Having a birthday so close to Christmas is tough. We work really hard to make sure Ian’s celebration is separate, but I’m not sure it always works. Since his sister had a party and invited her classmates, Ian wanted a party too. In hopes of having a few people who could actually attend, we celebrated a week early.
Our big 3 year old!
Ian is a lover of all things furry. It can be interesting playing in the front yard sometimes because he wants to hug all the dogs that walk past the house. There’s a big black cat at Lolli and Pop’s house named Baa-baa that will tolerate his hugs. We recently watched some friends’ guinea pigs while they were on vacation, and yup, they got hugs too. So, this year for Ian’s birthday, we hired a mobile petting zoo to come to the house.
It was great! We have a big open living room with a tile floor, so they just set up inside. These were little animals: chicks, rabbits, turtles, hedgehogs, a lizard of some kind – no big farm animals hanging out by the couch. The petting zoo people had little stools for the kids to sit on, little mats for them to hold so the animals’ claws didn’t bother them, hand sanitizer for when they were done.
Bunny!
Ian loved it. Some of the animals made him a little nervous, I think, but especially if they had fur, he was petting and snuggling away.
We talked a lot about what kind of cake Ian might like. It’s sort of difficult with our kids because neither of them care too much for icing. In the end, after a month-long insistence that he have “rainbow cake,” I borrowed a trick from a friend of mine and baked one. Six separate layers, each a different color. It was beautiful. And delicious. Alas, there was icing, but Ian ate some of it anyway, as long as I dug the cake out from between the icing layers.
Ogres have layers.
About the love of furry creatures … Since we had lost Pumpkin earlier in the year, Maya’s Hank kitty was feeling a little lonely. We figured Ian might enjoy a cat of his own and Hank might like to have a friend. At the end of November, we went to Austin Pets Alive and adopted a 12-week-old, solid black female kitten.
Ian was so happy. He snuggled her and petted her and … SHE LOVED IT. She followed him around. It was so cute! Ian means well, but he’s three. His affection can be a little rough, but nope, the cat puts up with it (you know, to a point).
Just a boy and his kitten
The best part about Ian and his kitten though happened when Sean explained to him that he needed to give his new pet a name. Ian thoughtfully considered it for a moment before telling Sean, “She likes N, O, and … X!” Nox. He named his solid black kitten Nox. This tweaked something in the back of Sean’s and my brains and we looked it up. Nox is Latin for “night.” According to Wikipedia, Nox is also the Roman goddess of night.
The cats actually got along with each other almost immediately. We tried keeping Nox in a separate room for a while so we could introduce them slowly. Hank stood at the door whining to be let in. Nox tried to climb the door, who knows to what end. We finally gave up and let Hank in to see her, and after some careful sniffing, they decided to be friends. It was the easiest cat introduction we’ve ever done, and we’ve had a few.
About the love of rainbows … Ian is a very sweet and kind boy. He adores his older sister. He loves to play with tiny things that he can collect into containers. He loves music and will sing, sing, sing when he thinks no one is listening. He builds things with Legos. He pretends he’s a doctor and gives us shots. He also takes care of baby dolls and cooks in the kids’ play kitchen. “There are no [boy/girl] toys; there are just toys,” is a common refrain in our house when someone brings home some nonsense from school or the park or a play date. For whatever reason, we’ve never thought to apply the same concept to their clothes.
So pink! So furry!
Ian will tell you his two favorite colors are pink and rainbow. His guys, a stuffed fox named Mulder and a soft monkey named Scully, drive rainbow cars and wear rainbow clothes and eat rainbow food. His favorite color to wear is pink. Bonus points if there are checkers or sparkles as well.
One day a long time ago now, I told Maya not to give Ian a skirt she had outgrown because most boys don’t wear them. She wanted to know why. And finally I stopped to think about it. There’s really no rational reason. (So far, Ian doesn’t care too much about skirts, but he LOVES tutus.)
At first, we thought Ian’s preferences were driven by a desire to emulate his sister, and I think because of this, we discouraged it at first. It didn’t take long though to realize that Ian prefers more pink in his wardrobe than Maya ever did. This past fall, even though we had bought Ian his own cool-weather stuff (and I swear, I tried to find bright colors and things he’d enjoy), he picked through Maya’s old clothes that we had been gathering up for donation and assembled his own winter wardrobe.
Wearing what he wants makes him so happy, and it’s such a simple and seemingly harmless way for him to express himself and to exert a little control over his life. I was worried that he’d catch crap for it, but so far people have been pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. Most parents we’ve chatted with acknowledge how boring boys’ clothes are – all dark, neutral hues, no sparkles, no sequins. At our house, it’s completely normal. Maya is thrilled when she can pass down something of hers to Ian that she knows he’ll love.
Not everyone in the world is on board, of course. Sean was once asked by a grocery store cashier if Ian had two daddies. Honestly that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard; no gay couple I know would dream of letting Ian leave the house in the pattern and color clashing get-ups he devises.
There’s no denying that it’s a man’s world in so many ways. We strive to make sure Maya knows she’s intelligent and capable and that she can be interested in whatever she chooses. But in this one thing, she has it easier. She prefers blue and green and she sports a very short haircut, and people to have realized that that’s perfectly fine, for the most part.
I am sure the hard times are coming for Ian though. One day, he’ll come home from school upset because he got picked on. He’ll tell us he wants “boy clothes” and doesn’t want to paint his nails any more. There’s a part of me that wants to keep him from getting made fun of, to ease his way in this world. (There’s a part of me that’s angry already about the narrow-minded torment he’s likely to encounter.) But more than any of that, I want him to be who he wants to be and to know that he has our support. What I really want of course is for the rest of the world to catch up and not give a little boy abuse for something as ridiculous as the color of clothes he prefers, but since that seems unlikely, support is what he will have. And I will work very hard to temper my “fuck you” attitude when it comes to dealing with other people’s misguided assumptions about my kid. Probably.
Party time
At any rate, our pretty boy had a great birthday. Some of his friends came and petted animals with him. Illnesses and proximity to the holidays kept attendance light, but there were enough people for it to feel like a celebration. He had his rainbow cake and his “coca dot” decorations. He has a furry kitty to love and snuggle. And his smart friend Ruby picked out a fuzzy pink scarf like thing that Ian keeps hung on his bed, he likes it so much.
On Ian’s actual birthday, he chose California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. He’s a very particular eater, and one of the things we’ve discovered he will reliably eat is pepperoni pizza. He helped me bake some box-mix brownies for his birthday cake (after Maya’s cake, Sean’s cake, and Ian’s rainbow cake, I was pretty much all baked out at this point).
Birthday ice cream
Included in the photos below is Sean’s birthday cake as well. His birthday falls exactly halfway between Maya’s and Ian’s, and we make an effort to remember him too. This year, I gave Maya a shot at decorating Dad’s cake. I loaded up some orange icing into a piping bag and let her have at it. She’s a fiend for sprinkles, so she doused his cake in those as well. It was quite a creation, made with love and lots of sugar.
