Archive | May, 2007

Farmer’s Market find

…a coupla pregnant lesbians! Wish them well! I knew they were lesbians because of the tell-tale Mich Fest hoodie thing. They knew I was because of what I had my daughter in:

It pays to advertise.

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Weekend bonus shot, 05.26.07


Mother and son vocalizing, Berkeley, CA.

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It’s a Cheney!

happygrandparents

Eeek! What’s wrong with this picture? Right! No parents!

More on the the Mary n’ Heather baby news, along with the ACTUAL official White House photo of the proud kin, from Pam Spaulding at the Blend and her berth at Pandagon. The Family Pride Blog has a piece on it, along with ample community chit-chat. And Dana at Mombian provides a synopsis of media coverage, from closeting to bumbling to — surprise! — factually accurate.

My only two cents on it today: May amor vincit omnia.

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Reading is fun

[Heavy work week = images > text. Lo siento.]

The lil’ monkey and her buddy CoCo had an extended and fun-filled reading session during our recent visit to the southland (a.k.a. L.A.). I was supplying them a steady stream of books — you’d be amazed at how the pages just fly by when you aren’t encumbered by the words on them! — and had picked out their next batch, only noticing after I’d plucked them from the bookshelf that I’d grabbed a Ninja Turtles one. I handed it to CoCo, six months more worldly-wise than our daughter, with the muttered reasoning that maybe they might be “scary turtles” to her.

Yeah, I have a fat streak of overprotectiveness; so sue me. I’m a street-legal parent now, after the adoption, so I’m ready. Anyway, she did have a rough patch after we read an abridged and generously illustrated version of Alice in Wonderland. Everything was fine until Alice drank that potion and got gi-normous. The picture of the tripped-out Alice, arms and legs bulging out of windows of the White Rabbit’s house after she exploded: that was scary ! I got nightmares!

Anyway. Forget, at your peril, that your two-and-a-half year old will record absolutely everything you say, even when it’s sotto voce and mostly directed to yourself.

After I handed them the books, lil’ monkey leaned over to CoCo and said, “Actually, turtles are very nice.”

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She loves me, she loves me lots

Sure, the addition of the second kid definitely represented an exponential, not arithmetic jump in parental labor. And the toddler + infant combo can be tremendously daunting at times, when there’s just one of us and the both of them are simultaneously at the apex of need, (toddler’s needs: 75% emotional; infant’s: 75% physical; both of them, at the pinnacle of their own special misery: 99% piercingly vocal). And after four months we’re still in the weeds; the improvement now is simply that we get clear views up out of them regularly, so we know it’s not all weeds for as far as the eye can see.

But it’s so clearly worth all the fatigue of these early months. Because apart from the phenomenal blessing that “me boy, me sweet boy” is, simply on his own — and that would be reason enough to slog through these weeds — it’s clear that they love the bejesus out of each other even now. And that, people, is a sight to behold. The lil’ peanut beams outrageously whenever his big sister approaches him, and just this morning I swear I thought the lil’ monkey was going to faint from an overdose of her own lovey dovey feelings. Really, she was swooning. I watched a two-and-a-half year old swoon.

Love: nothin’ like it.

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Weekend bonus shot, 05.19.07


Bath time with friends, Los Angeles, CA.

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Join a global women’s chit-chat

imow

“Tilt!,” an essay I posted here some months ago, has been recently republished online as a part of an online exhibit at the International Museum of Women’s Imagining Ourselves Project. The International Museum of Women (IMOW) is a “museum without walls” which sponsors events and exhibits online. (Here’s a March, 2006 piece on the IMOW in the San Francisco Chronicle.) The Imagining Ourselves Project provides a venue in which women from around the world share stories, images, and responses to them, all online. Here’s some more about it, from their website:

The goals of Imagining Ourselves are to increase young women in leadership positions, to connect our esteemed partners (such as the Global Fund for Women and the World YWCA) to a broad audience, and to increase international community among this first global generation of women. The magic happens when young women are able to form connections across international boundaries—and use those connections to improve each other’s lives.

The project has received rave reviews and endorsements. A mini-exhibit previewed to international delegates at the United Nations Beijing +10 conference in 2005, and has since toured the world. Over 60 distinguished leaders of from around the globe have signed on to be ambassadors for the project, as have major international organizations such as Amnesty International and the World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides.

The Parenting subtheme (part of a larger theme on Motherhood) includes pieces (text or image) by women from the US, Iran, South Korea, Nepal, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Guatemala, and Mexico. Mine is one of two by lesbian parents, though my piece is a tale of woe about an exasperated parent and a more exasperated child (and the existential angst at the core of that exasperation). All of which mostly says, about lesbian parenthood, that in many ways it’s as exotic as a diaper or a sippy cup. A message I’m glad to continue to promote.

I encourage you to mosey over there, and if you have the time, log in and converse and exchange insights with women from around the world.

The IMOW is also running a Mother’s Day Photo Contest at Flickr. Here’s how they describe it:

We are looking for original and striking images depicting motherhood and what Mother’s Day means to you. We encourage entries from all corners of the world, in both rural and urban settings. We expect to receive images that represent motherhood, maternity, pregnancy, mother relationships and everything in between.

I heartily encourage us lesbomums et al. to represent.

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Happiness is having an auntie

…who looks at the world from your unique vantage point,

and who takes The Sound of Music as seriously as you do,

even if she does suffer from the occasional lapse in focus.

[Happy Birthday Auntie Rache! XXOO!]

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