Jocelyn has some weird notions about boy vs. girl. I don’t know if that’s because we took so much time explaining everything to Ethan (who is always wy? why? why?! all the time) that we wave and say “sure” to Jocelyn. But according to her, some things are boy and some things are girl.

Let me explain a bit better.

When she is in the bathroom and has finally finished doing her business, she will pull off a length of toilet paper and then carefully wrap it around her hand before pulling it off all nice and neat and wipe.

“This is the girl way.” she informs me on occasion.

Maybe this is because she has seen her brother yank off a chunk, wad it up in a ball, stick his rear end out and wipe vigorously. Obviously, that is the boy way.

I can’t think of any other examples, but she has a couple of these boy vs. girl things that make little to no sense.

The one that took the cake though came today on our way home. We’d gone out to dinner as a family, me and the kids meeting James there, and then divided into girls in one car and boys in the other for the ride home, as Jocelyn and I stopped at Target to get her some new shoes.

“Mommy, I’m huuuuungry.”

We’d just bought some snack type stuff that I keep in the car for after school snacks. I knew she wasn’t hungry, she just wanted one of the granola bars I’d let her pick out.

“We just ate dinner honey.”
“I want a snack.”
“No, we just ate dinner, when we get home, you can have a drink. Soy milk or water.”
“SOY MILK!”

She drinks soy milk because she still has an intolerance to cow’s milk protein. If she has something with un-tampered with cow milk*, she will get really congested. Ethan had the same thing but outgrew it by the time he was about 18 months old. We’re still waiting for Jocelyn to outgrow it (cross fingers!).

So back to our conversation. she expresses her desire for a drink filled with soy milk, and then lets out this astute observation:

“When I turn into a boy, then I will drink COW MILK!”

She has let some real stunners out lately. Like how I ate her and then she was in my tumm when she was a baby. (She said that AGAIN recently, I had better buy her a simple reproductive book I think..) but damn, this one really threw me for a loop!

I tried a few tactics. Correction never works, because she will just adamantly insist that she’s right and I’m wrong. I tried to explain that it was because her body doesn’t like cow milk. and maybe someday her body will decide it DOES like cow milk, and then she can drink it, but she will still be, and ALWAYS be.. a girl.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see if that one sticks.

*By untampered with, I mean, uncooked, or changed in any way. Yogurt = OK. Cheese = OK. It’s because those milk proteins have been changed from their original state. But milk, or a milk based sauce (like macaroni and cheese) is no good.