At last I have a new laptop and a free weekend, so I'm aiming to write a few posts given that I only managed one for December, and none so far for 2013! This first one will be relatively short whilst I get my thoughts in order for the next ones.
Jake is a very outdoorsy baby, as I've noted on here before, and he's also a very physical baby. By this I mean that he enjoys being thrown around, tickled, raspberried, turned upside and just about any other form of rough and tumble you can think of. The big gummy you get when you pick him up upside down or roll with him from side to side makes me laugh as well. His latest trick is being able to sit up in the bath and splash the water around, which he did for 20 minutes today, gurgling all the time.
During one of my rough and tumble sessions with him over the Christmas break (there were many of these!), my mother in law, as a joke, asked me if I would be doing the same with a girl. My instinctive answer is to say yes, absolutely, but I wonder if that's true. I mean, I absolutely hope that it's true, that if we had had a girl instead (or if we have a girl next time round) and she showed such clear delight in being thrown around, then I would be doing the exact same thing.
It was an interesting question though, as my wife is one of three sisters, I only have sisters and the only friends I know with boys live so far away that we never see them. I like to think that we act in accordance to Jake as an individual, rather than as a gender. For example, he still detests tummy time (despite being almost able to roll his way back on to his back) so we don't do it very often. Whilst I don't think it's something that I'll lose sleep over, I will definitely be checking in on myself and my wife to make sure that we're not falling into gender stereotypes (or at least, any more than we can avoid!) as Jake grows up.
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