Guys and Dolls

You know all those theories and studies about kids and gender specific toys? The ones where they put a masculine and feminine toy in a room and the boys gravitate to the "boy toys" and the girls gravitate to the "girly toys"...I'm pretty sure they can't be as accurate as they let on, at least I'm sure that game would not work with my kids. Will learned to say "princess" and "baby" way before he learned to say "dinosaur" and "car" and the very first time I took Gracie to Target with her own money and let her pick out a toy she chose a bucket of dinosaurs. Don't get me wrong, Gracie is about as girly as I can stand for her to be, she loves to paint her nails (and Will's! though I only let that happen once) and play dress up and reminds me every day that she's a princess. And Will loves to play with cars and his tool bench and throw balls and, as much as I hate it, has a new found fondness for spitting...which he learned from Gracie. Truthfully though, I don't think I would have it any other way. I'm not sure why it bothers John so much more that Will likes to play with Gracie's baby dolls and barbies than it does that Gracie likes to play with dinosaurs and throw rocks and sticks in the creek. I just think it's great that they have so much fun playing together. If they want to do a study that would be worthwhile they should put a cardboard box and some exciting new toy in a room and see if they can figure out why kids loose interest in the toy in about 30 seconds but will play with the box for hours. AND, even more importantly, when will they start making a toy vacuum that really works?!?!