Pregnancy and potty thoughts

It has been a terribly exciting 6 weeks, and I think (knock a redwood) I may be (knock a redwood) easing a little bit (knock a really fucking big redwood) out of the sickies. There I've said it, and 2 years of therapy has me convinced that having said it won't jinx anything and send me spirally back into a pit of feeling gross on my couch until the fall.

I suspect I am having a boy for 2 reasons: the incessant desire and need for protein (not carbs) and the general fear I have of having a boy, selecting a decent boy's name and dressing a boy in the mostly ugly navy blue and orange clothes I see in the male section of baby departments.

Yes, I know I got my girl the first time around, and I am thankful. And I am not anti-boy necessarily. Boys are just so foreign to me--I suspect I'd feel slightly more at ease if I was having a cat. I can handle the dingleberries when it comes to that. It's the psychology of boys that terrifies me. My father just about burst a blood vessel in his eye the time long ago that I suggested that it might not be bad having a gay son. With a gay son, provided he was the stereotypical gay son, he would at least be someone who might show his feelings on occasion.

Yeah, I'm jumping the gun, I know. But I am determined to enjoy this pregnancy --the talking about being pregnant, the getting fat, the buying baby stuff, the name-choosing. Maybe since I didn't do all this stuff when I was pregnant with N, I feel a need to relive it as if I'm carrying a female. This fretting over a boy, though, I did do this with N. I "knew" she was a boy until they told me she was a girl, and then I took a deep breath of relief.

I feel guilty saying that, though, because I think D would like a boy, especially since his dad died. Oh well, it makes no difference because he determined the gender anyway.

I have begun "seriously" potty-training N....well, as seriously as it's likely going to get. I'm sticking the girl in underpants, keeping her little Pooh potty in the living room, and asking her every 10 minutes if she has to pee-pee. I am SOOO not into this business. It is far too time-consuming for me, takes more thinking and planning than I care to allot.

I'm gonna blame my mom for one more issue of mine from childhood, but I wonder if my aversion to potty training has anything to do with listening to my mother ask my brother 10,000,000,000 times: "K, do you have to go poo-poo?" "K, do you have to go pee-pee?" I know I wasn't very old when all this was going on but it sounds like a refrain in my head. My brother was a stubborn little thing...my Uncle E has referred to the boy as "Turd" since childhood...so potty-training was not the easiest endeavor my mother had to face. But all that questioning just drove me nuts. I wasn't being potty-trained but that always sounded like nagging to me.

Plus, there were all the poop in the tub during shared bathtimes that scarred me for life.

I guess another motivation that didn't really occur to me until today is that I have spent all of my life wanting to do and trying to do the opposite of everyone else. Just to be different. Yeah, I know there are tons of people like me....little drummers marching to our own beats. I think this "wanna be different" thing maybe has something to do with my refusal to enter N into preschool before she's 4 and a half. And my hesitation to potty-train or have her give up the pacifier.

I know a lot of day-cares have certain requirements kids have to do before they can move to the next room or level, and while I understand the reasoning behind it, I think it sucks. In the spirit of "doing things my way," I guess I want to be the opposite by letting N do things when she is ready or at least before she is at the end spectrum of developmentally delayed. And I don't want to be like other mothers either. I don't think it is so much a judgment against others as just a determination to be the "honcho." The boss of me and my own choices.

Which makes me think it has nothing to do with N at all...as usual it is all about me. And I thought you became less selfish after you had children.
In my case, I am just selfish in more complex way.