babies, babies everywhere

All my friends are having babies (I recently went to a baby shower with another baby at it!), and it's come to my attention that some of my mental representations of babies are different than other people's:

1) I think babies should properly be referred to as "it." I don't consider them gendered until age 2 or so. Once they have toy preferences for trucks versus dolls (and they do, according to some people I babysat for that bought both trucks and dolls before their children were born), then they can become gendered.

2) Very much related, I think of babies as pets that eventually grow up to be people. When do they become people? Well, I'm a linguist- when they start talking, of course! Interestingly enough, although I don't think of animals as having language, when a baby starts talking like Coco the gorilla, I do consider the baby to already have language (me banana eat eat banana yum.) That's because I'm optimistic that the baby will go on to develop more language.

3) I don't consider a "mom" to be just anyone who happens to have a baby. Just as the baby takes a couple of years to become a person, the woman who has the baby takes a couple of years to become a "mom." Actually, my mental representation of a mom is a woman above the age of 35 who wears pleated pants and makes desserts, who may or may not actually have children. (Sorry, mom.)