6 Things you may want to know

1) ML turned 6 months this week (and the newsletter is no where near done)

2) My car's "check engine light" mysteriously went OFF this week (after months of being lit, but ignored; I guess it just gave up on trying to get my attention)

3) Today on a walk, JB saw a brown vine that was either growing up or dying around a mailbox, and he said to me, "Why is that so mulch-y". (Mulch is his frenemy since last fall when the new mulch on the playground at school would get stuck in his soft, orange jacket from Aunt Marilyn and we eventually had to stop letting him wear it so that we didn't have to spend 2 hours a night picking pieces of mulch out of it.)

4) We've been sleep training ML- I sent Kt and JB out of the house so I could spend 3 nights alone with my boy- like a warrior in the woods- teaching him not to freak out when he wakes up and cannot comprehend why there is no binki in his mouth; teaching him to soothe himself, unwind, and get to sleep without a long, faceless, parental arm reaching out into the darkness and popping a binki magically back into his mouth.

These are the rules:
a) we can't put the binki in his mouth
b) we CAN put the binki in his hand (though we try to let him find one of the 1/2 dozen we've sprinkled all around his crib)
c) we are trying the Baby Whisperer's "pick up, put down" method (PU/PD)
d) we only use PU/PD if he cries for more than 30 seconds (yes, I do mean use a stopwatch...)
So far, so good. He's a terrific little dude, but his mommies are a little scarred by that night he cried for 8 hours and then needed to be hospitalized for a week. We've been careless about teaching him to self soothe and too quick to run into his room when he makes tiny little noises.

5) Today the outside thermometer on my car read 67 degrees F on my way home from work. (Yummmm-MEeeee)

6) Our 2010 census arrived today. I plan to follow katy's advice and, "Make us as gay as humanly possible." We will fill out the census as a married same sex couple with two kids. "Person 1" is female and married to "person 2" who is also female. "Person 1" has a biological kid and an adopted kid... (so does person 2). This is confusing because even though only one of these kids is "biologically" mine, I conceived OF both of them. I was involved in every decision and every aspect of planning, conception, and birth... So part of me wants to say they are both biologically mine, but fine... we will leave it at the literal answer.
However...
When the federal government gets our census, they will change the answers. They will change the truth to something that is less like the truth and more like what some people want the truth to be. They will say we are not married; even though we are legally able to wed in this state. They will say we are single. We will tell the truth on the US census: That we choose to live in a state where we can legally be married... We will tell the truth and they will change our answers. According to the federal government, there have never been same sex couples. There have never been and still in 2010 ARE NOT ANY gay or lesbian parents. There are no families with two women raising kids. There are no families with two men raising kids. There are no children with 2 moms or 2 dads.

The federal census is a constitutionally mandated count, every 10 years, of the citizens of the united states for the purposes of maintaining an accurate or numerically reasonable representative democracy... Though the primary (constitutional) purpose of the census is to determine congressional representation, the census is used for a lot of other demographic calculations in explaining the make up of the population of the United States.

Only if the census is accurate, do people get the right number of representatives. You must be counted to count... But here we are in the United States of America in 2010, and Katy and I will be counted as 2 separate, unwed mothers who live together. This is the last census (I would bet my life on it) that the government will be allowed to change our truthful answers to fictitious answers just because we are gay. But I will be in my 40s and my children will be 10 and 12 years old before their family is allowed to count; before our descriptions of ourselves are allowed to stand, without the government stepping in and saying, "From our legal standpoint, There is no such thing as you."