A message to all of the pregnant gals out there -- when you go to the birthing class and they tell you to stick your hand in a bowl of ice-cold water to help prepare you for labor pains, you tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine. I am here to tell you that experiencing cold and discomfort for five minutes doesn't help with your labor. Nope, you just had a freezing cold hand one day and insanely painful contractions another day.
When I was pregnant with my daughter, my husband and I went to every baby-preparedness class our hospital offered. Labor and delivery 101, check. Hospital tour, including special late-night arrivals directions, check. Newborn care, featuring swaddling and breastfeeding, check. Infant CPR, check. There were at least four classes we took, not including the Happiest Baby on the Block class we took when my daughter was three weeks old (okay, actually that one was totally worth it and the best $40 we ever spent -- now there's research to prove it).
But, now that my kids are a little older, I wish I would have skipped "how to bathe a baby" and instead found a class that would prepare me for life as the mother of a little boy. So many of his interests are foreign to me and I'm already finding myself out of my league. My daughter's hobbies are easier for me. Having been a girl myself, I'm up-to-speed on the Disney princesses and I know the basic positions in ballet. These things I get. My son's interests, not so much.
Not too long ago, he asked me a pretty basic question about how a car runs. The only answer I could come up with was to point and say "Oh look, a deer!" There was no deer.
Like most two-year-old boys, he's fascinated by all kinds of trucks and construction equipment. But, no matter how many times I read him his little truck book and point to diggers, scrapers, mini loaders and tractors, damned if I can recognize any of them out in the real world. Aside from concrete mixers and car transporters, I'm at a complete loss. Generally, I just call them all bulldozers and hope that there's at least one bulldozer in the mix.
Again, like most two-year-old boys, he loves Thomas the Tank Engine and can push his little cars around those little wooden tracks for a long time. Then, he gets bored or frustrated and breaks up those tracks. That's where I come in, I have to reassemble those tracks. Except I'm terrible at it and can never get the darn thing to connect back into itself. It's a one-way road.
Why don't they offer moms classes that will help prepare them for a life of boys? Classes like: Train Set engineering 101. Introduction to emergency vehicle parts and identification. Advanced cars and trucks...
