I got asked this a lot: "Do you know what you are having?"

Our usual answer to that question was: A) a baby B) a big meal C) what do you think I'm having? D) a human, unless that alien abduction dream was true.

At which point the asker would then try and guess, either by using some superstition that had to with my skin, eating habits, the way the wind blows, the size of my stomach or something else with little reliability.

But is knowing the gender of your baby really that important?

The world is divided into male and female. The toy stores want us to know it, the toy manufacturers want us to know it and, often, the comments here on this blog want me to know it.

But once in a while a kid will tiptoe over the line, sometimes with intent, with curiosity and sometimes just because sparkly, purple things are nice to look at.

I was cruising the aisles of Toys R Us and was a little shocked to find myself in a sea of pink. Pink shelves, pink signs, pink products. And then a few aisles later I'm in a sea of blue.

It was a bit over-the-top. I understand that marketers feel very strongly that Beyblades are for boys. But I happened to be buying one for my daughter. Was I the only one in the boys' section buying a gift for a girl? Are there people buying gifts for boys in the girls' section?

I'm far beyond the need to read baby name sites or search for baby names - and yet the top names of the year always interest me. I know there are a lot of baby naming geeks out there as well.

So with fanfare... here are the top names, according to Babycenter.com, for 2011. You can definitely see some of the celebrity influence in there.

Have you seen the video of the two boys spreading flour all over their house? It has over 2 million hits on YouTube and keeps growing.

Seems that mom wasn't feeling well and headed to the bathroom for a longer than normal visit and forgot to lock the safety latch on the cupboard. Her boys drag the bag of flour out and make their own mosh pit. Her reaction as she finds the mess? She repeats "Oh my Gosh!" about 100 times, grabs her video camera and puts it on YouTube, ostensibly for her relatives.

I tune in to Saturday Night Live each week while my husband snores beside me just to catch Seth Myers on Weekend Update. (I know, we are a wild and crazy bunch!)

But this Saturday, through my sleepy haze, I heard Seth mention Toronto. He was taking a Toronto school to task for banning "hard balls" in the playground. He was wondering if the principal was going to put a hinge in the teeter-totter next. (Silly Seth, there hasn't been a see-saw in a school playground in years.)

As the kids get older, we are less often the family causing the scene with screaming tantrums and scolding parents and more often the family sitting smug, watching some other family fall to pieces.

Sadly, that was not the case today. Today was our turn and it was totally embarrassing.

When toddlers learn to walk it is with slow steps that slowly gain speed. Their bodies can not stop themselves from taking those first steps. And as a parent you stand idly by, encouraging them, nervously laughing, proudly clapping. They toddle, they waver and off they go - their first steps away from you. And then they fall and return to your arms. But soon they are taking longer walks away from you until one day you blink and they are a stinky tween begging to go downtown to hang out at the mall.

I'm standing in the schoolyard surrounded by five grade six boys with pleading eyes, cell phones in hand. Please can we take the subway to Dundas Square?

Bobby Montoya has been identifying as a girl since the age of two, despite being born with "boy parts". His family has always supported him whether it was his choice in toys or clothes, hairstyles or what he wanted to do with his time. When he wanted to join a Colorado Girl Scout troop, however, the group wasn't so understanding and turned him down.

The American Association of Pediatrics have revised their guidelines so that kids as young as four can be diagnosed with ADHD. They are expanding the range from four to 18, which is a much wider age spread than the previous recommendations of six to 12.

There is no definitive test for ADHD. The diagnosis is still dependent on purely observational means. So I can only imagine that parents all over are now obsessively watching their preschoolers' totally normal behaviour such as repetitively climbing up and down from their chair at mealtimes or running around the living room in circles knocking over the lamp.