My Little Baby Girl and the Big Wide World of Gender Performance

I have a small roster of baby and mommy blogs that I check through every day, and today I read something on one of them that made me a little miffed.  A mother of one 11 month old baby girl is pregnant with her second child.  A boy this time.  She was answering a commenter's question about where she got her baby barrettes, and bemoaned the fact that her new baby boy wasn't going to be able to rock the fancy headgear that her daughter can. 

My somewhat irked, immediate knee-jerk reaction was "why not?"  Why can't your son wear head decorations that keep his hair out of his face.  Is it the colour? The flowers attached?  And why was this statement separated from the rest of the paragraph, and bolded?  And as equally as important as the restrictions this meaning has for the unborn baby boy, what does it mean for her daughter?  My mind was racing as I began imagining all of the boxes and guidelines her daughter would be placed in as well.  Maybe there are clothes she can't wear, or sports she can't play.  Its strange and sad to find such a restrictive statement on an otherwise modern and progressive blog. 

Which of course made me think about Amelia.  The toddler years, though still distant, terrify me.  How am I going to manage mommyhood and safely raising a healthy young girl and instill my sense of gender equity at the same time?  There are so many things I want to teach my daughter:
1. The arbitrariness of "girl" and "boy" specific clothes
2. The availability to her of all and any sports and activities she wants to try
3. The difference between sex differences and gender differences, and most importantly
4. How to feel confident in herself, no matter what she wears/does.

I'm sure the unnamed mommy on the blog I read would want all those things for her daughter as well, but I believe it starts with everything, and anything that comes up.  Barrettes play an important role too! They have to, or else we get a snowball effect into everything else.