Grunt 'n' Squeak

Poor poor blog

I've let my poor poor blog, and the three people reading it, languish for far too long.  Maybe its because the weather has turned hot and lazy, sort of like me, and it seems that we go day in and day out with no new news.  The boys' interesting milestones are becoming fewer and farther between, and for the past six months now my days have been a blur of preparing food, followed by cleaning up the food, followed by slumping into my recliner with a knitting project and a giant sigh of relief for having made it through another day.  I sound like I'm 80 years old.  Some days I feel 80 years old.  Poor boys, for having such an unmotivated mother!  I'm sorry little guys, that I'm not out changing the world for the better, or thinking up brilliantly entertaining toddler activities. 

But my boys have not remained unchanged in all this time.  It has just become more gradual, and I am failing to document all the bits and pieces of change.  Somewhere along the way, my little babies have become little boys.  I look at them and wonder where all the hair on their heads came from, and when the cheeks on their faces finally became narrower than the cheeks on their butts.  I'm wondering when they let go of the furniture to walk, and when they stopped tripping over their own feet. 

We are going to see Grandmas and Grandpas for the Fourth of July weekend, and I'm so excited to share my little guys with them.  We haven't seen the grandparents since April, which doesn't seem so long ago when you are all grown up, but leave a toddler for three months before you get back to him, and you will be meeting an all new person.  Words are slowly starting to spill out of my children, though still not as many as they should be saying.  Grayson is becoming a regular parrot, ready to repeat anything I say, though he's still not using most of his vocabulary in any constructive way.  Ben is still talented in repeating my tone, though not my exact words.  I got him to sing some baby blues with me yesterday, which makes me laugh even now when I think about it...you know: da NA na na NA, got me a dirty bumb...da NA na na NA, and I stink like my poo....da NA na na NA I'd learn to go in the toilet....but I'm not yet even two!!!! I got me the stinky butt...stinky butt... stinky butt blues!   I can't remember the words I made up, but I did get him singing along to the da NA na na NA parts which was really cute.

We had some friends to visit this weekend, and they noticed right off that Ben has an incredible basketball shot, with absolutely no training whatsoever.  It rocked that someone besides me noticed that about him. I already knew he had a great arm, but someone who may actually know something about sports was impressed.  They were also impressed by what great kids they are.  And they are great kids!  They are both friendly and excited to meet people.  I haven't pressed too much of the whole stranger danger business on them yet, and they love to meet people and make friends, though they definitely look to Amy and I to help them decide which people are ok to talk to.  Anyone who will help them build megablock towers is automatically cool, and I totally agree.   Grayson is still my explorer and fiddler.  He wants to know how stuff works.  I can forsee him being the child who will take apart all of our electronics on his quest for knowledge.  Ben will be standing by telling him he's gonna get in trouble. 

They are both too cute for words, and exasperating nearly-two-year-olds.  They keep me on my toes, and make me look at the world in entirely new ways.  They remind me that losing my patience never solves the problem, and that sometimes, when you don't have to be in a hurry, it's best not to rush things.  They are awesome little boys, and I can't wait to see what's next!

What's that smell?

Ok, in my house, that answer to that burning and urgent question could be most anything, but right now it's me, and my dripping gym clothes that I'm too tired to peel off.  Or if you open the fridge, there's definitely something odoriferous, and when I find it, it will certainly be a liquefied version of some former solid (or perhaps a solidified version of something once liquid), but again, I'm too tired to look for it.

I've been going to the gym for the last six weeks desperate for a change in routine, for a boost in energy, and mostly, to be able to hand my children off to someone else for an hour or two.  It has been going surprisingly well as far as the kids go.  This is their only exposure to a daycare type situation, and today was the first day that they had to come get me to say that one of my kids needs me.  Thankfully they waited until I was 45 minutes into a spinning class, so I couldn't be irritated that I'd be missing my workout.  If I could bribe my kids to act up at a specific time, I'd ask them to save me from spinning class at 45 minutes.  That's when my reserves are failing, and I'm spending more time watching the second hand on the clock tick by than paying attention to whatever the instructor is doing.   Poor Ben was crying inconsolably, and wasn't calming down, so I needed to come save him.  That kid seems to need a lot of saving lately, which genuinely stinks.

I awoke at 6 am today, for once to a relatively silent house instead of a crying child.  Most mornings I awake to a crying child (Ben), and usually it's not quite as early as 6 am.  I thought I'd get out of bed and tackle the mountain of clean laundry that we've been tripping over in the hallway for weeks, and start sorting and folding it.  And lucky me, there was a re-broadcast of an Indigo Girls interview that I wanted to hear on Satellite radio starting at just the same time.  So I got out of bed, went in the bathroom to pee, and got out of the bathroom just in time to hear Ben start screaming like a stuck pig (I've realized that's the part of his cry that is most annoying, he sounds just like a wounded little piglet with a blow horn.)  I couldn't help it, I started to cry.  I was going to have a quiet hour to myself, and get something done, and it all went out the window.  Luckily Amy was still home getting ready for work, and when she saw my pathetic state, took over soothing the little monster for an hour, delaying her work day. 

It seems that lately Ben is stuck in a permanently agitated state, and his mood only swings from irritated and annoyed to grade A tantrum that won't be stopped by anyone or anything.  Consequently I I find my own mood varying on a similar scale.  The sources of his tantrums and fits are usually hard to pin down, and the only thing I can think that might be the underlying cause for most of his behavior are his two-year molars.  They are trying to come up, but I can tell it's going to be a long, slow process.  Damn you baby teeth, damn you!!!!  Or it could just be that he's nearing two, and they don't call it "terrible" for nuthin'.

Grayson, the little stinker, is not so innocent when it comes to keeping me on my toes either.  Yesterday, I'd put them down for a nap rather early (yet again, Ben was upset over having to share toys, and the state of affairs in the middle east) and I'd left them to their own devices in their cribs a little longer than I probably should have after they woke up.  When I went in to get them, Grayson had unzipped his zip-front pj's down to his knee, and had his diaper open and hanging out the front.  I could tell he'd probably peed a little with his diaper down, but his bed was dry, and his clothes needed to be changed anyway.  I didn't think much of it until I got finished changing him, and had Ben on the changing table.  That's when Grayson started trying to hand me something off the floor.  It was his own poop.  Seems he'd made himself a little present, opened his diaper, got it out, threw it on the floor in front of his crib, and was just trying to help me clean up a little by handing it to me later when I didn't notice it right away.  Gross kiddo, truly gross.  Lucky me, it had all landed on his blanket, which he'd also thrown out of the crib, and clean up was minor.  But still, oh so gross, and here I am sharing his antics with you.  Yum. 

I can't wait for next week, Amy is off work, and we are going away.  We are taking the boys to the beach to go camping, and hopefully the only thing we will smell is salty air and good food. 

Preggie preggie everywhere...

Now lest you all get in a dither over our secret baby-making efforts, let me just start by saying that no, there are no pregnant bellies at our house.  No way, no chance, no current efforts toward such an end.  But it does seem that we are surrounded on all sides by pregnant friends and family, and one can't help but feel a little tug in the uterine regions, especially since we hope to be walking that road again at some point. 

I am a little jealous of all these growing families, and at the same time, I am thrilled beyond belief for them.  Pregnancy was good to me, and not just because I had a healthy, relatively problem-free pregnancy with the boys.  The selfish attention whore in me loved being the focus of generosity and concern.  I liked that people called me just to genuinely ask how I was feeling, and strangers wanted all the details.  I liked feeling like a super woman, carrying twins, and working nearly full time practically to the week they were born, and knowing that for once my body was working for me, instead of against me.  I liked that Amy went out of her way to make sure I was comfortable, and had everything I needed at my fingertips.  Who wouldn't love that?  Ok, so I've blissfully forgotten about the excruciating pain in my stretching pelvis, the swelling, the inability to breath, sleep, eat, walk, reach my feet, or go less than 15 seconds without running to the bathroom to pee.  But I dealt with all of that as it came, because I liked the rest of it so much. 

The best part was feeling like it was Christmas Eve every day for 8 months.  The anticipation of knowing that something really great was coming my way, but I didn't know exactly what, was magical to me.  I knew I was having two little boys, but what would they look like, how would they act, what kind of mom would I be, how would I be a different person having known them?  I got equally excited knowing I got the share these little creatures with those whom I love, sort of like knowing on Christmas Eve that you have the perfect present for someone, and you can't wait for them to open it.  

I remember how great that was, and I hope that Amy and I get to experience that again soon.  In all reality, there is just no way I could see having another baby on the way, when I have two cute boys running out of control at my feet.  I had a brief and very rare moment this week when I got to leave the house with just one child.  Grayson was napping well, and Amy was home, but Ben was awake and bored when he should have been asleep.  I had errands to run, and I left Grayson home to sleep, and only took Ben with me.  I only had one child to buckle into the seat.  I didn't have to heft an entire double stroller out of the car and buckle two kids into it just to run quickly into the store for a second.  Ben caught up on the state of affairs of U2 in an old Rolling Stone left behind in the waiting room of the oil-change place while I thumbed through back issues of People.  One set of hands for one child, and no tag-team running in opposite directions, or synchronized public fits, culminating in two bawling children being hauled off foot-ball style under each of my arms.  It was a blessed hour, where I could focus just on Ben, and we could enjoy ourselves and being with each other.  Thinking of that one strange hour on our own, I can't for the life of me figure out why I'd be so hungry to have another.  Freakin' biology...

For now, I'll celebrate that I get two sets of slobbery kisses, two full-faced grins over little joys, and I get to sleep through the night about two-thirds of the time.  I will keep my eyes open for the chance to spend one-on-one time with each of my children, and I will read up on potty training, so in six or seven years when the boys finally notice and care that it's a little disgusting to be walking around with steamy britches, we can start thinking about adding a third child to the mix.  And if you are one of our preggies out there, will you please let me hold your baby and coo like an idiot when he gets here?

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!  I can't believe that this will be our second mother's day with the boys, (third, if you count pregnancy, and I do, because damn it, pregnancy ain't easy, and the kids don't get here without it, even if you aren't the one who carried your child).   I can't believe how fast my children are growing, and I can't believe that I still find it novel that I'm celebrating Mother's Day as a mom myself. 

To be honest, I have a hard time believing that the Mom title is mine.  And it's not because we had some terrible long-fought battle becoming pregnant, and year after year I watched Mother's Day roll by, and I still wasn't a mom.  Nope, that's not it.  I've seen people go through that, and even though our one year trying to get pregnant was insanely emotional, it's nothing compared to a lot of the infertile stories I followed over the course of that year, or friends and family who tried a lot longer than we did.  We paid our dues for sure, and earned our kids, but we (mostly) didn't wonder if it would ever happen. It's more like a crisis of existential proportions, where I can't believe this is all real. 

When I think of "mom", I think of MY mom.  I think of how nice it was to be little and not worry about the money or the details or what was for dinner, or what we were going to do next, because my mom was really great at being a mom.  She did it all, she was wonder woman, who worked, and cooked and cleaned, and seemed to have it all together all the time.  Because she was so great at it, it took us a while to catch on that maybe she didn't have it as together all of the the time as we thought, and a good number of years longer to appreciate that she IS a wonder woman.  It seems too surreal to contemplate my own little beings looking up at me that way, especially since I tend to feel that I only have my shit together about one hour out of the week.  The rest of the time this little raft is careening rather out of control, and luckily the rapids have been pretty mild. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't underestimate my mom-ly powers.  Some days, when I can get the kids fed, and we make it to appointments on time, or I get to the end of the day and there are two toddlers safe and sound and asleep, I think that I kick some mama butt.  But when I call the pediatricians office and say "Hi, this is Ben's mom..." I can't help but giggle a little stupidly in my head when I use the word "mom."  I speak once in a while with my next-door neighbor, and we commiserate about things that have happend with our kids, but for some reason I feel like I should be connecting more with her 20 year old daughter.  I'm just not grown up enough to have kids, or to be the wonder woman with all of the answers, or to be calling pediatricians, or making play dates.  There is too much out there that I don't know to be trusted to impart wisdom and knowledge on members of the next generation.  I still laugh at Southpark reruns, I still throw fits when I lose at card games, and I still think about 15 times a day that I want my mommy.  How can anyone in their right mind look up to me like I did, and do, to my own mom?

Thank goodness I have some time before my own kids catch on to the fact that I don't have it all together.  I am thankful that I've still got time to figure out some of my own neuroses before I pass all of them on to my cute little guys.  I am especially thankful that I have a wonderful, caring, compassionate, capable partner to share this "mom" title, so later when the boys are in therapy, at least it won't be all about me.  And for this Mother's Day, we will celebrate the fact that the boys are healthy, happy, and thriving.  We will celebrate that diaper rash and sunburns are infreaquent occurences, that there are finally little words rolling akwardly off little toddler lips, and because of that, so far, Amy and I are making the mommy grade, and our kids can go ahead and think we are awesome.    And looking back over the past two years, I think we are pretty awesome.

Another funk

Gosh, it seems lately I only come running here to post when I'm in a funk of some sort, and I've run out of people to talk to.  So here I am, venting to whom ever is unfortunate enough to be reading this. 

This funk is the grand culmination of too much alone time, and simultaneously, not enough alone time.  Amy's workload recently shifted from busy as hell with an employee to help out, to busy as hell with no employee.  The no employee is a good thing, and it's resulted in a nice chunk of change in the bank that we feel blessed to have.  But it also means long long hours on her part.  Her children desperately miss her, as they now only see her on weekends.  Her wife misses her too, and I miss adult conversation, and I miss having a break from having to take care of the kids all by myself.

The good thing that has happened since this new change is that I (re)joined the gym, and they have daycare on site.  Free with membership.  The two hours a day that I'm allowed to drop my kids off is worth the cost of the membership five times over, and I'm working out regularly again.  My butt and my psyche both seriously need this gym time.  The sad thing is that all this alone time, and time with the kids, is driving me up the wall, and lo and behold, what's on the walls?  Cabinets full of snack food.  And it's there I gravitate, especially in the afternoons.  So all my hard work at the gym is resulting in absolutely zero weight loss.  A sad sad fact considering I've gained more weight in the past year than most normal people can in a lifetime of trying really hard to get really really fat.  Gotta love the PCOS shit.  The only bright side I can see to this fucking disease is that while I'm dying of heart disease and diabetes, I certainly won't be suffering from osteoporosis. 

I'm really impressed with how easily the boys have integrated into the kids club at the gym.  They've never been in a daycare type setup before, and I was really nervous leaving them for the first time.  I shouldn't have been.  They loved it right from the beginning.  There are slides and play structures, and new and interesting children for Ben to steal toys from.  Grayson has been batting his eyelashes at all the little girls, and inevitably when I go tromping back in there, smelly and dripping, my little charmer is sitting in the lap of some swooning girl-child, handing out his allotment of hugs and kisses that he never seems to have on hand for me.  I couldn't be more overjoyed that they've made this little outing so easy for me, becaue they are happy to get there, and they don't mind leaving when I come pick them up.  Now if only they were potty trained, I'd have the best kids on the planet!  Oh, wait, I do have the best kids on the planet, and I'd have the best job on the planet, if I could only re-negotiate the hours a bit.

What's new this time 'round?

Here we are at Grandma and Grandpa's again.  We have come to Utah for the third time in as many months (or so it feels) and who knew I would drive across the Great Basin so much, with my toddlers, just for some grandma time?  Grandma's are the best, are they not?  When I was young, my Grandma Beth was the best grandma a kid could have.  Now that I'm a mom, I've come to respect my own mom as the best grandma a kid could have.  Boy are they lucky kids, to have both of their grandmas. 

In fact, we are here again to celebrate Amy's mom's birthday.  It's her 60th, and we couldn't be happier to have made the trip.  We are getting all the people from all the different aspects of her life: work, church, family, friends, to hopefully surprise her and eat some cake.  She must know that something is up, but we will all go on pretending that no one has spilled the beans, and that when Amy asked her what her favorite cake flavor was, it was just out of pure curiosity.  I pick up the cake on order for tomorrow's shindig, and decorate the party room while Amy whisks her away for dinner with the boys.  There is only one giant hitch in the plan, and that's sick children.

Two days ago, while Ben was left briefly on Grandpa watch while I went to order cake, his breakfast and lunch started making uninvited reappearances, much to the chagrin of a very confused and upset toddler.  This had nothing to do with my dad, but I wondered if perhaps Ben had just gotten so upset at my leaving him, he cried until he made himself sick.  I should have known we wouldn't be so lucky, and that I wasn't that special.  He continued to throw up through to the next morning.  By yesterday evening he was back to his normal self, ready to eat again, and kept his one-way system moving in the right direction.  I thought we were in the clear with one day of relatively happy children (though there has been much nose-wiping, damn colds) and then this afternoon, the stomach bug reared its ugly head in the other child.  I'm hoping the healing time is as quick as it was in Ben, and Grayson will be ready to party like it's 1999 by tomorrow night, for Grandma Porter's surprise party.  If not, thank goodness we have a grandma back-up who will love on him at home.    And let's all knock on wood that the same stomach bug doesn't make the rounds through me.

It is fascinating to see how my children, conceived at the same time, born on the same day, and raised identically, can be such different people.  And nothing emphasizes the differences more than watching them handle illness.  Ben is my wonder child, whiny full of spunk, needy and strong-willed.  If his tummy hurts, you will know it.  If he's going to throw up, you will know it.  If he didn't like that being-sick-business, you will know it.  He cried, he wanted to be held, and reassured, every moment he felt not-quite-right.  Grayson, on the other hand, plays it cool in most scenarios.  I wasn't aware that he wasn't feeling well until I was cleaning up after the mess.  And even after that, I wouldn't have believed he was the one that was sick, except my mother has no dogs, and the children were strapped to their booster seats to eat lunch.  There was no denying who's seat the puke originated from.  He wants to play, he wants to climb, he wants to wiggle out of my arms, and he's not going to let a little 24 hour flu hold him back.  Just clean him up and send him back into the trenches, those toys aren't going to play with themselves! What gives him away is his restless sleep, and that part breaks my heart a little.  

So now, the challenge for Grandma Kathy is to teach them something new, quick, before they come home from this trip with nothing more noteworthy than their first realio, trulio vomit-fest.  

We Are Equal

18 Months

My little squirts turned 18 months old today.  I'm sure I've said this about every phase, but holy crap, I can't believe they are already 18 months old. 

They are still shining through with their own personalities, Ben being the sensitive screeching child, and Grayson being the adventuring wiggly child.  They are their own little yin and yang that complement each other nicely, except when they simply conflict, as do all children.  They are good at creating their own entertainment, like head-butting each other as hard as they can while sitting in the shopping cart at Wal-Mart.  It's all fun and games until someone puts your eye out, or cracks your skull open.

My little man Ben loves to copy everything we say.  Not the words, so much as the intonation.  I ask him to say "mama" and he follows with any two-syllabled combination of letters, except M-A-M-A.  But he's got the tone right.  He crawled up in the rocking chair today to read himself a book.  He turned all the pages carefully one by one, and made animal sounds for each animal on the page.  Sometimes his animal sounds and the animal actually coincided correctly.  The tiger says 'roar', as does the lion, the bird, and the dolphin.  The doggy says oof oof, and so does the horse.  Only the cat says meow, except coming from Ben, there is no 'm', so really it's 'eow'.  I can tell that language is coming, it's just taking some time.  He likes playing catch with the balls, and playing in his new sandbox.

Grayson is not so much a talker as he is a doer.  He is my little man that is into everything all of the time.  There is no keeping him still or holding him back, unless I turn on his shows.  As soon as Baby Einstien comes on he stops dead in his tracks and glues his eyes to the tv.  He doesn't give up kisses or cuddles easily, but I've taught him to make the most of his long eyelashes by giving me "butterfly kisses", which make us both giggle.  I was showing him a book that had little butterflies in the pictures, and when I pointed and said butterfly, I looked at him and he was batting his eyelashes.  Today after I changed his diaper before dinner I just left his pants off and let him run around in his socks and onesie shirt, with the snaps around his bottom to keep the shirt on.  I was making food in the kitchen, and he comes wandering in.  Each step he took caused a funny knocking racket, and he was looking rather paunchy around the middle.  So I unsnapped his onesie and out fell handfulls of megablocks and little plastic shape-sorter pieces.

The boys have a new-found interest in leaving the house.  We got a sandbox for them as soon as they showed up in the toy store again for the season, and they now know there is something fun in the backyard.  They also like it when I let them walk themselves out the door to get in the car, rather than being carried.  So now I have to be careful when I yell either "you want to go for a ride" or "Let's go outside!" because both the dogs and the babies come running to see what's up.  The babies mope hopelessly at the back door when the dogs get to go outside, and the dogs mope hopelessly at the front door when the babies get to go for a ride.  I can ask the boys to sit down, so I can put there shoes on, and tell them dinner is ready, and they come running.  Amy joked the other day that the boys are finally as smart as the dogs, and it's funny because it's true.  

I love you little guys, we are so lucky to be your moms!

Double Speak

Here I go with some more witty (or not) banter on a subject about which I know surprisingly little: twin talk.  And I don't really mean "do they have their own language?" kind of twin talk, I mean talk about twins.

I'm a mom of twins, so I can tell you how much work it is to change twice the diapers, give twice the baths, feed two mouths, and teach two toddlers, well, everything.  And while you maybe can imagine how our household does or does not run because there are two babies at once, it is surprisingly different from having just one child at a time.  Or so I suppose, based on the comments and questions I've fielded from mothers of singletons.  What I can't really speak on is twin development.  And I'm becoming more concerned that it's a subject I should have looked into a while ago.

My approach with my children thus far regarding their twin-dom has always been to just treat them as siblings that happen to be the same age.  They aren't identical, and I don't have any overwhelming desire to dress them the same or give them cute rhyming names like Budd and Judd.  Once in a while they dress alike because I'm saving myself time on deciding what they should wear by only deciding once.  The other kid by default wears the same thing.  But if they don't match, who cares?  I don't usually call them "the twins", I interact with each based on his own strengths and weaknesses, and I let them do their own thing. In a few short years no one will be able to tell they are twins anyway, what with their differently proportioned features.  I've even had people ask me how far apart my children are, expecting me to say months, not one minute.  And I'm inclined to lie to them anyway, since their curiosity about me being a mama-whore who can't wait ten minutes to get preggers after the first is born is something that really isn't any of their business.  Next time I get that question, I'm going to say 6 months, and watch their little hampsters spin as they start doing the math in their head.

So, back to the twins.  I've been noticing that the boys seem a tad bit delayed in some of their major developmental milestones.  Talking is the big one that I worry about right now.  Keep in mind, everything that I've worried about in the past has eventually worked itself out.  They aren't rolling around on the floor still, they walk and babble, and track things with their eyes, and interact.  It's just that on the bell-curve of "normal" they tend to fall on the slacker side.  I've written this off as a factor of their y-chromosome since the beginning.  With careful nurturing, it's a physical handicap they should be able to overcome.  But perhaps I should be looking deeper at the special relationship between twins.  Maybe they are just modeling their behavior after each other, because they spend so much time interacting with just each other, and not many other children.  You don't learn to walk very quickly if you are copying your brother, who also doesn't walk yet.  I've tried play groups, and moms clubs, but nothing seems to have stuck as far as long-term interraction with other children. 

My boys are content with each other.  I use it as an excuse to let them work out life together, because clearly, they are happy without me hounding them all the time.  But is this the reason they don't talk?  That they walked late? Is there something about twins that I should know, a different way to stimulate them, to get them to see beyond each other?  Am I just being lazy?  It's that last one isn't it, because everything else in my life is generally done sorta half-assed. 

Right now it probably doesn't matter so much, but should I be out there reading everything I can on twin development?  What happens when they start school, and I have to decide things like "same class or different?" I just want to know, is there some bastion of knowledge out there on fraternal twins that holds a secret that I, as a parent of twins, ought to know?  Or is it all just psycho-babble, and the boys will be fine?  Tune in next time for another exciting episode of "Twins Ripped Apart by Their Mother's Inept Parenting."

In all seriousness, if you are a twin, or have experience with twins (especially ones older than mine) I'd like to hear your feedback.  If you don't have any experience with twins, but feel inclined to give me an opinion, I'll listen to that too. And if you don't care one way or another about twins, leave me a recipe for a vegetarian meal that toddlers will eat, because frankly, my kitchen is getting boring, and we are sick of mac n' cheese.  

Family

Yesterday I broke down and went to the doctor again.  This time I left with prescriptions, hopefully ones that will make life much better.  I am now on antibiotics, and I asked for the mother of all cough medicines, which I saved for bedtime.  I slept all the night through, minus one incident to take more cough medicine, and I feel like a new woman.  Ahhhh, the sweet bliss of real recovery.

During the boys' nap time yesterday I pulled out the spinning wheel and created some significantly less crappy yarn, and listened to Talk of the Nation on NPR.  Their conversation was about the Donor Sibling Registry that I've already discussed concerns about here.  I've more or less come to terms with how to handle this with the boys since my original posting, but I can't help but listen to the media coverage every time the subject comes up and I'm around to hear it.  I want to hear all the perspectives out there, and I want to know what other people in the same situation think.  There were no earth-shattering opinions to wobble my approach, but it's an intriguing listen nonetheless, especially if this is a subject that does or will concern you and your family. 

I am so grateful for the opinions that you, the internets and friends, offered after my initial blast with the realization that yes, there are donor siblings out there for the boys to discover.  I knew this as a theoretical possibility all along, but the reality knocked me unexpectedly a-kilter.  Since then, I've had some months just to quietly ponder what should or should not be done with this information, and I've decided that these are the boys' siblings to discover, not mine or Amy's.  We will do our best to always be honest with them about where they came from, how much their mommies loved and wanted them, and keep all of the information at an age-appropriate level.  Once they are old enough to fully understand, we will let their own curiosity guide our approach.  If they want to become a member of the registry themselves and contact their siblings, we will be supportive in whatever way we can.  

And now, as an aside, another interesting thing I heard on NPR yesterday is that the same lawyer who fought the Massachusetts supreme court on behalf of the the rights of gays and lesbians to marry (and won, as we all know) is now taking her battle to the federal level, against the Defense of Marriage act, to win the rights of those married in MA to reap the benefits of the marriage on the federal level.  It may sound stupid, but you go girl!!!  Their argument is that the Defense of Marriage Act was established to protect states' rights to define marriage.  And now that same act is discriminating against one state who's decision was to allow gays to marry.  I will fully admit that this is a blurb I've heard on NPR, no research of my own, so if I have some facts messed up, forgive me.  The counter argument was that all that the Federal Government has to do is prove that the institution of marriage is recognized and established to protect the efforts of procreation, thus, they are not obligated to extend those rights to Gays and Lesbians.  Here is where I cry bullshit.  If they honestly get away with discrimination based on that argument, ours is a flawed flawed world.

First off, we all know that there is no one monitoring straight couples in their efforts of procreation.  They get the benefits whether they choose to have children or not.  Second, in this day and age of assisted reproduction, adoption, and surrogacy, gay and lesbian couples ARE procreating, so how can you deny us the federally recognized rights of marriage?  The passage of Proposition 8 tore more families apart than it will ever protect, and the federal government is doing the same thing.  I'm sick and tired of hearing that all of this is in the name of protecting the family.  What about my family? Or families with single moms?  Or families headed by Grandparents, and Aunts, and Uncles?  Lets pull our heads out and start protecting ALL families.