Stay-at-home dude

Dudes being dudes.

Today, we went out for a walk.  At the library, I accidentally found myself at baby storytime, and I have to say, it was pretty awesome!  Sing-alongs were sung along to, stories were read, pictures were shown, and small rattles were stuffed up DanPar's sleeves so he could shake them, because he doesn't exactly hold stuff yet.

The experience at the library was so nice, I decided to continue my walk, and go a bit further to the grocery store!

...where some guy said to me, "So, you're on dad duty today, huh?"

And it didn't so much make me mad as it did make me struggle for stuff to say.  The other guy obviously was expecting some response such as:
"Yeah, the wife's doing yoga or some crap like that, so the little runtling is mine today."
or
"Don't remind me.  Did you know babies poo right in their pants?  Good thing the lady folk do the laundry!"
or
"Grrarr!  Me man!  Man no like childs!  Childs be woman spawn!"

The fact is, it put me in a weird situation.

A few months ago, I went out to trade in some used books, and I had my little runtling strapped to my chest.  Some guy (a different one) declared, "Ha!  Looks like you're Mr. Mom!"  This was soon after Jessi started going back to work, and so I was naive enough to try and graciously correct him, like he was mistaken: "Actually, I'm Mr. Mom every day." He just laughed, like I had made one of the suggested man-responses above.

Jessi and I are in the situation where the gender roles are obviously reversed, but if you comment on it, we could retort, "Well, what's so weird about that?" and make you self-conscious for considering gender as a factor.  For the record, however, I know the roles are reversed, and it's AWESOME.  I'm currently blogging at home while the kiddo is napping and the washing machine is running, and she is having a barbecue at her engineering firm to celebrate opening day for the Colorado Rockies.  Life's great.

I think what I'm trying to say is that it's okay to take notice that most stay-at-home parents are female, but when you vocally apply that to me, and make some statement that just naturally assumes that what I'm doing is something that I would only do under very rare circumstances, I can feel gender equality shudder from the blow.  We shouldn't make any loud assumptions about someone because of their demographics.

Yes, I am a man.  And here's what being manly means to me.  It means being deliberate.  Being solid.  Striving to be stronger in body and mind and moral integrity.  Biologically, it means having to deal with facial hair.  It means being handy, even if you have little at hand.
But here's the beauty of modern society: We all get to choose what our gender means to us.
It's incredible!  We're free!  You don't have to subscribe to anyone else's definition!  If you think being a man means being competitive and not consuming anything diet or low-fat, great!  That's up to you!  Heck, we're raising a generation that will feel more free to be whatever gender they prefer!  It's delightful!  Life is a cornucopia of rainbows of our own design, and my rainbow happens to include babies, blogging, Batman, books, and bideogames!  And I've never been happier.

That's all for now.  I just wanted to get my opinion out there.  It's okay to not comment on the fact that a person with a baby is a man.  It's much better to comment on the fact that babies are ADORABLE.

Speaking of which, because I feel the need to include a couple pictures in every post, here is DanPar with his aunt Brittany's red hair as a toupee!