Summer Summary

Thanks everybody who filled out or passed on the LambdaLegal survey! And who asked how I was doing!I'm doing good, just not doing good at finding time for blogging.

My Sunshine is doing great. She is a cheerful little one, who often delights us with her expressions of sheer joy. She is a very big 9 month old baby who crawls and stands and eats solids. How'd that happen?! She doesn't talk much or say a lot of consonants (how much should I worry about those milestone charts?) but loves to interact. She does not sleep through the night, not even close. She wakes up several times just distraught. Not like "I want milk, I want comfort" but like.....distraught. Its so upsetting. And then each morning, she smiles and plays with her toys while we stumble around looking for caffeine.

Lovely partner is on maternity leave this summer and she loves that. She is shocked at how much fun she is having and how little she cares about missing work. Yesterday she told me she might want to be a housewife after all. (Okay, so that is two of us now, please send lotto tickets) Her maternity leave also greatly simplifies our general household stress level.

We had fun at Pride with Sunshine. We have a Lesbian Moms group. I think about being a lesbian about 90% less time then I think about being a Mom, though I see the way our queerness shapes many aspects of our parenting lives. Where we live, who we want to spend time with, how we worry. We frequently get asked all those questions lesbian moms talk about "What do you call yourselves?" (Who is Mommy vs. Momma etc) We get many questions about the donor's ethnicity and especially his size. It is not too big a problem right now. I know it will be harder as Sunshine starts to learn about homophobia. That is the part I hate.

Here's some things that would have been helpful for me to know earlier:

*Having a newborn is NOT what having a baby is like. It is what having a newborn is like. Knowing this would've saved me a lot of panic!

*It would've been helpful to know Sunshine earlier-ha! Then I think I would've handled newborn stress better. It was HER! Not some screaming ball of need.

*The damage that TTC can cause on a relationship between partners is not necessarily solved once the baby arrives. I neglected my relationship because of my TTC obsession. That decision has costs. Now I've got a lot of restoration work to do.

*Babies need to be a certain age/size before using booster seats in bistros. Request highchair. (You don't want to know how I learned this, except I will say I never felt like a worse Mom)

*Summer is better then winter. Okay, I ALWAYS knew that but life is such AMAZINGLY easier when you don't have to bundle a baby before you go outside.

Best wishes for a happy summer, everyone!