Since you all keep growing here, as a community, and/or your evolving family-making and -raising stories migrate your blogs from one “category” to another, I’m thinking this simple update will be a regular feature. So long as the wee chunk of time it takes continues to make itself accessible.

Also, since no one called out “No, no, a thousand times no! Don’t alphabetize the listings!” I’m going to just slowly alphabetize them. And I’ll notate the freshest batch of listings on any given page with a Recently added! jobbie. Since that was the benefit of the non-alphabetized list: E-Z access to recent additions.

Speaking of which! New to LesbianFamily listings this past week are:

• Specific Destiny just started their conception journey, and has joined the prodigious LesFam TTC ranks.
• And Ramblings of the Other Mother writes about raising her and her partner’s Big Kid, as they all anticipate the any-day-now celebrate the birth of their new baby. You can also find Ramblings in Expecting (but not for long!), and Non-Bio.

Welcome to you both! And readers, do drop in, and tell ‘em LesFam sent you. Changes in status this past week:

• The Chronicles of Conception is now chronicling gestation! So they can be found in Expecting, rather than TTC.
• And moving right along, Possible Maybe is now talkin’ Babies!, and so will no longer be found amongst those Expecting.

Congrats all around!

…consequently, your Monday changelog is on hold coming up soon. Several blogs joined the fold before the comments feature on LesbianFamily went dark (or A.W.O.L., or on an unscheduled break, or on a walkabout, wherever they are). Unfortunately, it was their chronological order in the “Moderated comments” queue that helped us identify them. And now they’re all off wherever the comments feature is. Hopefully behaving themselves. recovered.

Sorry for the extended inconvenience! We hope to begin to be able to hear from you again look forward to hearing from you soon now.

As you can see (if you click on any of the comments links), our comments feature is currently out making itself a sandwich. Or something to this effect. It borrowed the family car and is now A.W.O.L. We’re hoping it doesn’t get itself into too much trouble and that it comes home soon. We won’t be angry when it comes home, we promise.

But meanwhile: your comments aren’t being received, and haven’t been since sometime earlier this week. We definitely hope that your old comments didn’t get lost behind the bleachers at the football game or wherever our comments feature got itself to.

If you’d like to have your blog listed, we’re hoping you can just hang on a bit and try again soon, when this episode will all be in our pasts.

Thankyouverymuch.

Welcome to another in the occasional series of Monday LesbianFamily changelogs. If indeed I’m using the term correctly (changelog, that is; occasional is all in the eye of the beholder).

We have some more blogs to draw your attention to from the Egregious Oversight File, followed by a nice smattering of recent requests for listings.

From the Egregious Oversight File, allow me to introduce you to:

• Barb’s ROYAL website. Barb asked to be listed under Little Kids back in, oh, NOVEMBER of last year. Oops.
• Then we have PBX makes four, who are TTC, and made the request back in NOVEMBER too. By the looks of things we’ve still caught them whilst they’re TTC. Though our dearest wishes for them are that they find themselves Expecting soon enough. It’s a journey.
• Another NOVEMBER orphan (see the trend? we all went to heck in a handbasket right around the winter holidays! surprised? didn’t think so!) is Scribble and Scribe, who had asked to be listed under the Big Kids section of LesbianFamily, in addition to the Grown Kids section, where she’d been listed that month.
• Finally, this week’s Longest Wait on the Bench award goes to Suburban Dyke, who asked in JANUARY of last year to be cross-listed in both Little Kids and Non-Bio pages. We initially got her listed on Little Kids, but just now added her to the Non-Bio crowd. Welcome!

That does it for the Egregious Oversight File, or the EOF for the AO (Acronym Oriented). One day we will empty that dadgum EOF for good! Hope springs inernal!

And now, here are updates and requests for listings from this past week:

• 1 in Vermillion has joined the TTC list, as has Two Hot Mamas and Eat, Poop, Love. Welcome to LesbianFamily.org, and abundant fertility to you all!
• The Commune Child has transitioned from TTC to Expecting. Mazel tov!
• Probably Boring Ramblings moved from TTC to Expecting to Babies! Not all in the space of one week. You know, over time. But this last week she updated us as to her new status. Congrats!
• Finally, wake up naked has joined both the Babies! and Non-Bio pages.

A rousing LesFam welcome to all the new folks. Happy trails — and minimal trials! — to everyone.

Anyone wishing to add their blog to the listings should just leave a comment on the page they’d like to be listed on. Enough folks ask that, as they leave a comment, that I’ve not only mentioned that here, but added a note to that effect at the top of each blog listing page. Hope that helps clarify. (Also, I’ve added a modest little “list last updated” notation at the bottom of each list, so that folks know how fresh it is.)

I’m tempted to add another LesbianFamily.org Spring Cleaning To Do list item (under “clear out sad sacks from the EFO”): alphabetize the various page listings. That is, unless a mountain of folks write in to say “No! No! A thousand times no!”

Some lists, most notably the Trying To Conceive list, are just so huge that it’s hard to find a given blog. It’s convenient to see who’s been added recently, and at the moment one can just peep the bottom of the list to find out. But the same thing might be accomplished if we add a bold, red “Recently added!” notation to the blogs posted in any given month. Goddess knows I don’t want to add to the administrative overhead (eek!). But I think the pages should be easy to browse, too, for new folks.

What do you think? Any other relatively modest improvements you’d like to see?

Today we have five new additions to the LesbianFamily family, three of which have been languishing, un-posted, for months on end following their initial requests. I’ve checked, though, and fortunately they’re all still (a) lesbians, and (b) forming and raising families.

First, from the blogs who collected mounds of dust in the Egregious Oversight File, allow me introduce you to:

• Grunt ‘n’ Squeak, which wins the top Egregious Oversight prize for languishing in obscurity since NOVEMBER. Of LAST YEAR. They’re listed in Babies! and Multiples.
• 2moms2babies only languished since DECEMBER. They’re listed in Babies! and Multiples as well.
• Finally we have chasing the tree, which has only languished since JANUARY. That was just yesterday, it seems! O how time flies. They’re listed in Babies!

I’m not quite sure I can guarantee that we’ve managed to list their blogs while their babies are still babies, but there they are.

Early April requests for listings are:

• chasing the tree, listed in both Big Kids and Multiples.
• The Reluctant Blogger listed in both Big Kids and Non-bio.

Lucky for us, these are Big Kids blogs, so I feel confident that their big kids are still big. Probably — this is just a guess here — they’re even bigger now than they were last week, when the requests rolled in.

Please extend all these gals and their young a spirited LesFam welcome, and pay a visit to them and their online lives. Meanwhile, I will extend a sheepish LesFam apology to the Egregious Oversight File residents for their long wait on the bench.

If any of you made a long ago request that is still unfulfilled, please leave a note on this post and I’ll see to it that your blog is rescued from the LesFam Egregious Oversight File. Likewise, if any of you would like to see your blog shifted — i.e., from TTC to Expecting, Expecting to Babies!, Babies! to Little Kids, or Little Kids to Big Kids — do tell. Until we get a raft of intern elves (who aren’t distracted by their own kids!), we’ll continue to rely on you, Gentle Reader, to help us keep the LesbianFamily.org site kempt.

Many thanks.

Whether or not your local weather patterns agree, it’s coming on Spring, as the Vernal Equinox, Purim, and Easter will be only too glad to tell you. A whistle-stop Google tour tells me that it was Eirene (or Irene) who was the Greek goddess of peace and the season of spring (shown at right with Plutus, symbol of wealth, which is news to me since I thought he was symbol of either long-eared Disney dogs or demoted planets).

Good morning, Irene! What better goddess to invoke at this time, just on the heels of the five year annivesary of the Iraq war and the U.S. casualty count tipping over the 4,000 mark.

With spring comes news of more lesbians invoking or bearing the happy results of fertility. May our families contribute to more peace in the world. Here are this week’s additions to or shufflings of LesbianFamily blogs:

• Shrike & Whozat have (tentatively) moved from TTC to Expecting, as has the Sarahbean half of the Joulybean’s baby blog team (the Joulybean half is still TTC). Huzzah, and good health to you gals. Or, to quote S&W, “Squeeeee!”
• Creating a Miracle has joined the TTC crowd, having recently begun their IVF journey.

A rousing LesbianFamily welcome to the two new blogs, and a congrats to Joulybean and Sarahbean!

Nearly A dozen new listings have been added to the blogs here at Lesbian Family. Many are gals Trying to Conceive; one’s a move from Trying to Expecting (yay!), another from Expecting to Babies! (yay!). Plus we have several more new baby blogs, and one about both little and big kids.

New blogs listed on the Trying page are:

• Joulybean’s baby blog
• Our TTC Blog
• puffer and the baby fish
• Word to Your Mother(s)
• Insert Metaphor
• And Baby Makes 8

Star in My Heart is a newly listed blog by a non-bio mom, listed on the Non-Bio page, though they’re also TTC right now.

PBX makes four has moved from TTC to Expecting (congrats!), joining new listing A Tale of Two Mamas, which is also cross-listed at Interracial Families.

Nhamo in Paradise has moved from Expecting to Babies!, joining new listings The Frankenbaby Chronicles and Together is a Wonderful Place to Be! Mazel tov to you all.

Finally, All For The Love Of You has joined both the Little Kids and Big Kids listings.

A hearty LesbianFamily welcome to everyone who’s newly listing their blog here! If you haven’t already met these gals, mosey on over and set a spell.

My Custom Story is a site where you can order totally customized photo board books. What a neat way to make sure our kids see positive images of their families from a very young age! It would be great if they had gay and lesbian families represented in their example books, but it looks like all of the examples come from the owner’s family, so I guess I can’t expect her to make up a lesbian auntie getting pregnant with donor sperm just to be inclusive!

Speaking of sperm (what a segue!), Sfrajett has a great post about buying sperm, contemplating parenthood, and figuring out definitions of family. It’s been up for a while, but I just read it and found it very thought-provoking. Good luck to you & GF as you venture down this wild and wacky path to parenthood, Sfrajett!

On to my rant of the day.

Smashing, bashing, and crashing… “the 3 important stages of boyhood?”

That’s what Tonka says in a multi-page ad in Parents. “From the way they talk to the way they play, boys are just built different! And Tonka (of course) has the blueprint for the fun they love. The TONKA [no product placement here, thank you] grows with your child so he can sort, walk, and ride to his heart’s content.”

Because girls don’t sort, walk, or ride? Let alone smash, bash or crash?

“Boys don’t just like to be active, they need to be.”

I am the mom to one very very active little boy. One little boy who seems to be determined to conform to every stereotype - whose head whips around when he sees a truck go by, who has never met a ball or a wheeled object he doesn’t like - but that doesn’t mean that the little girls I know don’t need to be active too.

“Enjoy all the wild, wonderful moments and remember, you’re part of a very special group of women - you’re the mom of a BOY!” Gag.

Playing to these stereotypes may sell toys - though not to me - but it also hurts kids. It hurts little girls who want to run and make noise. And it hurts little boys who don’t.

Shame on you, Tonka.

Note that I’m not even mentioning that aside from one possibly-Asian looking kid, there are absolutely NO children boys of color in the whole 8.5 page spread? Oh wait, I guess I did just mention that.

Doesn’t this picture make you miss summer? And want to take a beach vacation right now? We’re in drought hell, but it’s gray and foggy here, and I seriously wish I were whereever the Round family was:

As I’m catching up on blogs… (Who am I kidding? I’m never caught up) I thought I’d share a few pieces of happy news from the past month in the lesbianfamily blogosphere. 

If you’re not on here and you should be, please comment, and I’ll update: 

Arrivals:

The Muriels welcomed Charlotte Kathleen on September 26. Congratulations!

On the Way:

Thwarted Repeatedly got her wife pregnant!

Infertile Pediatrician is pregnant… and so is her partner… with twins!

There are more twins on the way at RaJen Creation.

Mommies in the making are in the making for real now!

Mommy Too is to be a mommy.

And the dos in dos mamas is expecting!

I updated the TTC category, so if you asked to have your blog on there, you should be. Sometime maybe I’ll get to the other categories…