A year of The Butler Bunch

Yup you read that right, Jason and I have officially put up with each other for a year. Despite all of the hard things we went through some how we made it. I still remember the moment of meeting that loser like it was yesterday. This really handsome guy came through my line with four kids, literally the first thing I did was check his left hand. There was no ring so I was good to go. His kids were a hot mess, they were fighting and crying he was clearly embarrassed and losing his mind. Having kids I knew exactly what to do. Bribe them. With stickers, but still. I looked at them all and told them we were going to play a game they listened so carefully and closely I've never actually seen kids listened so intently before it was kind of interesting. I told them it was the quiet game and they had to whisper to win and if they got a sticker they were a winner. They went silent. No one talked. He looked at me and asked if I had kids, I said yes. He then signed up for a store card and I needed his address, I realized we lived across the street from each other-which apparently he already knew-he then slipped his number into my hand and told me to text him. After a lot of peer pressure and my sister texting him for me we quickly became friends, then it turned into more. Neither of us wanted a relationship so neither of us admitted to dating. Literally when people would ask if we were dating we'd say "No, we're just hanging out raising our kids together and we go to the movies sometimes and out to dinner" then someone pointed out that's literally what dating is. Yea. We were in a relationship for about five months before we told anyone, we didn't want anyone judging the fact we both jumped into a relationship so quickly. His wife had passed away over a month before, my ex hurt me so badly I cried into a bowl of ice cream for a week. It was bad, but we realized this wasn't a rebound for either of us. It was real. Not only were we in love with each other, our kids love each other. My daughter, Brooke, pretty much hates every girl her age. I don't know why, but she does. She's perfectly fine with boys, but girls not so much. Except Jason's girls, she couldn't get enough of them. She wanted them around all the time, if for some reason they aren't home she walks around really sad asking where they are. Our kids are literally best friends and that has made blending this family so much easier. Our kids also luckily love each of us, my kids look up to him so much. Hunter pretty much made it sound like he walks on water when we first started hanging out, he would talk him up so much! I don't know how we got so lucky in this situation, but we did. Thank you God for sending this man and his four crazy kids to me. I couldn't be happier.

Birthday Parties

Ah birthday parties, I have a serious love hate for them. I mean we have nine kids so it seems like every other day there's a party of some sort. My kids' schools have rules about birthday parties, if they invite a classmate it has to be all of the kids or their genders-boys invite all the boys, girls invite all the girls. As you can imagine having a transgender child with this rule can make it slightly difficult. I've had parents call me and ask which gender my child likes being addressed as and which birthday parties she should be invited to. I've also had parents who just invited the whole class to avoid the awkward conversation about which gender party she should go to. As to which offends me more, neither really do. They are at least being mature about it and not punishing my four year old for her differences and are allowing her to attend a birthday party. That is honestly something I was worried about that she wouldn't be invited to many parties because of being transgender, she is after all in a Christian preschool so I didn't know what to expect. Luckily most of the parents seem to be accepting or at least have decided not to voice their outrage, which I appreciate. The last thing I need is to drop my kid off at school and get yelled at because of how I've decided to raise them. So to the parents at our preschool, thanks for having our backs this passed year and thank you letting my daughter participate in something every child should be allowed to do.

Has she had surgery?!

Whenever I tell people that Callie is transgender it's always followed up by tons of questions some highly inappropriate such as "has she had surgery yet?!" I'm not sure when it became ok to ask someone if their four year old had reconstructive surgery, they're literally asking me what's between my kids legs. Normally when people ask me this it takes me a second to respond because I'm silently judging them, so to just set the record straight-NO! She has not had surgery yet and will not have it until she's at least 18 years old. There's no way I would let my four year old go under the knife for something that serious at such a young age. I know what you're all thinking, if she's truly a girl I should let her have surgery because she needs to have all the parts. You thought wrong, what's between her ears is more important than what's between her legs. As for hormones, which is normally the next question, she can start those when she's 13. She will also has start male puberty blockers(I'm seriously not able to think of the stupid word today there's a real name for it) when she's about 11-13 years old. She has already begged me to make sure she doesn't go through male puberty. I can't say I blame her, she's a girl she doesn't want an Adam's Apple or any other male features. I've already spoken to her doctor who agrees that the moment we all agree it's time we'll start her on the blockers, if we were to wait and hold off it would end up being five million times worse for her. Over all I think our game plan is set for what steps we need to take and when to take them, as for asking if she's had surgery I'd appreciate if you don't ask that not just to my daughter but to ANY transgender person you may meet.

Snow Days

If you live on the East Coast you know all about snow days and the terrible snow storm we had this passed weekend and if you have kids you know that being snowed in for three days isn't the most fun thing in the world. Don't get me wrong I love our kids and would rather stay home than go to work most days, but they are kids that are made to be on the go doing something 24/7. Sitting still isn't their thing which meant I had to get a little creative this weekend and let me tell you something-inventing games for kids they can play indoors but still burn energy isn't that easy! The first night we decided to make it a family camp out in the living room, I feel the need to emphasize this because someone told me it was child abuse to make them sleep outside, we were inside! During this little camp out we watched movies, played board games, made brownies, and talked. After tucking them all in I thought to myself"wow I can do this!" now its Monday and were still snowed in and I've lost my mind! It might be because they're all sick and I just came down with what I think is a sinus infection, but they're so cranky and one even told me he'd rather be at school! I'm going to remember that tomorrow when he's impossible to wake up and refusing to go to school, but I guess this is what happens when you have 9 kids under 6 in the house. Preschoolers aren't made to sit still, they aren't made to be kept in a house for countless hours, they need to run and play. Luckily tomorrow we can get out of the house and the kindergarteners will go back to school and Brooke has gymnastics again so our tough time of keeping them inside is over and we hopefully won't have to do this again for at least another year.

Why Callie?

All of our kids have a story behind their names and everyone is always really curious to hear it, even if the story is "we couldn't decided between two names so we had Facebook decided"-sorry Brooke. Callie's name is a little different. When she was making the switch she made it clear she did NOT want to be addressed as Noah, she wanted to be as far away from that name as possible because it was attached to her "boy life". We gave her the option of possibly naming herself something I would have loved as a kid, seriously if you gave me the option boy or girl I knew what it would be without any hesitation. She however didn't like this idea and asked us to name her. So one night Jason and I went without sleep, we looked at baby name books, we looked online, we thought of names from our childhood and shows we loved watching. Nothing seemed to pop out at us, then we realized we were only looking at names we really knew already. There's this family, The Bates, they have a show and are kind of like the Duggars except without any crazy sex scandals-to my knowledge-and their kids have some really awesome out there names. Their three youngest girls happen to have some of the prettiest names, Addellee, Ellie, and Callie. After saying all of them we decided Addellee was too close to my niece's name Addie and Ellie is pretty much my sister in law's name. We settled on Callie and even discussed changing the spelling because I knew a Callie who spelled her name differently and I really liked it the way she spelled it, but decided against it after realizing that if we did she would never find anything with her name on it. Before telling Callie that we picked her new name we did some research, I wasn't about to give my kid a name without knowing anything about it, plus if it had a really inappropriate meaning I wanted to change it! Luckily that wasn't the case, Callie which is a greek name means "most beautiful" we could not have picked a better name for this child, because that's exactly what she is and I want everyone else to know that too.

Losing Noah

My kids always get asked a lot of questions regarding Callie being transgender, the thing they get asked the most is if they miss Noah. Last night Jason and I were discussing that and realized there's not much to miss about Noah considering all of the traits we loved about him were Callie's. Now this doesn't mean I don't miss my little boy, because trust me I do. I cried about it a lot in the beginning, but decided this is for the best. Our kids on the other hand have pretty much forgot Noah was a person! Our oldest literally sat there for a moment at our family counseling session and then said"OH! Noah was your name! I didn't know who that was!" so to answer everyones questions-they don't exactly miss Noah. Even if they were to say they miss Noah we wouldn't be able to do anything about it, this isn't the same as losing someone because of death. You don't have the comfort of knowing you'll see each other one day, you can't be happy with the knowledge that they're in a better place. They're just gone, never to be seen or heard from again, but when it comes down to it we're better off without Noah. Noah was just a mask for our girl to wear until she was ready to show the world her true colors, he wasn't exactly a real person. At the end of the day every time I think about Noah I remind myself that if I forced my daughter to remain as Noah I wouldn't have a son or a daughter. If we were to force her to live a lie she would be one of the many transgender children who start to resent themselves, their parents, and siblings. I don't want that for her. As much as I loved the name Noah-legit my favorite boy name EVER-I love my daughter and everything about her 5 million times more. I love her outlook on life, I love the way she runs to her daddy when he walks in the door after work, I love the fact she's so open about all of this because she wants to help another kid who is going through the same thing, and I love that she's ours and I wouldn't trade her for the world.

Making Friends

Making friends never came naturally to me, I'm super awkward and honestly kind of a jerk. I can only tolerate people who can put up with my sarcasm, dry sense of humor, and annoying habit of talking too much, in other words it's really hard for me to make friends! Callie is also having an issue making friends, but for a totally different reason, it seems like all the parents in her preschool have brain washed their children into thinking transgender is a bad thing. I have literally had parents pull their kid away from mine when they're playing it's getting a little ridiculous. We have decided to homeschool her and my daughter, Brooke, this upcoming school year, but that doesn't help with the friends issue. She so badly just wants people to accept her for her and I really don't see that as a bad thing. She's going to be starting soccer soon and that brings up a lot of issues as well, does she join the boy team? Does she join the girl team? I feel like if she were to join the girl team she would be able to make friends fairly easily, no one would have to know she was transgender they would just see her as a little girl. If she were to join the boy team, well to be honest she probably just wouldn't go through with playing. Due to the fact our state doesn't have transgender rights she will most likely be placed on the boy team, unable to make friends, unable to play soccer. It's sad that because our state refuses to have transgender rights my four year won't be able to make friends, it's even more sad to think if they had transgender rights she still would struggle making friends. No matter what law is in place my kid will always be a second class citizen, she will be labeled, bullied, and so much worse. I think the big problem I have with the fact my kid will be treated this way is clearly those little four year olds in preschool are being taught that it's ok to treat someone like this. Kids don't just wake up one day and hate someone for something like this, they have to be taught that transgender is wrong to think that way-hence my kids knowing the truth-and we as parents need to teach them from the moment they are born that EVERYONE is equal. We need to start showing our kids that love is stronger than hate and that even if you don't agree with someones views you can still be friends. I'm not saying we need to tattoo rainbows on every child in America, but we definitely need to start teaching our kids the importance of acceptance.

Jazz Jennings

So, Callie is actually in charge of what I'm allowed to post and I always ask her before I post anything. She's not actually here right now, but she asked me to post about Jazz Jennings some time so I guess that's going to happen now. I've already mentioned that we love Jazz's book "I am Jazz" and love her show just as much, but I don't think I ever expressed my gratitude towards Jazz and her family. Before we were told Callie was transgender I was watching a video about Jazz on Youtube and Callie was sitting about five feet away from me playing with her siblings her eyes suddenly locked onto the video. I continued watching it knowing my "little boy" was sitting there with wide eyes so fascinated by this beautiful girl on the screen. When the video was done I asked Callie her opinion on the video and she asked to watch more videos, she didn't say much, but I knew that video touched her just by looking at her face you could tell it affected her. Flash forward to her being diagnosed we were watching TLC and saw Jazz's show, again Callie stopped playing and watched the show with her wide eyes again completely silent until the end. At the end of the episode before she went back to playing Jason grabbed her hand and asked if she was ok, she smiled and said"That girl is like me!" she finally said what I had been waiting to hear for going on a year and I couldn't be happier. Since that moment anything Jazz has Callie needs as well. Literally she sat on Santa's lap with a picture of a pair of shoes Jazz had and told Santa she wanted those boots because Jazz had them. She wants to play soccer because Jazz and wants to be just like her. Honestly I couldn't think of a better role model for her to have than Jazz. So many people have sent this child hate, they have left cruel comments about killing her on her Youtube videos, she has been discriminated against, and so much more but continues to try to be a positive influence not just on transgender kids, but everyone. She is trying so hard to be a voice for the transgender community and she is the perfect role model for children everywhere. If you haven't watched "I am Jazz" I highly suggest it, you will fall in love with this sweet girl and her entire family and if you have a preschool aged child grab a copy of the book at your library it explains not just being transgender perfectly, but also explains being YOU and why that's important-and to Jazz and her family, thank you for being so strong and brave and sharing your journey!

Family Changes

Normally I post specifically about Callie and all the struggles she has, but our family is facing a huge change right now and I decided this was the best way to get it out. A year ago I met a guy, we had a instant connection. We were both single parents, both had four kids, both needed someone to lean on so we chose each other. We became friends and it turned into more. In August he asked me to marry him, I said yes. We had this awesome relationship of give and take until it wasn't. It was all one sided and I couldn't handle the yelling and the fighting anymore. We have decided, for now at least, to put our relationship on hold and see where life takes us. I totally and completely believe everything happens for a reason so if we are meant to be we will end up together. With that being said let's get to what everyone is worried about:The kids. Our kids have always been our number one priority and I vowed to help take care of his kids and treat them as my own, I plan on keeping that promise and to be a mother figure for them as long as they need me. We decided to give our kids the option to go visit the other parent on specific days, because legally only one of my kids needs to see him, I talked to my older ones about it and they agreed that they love him and want to see him and spend time with him when they have the chance. We decided that our kids need to be shown that they are still number one in our lives, we decided this for our family. I'm not entirely sure how other families do things when something like this happens, but for our nine we need them to know they have a mom AND dad who love them. For a year now this man has loved and supported my kids, he was there when Skyler was born, and was there when Callie got "diagnosed", he was there when Hunter learned to ride a bike, and when Brooke learned to read. My kids literally see this man as their dad and I need them to know that's ok. With that being said, this blog might have some posts about being a single mom now and the struggles of co-parenting. To my friends and family reading this, thanks for supporting and believing in us and hopefully you don't stop believing in us now.

School Drama

Being a kid is tough, you have all this pressure on you about finding out where you belong. If you're like me you spend way too much time worrying about that and less time focusing on school. Being 100% honest if I could do it again I'd tell younger me not to try to fit in because it's not really worth it in the end, but those grades actually matter! This is honestly something I fear my kids repeating Callie already hates school and throws fits when she has to go. Did I mention she's in preschool? You know that thing where you just go play, have snacks, make friends, and learn a little bit? Yea she hates it. I'm not exaggerating when I say she would rather do ANYTHING else, it all goes back to her teacher treating her like a boy. When I brought it up to the school board I was informed in our area there is no law saying they have to treat my daughter as a girl, wonderful right? That means my little girl would still be classified as a "boy" no matter what action I took. This forced my fiancé and I to think of some really big things involving Callie's future. We need her to like school, we need her to be protected, and we need her teacher and the rest of the staff at the school to be on her team. We don't currently have that and probably won't find it unless we move or homeschool. We're currently looking for a new home in a better distract-possibly state even-where they have transgender rights in place at their school(if you know of any I'd love to know where they are!) but right now our only option for kindergarten is homeschooling. Don't get me wrong homeschooling isn't bad, it isn't less than public school, but I know how I did in homeschool because of my lack of interest in school. I sucked! I saved all my homework until last minute, literally if it was due at 6am the next day I squeezed out my work at 5am, I don't want that for her. The other reason I have an issue with homeschooling her, it shows that the haters won. I don't want to teach her to give up without a fight, but don't want her to be subjected to bullying especially from her teachers. We have already met with the kindergarten teachers at the school she would go to and were told she would be treated as a boy-using the boy's restroom, sitting in the boys' seat-boy girl seating-, and so much more. I've spoken to some other moms in this situation and they have all told me the same thing, I have to fight, but honestly right now I just want to go get my kid from school and homeschool her for the rest of her life or at least until we can move to a place that realizes transgender people are just like the rest of us and deserve the same respect and basic rights like going to the school of their choice. Unfortunately that's not happening today, but hopefully sometime soon there will be a law passed that you can't discriminate against transgender youth in the school setting.

A girl like me

One thing I want to teach all my kids, boy or girl, is that reading is super important. I was an avid reader when I was younger, but eventually fell out of it because I couldn't get into as many books. I never want this to happen to my kids, but it seems like it's already happening to Callie. She really only likes about four different books, one being the Jazz Jennings book about being a transgender child that was written for children around Callie's age. I recently sat down and asked Callie why she didn't want to read and she told me it was because none of the girls in the books are like her they're all "perfect girls"(her words) it frustrates her that none of these girls have to struggle like her and she wants a girl who's like her it's hard enough being a kid, but add being a transgender kid into this mix and it's a whole lot worse. After she pointed this out I went through my daughters' books and realized Callie is right! We have books about everything-a girl doing gymnastics, a girl pirate, princesses, and so many others, but only one book that has a girl like Callie. I know a lot of people would probably argue that this is a too mature theme to have for a children's book, but this is a serious issue tons of kids are dealing with every single day. Having a book that explains what being transgender means to children would benefit not just transgender children, but their peers as well. Everyone always complains about the bullying epidemic that is going on in America and honestly the bullying of transgender children could be avoided if we took the time to teach children while they're young that this issue is real. I have talked to so many adults about our situation and they have all told me that they didn't know what transgender meant because it was never taught to them, this right here is why we need books for transgender youth out there. They need to have a voice in this world and books are the perfect place to start.

Clothes Shopping

I think for us the hardest part of this transition was getting her a new wardrobe. I mean really, I had twin boys think of all the fun outfits that I got to torture them with! She wasn't in the same size as my daughter so I literally had to get her all new clothes, we went shopping and she tried on outfit after outfit trying to find out what screamed "I AM A GIRL!"! That meant nothing blue, nothing athletic like, nothing at all masculine. We settled on several different dresses and a cute sweatshirt. This was all fine until it started getting cold. Where we live the weather is super unpredictable and can get cold any moment, which it did. So back to the store we went this time to get something Callie had been trying to stay away from:Pants. I know what you're all thinking, girls wear pants too! Which is so beyond true I'm sitting at my dining room table right now in jeans and a hoodie, but according to her therapist this is totally normal when you began transiting the child will refuse to wear anything that was associated with their biological gender. The other issue we had is an obvious one when shopping for a MTF person(male to female)-all the pants are super tight! Callie has told me over and over she just can't wear pants because it's uncomfortable because all the girl pants are super tight. We have tried buying larger sizes, stretchy ones, everything! No matter what we try it seems like the girl clothes conform to your body to be super revealing and this might be a little TMI, but this is why I started this blog to tell everyone the struggles of having a transgender child. My poor child has been wearing dresses all winter(with leggings under it but still!) she just wants to wear those cute leggings and stuff with the cute things on it like for example, there are Paw Patrol leggings, with Skye on them that every girl just loves, but my little one needs to cover things up. The struggle is so real right now especially as it gets closer and closer to summer time when we have to face a new issue of clothes shopping:Bathing Suits! To all the people who think being transgender is something kids are doing because it's the "in thing" you should honestly try taking your son shopping for girl clothes and look for pants that aren't crazy tight then you'll realize that no one would do this just because-and to all the clothing stores out there please make girls pants a little more comfy and less tight trust me I'd buy a lot more clothes for my girl if they fit her right.

Caitlyn Jenner

Yes, I am going to have a full blog post about Caitlyn Jenner. Caitlyn has been all over the news and is literally one of the two people my daughter has to look up to. My four year old will grab any and all of the magazines with Caitlyn on them and ask me to read them to her, we only allow her to read the good ones, she has listened to her speech from the ESPY Awards numerous times and almost cried when I told her the Caitlyn was woman of the year. Without a doubt Caitlyn Jenner is a hero in my eyes, but sadly others see her as just the opposite. Every single day I log onto Facebook and see a post saying that a man was given the title woman of the year. This is not only offensive, but wrong. Bruce Jenner is no longer a person, he no longer exists, and honestly he never really did! Caitlyn Jenner however is a legit woman, she has feelings, she's here to stay! When my daughter found out Caitlyn was the woman of the year she got the BIGGEST smile on her face and said "I could be woman of the year one day too!" this right here is why we need Caitlyn in our lives. She not only is giving the transgender community a face, but she is inspiring so many kids and probably adults who are in similar situations. The world doesn't need another athlete the world needs these kids to have someone to look up to, these kids face so many challenges I couldn't even imagine facing every single day this one person allows these kids to feel normal. Both awards that Caitlyn has received were not only well deserved, but well needed for this community. So thank you Caitlyn for teaching my daughter what I would never be able to, that being transgender isn't a bad thing and that you can still do so much-thank you!

Losing Friends

Around the time Callie was "diagnosed" Target got rid of it's gender specific toy section. This caused a lot of controversy, no matter what side you took someone was offended by your point of view. Don't get me wrong, I applaud Target for trying to make kids AND adults realize colors and toys don't make you a specific gender but at the same time it kind of does. Let me explain, my daughter who was born a boy knows she's a girl because of what she likes, thus meaning girl toys and boy toys are two different things. This doesn't mean a girl can't play with guns or cars, trust me I was the biggest tomboy out there when I was younger, but it also means that knowing your gender goes along with knowing what you like. I tried to explain this to a friend and he told me I shouldn't push gender roles on my kids-which I don't-and when I then told him I didn't force my daughter to be a girl he said that's not what he meant. But how can you have one without the other? How can she be taught gender specific roles and not be forced to be a specific gender? When she was portrayed as a boy she was surrounded by both boy and girl things, she had her choice of toy, she even had her choice of clothes when all of them fit in the same size. I never once sat down and told her "Listen kid you have to be a girl, I really want another daughter" to be honest I loved the dynamic of twin boys and a little girl that our family had, but that wasn't how our family was meant to be. I feel like when you tell someone your child is transgender they automatically think that you had something to do with it, but so many studies show just the opposite. It doesn't matter what kind of family you're in, how many boys or girls are in the family, how much money you have, if you're supposed to be a different gender you will know. This friend sadly wasn't the only one who thought this way I have actually lost so many friends and received hateful text messages, emails, Facebook messages, and so much more from people who I thought were my friends. The ones who truly matter in my life stuck by me, but it still stinks that some people couldn't take the time to get to know my girl before judging her. Martin Luther King JR is quoted with saying "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by color of their skin, but by the content of their character" let's make his dream come true and judge only based on the content of ones character.

Making a transition

I think one of the hardest parts of finding out our little boy was actually a little girl was figuring out how to tell our kids. In our blended family we have eight kids between the two of us all five and under, so it was kind of tricky to explain what exactly "transgender" was. We pretty much devoted all of our time to searching all kinds of things on the internet to find out how to explain this to children. As you can imagine there wasn't many results, but we were able to find one book I am Jazz . Amazingly enough this book is actually written for children to explain what being transgender means! We picked it up from the library and read it to our children, they all loved it so much we read it multiple times before returning it. We allowed them to ask any question they could think of, but most of them were understanding probably because Callie was already a girl in their minds. After getting it through our kids we had to tell the rest of our family which was a lot harder when it came to some of the members of our family, we didn't spend too much time focusing on that though we had more people to tell. We told our friends, we told the gymnastics coach, we told the teachers-everyone who was a big part of Callie's day to day life was informed and not just because it was big news, they needed to know for her safety. The more research I did on raising a transgender child the more I found out about how unsafe the rest of their lives were if they didn't disclose certain information upfront and I wanted to make sure my child was as safe as possible and needed all the adults in her life on board. It seemed like it was going fine until one day in preschool when they did a "boy team" and a "girl team" and my four years all came home and told me Callie was addressed as "Noah" all day and stuck on the boy team. This had me furious, I went in and talked to the teacher who informed me I was in the wrong for letting my son live as a girl when he is biologically a boy. Because I'm a smart aleck I responded with "I don't have a son named Noah, I have a daughter named Callie though and she is a girl and should be free to live as one". It took us months to get this under control and we almost pulled her out of the preschool all together but it seems like the teacher either gave up or is accepting the fact she has a transgender child in her class. Regardless the transitioning period is the hardest and having people not accept her was making it that much harder and it was sad to know this might not even be the worst that will come for our girl.

New Year, new kid

First of all, Happy New Year everyone! 2015 had a lot of changes for us, we blended our family, we started an adoption process to get custody of my daughter's brother, and were told one of our children has gender dysphoria. For those of you who don't know what gender dysphoria is it's basically a fancy way of saying our child is transgender. Honestly it wasn't much of a shock when we were told, let's just go back in time a little bit-Callie was born August 22nd 2011 and was given the name Noah. She actually came into my life when she was 2 years old and was still being portrayed as a boy, she has a twin brother named Hunter and they're definitely fraternal. One has blue eyes, one green, one has blonde hair, the other red. But that wasn't the only difference in the two. Callie would always gravitate towards my daughters toys instead of the trucks and guns that Hunter was playing with. Neither of us really thought anything of it we just thought the "girl" toys were more appealing to her. As time went on and their dad left their lives when they were three, I noticed Callie would gravitate towards EVERYTHING girly! She wanted to wear dresses, she wanted the girl underwear, the girl socks, everything had to be pink! I thought maybe it was her way of dealing with stress, she was now being raised by her dad's exgirlfriend who is a single mom so maybe she wanted to be accepted? I kept making excuses until around her fourth birthday. I had started dating a new guy who had two boys and we noticed Callie was nothing like them, besides the things I stated earlier. Everything was different, the way she carried herself was different, the way she played with her toys, the way she colored(our boys color really fast and sloppily) she mirrored everything our girls did and her desire to wear girl clothes just got worse. She would literally throw fits before going anywhere in boy clothes, she would throw herself on the ground and scream like we were beating her. We knew something was different with our kid. She had a doctors appointment for her four year check up and we mentioned everything to the pediatrician who gave Callie a piece of paper and crayons and said "Noah can you please draw yourself" and it was a moment I would never forget. She drew herself as a beautiful girl with long blonde hair in a pink dress. The doctor looked at us and said "I want you to take your little girl shopping" so we did. We got a lot of strange looks and lost some friends after that but after reading that more than 50% of transgender youth would try to commit suicide by their 20th birthday we knew we'd rather have a living daughter than a dead son.