I have to fess up that I have been miserable at trying to contribute to this site. Perhaps I could blame stressful job and stressful change of job and, most recently, unemployment (okay, admittedly, I do not have the stresses that many of you do while unemployed, so I will not complain). Perhaps I could blame the fact that I simply have not found more lesbian mom sites in other languages that most of you can’t read. Perhaps I can blame the fact that I haven’t gotten to many lesbian mom related questions from Hispanic women recently– I think that Julieta has long since taken over the category of go-to-person. That said, I won’t. I will just say I have been lazy and not sure what to write about. That, however, is coming to an end.

Since I still don’t know what to write about I thought of Liza’s suggestions post Blogher 2007. On my own blog I have had some success with weekly and biweekly features like weekly picture or posting as part of a topic community. Also, I was thinking that interaction is part of what makes LesbianFamily such a great site. Therefore, I am going to do I pilot run of a project I call “biweekly question”. This will be my space to pose a question for you, the esteemed reader who knows much more than I, to answer. (Keep in mind, if no one answers this will not work and I will dejectedly go back to writing on my blog– Is that a guilt trip or what?) To tag along with Mombian’s recent question about LGBT Children’s books in Spanish, I thought the first question should be:

What is your child’s/ or your favorite LGBT friendly book and why?

Feel free to answer either 1) in the comments or 2) on your own blog and then put a link to it in the comments. Thanks everybody!

There is a lot of chatter about inclusive stories for kids. While in school libraries in the US and Canada these books may be few and far between, they are much harder to track down in some other places (and in some other languages).
Gabi pointed out this amazing site where you can actually download stories for kids in Spanish. The page is called Stories for Diversity and is produced by the LGBT collective of Madrid, COGAM. According to Gabi, the majority of the .PDFs download without any problem.

I took a look at some of the stories and they are really very cute. Not to mention, some of them are simple enough for a parent with little Spanish to be able to read to her son or daughter.

I have been sadly and inexcusably absent from here for too long.  And while I’d like to make this my big comeback, the post to make all the silences worth it… this isn’t it.  I have no achingly beautiful or deeply thoughtful words for you.

What I do want to do is point you to someone else’s series that is definitely worth taking the time to read.  If you haven’t already, please check out Susan of Crunchy Granola’s Days of Four series (I liked to the first one, I think you can find them all just by hitting “next post” off of that one.)

Also,

congratulations to Two Moms are Better than One and Heretical Hedonism who both found out that they’re pregnant this week and to Shelli and Narda of Hydrangeas are Pretty for finalizing their adoption of Malka today.  And, finally, Dee and Shelly of 3 Dogs, 2 Moms, 1 Baby are going to get to meet their daughter, Riley, outside of the womb this weekend!

And… how could I have left off Rae finding out that she’s pregnant this week, too?  Sheesh, I need to do a better job at this… 

And, I can’t believe I left off Jenny’s pregnancy, too.  Crap, I need to be fired… I’m off updating links as we speak.

Following up on Lesbian Dad’s post Friday, I wanted to point out some other bloggers who have been talking about how it feels when you consider yourself a mother, but it’s your partner that’s pregnant or the one who gave birth.

Sarah at Journey of a Co-Mom de-briefs us on their Easter visit with her partner’s parents, and how it felt to be dismissed as her son’s mother by her in-laws.

Charlotte at Dos Mamas describes how she feels lost now that her job of getting S pregnant is done.   She feels like she doesn’t really have a place right now, and that feeling has been reinforced by the people who seem to consider S the only expectant mother worthy of special congratulations.

and Lo of Family O takes up the subject as well, describing her feelings around her shifting roles and the ways she’s being viewed by the people surrounding her family as they move further into Co’s pregnancy.

Finally, Lesbian Dad has something to say about the connection and love of a Baba to her children.

That connection, while you’re looking deep into your child’s eyes, wipes all the hurful comments and ignorant slights away.

If I missed a blog post or three, please comment and I’ll go wrangle them in, weekends aren’t exactly the most to blog surfing for me…

This is a tag-team post by j (her “voice” in italics) and Trista.

When I was a teenager, just beginning to come out to myself, I bought a book of lesbian short stories.  In the collection was the story “When it Changed” by Joanna Russ.  This story blew me away.  It encapsulated every amorphous feeling that I was having about the possibilities of creating a life with a woman.  Here, in this story, it was normal.  Natural.  It wasn’t that men were absent, it was that loving women and creating a life with one was normalized.  The women were stong and capable and they loved passionately.  There was possibility made manifest in a way that made me ache for the reality.  And then the story forcloses on that possibility, because we see that society only at the moment that everything changes, and suddenly that imperfect, hard place is revealed as a utopia disrupted.

I cried after reading that story the first time.  Not only because of the loss of that fictional utopia, but out of joy for seeing that life with a woman partner could be fulfilling and not the story of alienation and loss that had so often been thrust at me.  Over the years I’ve thought of that story with longing more than once.  Not for the post-apocalyptic lifestyle, or the separatist society it portrays, but because the women in that story had access to a technological process that allowed them to have children who were biologically the offspring of both women.

In If These Walls Could Talk 2, Ellen DeGeneres’ character exclaims in frustration and sadness how she wishes she could get her partner pregnant herself, without the tank and some unrelated person’s sperm.  Or something to that effect (it’s been a while since I’ve seen the show).  And oh how I’ve often felt that.  As much as Kristin and I love our known donor, how would our lives be if it were possible to impregnate each other with our own genetic material?  If Julia was biologically both of ours and no one could take her away from either of us just because we’re not her “real” mother? 

S and I have shed numerous tears during our ttc journey, and often times one of us will say “I wish I could/you could just get you/me pregnant.”  Perhaps knowing that this is not an option is part of the reason we keep saying it. I mean, plenty of straight infertiles have male factor as part of their issues, and I’m sure that in moments of a multitude of emotions, those same words are uttered.  In addition, I will admit some feelings of loss knowing that our children won’t look like S, and she has so many wonderful features, that I’d love to have combined with my genetics.

It seemed a possibility destined to remain on the scifi shelf at the library.

But now researchers have created immature sperm cells from bone marrow.

Scientists say they have successfully made immature sperm cells from human bone marrow samples.

If these can be grown into fully developed sperm, which the researchers hope to do within five years, they may be useful in fertility treatments.

The article talks about how the treatment would be used to help men who’ve been rendered sterile by disease or defect.  But I can see lesbians and transmen clamoring for this technology, too.  If they can make sperm from a male’s stem cells, why not a female’s?  The generation of lesbians right behind us, or at most my daughter’s generation, might be able to have children this way.  Transmen would be able to impregnate their partners with their own sperm.

I echo Trista’s wonderment about the possibility of creating sperm from female stem cells.  That’s not to say that this is something that I fully endorse, but I’m more curious about the male/governmental (worldwide) reactions to this science which could render them…obsolete.

Also, creating sperm from females would make the offspring guaranteed girls, and that just adds more complication and implications to the stew….

There are so many things to be “thought” about this discovery – it seems like a step beyond anything we’ve imagined could happen!  But is that such a great thing?

Discuss.

While I would have liked to herald my return to writing for Lesbian Family.org with a deeply heartfelt, moving piece, I’m still just too tired for that.  So instead I’ll ask a question.

Would you use a coupon on a first date?

This question was asked on queercents this week as part of their WWYD series.  To me, it seems like a non-issue: If I have a coupon I’ll use it.  If I’m not the one paying, I’d still offer it up.  I was surprised to see that most of the respondants (admittedly a small sample) said that they would not use a coupon on a first date.

This, to me, seems to take making a good impression too far.  What does it say about you that you would use a coupon on a first date?  And I’m not talking about planning your first date expressly so you can use a coupon, but hey, you’re going out, you happen to have a coupon for the place, why not use it?  So, I thought I’d ask the demographic of a different blog, this blog, to see if the answers differ.

So.  What would you do?  I’m curious now.  Would you use a coupon on a first date?  Why or why not?

Buying a house was one of the first things Kristin and I did when we decided that we were almost ready to start a family.  And, after months of searching, we found a house that was perfect.  Perfect.  Only… well, there was only one bathroom.  And the kitchen was terrible and dark and small and there was no dishwasher.  And there was no shower in the upstairs bathroom, only a tub.  And there was no laundry room.  But the most obviously worst thing in the house was the sparkly, asbestos, popcorn ceiling.

While looking at the house the part of me that was raised by a contractor came out in full force.  No 2nd bathroom?  We’ll put one in the basement.  Terrible kitchen?  My dad can help us tear a wall or two out and expand.  And so on through the list of deficiencies until we hit the popcorn ceiling.  I had an answer for that one, too.  “Oh, I have an aunt and uncle who had to remove that stuff themselves.  They said it was a pain, but it’s possible.  We’ll just take it down ourselves.”

Fast forward 2 years.  We’re actively trying to conceive our first child and Kristin, the bio mom-to-be, has decided that she will absolutely NOT bring a new baby home to the toxic stew that is our popcorn-ceilinged home.  I, on the other hand, have just about had enough of remodelling (and we hadn’t even done the kitchen yet) and had grown fond of the asbestos stars winking at me as I lay in bed at night.  Plus, I’d done some more reading on just what, exactly, it would take to get the stuff down.  I was not looking forward to the adventure.  I couldn’t exactly put my finger on just why I was so reluctant, though.

Turns out I have a bit of claustrophobia.  Claustrophobia that expressed itself in a gigantic problem when I was in all the protective gear and the giant gas-mask-like thing needed to keep the asbestos fibers out of my lungs.  It was summer.  It was hot and muggy in our plastic-lined house.  The plastic jumpsuit was clinging to me, and the air I was breathing in was the same temperature and humidity as the air I was breathing out.  I became absolutely convinced that I wasn’t getting any fresh oxygen. 

Now, Kristin and I had been sure, sure, that it would only take one session in all the gear to get the stuff down off the ceilings in our entire house.  After all, it comes off super easy when you spray it with water.  It should have taken no time at all.  So we only bought 1 set of disposable protective gear for each of us.  Stupid stupid stupid. 

So, I’m in the gear, in the toxic area.  There’s wet and cumpled asbestos everywhere.  Kristin’s working at getting the stuff down off the ceiling and I’m just standing there, trying to breathe.  I keep thinking about how I wanted to just paint over the stuff to seal it in.  I had decided that living with painted bumpiness was the best way to safeguard everyone’s health, instead of stirring up this kind of stuff in an effort to remove it.  I was being rational and Kristin was being the completely irrational one with her desire to REMOVE the asbestos instead of sealing it up.

I sat there, breathing faster and faster, convinced that I was suffocating.  So I did the only rational thing that could be done.  I pulled off my mask and protective head gear and took several big, deep breaths of the fetid (but slightly cooler) fibrous air.  After all, I was dying anyway, what difference the method?

That’s when Kristin looked over at me and noticed that I was breathing in asbestos air.  “PUT YOUR MASK BACK ON!” she yelled at me.  Of course I could barely hear her what with the mask she was wearing over her own face.  But my words, unfortunately, were quite clear.

“I HATE this.  I didn’t want to do this in the first place and now I’m going to die.  I’m going to die anyway.  I said we should just paint the stuff, we should have just painted the stuff! If you want to keep doing this, fine.  But I’m going somewhere I can die in peace!”  And I stormed out of the room and into the air lock we’d created out of plastic.  Where I divested myself of the protective gear and threw it away.  Through the airlock I could see Kristin staring at me incredulously.  She couldn’t believe that I just left her there to do this all by herself.  I should mention here that Kristin is only 5 foot 2 inches tall.  She couldn’t even really reach the ceiling, even using the step ladder that we’d bought for the occassion.  But I did.  I left her there, and she began scraping at the ceiling with a scraper attached to a big stick, paper-mache-like clumps of toxicity falling down onto her head.  Serves her right, I thought.  If I was dying the least she should have to suffer was getting thumped on the head with wet, gray, stinky pulp.  When she came out of there and found me dead from asbestosis and suffocation then she’d be sorry that she prioritized smooth ceilings over my health.

A few gulps of less-humid, non-asbestos-tainted air and my head began to clear and my heart began to slow down.  And then I felt really really dumb.  I felt like a complete asshole.  I WAS a complete asshole.  How could I do that?  Had I gone completely insane? So I rinsed off, got dressed, and drove back to the home repair store and bought several changes of protective clothing and mask filters for both of us.  And then I drove home to apologize to my wife (who, by the way, was really, really angry at me, the kind of anger that is cold, and I deserved all of it.)

Working in short shifts, taking breaks to talk myself through my panic attacks over the air thing, and leaving the enclosure entirely when I had to, we managed to get all the asbestos off the ceilings and cleaned up and properly disposed of.  And our ceilings look wonderful.  But still, that little endeavor nearly cost me my marriage even as it was a beginning step to expand our family.

I’m relating this story in part because of J’s post on stress (this was definitely one of the most stressful things about trying to add to our family, and yet oh so important to us to do) but also because I’ve been thinking about remodelling a lot.  Kristin and I are almost done with our house projects.  In fact, we’re so close to done that we’re going to focus on the yard this year instead of the house.  But Tex and Blondie are going in full force with their kitchen remodel (after just completing a bathroom remodel).  And Oz at The Bean Blog not only just completed a really cool project, but is also about to embark on a bathroom/bedroom remodel project that makes my own bathroom endeavors look like the equivalent of putting up wallpaper.  And, of course, there’s Estelle’s sun room addition from last December that still has me in knots of envy.

I’ll bet there’s others of you out there doing remodels and construction projects.  If you are, leave it in the comments and we’ll all come over and ooh and aaah at your war stories and pictures.  

Someone suggested to me that I write this week on trying to have a sex life with my partner while raising a toddler. I think she thought this would be a hard thing to do. Not the writing about it, goodness knows I can write about sex as long as I have to, but the managing of said sex life with a toddler in the home.

I think toddlers get a bad rap. Oh yeah, sure, they’re into everything, and everything they’re into is dangerous. One moment you’re pulling them off the back of the couch as they’re about to fling themselves into a plate glass window, and the next minute they’re demonstrating a genetic link to mice as they squeeze more of their body than should be physically possible through the tiny crack allowed by the baby latch into the space under the kitchen sink to reach the caustic, skin-melting, cleaning chemicals of doom. And all this before you’ve even managed to eat the celery in your breakfast Bloody Mary. But they’re hell of a lot easier, in my opinion, than infants. You don’t have to carry them everywhere, you don’t have to feed them from breast or bottle every couple hours and, most importantly, you don’t have to get up with them 6 times in the night only to start your day at 6 AM.

So, yeah, there are a lot of things you can’t do with a toddler in the house (you can’t leave bras and shoes lying around, you can’t leave toilet paper unguarded, and you can’t leave large glasses of water sitting on the coffee table) but sex isn’t one of those things.

Now that we’re finally catching up on our sleep, and now that bed time for Julia is really bedtime (THANK THE GOOD LORD ABOVE!) Kristin and I are no longer forced to try and have sex in the snatched, golden, and all too few moments of time between us putting her down and her waking to realize that she has been abandoned. I don’t know about you, but if my lover is urging me “faster! faster!” I’m hoping that I’m on the giving end of things and that she’s really into it, and not that I’m on the receiving end and our super mommy ears just heard the ominous intake of breath that precedes a scream of infant outrage.

No, now that Julia’s a toddler, the whole night stretches before us like a starry coverlet of velvet possibility into which we eagerly roll ourselves and… most of the time, fall asleep. But we could be having sex, and that’s the important part. Also important to note: it’s only “most of the time” now and not all of the time, as it used to be not that many months ago.

I actually think this might be the easiest time for parents to have worry-free sex. The toddler’s in a crib and can’t get out unless we get her out. She can’t ask embarrassing questions, or repeat the equally embarrassing answers to whomever will listen to her. She can’t burst in on us, and she can’t know what those sounds are that are coming through the wall, the white noise machine, and a muffling hand.

But I could be wrong. What do you think? When did your sex life return, and at what ages did it get difficult again?

How do those of you who have two careers and babies/small children manage it?

This has been the subject of some recent heated discussion in the art-sweet/pili household and after trying to organize my thoughts on the issue into a coherent post far too many times, I’ve decided to wimp out throw the question out to our vast and extensive LesbianFamily audience and seek your wisdom.

I’ve also added some new links… go check out this week’s new (to me) blogs:

Amy and Melissa’s Baby Blog (TTC)

Bebe’s Cache (Expecting)

Other Motherhood (babies/nonbio)

Roll Playing with Kids (little kids)

I’ve decided to add a news ticker to my life, using keywords like “lesbian” and “parenting”. This week, I received 85 notices that Jen*ifer Anist*n and C*urtney C*x were going to kiss onscreen. How exciting! *rolls eyes*

Yet I did come across some interesting news links and offer them up for you this weekend in addition to Trista’s great weekend reading.

If you missed it, Mombian posted a story last week from the Mail and Guardian Online that asks, Why are Pregnant Lesbians scary?

Across the pond, government ministers in the UK are moving towards a decision that would make Catholic (and other faith based) adoption agencies comply with a new anti-discrimination law, which would require them to place children with gay and lesbian families.

Again in the UK, My So Called Gay Life reports that 3% of gays and lesbians intend to adopt in the next 5 years.

In response to this ongoing issue in the UK, this story states that adoptions by gays and lesbians seems to have become less of a contentious issue in the US.

As many of you may have already seen, US VP Dick Cheney made a few waves this week, responding (or actually, not responding) to comments about his daughter, her partner and his future grandchild on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (video included).

For those Oprah fans out there, this Monday, January 29th, her show will feature “Extraordinary Families” including a family with two dads.

In Sweden, a proposal has been forwarded that would allow lesbian mothers equal custodial rights to their children conceived outside of the country or in private arrangements (known donors?). Also, a section would be added to the law allowing for children conceived with donor sperm/eggs to have access to the identities of these donors.

In old(ish) news, a second state in Mexico, Coahuila, has extended legal statues to same-sex partnerships.

In Kenya, LGBT folks have been making headlines, demanding rights and thinking about ways to become parents.

Two recent projects by the NCLR (National Centre for Lesbian Rights) have been launched: to support low income LBGT families, and to provide legal education training for lawyers dealing with same-sex parental issues in Florida.

And finally, a story that characterizes how families are being redefined (the two moms in this story are members of a lesbian moms group in our city).

Happy reading!