I know what you are looking for - and its not here

My understanding is that there has been a change in the Google algorithm so that if you are looking for porn, you may not find it as easily. See here: http://seoblackhat.com/2006/11/21/free-porn/

Apparently, Google is now assuming that you are not looking for porn until you refine your search and make it really, really clear that you are. Why they would do this, I don’t know. I would think that they would assume that you are looking for porn, because you probably are.

I have a stat counter on this blog that tells me what keywords people are using to find us. There is a sudden uptick in “nurse giving rectal temperature, pic.” Apparently, there are a few medical fetishes out there. I’m so sorry to disappoint you with our domestic blog. It’s a timely search though because my son has a double ear infection. We’ve had a few rectal temps around here. Now if I could just get my wife to wear this outfit for me.

Quick Update

I have an overwhelming desire to post to my blog tonight. I am such a geek. Not much is happening here though. Little guy is almost walking. He is cruising around the furniture, but he isn’t quite there just yet. We think he is teething. He is running a fever and is drooling like crazy, but we haven’t seen any pearly whites just yet.

My wife is working a lot. She is working tonight as a matter of fact. Me? I am still trying to get a consulting practice going. I joined a networking group where you are supposed to meet one on one with all of the members. There are thirty members, so I am running around like crazy meeting with everyone. It’s kind of funny because I don’t have much work to do. I kind of feel like I have an imaginary job. I’m running around the city going to meetings and I pass out business cards, and that's about it.

Also, I don’t quite know what to obsess about now that the anti-gay marriage amendment might actually be dead. I just don’t know what to replace it with. I worry about money a lot. If we ever become financially solvent, I might have a real crisis on my hands.

Since I have broken my rules about not posting pictures, I thought I would give you guys one more.

I do not feel pretty

Anne Sexton said something to the affect of: I use to be pretty, now I’m just me. I have been looking all over the internet for the actual quote. If anyone knows it, please email me or leave it in the comments.

Blogs are weird. They are personal and public at the same time. This feels like a personal post, but I don’t know most of you, so I am going to blog it anyway. I am going to trust that those of you who do know me, love me enough not to hold my character defects against me.

I have been thinking about this quote lately. I look a lot different than I did before the baby, and its not sitting so well with me. I had a horrible pregnancy and gained 80lbs. I am still lugging around 40 of it. I use to have long, red hair, but it changed color during the pregnancy. For expediency’s sake, I chopped it all off. I am still getting use to my new self.

So this is the part that is hard for me to talk or blog about. I did not realize until now how much I leveraged my prettiness in the world. I would categorize the new people that I would meet into two categories. “Prettier than me” and “Not Prettier”. If I was uncomfortable in a situation, I could rely upon my physical attractiveness to help me meet people. People were interested in me.

Now, I know. I know. I know. Pretty vain. Pretty shallow. In my defense, it has a lot to do with my upbringing. My mother, despite giving birth to 5 children, remained at a fashionable 110 her whole life. She use to say things to me like, “There’s no reason to learn how to change a tire, just stand by the side of the road and look cute. Someone will help you out.” It’s a terrible message. But there was a truth to it. I was often pulled over for speeding, the policeman never gave me a ticket. Even more bothersome to me is that I really think people took my opinions more seriously 3 years ago than they do now. To be fat is to be invisible. Like the erstwhile quote says, now I’m just me.

I ran across something today that I wanted to share. It is from the blog, Dress A Day.

You Don't Have to Be Pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked "female".

What it all boils down to now is that I just don’t have pretty in me anymore. I know I could do something about it. I can’t make myself younger, but I could lose the weight. I could scrape up the money to visit those Newbury salons I use to frequent. But I won’t. I guess this is how someone falls into the “Not Pretty” column of the debit sheet.

I have been trying to think of new ways to leverage myself. Did you see “The Fisher King?” In the movie, the Amanda Plummer character complains to Mercedes Ruehl that she has no personality. Mercedes Ruehl says “You want a personality? You can be a real bitch.” So instead of being the pretty one, maybe I will be the bitchy one for a change. Besides, I have since learned that you don’t actually need to know how to change a tire if you have Triple A.

Am I dreaming?

I am feeling somewhere between totally relieved and totally confused. When I first heard that the legislators recessed from the ConCon, I really thought the lawmakers were just postponing the inevitable or buying time. But the word from BayWindows is that this is a victory. They say that it’s unlikely that the legislators will take this up in January. My wife is at the hospital and I had just put the baby to bed. Reading the news coming out of the ConCon, I was just so filled with emotion I broke down and cried. Can I really not worry about this anymore? Can I stop taking my French lessons that I don’t study for anyway?

That and seeing the Democrats take both the House and the Senate AND Rumsfield stepping down. What a difference a couple of years makes.

Election day - finally! We win!

The elections were really exciting. I was very proud of my home state of Arizona for being the first state to reject an anti-gay amendment.

My excitement has been offset with a sense of sadness tonight. Tomorrow, the Massachusetts legislator’s will meet to decide whether or not to advance our own anti-gay marriage amendment.

From what I have read, barring any procedural moves, it will probably pass this year. It could end up on the ballot in 2008. I am so proud of Boston sometimes. I feel like a real citizen here. I don’t feel that way towards the entire country. Anti-gay measures in places like Virginia and Missouri tell me that they don’t want me here. I am happy to oblige. But I really like Massachusetts. It makes me sad that people feel that this is even an issue.

I know in the long run there is a good chance we will win. By the time it’s on the ballot, gays and lesbians will have been marrying for four years. That is a pretty long time. And we now have Deval in the corner office. In the meantime, its scary and demoralizing to constantly have my rights questioned.
Sometimes, when I look at my son, I am happy that he understands so little. He doesn't know there is hatred. He doesn't know that there are people out there who hates his family. He just moves through his days looking for his next adventure

Janice Marie Parker Pierce August, 25, 1943 - October 31, 1997

On another note, October the 31 is kind of a pregnant day for me. My mother died nine years ago of colon cancer. At the very moment she was dying, John Keats Endymion was being read on the radio. So she died to these words. They are very beatiful, and I think must have been a comfort to her. I know that continue to be a source of comfort to me, and I read them every year in her memory.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Happy Halloween!

I love this holiday. I almost died from the cuteness at the Tot Lot. The kids were killing me.

I decided to post some pictures of my little guy. I worked at a church for a number of years as the webmaster. They put the fear of God into me, so to speak, about posting pictures of children on the internet. They saw predators lurking behind every screen. I guess I have internalized it because I have been nervous to post any pictures. Really, they should have been looking for the predators in the sacristy, but that is another story.

I have been visiting all of these really great parenting blogs, and everyone else has pictures of their cutie pies. So here it goes. He is kind of incognito in the lobster out fit anyway.

I hope that you all have a fantastic time tonight.

Adoption Day

We had a big week here in Boston. Our second parent adoption went through, so we went down to the courthouse. A lot of my friends who are gay parents express annoyance that they have to go through this step. Personally, I am just grateful we live in a state were we have legal protections for my little family.

It was pretty dramatic though. We left really in the morning to get to the courthouse on time. But there was a huge accident in front of us. We were diverted into the tiny, congested streets of Roxbury on the last day of Ramadan. Traffic was at a complete standstill. We completely freaked out. We were yelling at each other, yelling at the other cars, the cops…everybody. We were so worried about what would happen if we were late. We finally get into downtown Boston, and of course, we couldn’t find parking anywhere. We parked in a handicapped space just so we could book it to the courthouse. (I’m not condoning this behavior. In our defense, we never do this sort of thing).

We went racing down the Financial District, flying past all of the morning commuters and big dig construction workers. We made it to the courthouse just in time. Then, our lawyer was 45 minutes late. She was stuck in the same traffic we were.

The judge couldn’t have cared less. She strolled in 15 minutes after our attorney came storming into the room. My wife was worried that she would grill her about her parenting skills. She did no such thing. She just picked our son up and let him chew on the gavel and pound on the keyboard. She was older, had really blonde hair, and just the thickest Boston accent you ever heard. She kept saying, “He’s so cute. I am going to sign the adoption papers over to me.”

Then she signed the papers and it was all over. We were at the clerks waiting for the ugly yellow adoption certificate. I looked over at our son and said, “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?” Then my wife’s mom said the sweetest thing. She said, “She knew he was her mother.”

We went to Legal’s afterwards. They had these delicious baked oysters. They were great.

Our little guy has had a cold since then. He has been pretty crabby. In fact, I have never seen him in such a bad mood. Every toy I gave him he would just through on the floor with a screech. Even when he’s intolerable, I love him so much. He is just my little streetfighter.

Party with the Ann Coulter clones

My wife and I went to a bridal shower for a friend of ours. She is straight and marrying a very nice guy who I also happen to be friends with. She is a priest in a pretty wealthy town. Some of her parishioners were there as well as other clergy. Even though she is a member of the clergy, she is really fun and down to earth. She wore her clergy collar into a sex shop and proceeded to buy me a sex toy. I know because she called me on the phone to see what I wanted. I am pretty excited about her wedding.

On the day of the shower, I just couldn’t pull an outfit together so I wore jeans hoping it would be ok. As soon as I walked into the party and saw the other women dressed in dark velvet and beautiful plaid bows, I knew I had made a mistake. I felt like such a slob.

I tried to engage one of the parishioners in conversation. She was Ann Coulter thin and blonde. She was an attorney but now was a stay at home mom. I was interested in her because I am thinking about applying for law school. She muttered that law school was a big mistake, and then turned back to her other suburban friends.

We were there with our son, and boy, was he unhappy. We thought he would nap in the car, but no luck. He stayed awake the whole time. He fell asleep at the party, but would wake up startled every there was clapping when the bride to be opened up a present. We ended up leaving early because we were afraid our son was about to go into a full out melt down.

As soon as we got into the car, my wife turned to me and said, “My god, they were so straight.” I knew exactly what she meant.

I am blogging about this incident because there were a few things about it that interest me. The first thing that became clear to me is that I really surround myself with people who are very much like me. Even my straight friends aren’t sooo straight. Generally, we are a pretty grungy crew. The women at the shower were very thin and well coiffed. They shrieked and giggled every time the bride to be opened a box of lingerie. I think this what marshaled the comment from my wife.

The second thing was that it was apparent to me that it can be really hard to interact with people who are a different class from you. I don’t like to think of myself like this. I like to think that I can relate to pretty much anybody, but I tell you, these women were tough. But its not like I was raised in a cave, I went to Northwestern for crying out loud, I have been around rich people before.

And the last thing I want to say is that babies and polite company just don’t mix. I should have learned by now. But I’m pretty stubborn. We keep trying to take him to nice restaurants when we should just resign ourselves to IHop.

Don't eat your veggies

Did you see? There is a recall on lettuce because of ecoli fears.

http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/freshexpress05_03.html

All I can say is that if ecoli breaks out in cheez its or diet coke, I'm in big trouble.

Time to log off

There is a saying that I like very much that goes something like this: You don’t have to show up for every fight you are invited to.

I think about this saying a lot when I get into online “discussions”. I think that there is something about disembodied text that just brings out the worse in people. Sometimes I get sucked into a discussion and have a tremendous urge to be the last person to post a comment. This happens even when I know I am talking to someone who has the coherence of my grandfather 3 months before he died of Alzheimer’s.

I try to avoid bulletin boards or comments on blogs if there is an argument brewing. However, with all of the crap that is being said about the Foley scandal, I found myself showing up for the street fight, invitation or not.

The postings were on belief.net. I felt like I was in some kind of Alice in Wonderland upside down world. According to the thread, homosexuals are oversexed, miserable, have multiple partners and absolutely shouldn’t be allowed to get married, and Rep Foley proves it.

I have to laugh about the oversexed part. I should be so interesting. Honestly I am so tired from working and taking care of the baby, sex is the last thing on my mind. In fact, I have a pile of laundry and dishes, a living room full of toys and dried baby food my shirt. At this point, I don’t want sex so much as a clean house. Though, I’d take sex too..

And I just have to wonder, who are these people that they are talking about. These hypersexed, multi-partnered, drug taking, circuit chasing, youth loving, prada wearing gays? I’ve seen them on tv. But, I live in a very gay neighborhood, and nobody that I know is like this. The gays that I know worry about sending their kids to kindergarten and when to make a run to Toys R Us.

There is something about getting into an argument with someone who insists something is true that you know isn’t true that makes you feel a little crazy. I had a friend who would insist that all lesbians had been sexually molested. I pointed out that I hadn’t been sexually molested and neither had my wife. But she would just repeat her claim over and over. After a while you need to just stop arguing. And if you are online, you need to log off.

Bonsoir

I grew up in the Southwest, where there was a certain distrust of governmental powers. This was particularly true if there was a Democrat in office. When the men lost their minds, there was a Southwestern flare to it. They would join militias and bury their guns out in the desert because they were convinced the government was coming to take their ammunition away. I would actually see the men do this and I would think to myself, “My God their crazy. Who could be so paranoid?”

I’m a little bit older now and I no longer live in the desert, but I have to say my mistrust of the government has grown exponentially these last few years. I’m not burying guns. I don’t own any. However, I have been learning to speak French. Every Monday night, my friend and I go down to the local Adult Education Center and conjugate French verbs. I’m sure you are thinking that it’s a worthy endeavor and not at all crazy. But I have to tell you the reason why I am doing it is because I have grown convinced that before my life is through, I am going to have to make a run for Canada. I want to speak the language once I get there. I have my passport on me at all times, and I am dismayed that my wife does not have one. I have even been watching Julia Child so that I will be fully acclimated to the local cuisine.

I’m not sure whether or not to give the laundry list of things scare me about this country. I do not like all of the DOMAs that have been passed in the last few years, I do not like the war in Iraq and I do not like these new anti-terrorism bills that tromp all over the constitution.

At first I thought this has nothing to do with being a parent, but it does. Its one thing to feel like you are not safe. It’s a whole another to feel like your child isn’t safe. When I look down at my little boy at night, I feel such love for him its almost too much to bear. Suddenly I feel like I have a lot in common with those guys who buried their guns in the desert. I want protection. I want no harm to ever make its way in from the outside into the nursery room. I want my little guy to always be as peaceful as he is now in his little Halloween sleeper that says “I love my Mummy.” I can’t believe how crazy I feel, but I want a handle on French sentence structure and gun buried nearby.

TLC

It’s been awhile since I have updated this blog, mostly since I am so busy. I am trying to start an at home business and still take care of little guy. I am finding it really challenging working at home and having a baby. I never would have tried to start my own business if I didn’t become a mom. However, I now realize that a new business is kind of like a new baby, and it needs to be fed – a lot. If I had known this, I would have tried to start the business a year or two before having the baby. Instead, I have a real baby and a new business venture.

However, I am not so busy that I ever miss TLC’s Bringing Home Baby. It’s a show where they show a family in the first 36 hours after coming home with a new baby. I like TLC, I do. I like all of their corny baby shows, but I found myself getting a little testy with them. They were just so relentlessly heterosexual. Despite all of the different types of families out there, they never seemed to deviate from the one mother, one father cookie cutter family. Just when I thought all was lost, they feature a gay family on Bringing Home Baby. I was so excited, I blew the chunks of Oreos I was eating all over the floor. The family was a couple of dads and their two twin daughters. I was so pleased, I emailed them. You would think I had all the time in the world.

Brothers and Cousins, or something like that

I was contacted by a woman who had used the same sperm donor as I had. She lived relatively close by and wanted to know if we would like to meet. There is an organic farm with a petting zoo at the halfway point between our homes. I was surprised at how excited I was by all of this, and we agreed to get together.

She was very nice and very friendly, but she made it clear that she didn’t want them referred to as siblings. That was fine by me. I really didn’t know what to make of all of this.

Her son is a few months older than mine. When we met at the farm, I remarked that they looked like cousins, not brothers. There was a resemblance, but they weren’t the spitting image of each other, so I thought. I wanted to know if her son had cowlicks like ours (he didn’t) and if he had sleep issues (no again).

Of course, we weren’t at the farm a half an hour when a nice lady came up and asked if they were brothers. Dead silence. I don’t know what that woman must have thought. Finally, the other guy’s mom said, “They're cousins, sort of.” It was an answer that works, but it kind of bothered me since it wasn’t really the truth. I think I might have been more comfortable just saying they weren’t related at all, but I hadn’t thought this through. We went to a restaurant, and the waitress asked if they were twins! This time we just said no, they are several months apart.

My wife and I had decided to use a sperm donor to avoid emotional complications, but here we were in the thick of another one. They weren’t brothers and they weren’t cousins, there are some other thing that I don’t think has a name yet. The other mother isn’t a gay woman, but a single mom by choice. It is not just gays and lesbians entering this brave new world. This world without proper names for our relationships.

Swimming Lessons

We missed our son’s swimming lesson this morning, again. If there are any new parents reading this, and I can offer a piece of advice, skip the swimming lessons. In fact, skip all of the classes. Your baby won’t care. In fact, they would rather be at Home Depot in the ceiling fan department. It is a real hassle getting there. I signed up for so many things, Baby Yoga, Baby Swimming Lessons and a couple of mothers groups. It is what I imagined myself doing when I was pregnant. My gay and lesbian parenting group is the only thing I am able to consistently get to. They have a drop in policy, so you have a couple of hours to make it, but even then its sketchy. If he seems like he needs a nap right before its time to go, I have to make a choice. Go and hang out with other adults, but have a tired and cranky baby. Or I can put him to bed, and hang out by myself. As much as I need companionship with people who are not drooling and pooping in diapers, I don’t really want my son to be overtired. This is how I miss most of our activities.

Plus, I go to therapy. If I can’t get someone to baby sit him, I drag him to the therapist’s office. This wrecks havoc on his naps, and I feel like a bad parent. Most other days, I just concentrate on getting him on a consistent sleep schedule.

I really like that new Dunkin Donuts commercial where the mother is driving her five kids around to all of their activities. It reminds me that there are sure to be plenty of classes for him to attend in the future. But for now, he is sleeping.

Changes

Its been awhile since I last posted, and we had a lot of changes around here. The baby is scooting around the house like a little commando. Since he has figured out that he can get himself around, he is less interested in being held. You can imagine how distressing that is. He seems to vacillate between wanting to be on his own, and wanting to be held. Sometimes it appears that can’t make up his mind, or that he wants both things at once. I know what that is like. Often, I want safety and freedom when they aren’t always compatible with one another.

He has also gotten incredibly big. I literally can’t keep him in clothes. He is only 8 months, but I have to dress him in clothes for a one year old. He is eating more and more solid foods, and making an impressive mess.

Having the baby has been a big economic strain, and my wife and I are trying to make it on one income. The financial thing has been stressful for our relationship as well. I have been trying to get some work on the side to bring in a little extra income. I’ve been doing some networking online, and have found that a lot of stay at home moms are doing the same thing. A lot of them are Christian moms. I am finding that I have a lot in common with Christian SAHMs. Talk about karma.

Bad week in the courts

Its been a bad week for gay marriage proponents. The Nebraska gay marriage ban has been reinstated, as well as the ban in Georgia and New York’s highest court ruled that it can deny marriage to same sex couples since it is the court’s intuition that two opposite sex parents were best for children. Note that the court did not feel the need to provide actual data, just an intuition. Is there any other group of people that are as oppressed by other’s intuition? If the courts and legislators are unable to provide the rational for their decisions and instead rely on “unsettled feelings” or “intuitions” is this not bigotry, pure and simple?

I think children are the heart of the matter. Not that these decisions are made for the benefit of kids, because if that was their concern there would be healthcare for everyone under 18, and more money in the educational system. I believe the real motivation is to discourage gay people from forming families, which is in its essence, a denial of our basic humanity. We can form loving relationships, have children, and build lives, but don’t expect any help or approval from society or the legal system. And oh, keep it out of straight people’s faces, since the very fact of our existence is somehow offensive to them.

I found this all pretty depressing. We had spent the weekend in Ogunquit, and I did have one situation that made me feel a little more optimistic about the future. My wife and I entered a coffee shop with our son asleep in his stroller. My wife went to get some coffee, and a young mother entered with her husband and daughter. She saw my son and exclaimed how cute and chubby my son was. She then went over to my wife and asked if that was her son, and my wife said yes, it was. She repeated her compliments and then went back to her family. It was kind of thrilling to have a random straight person acknowledge the reality of our family. I think our son is the best little ambassador for gay families. Maybe this is the best we can do, one straight person at a time.

Straight anxiety and gay marriage

I haven’t been blogging about the marriage debate here in Massachusetts, because I find the whole debate so painful and anxiety producing, I have a hard time thinking about it. I couldn’t watch the TV yesterday because of it. But this morning, as in all mornings after the debate comes up, there is a slew of commentary from straight people on what this all means. I am a bit of a compulsive letter writer, but I cannot answer all of them, however, I found this article on slate particularly annoying:

Hate and Marriage: http://www.slate.com/id/2145620/nav/tap2/

I found the authors address on google, and this is what I wrote to him:

Dear Sir,

Let me see if I understand this. Gay people should abandon the fight for marriage because of straight people’s mostly unconscious anxiety about their gender roles. This is the most ridiculous argument yet. If I understand you correctly, gay families should remain legally unprotected because the majority (straights) are anxious? As a gay woman, I have seen the limits of democracy. If the majority wants to discriminate against a minority, then they can. Really, nothing stopping them.

I think your point is that this deep seated anxiety which causes 70% of the populace to trip over themselves getting to the voting box to vote against gay marriage is not bigotry, but it is. If there is no rational reason to expand marriage rights to gay people, if it is indeed, something that really belongs on the psychologist couch and not in legislation, it is discrimination. Not perhaps the virulent hateful kind, however, the haters drive the debate, and the anxious pick up its rear. All I can say to all of this, I hope you get over it so my family and I can have full citizenship in this country and are able to protect each other legally.

If you would like to add your two cents, this is his email address: rford@standford.edu

On another note, my state senator Dianne Wilkerson came through like a champ once more for gay people. I am calling her office with a thank-you and a donation this morning. This is her site: Dianne Wilkerson(Yes, this is how I spend my time when the baby is asleep).

On second thought

I have been thinking more about this breastfeeding situation. I am more attached to it then I realized, even if I am being gnawed on. I don’t think my son will have any problems being weaned. He already takes a bottle of formula pretty willingly, I think its me who is going to have a problem. Every time I am tempted to do it, I just think of the first few days of his life. He latched on so well at the hospital, like he was a pro. The nurse kept on saying how smart he was, and I was amazed that we were able to do it. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to make milk. It just seemed too weird, but there I was feeding my baby.

He had all of these really cute breastfeeding expressions. He had a very serious one where he would furrow his brows like he was solving a physics problem. There was another one where he would lift up his eyebrows like a connoisseur as if he were saying, “This is an excellent batch.”

Now he messes around a lot when he is eating. He smiles, he looks all around. If I am breasting in public, everyone gets a good look at my nipple. I am not sure what to do about the biting. Its like he is conducting an experiment in cause and effect “Look when I bite down, that funny lady screams.” I never pictured myself one of these people who breastfed their babies until they were toddlers. He is six months now, and that is when I thought I would stop. I’ll keep doing it for now.

Breasts and Bottles

I remember when I was pregnant feeling like my body had become community property. I had wild cravings for junk food. People had a lot to say about this. Everyone from co-workers, friends to people I didn’t even know wanted to tell me about what I should be eating or not eating. I finally came up with a rule that I used in response, I told people that the non-pregnant were not allowed to tell the pregnant what to do. It was surprisingly effective. And then I had the baby, and once again, everybody in the world has an opinion.

Of course, I am not complaining about people who offer to share their experience if you ever need it. Those gracious people are life savers. My sister-in-law is like this. She has plenty to say when asked, but never butts in. But there is a whole army of others who want to tell you all about the best sleeping arrangements, baby carriers, toys, television shows, you name it.

I have been thinking about this because I am thinking about weaning my six month old son off the breast. Truthfully, we have been moving in that direction for a while. I have had repeated problems with thrush, which made feeding painful for me, and eating painful for him. Now, he is beginning to teethed and has been gnawing on my breast. Do you know what it is like to put your nipple someplace knowing it is going to be bitten? It’s a little nerve wrecking.

I have mixed feelings about this because I don’t know if I will have another biological child, so this may be the only breastfeeding I ever do. Despite all of the problems, I do think it helped me bond with my son. He is so cute when I feed him too. He looks up at me and smiles, and it just kills me.

I am also not looking forward to the Breastfeeding Nazis either. These women really have their scorn down to a science. Half the time, they don’t even have to say anything. They just give you a look, and you know they disapprove. But like I use to say when I protested in front of abortion clinics, it’s my body, my choice. I wish people would have a little more respect for women’s bodies. Even with a child inside or outside of them, these arms, legs and boobies are private property.