Gurlz vs. Karate

It became official only a few weeks ago: Christina and I will be having a little girl this November. You should probably be a little concerned for me since I don't know anything about girls. My two brothers can probably attest to that.

Seriously though, I'm excited to be getting a girl. Part of me wanted to have a girl, and I'm not really certain why. It might be because there is a bit of a dearth of baby girls in my family (I have two brothers, one male cousin, and two brothers-in-law). Maybe I like a challenge or new experiences. Whatever the reason, I found myself secretly doing an arm-pump and thinking "Yes!"

Of course the next concern for me turned to how do you raise a girl? How does a father bond with a daughter? Should I resign myself to pretending to have tea with various Disney princesses? Would life be easier if my girl were a tomboy? Is there a way I could use operant conditioning to make my girl a tomboy? (Kidding, kidding, kidding ... well, mostly kidding)

I started to realize that me asking these questions was based off the naive assumption that I could raise boys any better. However, there's probably a limited list as to what I know about raising boys:

1. Brothers will fight each other after dark when they're supposed to be asleep.

2. ... actually, that's probably about it

I know I have Christina to guide me through a lot of it. But man, she's already doing quite a bit as it is. You know... the whole, "growing a human" thing. Apparently it can get pretty exhausting. It's what she uses as an excuse anyway when we need to move some cinder blocks. Talk about lazy. She even joked that once the baby gets here she's going to take the next nine months off, hand me the child, and just say "Your turn." At least, I hope she's joking...

I take comfort in a few things we're in complete agreement on. I'm banking on these issues being something to fall back on in the future:

1. Church is a must.

2. Books are important. By God, we will have lots of books in this house (we pretty much already do).

3. Limited TV and video game time. And no TV in the bedroom.

4. Encouragement with being active and involved, whether it's sports, dance, music, whatever.

5. Our child will not watch the Star Wars prequels until she is old enough to hate them (okay, that's mostly something I advocate).

I take a little bit of comfort in agonizing over the small things because it's a reminder to me that there are several big things that we have covered. Is gender really that big of a deal? I'm starting to think it isn't. I would love this child the same regardless, and I'd probably finding myself raising her mostly the same as if she were a boy.

Except, I probably won't have to worry about her trying out karate moves after dark ... I hope.