Girls girls girls

56 more days until the due date!

It feels like I've been pregnant forever. Now, I have the look to go along with the feeling. The belly is pronounced. I waddle. I even let out that unattractive grunt when I bend over to pick things up.

With a daughter on the way, I look at my niece who is four years old now and think of how quickly those years have flown by. My brother and his daughter came for a visit from Japan a week ago. I think she's great and that feeling only grows when she tells me how great she thinks I am. My mom asked her:

"Michele, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"I want to be just like Reiko."

Al and Michele
Originally uploaded by amiura.

Of course, that also meant she wanted to have a baby. We had to explain to her that she had to first study and become a big girl (possibly getting a Ph.D. in some scientific or engineering field) before she could have a big belly just like Reiko.

I took her to Palo Alto Toy and Sports World to buy her something. She immediately rushed to the pink corner of the store where they had dress up costumes for princesses and her favorite Calico Corner toys. I brought her back to the front of the store where they had Legos and "build yourself a robot"-type toys in an effort to expand her horizons into more engineering focused toys. Isn't that why they say boys are more likely to become scientists and engineers than girls? Michele's response was textbook.

"Michele, what do you think of this really cool machine we can build that will dig up dirt using a remote control?"
"Um, Reiko... that's a toy for boys."
"Michele, this is not a toy for boys. It's a mechanical toy that is completely unisex."
"Um, Reiko... I want the Calico Corner doll set."
"But, if you want the mechanical toy, you can have them both."
"That's ok. I don't want it."
SIGH....

After all, she is only four. She loves pink. She loves dolls. She loves playing make believe. If you ask her to pound your shoulders with her fists, she'll patiently do it for more than ten minutes. She pretends to like soy milk because I'm drinking it. She's fiercely competitive and has a deep love of learning new things. If I pronounce new words to her in English, she repeats them back to me until she gets it right. So even if she doesn't love the mechanical toy that I probably would have hated at four as well, I think she has so much ahead of her. I look at my belly which shifts and moves even as I type this and think of what this little girl will love and what she will say that will make me laugh years later.