I'm on strike today. For 24 hours I will not eat anything, just drink water, in order to protest the discrimination I face as a lesbian in the state of Michigan. It's part of Hungry 4 Equality and I'm the Day 26 striker out of 100. I'm camped out in the front window of Affirmations. It's all very red light district. If you want you can watch me live, which is pretty creepy, actually.
What does this have to do with being a mom? Well, Stacy and Gavin may come visit me later today, for one. But most importantly, I am not considered a mom at all by the state of Michigan. As far as they're concerned, I am a single woman who lives with another single woman and that other woman's child. I have no legal protections as a parent because I am not legally a parent. Michigan doesn't allow or recognize marriage between two women nor does Michigan allow second-parent adoption, which would allow Gavin to have two legal parents and all of the protections that come with that. Should something happen to Stacy Gavin would not automatically stay with me or anything. We'd have to rely on a judge to recognize our parenting agreement (a legal document we had drawn up with a lawyer), and said judge doesn't have to do that. We have a will and everything, but that is not at all the same, not even close, to a legally recognized relationship.
So, yeah, I'm doing this for my son and my wife and my life, really. How much impact or effect it will have, I don't know. But raising any awareness is a good thing.
Hunger related things: "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog, "Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran, The Hunger (that movie where Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve are, like, lesbian vampires or something), The Hunger Games, Hungry Hungry Hippos (my sister, Laura, swallowed a marble from that game when we were kids). It's lunch time. I'm hungry.
I just got back from Chicago. Gavin, Stacy, and I went on a road trip adventure to see Krystal & Nate & Henry & Lucy, Amanda & Dave, Carolyn & Chris & Brenden & Grayson, and Carol and Ina (Stacy's aunt and grandmother). It was an action packed week. We learned that Gavin is a most excellent travel companion who can sleep in just about any bed anywhere. He was very good in the car and had only a couple of meltdowns the whole trip.
Krystal's kids are pretty much in love with Stacy. She played Big Bad Wolf with them for hours. Basically you just reenact the story of the Three Little Pigs using your imagination and alternate who is the wolf and who is the pig. It involves a lot of running and hiding. It's something Gavin wants to do basically all of the time and something I want to do rarely, which causes some conflict. Stacy is the go-to mom for that kind of stuff. I'm more into things like, "Hey, let's line up your Hotwheel cars in color order" or "let's read books."
Gavin is still not potty trained, but he's making some impressive steps forward. He pooped on the potty at Amanda's house when we first got there, which is something he did at my dad's house a week earlier. He liked Amanda's bathroom because it is upstairs and Gavin, not having stairs in our oh-so-modest home, is very interested in this. He always wants to go upstairs at his Grandma Kathy's house, for example. Well, he declared, "I'm old enough to go upstairs by myself" and he did just that and used the potty all by himself, too. Granted it was all pee, but still. He asked Stacy for assistance (and yes, "assistance" is the word he used) with buttoning his pants. That's it. He'll get there soon enough.
Thankfully the place he's going to preschool (a Spanish-immersion Montessori school) doesn't require that he be potty trained like most preschools do. Otherwise I'd be panicking right now. It's such an arbitrary rule and I know that so many parents, and as a result kids, get super stressed about potty training right about now, which isn't at all helpful for anyone involved. I'm a believer that this isn't something you can force a kid to do. Not unless you want him to have major issues later on that he only shares with his therapist.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Friday, Aug. 10, 2012: Check it and see
I've got Gavin singing Foreigner around the house now. I just changed his diaper (poo, unfortunately. I asked him when he was going to do that on the potty and he said, "In five years." I told him that he will be 8 years old in five years and I would be really concerned about his development if he was still pooping his pants) and afterwards I said it was time to wash our hands (he has to help with diaper changing, so he has to wash his hands, too) and he stood up and said, "Let's do it!" And then, "Hot blooded, check it and see" while making a rock-and-roll snarl and giving a thumbs up. My work as a parent is obviously done. There really isn't a greater achievement I can think of.
Gavin's favorite song is probably still Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" which he sings a lot. A lot a lot a lot as Gavin would say (when Gavin wants to add emphasis to something he repeats the word or phrase while increasing the octave of his speech, so if something is of particular importance by the time he's done it's five minutes later and only Henri can hear him speaking). He often sings it to himself when he isn't thinking about anyone else listening, which I love. I sing all the time. To the dog, to the cat, to Gavin, to myself. A lot of times I don't even notice I'm doing it (unless Stacy gets annoyed and tells me to stop it). So Gavin clearly takes after me.
On Tuesday Gavin and Stacy were preparing to clean off the table on the deck so we could eat outside, and he said to her, "I'm the sprayer man and you're the woman who's the cleaner." See, he likes to be in charge of whatever cleaning solution being used (in this case it was Method brand antibacterial kitchen cleaner, orange scent. We use a lot of that around here). And boss people around. And then today as I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich he said to me, "I'm the getter and you're the maker." If I didn't know any better, I'd think we were doing our best to instill gender-normative assumptions in our boy. You'd never guess he was being raised by feminists. I fear he may be listening to Rush Limbaugh at night or something.
Also at lunch today, Gavin announced in the middle of eating, "I need to use the potty. But I need a little bit of privacy." And then, while running toward the bathroom he turned back to me, holding his crotch and said, "I'm going to see if I can catch the potty in time." My first instinct was to say, "Dude, go! Don't stand here talking about it." But I did not. I can't remember what I said, but it was probably along the lines of, "I hope you do." Thankfully he did.
Prior to lunch, we hung around in the back yard. I pulled some weeds and he helped me a little, but soon gave up and went to play in his sandbox. When I asked him if he wanted to pull any more weeds (because he was very enthusiastic about this idea just a few minutes earlier) he said, "I think so playing is more funner than working." He's pretty deep.
My new favorite thing is the following dialog exchange:
Oh, and if you ever wanted to know how to get to the airport from our house, Gavin will tell you. When we were going to pick Stacy up from the airport he told me, "It's way way far away on the other side of Hamtramck. On the freeway I-79." As Laura said, "Just give him the keys - he's got this covered."
Gavin's favorite song is probably still Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" which he sings a lot. A lot a lot a lot as Gavin would say (when Gavin wants to add emphasis to something he repeats the word or phrase while increasing the octave of his speech, so if something is of particular importance by the time he's done it's five minutes later and only Henri can hear him speaking). He often sings it to himself when he isn't thinking about anyone else listening, which I love. I sing all the time. To the dog, to the cat, to Gavin, to myself. A lot of times I don't even notice I'm doing it (unless Stacy gets annoyed and tells me to stop it). So Gavin clearly takes after me.
On Tuesday Gavin and Stacy were preparing to clean off the table on the deck so we could eat outside, and he said to her, "I'm the sprayer man and you're the woman who's the cleaner." See, he likes to be in charge of whatever cleaning solution being used (in this case it was Method brand antibacterial kitchen cleaner, orange scent. We use a lot of that around here). And boss people around. And then today as I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich he said to me, "I'm the getter and you're the maker." If I didn't know any better, I'd think we were doing our best to instill gender-normative assumptions in our boy. You'd never guess he was being raised by feminists. I fear he may be listening to Rush Limbaugh at night or something.
Also at lunch today, Gavin announced in the middle of eating, "I need to use the potty. But I need a little bit of privacy." And then, while running toward the bathroom he turned back to me, holding his crotch and said, "I'm going to see if I can catch the potty in time." My first instinct was to say, "Dude, go! Don't stand here talking about it." But I did not. I can't remember what I said, but it was probably along the lines of, "I hope you do." Thankfully he did.
Prior to lunch, we hung around in the back yard. I pulled some weeds and he helped me a little, but soon gave up and went to play in his sandbox. When I asked him if he wanted to pull any more weeds (because he was very enthusiastic about this idea just a few minutes earlier) he said, "I think so playing is more funner than working." He's pretty deep.
My new favorite thing is the following dialog exchange:
Gavin: "Guess what?"See, that's something that I've been saying to him forever. I say, "Guess what?" and the answer is always "I love you." And now he says that to me. Sometimes he says, "Mama D, do you want to tell you to guess something?"
Me: "What?"
Gavin: "I love you."
Oh, and if you ever wanted to know how to get to the airport from our house, Gavin will tell you. When we were going to pick Stacy up from the airport he told me, "It's way way far away on the other side of Hamtramck. On the freeway I-79." As Laura said, "Just give him the keys - he's got this covered."
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