It’s a good thing I don’t carry a grudge

My older bother brother and sister-in-law discovered the sex of their new baby last week. Due in January, I am going to have another niece.

I am absolutely ecstatic by this prospect, as I am a big fan of baby girls. They have tons of more selections when it comes to clothing and accessories, and you can clip bows in their hair. Or, if the little angels are bald, you can stick the bows on with Karo corn syrup.

My daughter had hair, so the only reason I knew the corn syrup secret is because — and this is my big confession — I was a bald baby. And a bald toddler. In fact, I was bald until I was around 4. To complicate matters, my parents also dressed me in my big brother’s hand-me-downs. If it wasn’t for that darn corn-syruped bow stuck to my scalp absolutely everyone would have considered me an adorable little boy.

Anyway, my big brother and the wonderful woman he found to marry him are going to have a girl. Another girl. And I couldn’t be happier!

Currently, the grandchildren tally for my parents stands at girls 3, boys 1. This new addition is going to bring it up to 4-1. Since both my brother and myself have agreed we are done breeding, that’s going to be it for my parents unless they decide to have another kid themselves, which could really make things interesting.

Scary, but interesting.

My brother seems somewhat surprised to discover he is going to be the father of another girl. My brother and I grew up in the same household, but in two different worlds.

I adored the theater and shopping and malls and people, often surrounding myself with friends and talking on the phone until the wee hours of the morning. I was quite an obedient daughter as well and maintained honor rolls grades and never stayed out past curfew.

My brother, on the other hand, lived to be outside with just a friend or two, kept his grades underwater (below “C-level”), and hunted and fished and got his car stuck in muddy ditches and subsequently borrowed my car and got it stuck also and never told me until I realized the next morning that my car reeked of swamp and was wet and moldy on the inside.

But that’s another story, and I would never carry a grudge from that incident all these years, even if I really loved that Volkswagon Jetta and considered it my baby and it had to be towed away for junk. That would be really immature and childish to bring up almost two decades later while seeming to still be holding a grudge.

My brother, as one could imagine, disdained what he considered “girly” things. I adored pink; he turned up his nose at anything with even a hint of red. I loved fantasy and sci-fi novels and anything with a happy ending. My brother only went to movies if he could be assured the body count was over the legal drinking age.

And now he has the two girls, and I have a boy and a girl.

My son is slightly, only slightly, in touch with his feminine side. This might be because his daddy has not been around for the past year, but it might truly also be because my little boy is just a sweet, sensitive and pure soul.

He claims pink is his favorite color and he loves playing with his little sister’s dolls and in her pretend plastic kitchen.

I thought I was doing great at nullifying gender stereotypes when he was playing with these items, until I realized last week he was actually chopping up Barbie’s head with a fake knife and putting her now headless corpse in the fake microwave. All this was done as he used one hand to restrain his wailing and hysterical baby sister from saving her pink and white teddy bear, which was apparently next on the menu.

When I asked my son what he was doing, he told me he was making dinner. Apparently, my oldest child is a Barbie cannibal. I just hope he chose a lead-free model.

He then released his little sister so that he could go grab his 10-pound Tonka Truck and drive it through his sister’s dollhouse, wrecking everything in sight and yelling “earthquake” joyously at the top of lungs.

I truly cannot wait for my husband to get home. This kid needs his daddy almost more than I do — to give me a break if nothing else.

Then there is my first niece, the 2-year-old cherub with forget-me-not blue eyes and honey curls. When she was born, my big brother suddenly overnight turned into this person whom I almost didn’t recognize. He became a daddy and it changed his perceptions on everything.

Of course, my niece, because she is still her father’s daughter before anything else, can also at age 2 reel in a fish, tackle anything under 100 pounds and twist her old man around her little pinkie finger faster than anything I’ve ever seen. I think my brother has just realized that he is soon going to have two little girls whom can get anything they want out of him, and the thought both scares and delights him.

I remember when his first daughter was a mere few months old and was unhappy about something and began whimpering. My brother absolutely hated the sight of his daughter’s tears and the fact that he couldn’t seem to console her. I seem to remember him promising to buy her a car if she would stop crying.

I plan on showing my sweet little niece this column when she turns 16, because I think she needs to remind her father of his promise, as she did stop crying that day.

He sent an e-mail out recently proudly announcing the sex of his daughter, then asking for donations for a new boat so he has a way to escape his estrogen-infused household when things become too much for him. My brother lives in Virginia near several large lakes and he seems to feel he needs a bigger boat to accommodate his growing family.

But he’ll get no donation from me.

I’m still holding out for my Jetta.