes up for the insane hard work we do throughout the school year.
We don't have an exact timeline yet. Every time I pray to know when to move home, I get the answer that we need to go to the temple, so that is what we are going to do this week.
It will definitely be a big, scary move because our school ends in May here and schools in Oregon don't typically hire until the late summer, like August. We will be leaving secure jobs where we have already proven ourselves and become comfortable for the hope of finding a job in Oregon. Scary!
Anyway, even though we weren't around family for Christmas, we still had a nice time. We bought a tree from Costco because it was from Oregon. We had soooo many presents from all our family. It was incredible! I had to write down who bought what so I wouldn't forget because we were so spoiled!
On Christmas Eve, we went to another family in our ward's apartment. Jared and Ashley live right next to us in our apartment complex and have two young kids. They were also far from their family in Idaho, so we had a delicious Christmas Eve dinner complete with a ham and my grandma's frozen mud pie. I made the ham and I am so proud of myself because it was my first time!Then we played Christmas Bingo and then Natalia and Noah both had meltdowns because they are both teething.
On Christmas, we just hung out at home and watched Christmas movies and played with our new toys. Griffey got a bike from Santa and legos, clothes, socks, a mirror, and tons of other stuff. I was impressed that Griffey was so willing to get rid of a lot of his old toys to give to other kids. He is such a sweet boy.
Griffey helped me deliver presents to two of my students who were definitely in need and he even donated 5 stuffed animals to them.
We have been enjoying our winter break by laying around and relaxing and also by deep cleaning and purging all the unnecessary stuff we have. It is so nice to have all this time!
We went up to Camp Verde the day after Christmas to stay at my friend, Rum's other house. It was cute and all decorated for Christmas. We planned to go to relax and get away from the big city. We made frozen pizza and rented some redboxes and were ready to hang out, but then both babies started freaking out. Noah spilt pizza sauce on the clean carpet and they were both trying to tear down all the breakable decorations, like candles. Then Griffey was acting up because I promised to do Legos with him but then I had to make dinner and feed the babies and figure out how to work the dvd players and baby proof the house and feed myself and a million other things. Griffey became vey whiny and wasn't listening and the babies started crying because they were teething so I just started packing up. I couldn't take it. I didn't want to do this all night. Oh, and the heater kept short circuiting so it was freezing there and we forgot the pack-n-plays, so the babies were going to sleep on the floor.
So, I packed everything up and told them all we were leaving. We left at 7 at night and it was supposed to take 1:15 minutes to get home.
There were two accidents on the 2-lane freeway, so it ended up taking over 3 miserable hours to get home.
I was annoyed, but then I realized that we still had well over a week of vacation, so I got over it pretty quick.
Now our Christmas tree is down and the house is looking pretty polished which feels nice. I have about 3 things to get done in the next 7 days, which is awesome! I love Winter break and wearing work out clothes all day and sleeping in! It makes up for the insane hard work we do throughout the school year.
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