Daughterdom

When the coin was being flipped by God over whether nor not we'd have another girl or a boy, I was hoping/wishing/praying for a girl. I told my friends it's because I have so many girl clothes. This is true. We do have a lot of girl clothes. But I also have to say that the little boys I encounter at Marta's school are totally psycho.

I went to pick her up one day and they were throwing themselves off the top of a staircase like they were in Mission: Impossible or something. I mean we are talking about the missing link between man and ape here: little boy. This is funny because I did all that crazy shit too. As a youth my friends and I would gladly climb inside an oil drum and roll down hills.

But now I have mellowed and my testosterone levels have gone down and -- as annoying as Barbie is -- I'd rather have Barbie on the TV than live with miniature A-Team down the hall plotting my downfall.

Yet every person I meet seems right to quip that the next child will be a masculine child. My grandmother tells me so. The old lady at the post office jokes so. The joke seems to be coming on me right? One out of three could turn out to have a pee-pee.

Girls seem so easy. I could have fourteen daughters. Marta, Anna, Maria, Lucia, Miina, Nina, Sabrina, Drusilla, Priscilla, Ursula, Tiina, Louisa, Lea, Mia -- see how easy that was? But boys? We never were even to find one measly boy name we liked. Not one.

You see, I wanted to name the little guy after men I admired, like Marcello Mastroianni or Caetano Veloso. I could handle a small, very expressive Marcello telling me that he was 'done' and needed his rear-end wiped. But such a designation would create some major eye-rolling across families, not to mention my wife would never call her little bundle of blue-eyed joy 'Caetano'.

She wanted Peeter. But my folks jumped on this one because, well, they didn't like it. They promised to mix dog food in my bolognese for the rest of my life should I move forward with Peeter. And I didn't like it either. In Estonia, Peeter is this old guy down at the pub who will curse, but only sparingly. In America, Peter is one of the boys on the Brady Bunch.

That's actually one of the major drawbacks of naming a future American: pop culture inferences.

For example:

George: Jefferson

Thomas: the Tank Engine

Justin: Timberlake

Ben: a rat.

Dick: Tricky

Fred: Krueger: Flinstone: Drop Dead ____

I decided that I just don't care anymore. But I know people like to write about these things. And nobody has written any comments on this blog for along time. Anyway, we decided to name the imaginary boy Federico, after my favorite film director. Or rather Fred-Eerik, because it looks so positively silly, yet somehow captures the stupidity he could inherit from me should he choose to come to this world. They are also family names, but I digress, this is a blog to amuse you, not me.

In the meantime, as people continue to make jokes about little Fred-Eerik, I will continue to nestle in my cozy home with my two nuzzle bears Marta and Anna and be happy as hell to be a daddy in daughterdom, where the big fight is over what color dress Marta will be wearing to school tomorrow morning.

The girls in my second grade class were right all along. Girls really do rule.