"She's a Girl"

I know this is mostly my fault, and it usually doesn't bother me much, but why can't people figure out that Mara is a girl? I can understand if you just see her out somewhere, and she's wearing green or blue or something...you might think boy. It's hard to say at this age. And usually I won't correct people if they just say something in passing. I'm sure I've mistakenly thought a baby was the opposite sex too (although I would never say something one way or the other if I wasn't sure!).

But say you're at an appointment...and they call her name to be seen. MARALYN. And then proceed to refer to her as "he" and "him" for several minutes until being corrected. Hmmm. This happened to us the other day. Did they really think we named our boy Maralyn? Or did they just forget her name that quickly, and go by the color of the outfit and assume?

I'm not the type of person to dress my daughter in pink or feminine outfits every day. At the same time, I wouldn't put her in something that said "boy" on it. She has plenty of pink girly things, but she has a lot of neutral type outfits too. I like bright colors, and I'm not a big fan of pink, so it happens. She doesn't usually wear bows or headbands, and she doesn't have enough hair for pigtails or barettes.

I don't need people to see her and automatically associate a gender to her. She's a baby. (But that's a whole separate tangent that I won't go off on right now...) And like I said, it doesn't usually bother me. But when someone knows her name, I expect them to at least make the connection. It would be one thing if she had a gender neutral name, but Maralyn is pretty clearly a feminine name! And I'd much rather someone ask than to just assume...