Gender

I've read how young kids can get overly focused on categorizing people once they figure out age or gender. Right now Penny is talking about gender non-stop. Here have been some of the remarks over the past few months:

I'm starting with the worst one:
"Mommy, I can't do the monkey bars. They are too hard. They are for boys. Not for girls"

"I want a spiderman shirt. I love spiderman. But the spiderman shirt has to be pink. Only girls can wear pink spiderman shirts"

At a public restroom:
"This is the girls bathroom. The boys can't come in here. We have to go to different bathrooms because girls and boys get marry when they are big so they can't use the same bathroom"

On our bike ride:
"Mommy, the boys are always naked. I want to be a boy then I can run with no shirt"
A woman running past us heard this comment and cracked up.

Then when we go to the park she specifically says "I want to only play with girls. And they can't be babies. And they can't be boys. Mommy, no boys, okay?"
She has a ton of friends who are boys at school, but she doesn't want to play with any at the playground.

And don't get me started on the whole dress thing. She wouldn't play with a 5-year-old girl at the playground the other day because "She's not wearing a dress. I only want to play with girls who wear dresses!" Although, I grumbled the other day at the cost of uniforms for her pre-kindergarten class, I'm actually excited to not have to hear the little girls comment on each other's dresses every morning when we walk into class. Geez louise...what we have gotten ourselves into?