princess... like gay, but worse?

tomorrow the baron, the husband, and toddler x will find out the gender of baby segundo.  both the baron and the husband are hoping for another boy, for reasons that have to do entirely with their self-perceived parenthood FAILS about raising girls and NOTHING to do with the obvious awesomeness of little girls.

for the husband, raising a daughter would perhaps remind him of his teenaged years; viewing a 13 year-old girl from the lens of fatherhood rather than teenage-boyhood might be too much for him to bear, since he'll acutely remember what, exactly, those teenaged boys are thinking about when and if they call upon his daughter.  he has visions of standing guard on the porch, cocked shotgun in hand, warning young men away from the house.  it's not a pretty picture.

for the baron, should she be carrying a daughter, her concern will mainly be about fundamental personality differences between herself and said daughter.  the baron has been informally polling women at toddler x's playgroup and has found that the disposition of the mother is no guarantee about the disposition of the daughter.  in other words, to paraphrase a woman from yesterday's playgroup, a woman whose rather sheltered daughter insisted on being a fairy princess for halloween: 'i used to think girls weren't born to want to be princesses, but she wants to wear her costume all the time.  i have NO IDEA how she got this way.  i'm not like that at all and she doesn't see those things...'

does this mean there's a princess gene?  something that can't be fought or altered, some fundamental part of some little girls that draws them to pink and purple, makeup and jewelry?  if so, the baron and the husband are screwed.

pregnant! again!

but reader, let us not dwell on that fact just now.

instead, as the baron, the husband, and toddler x prepare for an early december trip to new york city, let's read a bit about the city.

...

the baron's favorite part of this article?

“Rats are almost as fecund as germs … a rat at four is older than a man at ninety. ‘Rats that survive to the age of four are the wisest and the most cynical beasts on earth,’ one exterminator says. ‘A trap means nothing to them, no matter how skillfully set. They just kick it around until it snaps; then they eat the bait … I believe some of them can read.’ ”