Fly My Pretty

Days 6 & 7 - Mon & Tues

2010-02-23T21:54:00.001+10:00

Hi sweetheart,

I can't believe that, due to my diet, the only vaguely sweet treat type thing in the house is half a box of stale tiny teddies.

Granny came around today, so it was an easy day. She made a big vat of Scotch broth, at my request - I associate Scotch broth with all my childhood family crises, endlessly warming and comforting. I am under the impression that a nice big bowl of Scotch broth can put anything into perspective.

It's so frustrating that it's so hard to get to speak to you! These SMS text updates are so unsatisfying! But I'm glad things are looking up, and maybe you'll be home in another week.

I started on some domestrivia that was accumulating in a pile beside this [your] computer. Funny, all the things I haven't done for years. I haven't paid the rent on this house before. I don't think I've ever brushed the babies' hair - it took me a few days to realise why Louis and Pearl were looking so feral! And I've really backed away from organising the necessary stuff to get the house ready to sell. Well, I started on them all today. And guess what? They really weren't that hard! I might even try to mow the lawn before you come home...

Louis has been really clingy for the past couple of days. It's so unlike him, he's such a placid soul. At the moment, he doesn't want to be by himself. He won't sit and play trains by himself; I have to come and watch. And that of course, means Pearl isn't getting enough attention, so then she comes in and does something like sit in the middle of the train tracks. It could be because you are away - I presume it is - or it could be some other sort of stage.

It was so hot today. Hot and sticky and cranky-making. Granny cooked Scotch broth then we all went out to Seventeen Mile Rocks for a swim. We are having a nice time - I am making sure we are doing familiar, fun things - but somehow without you here it feels a bit pointless. I'm not phrasing that right. Of course it's not pointless, it's just...empty somehow. Incomplete. There's a big gap in our family, if only in the 'wait til we tell Mummy L about this' sense.

Pearl and Louis talked about you more today. Maybe it's starting to feel like you've been gone a while. They both had toy phones out, talking to you, this afternoon, giving you a rundown on their day. They wanted to hear 'Mummy's favourite song' as we drove along listening to Kasey Chambers and the Little Hillbillies. I didn't know which was your favourite, but I told them it was the colours one. Is it the colours one?

Jonathon and Richard dropped in with dinner, but didn't stay long, as they're off interstate tomorrow. They brought back the cutest souvenirs from China for the babies - training chopsticks! Louis's are red adorned with a person laughing, and Pearl's are green, with a cat. We will have to have yum cha directly!

Day 5 - Sun

2010-02-22T02:14:00.000+10:00

Fell asleep again putting babies to bed tonight. It's quite good - means I don't have to bother about getting myself dinner; however I lose the only baby-free time in my day. I hadn't cleaned my teeth though, so had that annoying half-wakefulness where I knew I had to get up and do that...so now I'm up at 1.30am with freshly sparkling teeth.

I'm so relieved we can breathe easier. I don't have language big enough. It's odd receiving drips of information by text message; huge pieces of news in 160 characters.

I have so much support here I feel a bit embarrassed. Everyone wants to do something, and I am the only candidate available for helping! It's lovely, but you & Alice & your mum are the ones doing the really hard stuff, so I almost feel fraudulent.

Hannah and Georgia came over to play with the babies this morning. Two teenage girls for a couple of hours - perfect! They did fingerpainting and playdough and hide-and-seek and dancing in the loungeroom to very loud teenage music (I felt quite middle aged!) Pearl and Louis were exhausted by midday. Granny in the afternoon - she's so reliably practical in a crisis. Food-washing-cleaning and 'go and lie down for a few minutes'.

And then Julie's party in the evening - the regular crowd plus a few new people. I made Nigella's chocolate cake out of this month's De1icious while Hannah and Georgia were here. It's odd to be amongst people who are just going on with their normal lives, although I felt a bit more like part of the human race tonight, knowing Alice is doing better. We stayed til 7pm! I think that's the latest I've been out with Pearl and Louis. They just ran wild with all the other children. It was so great to watch. I felt a bit redundant. I'm accustomed to having them constantly dripping off me when we are out and about and it seems that they have suddenly joined a new age group - the age when children find that their natural allies are other kids, not their parents at all! I thought they might just crash when we got home (I knew it was a long shot) but no, they still needed about two hours to wind down. Maybe it's our fault for having a long bedtime routine? - ie baths at 5.30ish then an hour of quiet play before bed. Still, I like our calm evenings and wouldn't change them.

When we got home I was sleepier than they were - struggling to keep my eyes open while I waited for them to calm down enough to reasonably expect them to 'drift off' to sleep. Now I must go back to bed before I awaken myself too fully.

Love to you and Alice and your mum.

Day 4 - Sat

2010-02-22T01:28:00.001+10:00

Darling heart,

Sorry I didn't write last night - I fell asleep while I was putting the babies to sleep, at 7.30! Slept til 2.19am when Pearl woke up looking for you. Not upset; more imperious. Like, 'Okay Mummy L, I've had just about enough of this nonsense. Stop mucking around now and reveal yourself this instant!' We checked through the house looking for you and I explained where you were and she went back to sleep with no fuss. I don't think she fully wakes up; I think she's just used to having you there.

Then we all slept til 6a.m, bliss!

They are having their midday nap right now. Louis is in my arms. I don't feel like now is the time to reinforce his sleeping habits - whatever gets me through is my motto. It just means I can't do the list of tasks I'm accumulating, the one entitled: 'Things to do while kids are asleep.'

Yesterday Granny came with us to our swimming lesson. Pearl went with her and I took Louis. In the afternoon we had our lesbian mums picnic. Our two are really reaching that age where, if there's a bunch of kids around, they just join the tribe and run with it. It's very sweet to watch - our kids, off playing with the big kids!

Granny's just arrived now...

Day 3 - Friday

2010-02-19T23:28:00.000+10:00

God I feel so useless.

The only useful thing I can do is look after the children so thoroughly, so perfectly, that you know that you don't have to worry for a second about us. Save your worry for the real stuff. We are absolutely fine here. Pearl and Louis are happy.

Today we went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary - another great place for toddlers. I love our yearly memberships.

We bumped into Maggie, the lovely woman we met in the park last week. We had coffee together with some other mother-friends of hers, and our children all ran amok in a tribe together, amazed at dingoes and kookaburras and curlews and of course koalas. A couple of the mothers had seen us on the news last week.

We had lunch with Nonie and saw Hugo's guinea pigs. Hugo was at school but the guinea pigs were a huge hit.

Pearl insisted on wearing her pink fairy dress all day. I'm going to need to make a sign that says 'She chooses her own clothes'.

Penny and Dinah dropped in after work. It was perfect timing, just as the kids were getting ratty. Dinah read stories and Pearl and Louis showed off, playing hide and seek. They talked about Penny and Dinah for some time after they left.

Pearl woke up just before dawn this morning, and said to me, 'Hello, Mummy L!' with such a tone of delight that my heart broke for her. I said, 'Go back to sleep, darling, Mummy's in India.' I expected her to burst into tears but she must only have been half-awake, because she did just lie down and go back to sleep. She woke up two hours later, properly, crying out for you. We walked around the house looking for you, while I explained that you were in India but that you would be back soon. Not today, but soon. She was okay with that.

I've really been surprised at how they have taken your absence in their stride. I think it is a sign of what lovely secure children we are raising. They miss you, they ask about you, but when I answer that you are in India and you are coming back, they are satisfied. Louis is particularly interested in the fact that you went on a plane. He was explaining this to our neighbour C, who dropped by this evening to see if I needed anything - 'Milk? Bread?'.

I know you can't read this now. But I hope you both can feel all the love from all of us.

Letters to India - day 2

2010-02-18T22:20:00.003+10:00

My life is going to be so tiny for the next couple of weeks. It needs to be tiny so you can do the big stuff. Nothing else exists except getting our family through all this.

A car just pulled up out the front, and I automatically stopped and listened, but of course it wasn't you.

The evenings are almost easier, having you away. I know you are not coming home so I must just keep going with the whole going-to-bed routine. I'm not anxiously waiting for you to come and relieve me, and in some way I maintain more energy for the whole thing. I suppose I just stay in the moment, rather than constantly look forward to you walking through the door.

Today we took the train to Southbank. Southbank is like a glorious gift to parents of toddlers. That fantastic playground where the bridges and slides and climbing frames wind over and around the rocky creek; that magnificent fake beach and the water playground; the State Library; the Museum; GOMA; and all those opportunities for babycinos. Tim was singing nursery rhymes at The Corner, of course. Our children do adore him. They fawned. I think we need to employ him as a manny.

Photo moment: Tim blew bubbles using that latex stuff that makes really strong bubbles. Louis and Pearl and myriad other children were trying to catch them, and at one point Louis and Pearl were standing there with little bubbles stuck all over them - in their hair, on their clothes. They looked magical.

Louis and Pearl had a big sleep in the pram and I fell asleep reading the newspaper on a couch in the library. I hope I didn't snore or anything.

On the way home a man spontaneously came out of his house to show Louis and Pearl his lorikeet.

Both babies were exhausted and fell asleep really easily.

They've asked where you are a couple of times. 'Mummy home?' said Louis as we headed home on the train.

'No,' I said. 'Mummy is in India with Aunty Alice.'

'India,' said Pearl wisely. 'Aunty Alice.'

And that is that. They are not in any doubt that you will be home. We have lovely secure children.

I think Louis is going through A Stage. You know how he has always been so placid and gentle? Something has shifted, and he is becoming the aggressor much more often. He leaps upon Pearl and wrestles her to the ground. She shrieks, clearly distressed, but he won't let her go. Today it seemed that whenever I left the room for a minute, there would be tears. Of course, she is still determined to have whatever it is he is playing with, even if I offer her another exactly the same.

I don't have any plans for tomorrow.

Give my love to Alice.

And I love you.

Letters to India - day 1

2010-02-17T22:42:00.001+10:00

My darling,

Where are you at the moment? In a transit lounge in Singapore, flicking through an Asia-Pacific version of Marie-Claire, perhaps? I hope you can take some time to relax, after the frenzy of getting you onto the plane, but before the frenzy of your arrival in India. I hope the in-flight movie was smart enough to be diverting, but dumb enough not to be demanding.

I want to let you know how we are going. In detail, every day, while you are away. Perhaps the minutiae of our daily lives will be too mundane while you are away, dealing with this. I don't think so. I think you will want to know every single thing your family has been doing. How our life goes on in your absence - we'll be okay, but we're awaiting your return. In all the craziness and uproar you are confronting over there, we're still here, loving you, waiting for you to come back.

The babies stayed asleep all the way home after dropping you off at the airport. They had a big sleep! And consequently were very easy to get to sleep tonight. I'm feeling a little apprehensive about how the overnights will go. I think Pearl will miss you. I've told them you are in India, and that you are looking after Aunty Alice, who is sick. And that you'll be back soon, but not today.

We went to the library this afternoon. I wanted to get some supplies from the shops, and a few library books to read during my solitary evenings. For the first time ever, I put money in one of those rides they have in shopping centres. I've always maintained a barrier: 'No, Grandma does that. I don't make them go.' I think Pearl and Louis were a bit surprised when I gave in to their pleas!

We also had pink milk ('just like Lola!'), can you believe it? I just couldn't be bothered taking a stand today. "Sugary drinks? Rides? Why not?" I'll probably pay for the lowering of my standards at the next trip to the supermarket.

Wish-I-had-the-camera moment today: Louis and Pearl both put on tutus and practised ballerina twirls through the house. They looked gorgeous!

People are really keen to help. It's so heartwarming. Our neighbours C & M drove over the river this evening to retrieve your car. Sally rang, and Katrine rang, and Sharon emailed, to offer me whatever help they could. Hannah and Georgia are coming over Sunday to play with the babies for a couple of hours. Hopefully a bit of teenager time will completely wear Pearl and Louis out!

I've only just emailed Mum to tell her you are away, I sort of procrastinated. I haven't heard back yet. I'm sure she'll help out lots.

It's going to be harder to stick to my diet without you around. I just wanted macaroni cheese for dinner - comfort food. I can picture myself every evening on the couch, rewarding myself with a whole block of lindt for making it through another day without you around.

I made the special diet pizza instead. Maybe I'll live on that for two weeks. But I'm finishing off that slice Libby gave you. It's amazing...and I wouldn't want it to go to waste. I'll start again tomorrow.

I've looked up that India is four and a half hours behind Australia. At the library, I pulled out an atlas and said to the babies, 'Look, I'll show you where Mummy L is.' Pearl looked politely, then said, 'Picture [of] Mummy?' So I had to explain that although I could show them a picture of India, I couldn't actually show them you in India.

Maybe once you've scoped out the place, we can arrange a time to do a video chat.

xx Pass on my love to Alice.

I miss youse

2009-10-13T21:42:00.006+10:00

It feels weird not blogging. I know it's weird to feel weird for not blogging. And I'm so busy I don't know what to do. You know that feeling? I just keep making lists and ticking off the really small things - "put bins out" - tick. By the time the babies are abed and dinner is over, I only have an hour and a half each evening - from 8.30 pm til 10 - to work on changing Queensland.

I'll be over at the campaign blog for a few more weeks yet. They tell me it should be presented to Parliament then go to the vote by the end of November.

I've made this - it's part of the campaign, but I thought you might like it.

Where did I come from 2 on Vimeo.

It'll only take a minute...

2009-09-07T22:34:00.002+10:00

Now, I'm starting a campaign blog at www.ozrainbowfamilies.wordpress.com

It'd be lovely if you could come over and post a comment, just to give the impression that it's a thriving campaign with lots of support.

The witch (that's me) and the wardrobe

2009-09-07T21:01:00.004+10:00

My energy is somewhat better than at my last post; thanks for all your encouraging comments.

By the time the babies are abed, we've cooked dinner and cleaned up it's 8.30 - that only leaves me an hour and a half a night to change the world! so this will be a quick entry.

I've been thinking a bit about closets. In my talking with people about the same sex parenting issue, I've come across four people so far who've said, "Oh, I couldn't write a letter of support, someone might realise I'm gay".

I just don't get closets. Well, I get them in Afghanistan or somewhere my very life would be at risk, but why would one choose to live in a closet in Australia?

Okay, one woman was, ahem, older. She said, "I've worked for this [charitable] organisation for thirty years. I don't want to leave in a cloud of disgrace."

So sad, and she's probably totally misreading her organisation (but who knows?) but I do get people who are older being closeted. They've come from a different era. It's the people who are more my age that I don't understand.

Reasons seem to be either career (I'll lose my job) or family (it would just kill my mother) related.

To the first one I wonder - How much would I have to get paid to stay in the closet? To say,"yes all you straight religious freaks are right, I should hide who I really am so I don't upset you"? Maybe if I was an international multimillionaire movie star I'd be tempted to keep it quiet if it would jeopardise all those villas in the South of France.

To the second one: have there actually been any recorded cases of people dying from someone telling them they are gay? My parents and I didn't talk for three years after I came out, but they came around in the end, and now (twenty years later!) they're great. I suppose the point for me is that even if they hadn't come around, I think I would have survived. I couldn't skulk around pretending to be something I'm not. It must just be shattering to one's self esteem.

I was talking to a new gay male friend about it - musing on how closets seem to be much more prevalent in Queensland. Maybe because the "gay community" (such as it is) is smaller, I come across a wider range of people than somewhere like Melbourne where it's easier to find a whole crowd of like-minded types. He was saying he had a rule for himself now - no dating closets. "Sometimes they're really cute," he said, "but it's so insulting to be introduced as 'my friend from work' - and even worse to be co-opted into going along with it".

Now I'm not a psychologist but I live with one so that qualifies me to be able to come up with theories. So theory 1 is that people who are closeted a) have parents who are disapproving and b) haven't worked through that stage of development where you realise your parents are not right about everything.

I mean, it's hard to imagine that someone who is closeted would have loving, accepting parents, isn't it? To be the sort of person who is closeted, you must have got a lot of messages that you are not okay. And then, there's a stage in adulthood where you realise that your parents will not agree with everything you do, and that is okay. You are okay, despite their disapproval.

And why are closets bothering me so much, at this time when I am being more out than I have ever been before - Queensland's representative lesbian mother? Because when I meet a person who is closeted, who feels ashamed of themselves for being gay, who feels that others would reject them if they knew they were gay - well I suppose it triggers the same feelings in me.

I also get cross with them, especially at times like this. Here's a low risk thing you can do to support gay rights! What are you waiting for? Us to get the rights for you? It's your struggle too! By staying silent they're just perpetuating the discrimination. It's like black people saying, "oh no sirree, I'm not gonna go for any rights, not me. Doan wanna upset the massah".

Ah well, it'd be best to avoid the closets then. Don't want to face any dark feelings now!

On with the job!

Flagging energy

2009-09-02T23:26:00.004+10:00

I'd really like to keep a record of our campaign trail, but I'm sooooo tired.

We're at a crucial time in Queensland - the Premier has announced her intention to recognise same sex parents, and now there's a Community Consultation (what new information are they going to learn from that? you may ask) and then there will be a vote.

The Opposition leader has vowed to defeat it.

I've got a facebook group, a yahoo group, and I'm keeping two other lesbian mum mailing lists posted (trying to get them interested - no response so far)

It's disheartening so far.

I hope someone else gets involved in writing letters.

I'm trying to think generously about other people - reminding myself of all the causes I hear about and don't do anything about, even though I support them.

If Queenslanders are reading, you have until September 18 to write to the Department of Justice.
You can read the consultation documents here
and you just send an email here legalpolicysubmission@justice.qld.gov.au

Apparently the anti-same sex marriage groups sent in 10,000 submissions - that was federal, but still, they're pretty active. The pro-same sex marriage mob sent in 12,000, yay us. I was a tardy contributor to that, feeling ambivalent about marriage as a whole, but in the end thought the symbolism of the inequality was more powerful than making (or not) a point about the inappropriateness of marriage as a foundation stone for society.

(My general enthusiasm, optimism and will to live may currently be influenced by Pearl being quite ill and crying for ohh, three days straight now, pretty much the whole time when she's not sleeping. It's quite mentally exhausting. Louis is getting fed up with playing quietly at my feet while I rock her and tonight started shouting in quite a demanding, teenage fashion - MUM! MUM!)

Yes, I am aware this post is fairly incoherent.

Can you help me destroy the fabric of society?

2009-08-20T21:21:00.003+10:00

I know, I know, where have I been? But now I am in the centre of a media storm, it's that exciting, and I need your help to work this out, so please comment...

The government has announced plans to recognise same sex parents here in Queensland. Yesterday L & I were on the local TV news (I'm trying to get a copy) and in the main rag here, and today I wrote an opinion piece, sharing the page with a family-values type.

Now a current affairs show is proposing a 'discussion' with people with different perspectives, including us. L is not so sure this is a good idea - that it will just validate the loopy fringe groups. I'm wondering whether it would be useful to be there, and come across as normal.

Their reasons why we bad are always predictable - I need to be clear on what I think in response, even if I don't actually say them.

I am trying to hold onto the idea that we are all concerned with the best interests of the child.

Reasons most commonly cited why we shouldn't have children:

- The Great Sky Fairy says it's wrong (aka 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve')
As I don't believe in this version of the Great Sky Fairy, this argument is irrelevant so I am not going to argue verse for verse, although I could. As we are a secular state, it is also irrelevant to lawmakers. Although I really try to resist the temptation of getting into a theological argument, I am sorely tempted to point out that if you believe in a God that made Adam, you must also think S/he made Steve.

- It's not normal/natural
Actually it is normal, it's just not positioned at the centre of the bell curve. Normal - naturally occurring - is different to common.

- We don't need to pander to the desires of a minority
I would say that how we treat our minority groups is a measure of us as a society

- The children will be bullied
Umm, and when did your child bullying my child become a reason for me not to have children?

- The children need the complementary love of a man and a woman
Children need loving men and women in their lives. I think it would be unhealthy for the parents to be the only role models in any family. The nuclear family is a modern invention, and perhaps not so relevant to many gays and lesbians, who form strong interconnected communities in the absence of biological connections. Good parents can find an abundance of positive role models of many different ages, races, abilities and interests

-The traditional family will collapse
Assuming this is a bad thing (because it would just be too mind-boggling to consider that perhaps the 'traditional' ie current Western family structure is not the best or even only way to bring up children), how exactly will that collapse happen?

- It's just sick and disgusting and I don't like it
Yeah, sorry about that. There will be things you don't like in the world.

Have I missed any general themes?
What would you say in response to them?

It's funnier if you say it out loud

2009-07-27T22:33:00.002+10:00

I find it endearing when people can't spell. Dad, whose first language is not English, is an appalling speller. I have to read his letters aloud so the phonetic renderings make sense. L, despite being exceptionally clever, can't spell. So here's another dad-ism, repeated with the greatest affection:

Dad: 'Where should I get off the train?'
Me: 'Yer*****ton
Dad: 'Hang on, I'll write it down...how do you spell it?'
Me: 'Y...'
Dad: 'Y for William?'

Qld: Same sex parenting briefing paper

2009-07-08T22:55:00.002+10:00

Just FYI.
If I knew how to do a fold, I would (any tips?) It's quite long.

******

Action Reform Change Queensland (ARCQ) is a community-based organisation in Queensland which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality through campaigns for legal and social change, and public education. ARCQ was formed in 2003 with participation from individuals and established community groups.
Key Points
· A significant number of same-sex couples either currently have children or aspire to have children.
· Queensland law does not currently recognise the de facto partner of a lesbian mother as a parent when accessing Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), in contrast to the way it treats the male de facto partner or husband of a heterosexual mother.
· Extending legal recognition to co-parents in same-sex relationships would ensure they can both perform day to day parenting tasks and fulfill their parenting responsibilities.
· Protecting the best interests of a child is one of the most important principles of international law.
· Research demonstrates that children raised by same-sex couples experience the same developmental outcomes as those raised by heterosexual couples.
· HREOC have found that legal discrimination against people in same-sex relationships and their children amounts to the breach of a number of international human rights obligations.
· Access to a regulated system for altruistic surrogacy should be available in Queensland and should not discriminate between couples on the basis of relationship status or sexuality.
· Adoption, parentage presumption and access to altruistic surrogacy should be available to same-sex couples with the non-biological parent recognised as the child’s parent – reform the Adoption Act 1964, Status of Children Act 1978 and the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2003.
· A 2008 Galaxy Poll demonstrates that the majority of Queenslanders support law reform.

SAME SEX PARENTING RECOGNITION IS IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF CHILDREN
Protecting the best interests of a child is one of the most important principles of international law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in particular.
A significant proportion of same-sex couples also parent children. 4,386 children live in same-sex families in Australia (ABS, 2007). This figure does not include children of non-resident or single lesbian or gay parents, or adult children living out of home. It is estimated that 20% of lesbians and up to 10% of gay men are parents. One study has found that 42% of young lesbians intend to have children in the future.
Some children are born to one member of a same-sex couple during an earlier opposite sex relationship. Many children are born to lesbian couples using donor sperm and Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). Some children are being born into and raised by gay male couples with the help of a female friend or through a surrogacy arrangement. A few children may be adopted by one or both members of a same-sex couple.
Under family law, a child’s two legal parents are generally the woman who bears the child (the birth mother) and the male partner of the birth mother, if there is one (the birth father). These are generally the two people who are recorded on the child’s birth certificate as parents, which will be evidence of the legal relationship throughout the child’s life. In Queensland, this includes the male partner of the birth mother where the pregnancy arises from ART, in that it presumes that the male partner produced the sperm even when there is another donor. Alternatively, if a child has been adopted, the child’s legal parents will include the parents who adopt him or her. Adoptive parents can also be added to a birth certificate.
A child born to a lesbian couple will generally have a birth mother and a lesbian co-mother. The birth mother will be a legal parent under the current family law system. A child born to a gay couple will often have a birth father and a gay co-father, as well as a birth mother. Alternatively, a child may have two gay co-fathers as well as a birth mother. If there is a birth father, he will be a legal parent.
The lesbian co-mother or gay co-father(s) can apply to the Family Court of Australia for a parenting order, as ‘other people significant to the care, welfare and development’ of the child. But the lesbian co-mother and gay co-father(s) will not be treated in the same way as a birth parent.
Extending legal recognition to co-parents in same-sex relationships would ensure they can both perform day to day tasks without question, such as writing permission notes for school, collecting children from childcare or sport, making decisions in relation to their children’s education, taking a child to the doctor and making decisions in a medical emergency. Addressing the legal status of the parents also gives certainty to the children in relation to inheritance and other legal processes that may relate to the death or illness of a parent. Children would further benefit from the legitimising of their family structures afforded by legal recognition
The failure to recognise gay or lesbian co-parents of a child may breach a child’s right to identity under the articles 7 and 8 of the CRC. It may also breach Australia’s obligation to support and promote the common responsibilities of both parents in raising a child (article 18).
In Western Australia (WA), Northern Territory (NT), the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and New South Wales (NSW), the birth mother and lesbian co-mother of an ART child are presumed to be the legal parents of the child, if they are in a genuine relationship when the child is born. They are both noted on the child’s birth certificate, to the exclusion of the sperm donor. Tasmania allows children in the care of a same-sex couple to be adopted by the non-biological partner. The Commonwealth and Victorian Governments have recently announced that they will make changes to recognise parents. Queensland and South Australia generally do not recognise children parented by same-sex couples. However, section 18B of the Status of Children Act 1978 provides that Queensland recognises lesbian co-mothers as parents if they are registered in WA, NT, ACT and soon in Victoria.
In the case of a lesbian co-mother of an ART child there is unlikely to be a competing interest. In the case of other lesbian or gay co-parents, there may be consensual agreements between the various people seeking to raise a child. The HREOC Inquiry supported amendments to legislation which open up additional options for a lesbian or gay couple to attain legal status and therefore better protect the best interests of their child.
A considerable amount of sociological and psychological research has been conducted over the past 25 years to examine the effect a parent’s sexual orientation has on the welfare and development of their children. The findings comparing lesbian and gay parents to heterosexual parents refute common stereotypes and concerns about lesbian and gay parenting.
It has been clearly demonstrated that the sexuality of a child’s parents has no connection to the child’s moral and cognitive development, well-being or happiness. When comparing children of heterosexual parents to children of lesbians and gay men no significant differences have been found in the social adjustment, social acceptance, or sociability of the children. Nor has any difference in the children’s peer relations such as quality of friendships or popularity been illustrated. In addition, no discernible differences have been found in the children of heterosexual or homosexual parents regarding a child’s gender role identification or sexual orientation.
The most important factor in a child’s upbringing has been identified as the care and love put into a child’s life. Lesbians and gay men display matched capability at loving and caring for their children as their heterosexual counterparts. For further information see the GLRL report, Meet the Parents.

FORMAL RECOGNITION OF SAME SEX COUPLES WILL PROVIDE FOR DOCUMENTATION, VALIDATION AND RESPECT
The 2006 Census reported 24,681 same-sex couples in Australia (ABS, 2007). The Australian Bureau of Statistics acknowledges this figure is an underestimate as some couples may be reluctant to publicly disclose their same-sex relationship status, or may be unaware that same-sex couples will be counted in the Census.
Queensland has recognised same sex de facto couples since reform in 2002. The Discrimination Law Amendment Act 2002 (Qld) amended a wide range of existing Acts to introduce the term ‘de facto partner’ as a category of ‘spouse’ or to replace the term ‘de facto spouse’ with ‘de facto partner’. The new definition of ‘de facto partner’ is as follows: either 1 of 2 persons who are living together as a couple on a genuine domestic basis but who are not married to each other or related by family.Thus, a same sex partner in Queensland now has access to entitlements available to a ‘spouse’.
The Tasmanian reforms in 2003 introduced a relationship register alongside the introduction of the term ‘significant relationship’. A couple (same-sex or opposite-sex) who registers their relationship as a significant relationship will have prima facie proof of the existence of that relationship. Tasmanian law does not require the couple to live together in order to prove a significant relationship. A registered couple has prima facie proof of the existence of their relationship, so cohabitation need not be a fundamental element of proving a ‘significant relationship’. Registration of a relationship does not confer legal rights in itself but it may assist in demonstrating the existence of a de facto relationship. Civil union laws are now in place in the ACT as from May 2008. The new laws allow same sex couples to enter a legally recognised civil partnership. They also allow a civil ceremony to be conducted by the Registrar General.
Both NSW and Victorian consultations with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community highlight a significant level of desire for symbolic and ceremonial forms of relationship recognition. 80% of Victorian respondents and 74% of NSW respondents thought marriage should be available to Australian same-sex couples. In NSW, 70% of participants also believed civil unions should be available.
There are various models of civil unions in other countries.
Sometimes it is difficult for a couple to provide the evidence necessary to prove the criteria for a genuine domestic relationship. This may be particularly difficult for a same-sex couple who has not yet declared their sexuality to friends, family or workplaces for fear of the public reaction. Further, some same-sex couples have told stories of decision-makers who are resistant to the possibility that a same-sex couple can be a genuine couple.
Several people told the HREOC Inquiry that a formal ‘piece of paper’ could assist same-sex couples in proving the genuineness of their relationship and in asserting the rights that flow from such a relationship. The NSW Law Reform Commission believes that the advantages of registration schemes include greater certainty and recognition. They comment:
Registration has the benefit of certainty. That certainty removes the need for legislative preconditions such as requiring cohabitation. The parties to a relationship can be readily identified, and have demonstrated that they know about, and agree to be bound by, the legislation and its provisions. It would give people who do not wish or are legally unable to marry, such as gay and lesbian couples, the opportunity to have their relationship registered and formally recognised by the State. It also provides a system of recognition for people who do not wish to live together, but want to acknowledge their relationship of mutual support.
The ALP National Conference passed a motion on 27th April 2007 stating in part:
Labor will take action to ensure the development of nationally consistent, state-based relationship recognition legislation that will include the opportunity for couples who have a mutual commitment to a shared life to have those relationships registered and certified...based on the scheme that has existed in Tasmania since 2004.
These sentiments were echoed by Labor during the 2007 federal election. The then Shadow Attorney General, Joe Ludwig, gave repeated commitments to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities around Australia that a Rudd Labor Government would act on the Inquiry’s recommendations as a first term priority and negotiate nationally consistent, state-based relationship recognition legislation.
The Victorian Government is at present considering its options with regard to which model of registry arrangement it will adopt. It is understood that there is serious consideration of duplicating arrangements that were adopted in Tasmania.
It is important to acknowledge that a relationship recognition scheme will not satisfy all lesbian and gay couples, many of whom aspire to full equality through marriage or desire the option to choose marriage as do heterosexual couples. However, a relationship recognition scheme with a ceremonial element would be a significant step towards addressing these aspirations and removing the sense of social exclusion that lesbian and gay couples currently experience.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community commissioned a Galaxy Poll in 2008 to explore the views of Queenslanders on a number of key issues. In summary, the poll found that:
· 60% of Queenslanders think that same sex couples should be able to have a civil union.
· 67% of Queenslanders think that children with same sex parents should have both parents recognised by law.
· 96% of Queenslanders think that more should be done to prevent homophobic bullying against gay and lesbian students in Queensland schools.

June 2009

2009-07-05T22:56:00.005+10:00

I don't seem to have many photos of Pearl and Louis together - often my attempts come out like this - one child in each corner of the frame, heading in different directions.

However Pearl has recently invented a game that necessitates much close contact. It involves Pearl chasing Louis...

Wrestling him to the ground...

Leaping on him...

And then them both falling about laughing.

Deep? You've come to the right place

2009-07-01T22:38:00.005+10:00

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

The babies have decided that this is their going to bed lullaby. If I try and sing anything else, say, Rockabye baby, or Hush little baby, don't you cry, or my own favourite, Bring me little water, Sylvie, they pop their heads up and insist, "Woe, Woe, Woe" in ever more urgent tones. So Woe, woe, woe it is, over and over and over again, until they both fall asleep.

Usually this takes about twenty minutes, but tonight, due to an unfortunate late afternoon car trip resulting in an unfortunate late afternoon nap, it took an hour. Seven til eight pm I spent singing Row row row your boat, over and over. It became like a meditation, like following my breath...innnnnn....and ooooouuutttt.... which I did for five days once, on a retreat. And I realised what incredible layers there are to that simple song, how it encapsulates wisdom of ages in its innocuous lines. A guide to life, all there in a child's rhyme!

Consider...

Row, row, row: You have to be active, not passive. You'll need to do a bit of rowing in life - don't just sit there!
your boat: You can only row your boat, not anyone else's. Keep your mind on your own business.
Gently: There's no need to be frantic about it. Go placidly among the strife and turmoil of this world, etc
down: Don't bother fighting against the current. Take your natural path in life.
the stream: It's okay. It's a stream, not a raging torrent. You are safe.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily: Maintain optimism. It is what it is. It's a stream. You're rowing in it. Be happy about it.
Life is but a dream: This is the truly deep bit. Don't take it all too seriously, it's just a dream. Which poses the question, what do we wake up to, when we wake up from this dream that is life?

Is this gut feeling intuition...or neurosis?

2009-06-27T19:09:00.005+10:00

Because, you know, people do say to mothers all the time, trust your instincts. And I really can't tell if this yukky feeling in my stomach is anxiety, or some sort of warning. I know I'm over-protective. But a certain level of hypervigilance is realistic, surely?

I've been trying to convince myself for some time that my concerns about my mother looking after the children are just based on my anxieties. She spends a day a week with us, and is an enormous help, and adores them, and when I'm supervising her I'm absolutely delighted to have her around and involved in the twins' lives. But she's so absent-minded.

She cannot remember to put her hot cup of tea away from the edges of the tables - I'm always moving them out of reach. Last week she kicked a full cup over, narrowly missing Louis, and we have a friend's child who has had skin grafts from a hot cup of tea incident, so I'm abnormally careful.

She cannot remember to close the wire door when she goes out the back to helpfully hang out the washing - the babies are pretty good with stairs now, but I'd prefer they didn't do it unsupervised. It's a wooden staircase that gets slippery when it rains, with stupid ornamental stones (rental house) at the bottom. And it's only got a handrail, not a proper banister, so it's possible to slip sideways and fall out the side of the stairs, if you are small.

Wednesday evening when I got home, she'd put Pearl in her car seat but omitted to do up the belts.

Last week she was helpfully sorting some cardboard into the recycling for me, and Pearl walked past her and out the front gate. Louis and I were picking lemons at the other end of the garden, so I just said calmly, "I'd rather you went after Pearl than did that," and she did.

I've been telling myself that when I'm around she probably relinquishes a lot of responsibility, and that she'd be more focussed when she has them by herself, but I've been more hesitant to leave them with her since they've both been toddling.

Friday she looked after the babies for us at her house for a couple of hours. L went to pick them up and the side gate was open. She lives on a busy road so this really feels like the final straw. The kids were inside at the time, but the back door was open (it's one of those kitchen flows out to the patio kind of arrangements, so the kids just wander in and out). L pointed out the gate (and I had asked her to mention it to Mum when L dropped the kids off) but Mum said, "Oh, it's alright, I'm watching them." Which is all very well but she was in her pyjamas when L had dropped the kids off, so presumably at some point she'd had a shower, and possibly gone to the toilet, so there would have been moments of inattention. I mean, why not just shut the gate?

Are these normal oversights? What do other people expect of their mothers? It feels like a really big deal to say my mother is not capable of looking after her grandchildren.

I used to be standing out the front with a placard. Think of the rainforests!

2009-06-22T19:20:00.001+10:00

It's been raining for days.

Rainy days are hard work. Hopefully in another year they'll be old enough to be diverted by things like fingerpainting, and cooking, and cut-and-pasting, and building forts out of two coffee tables, a sofa and a few blankets. And videos! Lots and lots of loooooong videos.

We've been to the museum. We've been to all the libraries. We've been to the art gallery. We've been to the highly expensive hell that is an indoor playland.

Today, we spent the afternoon in the undercover play area at M*cD0n*lds.

Actually it wasn't so bad. The play equipment is incredibly safe (covering every liability possibility) and the afternoon only cost $4 for a coffee and a McSc0ne. Scary. First we discovered C0ffee C1ub (lots of high chairs, lots of space for prams, lots of other parents there so no disapproving looks from exasperated, sophisticated cafe goers) and now M*cca's.

Is there any further to fall?

Onward to the workforce

2009-06-21T21:44:00.004+10:00

I've just scored myself a job - well, it resembles a job in all ways except for the bit where you get paid. I'm going to go in one day a week and do some 'interning' as we call unpaid labour, with a small film production company. Mostly corporate films, some docos, some ads.

L and I have been discussion my job situation. Come July 1, I'm going to be losing the single parents' pension, as the federal government has decided that two people of the same sex do actually have the potential to constitute a couple. Nice, on the whole, and I'm grateful that I had 18 months' maternity leave paid by Centrel1nk. As I've explained in other posts, we're still not recognised in Qld, which means that although L is my partner, she is not seen as the babies' parent. So the fight goes on.

But I digress. I want to talk about going back to work.

At the moment, L has the babies on Thursdays. Financially, it would be nice if L worked four days and I worked three, but we don't really want to put the kids in childcare. I think Louis would be okay, but Pearl is still very clingy. Overall I don't think a bit of childcare is bad, and I've read up on the research (full time long day care from 3 months old = bad; anything else = neutral and the home environment is much more important in determining outcomes. No evidence to support oft-quoted theory that childcare is necessary or particularly beneficial for socialisation and academic achievement UNLESS the home environment is dysfunctional, then childcare can be a protective and positive factor). We had been envisaging leaving Louis and Pearl with Grandma for a day or two but honestly, I don't think she's up to it. Or I'm not up to it. I worry too much. Mum adores the children but she's a bit...absent minded. I think it's very hard to be on top of two toddlers; maybe it's not until you have twins yourself that you become able to do the constant division of attention. Like, if Pearl injures herself, Mum will drop everything and concentrate on Pearl's distress; all well and good except that Louis meanwhile is wandering off in another direction. You can never, ever give undivided attention to one child, when you have two toddlers, and I think that's a learnt skill. Mum gets insulted when I imply that her experience of bringing up three children is insufficient in some way. I think kids of different ages are hard in a different way; it's like comparing, I don't know, care of cats to care of dogs.

Anyway, the point is, that L and I are considering childcare, maybe one or two days a week. And I'm considering whether I want to work; that is, I think about working on the days when I'm not planning to home-school them. And I have lots of mad ideas for home based businesses that are incredibly interesting but not at all lucrative; part of the problem is that I don't think we should be consuming any more than we are, so how can I convince people to buy more stuff? And we're figuring out how we are going to get along on one income, and I've subscribed to a (free) email list that sends me handy hints on how to cook for a family of five for a week using only one potato and some generic label soy sauce (This week's tip: save all your laundry washing up and do it on one day each week - then you only do full loads so you save on water and electricity and washing powder, "I've saved $1200 over twelve months doing this!" writes Lynette from Upper Kumbukta West).

Sorry! How did I get to be here discussing laundry schedules?

We're here, we're queer, and...we ARE going shopping

2009-06-14T22:05:00.003+10:00

Yesterday we went along to Qld Pride. The march was a lot of fun, and going in on the train was a hoot - the whole carriage was filled with a range of queer folk: we staid suburban lesbians with our twin pram, a gorgeous gaggle of fifteen year old boys with Duran Duran hairdos and self-consciously camp mannerisms, a brace of old leathermen and some young dykes with trim short hair and low slung jeans not held up by their low slung belts. We met up with a bunch of friends and formed a pram posse, somehow ending up marching between some spunky FTM trannies (I loved their banner: "LGBT - the T is not silent"!) and the aforementioned leathermen.

The Brisbane rally is absolutely nothing like the Mardi Gras parade. It's a political rally, not a celebratory parade. We marched through the streets; those so inclined were chanting, I'm not sure what; some were blowing whistles. Lots of cars gave us cheery honks. In depressingly true Queensland style, not a single word of it was mentioned in the print media, although L gave a radio interview to a local commercial radio station and I was interviewed for a documentary some enthusiastic young things were making about workplace discrimination (my quote: have never experienced it, but am concerned that L won't be able to get parental leave if she needs it, as she's not legally recognised as a parent).

After the feelgood high of the rally, the fair day was something of fizzer for me. It was, umm, one dimensional - a one dimensional representation of the queer community. And what was represented was the partying, market-to-the-high-disposable-income, heavy drinking scene. A bunch of stalls handing out pamphlets, multiple tents selling alcohol, and a stage pumping out music that was too loud. I think I would like something more participatory: a couple of alternative stages; a healing or health space where you could get massages, and fruit juice, and tarot readings; maybe another space where you could do demonstration things, like bootscooting or muu thai or whatever is the latest queer fad; and a KID SPACE.

Like everyone else in the Brisbane queer community, instead of just criticising, I should get involved and do something about it, or else shut up.

It was nice to bump into people. That's really the point of those events, isn't it? Gathering everyone? It's just, you know, it seems a bit sad that we're all gathered there and all we can do is drink and listen to loud music. There's more to being glbT (not silent) than drinking and partying and s*x, but it's all I see reflected in the gayboy media, and L0TL's (Aus lesbian mag) not much better.

Reporting in

2009-06-12T20:37:00.004+10:00

Date night menu:
Chicken pie - comfort food from the Womyn's Weekly Cookbooks, because it's freezing. Can you believe a top of only 19C (66F)? Thank god it's only a cold snap, not an actual winter that anyone would recognise, and back to more reasonable temperatures next week.*
& a cheat dessert - I made sugar free banana coconut mini muffins for the babies this morning, so I made a couple of big ones as well, and have made a sticky lemon syrup from to pour over them, warm, with ice cream. Two birds with one stone, and all of that.

*One of the problems with living in a warm climate, and a reason why I'm entitled to grizzle about overnight temperatures dropping all the way to 6C, is that the houses here are completely unsuited to cold weather. No insulation. No heating. The windows don't close properly - the jambs don't meet up. We can see the ground underneath the house through some of the floorboards. So unlike Melbourne, where cold nights can be quite snug (discounting days in student housing), 6C outside pretty much means 6C inside. Brrr and grrr.

No movie due to disorganisation. L's trying to convince me that Si1ent W1tness counts but I'm not convinced - too many close ups of autopsy techniques.

Now what are they up to?

2009-06-09T19:25:00.002+10:00

It's kind of long - five minutes. But riveting! The other kid is their cousin, Jaya, who is one month older. I make a brief appearance - I wear glasses.

Should I stop posting pictures of the babies? Am I putting them at risk? Of what? I said I was going to stop when they turned one. But here I am, still posting. I mean, I presume my audience is clamouring for pictures of them and how can I disappoint you?

Try this

2009-06-05T21:52:00.002+10:00

Friday night is date night:
Tonight I cooked one of my favourite meals. Incredibly simple, reliably delicious and you can make it with anything. Really the only compulsory ingredients are the lemon & the fresh herbs, both of which we have growing in the garden, so I can always make it.

Here it is:
Vegie pilaf

2 cups of cooked grain (brown rice, white rice, millet, quinoa, cous cous, risoni...)
chopped onion/leek/red onion/spring onion (any one will work)
2 cloves garlic
about 2 cups vegetables, chopped finely - I use a max of 4 different vegies ( peas, corn, carrots, cauli, broccoli, green beans, mushrooms, silverbeet...)
rind and juice of half a lemon
generous handful or two of chopped fresh herbs (mint, parsley, basil, chives...)
Some nut type thing for garnish (flaked almonds, pine nuts, sunflower seeds...)

Stirfry the onion, garlic & lemon rind
Add the chopped vegies & stir fry until just cooked
Add the pre-cooked grain, lemon juice and herbs, and heat through.
Serve & sprinkle over the nuts.

Just like that, it is a fabulous side dish. But behold my innovations:

Vegetarian dinner: stir through a tin of cooked chickpeas and some cubed fetta when I add the grains
Carnivore dinner: stir through some prior cooked meat (tonight I added chicken; I haven't tried red meats but I reckon a gourmet sausage would work well. Fish would be great, too) that is cut up into small chunks, again at the same stage as you add the grains
Cold salad dish: don't add the herbs until after you take it off the heat and cool it, so they don't wilt. Also stir through something fresh, like chopped cucumber or snowpea sprouts. I took this to a barbecue and it was a hit.

I was also going to make a chocolate cake with cherry-chocolate sauce but the babies didn't go down until 8.30 (7 being their ostensible bed time) so date night is a bit of a write-off, apart from the excellent dinner.

You may well ask, why am I using the precious few moments of date night remaining, blogging?

Crossdressing toddlers

2009-05-31T19:31:00.009+10:00

Today we went off to a birthday party lunch for a gayboy friend of ours, and in honour of the occasion I dressed Louis in a t-shirt that says, When I grow up I want to be a princess.

We had planned to go to a playground en route to burn off a bit of energy, and Lovergirl took his T-shirt off and tucked it in the nappy bag. 'It's okay with our friends, but I don't want him getting teased in the playground for our sense of humour,' she said.

In the end it was irrelevant because we were running late and didn't make it to the park, so the t-shirt went back on, but I'm turning it over in my head.

How much gender role playing do we do with and to our children? How much gender role indoctrination is appropriate? There's a line, I think. I want the children to be proud of their sex - it's good to be a boy, it's good to be a girl. I think it's okay, even important, to have 'boy's things' and 'girl's things' - I like the idea of the 'Dangerous book for boys' & 'Daring book for girls' although I haven't actually read them. But I don't want them to feel they have to conform to gender stereotypes.

Cruising around the internet, I was reading another lesbian mum blog which made me feel a bit sad. I'd be hard pressed to find it again, but they described their two children as "all boy" and "a hundred per cent girl". Maybe they didn't intend it, but it sounded defensive to me - look at our PERFECTLY NORMAL children! No traces of gay-training here! I wrote a couple of days ago about creating my own pressure to be a 'perfect family', to demonstrate that lesbian-headed families are completely valid. I keep coming back to gender roles - what I'm modelling, what I'm teaching them. If I was in a relationship with a man, would I think so much about whether it is okay to dress Louis in girl's clothes? Will people think we are ashamed of his sex? That lesbians hate men therefore we are trying to emasculate our boychild?

Naturally none of these issues come up when we dress Pearl in overalls and little red t-shirts with trucks on them. She just looks cute and tomboyish.

We have good friends whose son was crazy about pink, and frills, and sequins, and glitter, until he started kinder. Then the kindergarten teacher spoke to a psychologist about her concerns, and called in the mums, and said he had to wear more appropriate clothes to kinder. I don't know all the ins and outs of the mothers' decision making, but they approached it with him by saying he needed a kinder 'uniform' (he had a big sister who wore a school uniform so that was okay) but he could still wear anything he liked at home. In the end he gradually grew out of the pink frilly stuff all by himself.

As they develop, I find it eerie to see just how much gender-stereotypical play Pearl & Louis are starting to engage in. It could just be coincidence, as Suze pointed out some posts ago. And it's not all-encompassing - Louis is crazy about trains, buses and motorbikes, but also loves flowers and putting on necklaces (he's particularly fond of pearls, but any shiny beads will do). Pearl carries a stuffed toy with her everywhere, and chases after Louis, shoving bits of food in his mouth - Louis, on the other hand, never tries to feed Pearl. However Pearl is the more physically active of the two, rarely sitting still, and also much more bossy.

In a few years my children will be wandering through all sorts of situations unmediated by my presence. Children can be cruel little reflections of their parents' bigotries without the thin veil of social niceties that stops most adults acting on their own prejudices. I don't want my children to be teased or bullied. But I want them to avoid this by being resilient and confident, not by being conformist.

I don't want my boy to feel shame about wearing pink, or girls' clothes. If he feels shame about doing things associated with girls, what is that teaching him about girls? About the validity of being soft and gentle? But also, I don't want my children to suffer because of my beliefs about how society should be.

One of the maxims I keep in the back of my consciousness is, If you want to live in a world without homophobia, act as if you already do. For me this means being out about my family in any situation where I would normally talk about my spouse and kids. No evasive partner tactics, or avoiding pronouns. A world without homophobia would also allow men and boys to wear pink, and aspire to be princesses, or train drivers, or princess-train drivers.

Because God's word is unchanging...

2009-05-30T12:31:00.003+10:00

Wow! Did you know that the Christian church used to officiate at same-sex unions?

The most famous were St Sergius & St Bacchus

In the definitive 10th century account of their lives, St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the "sweet companion and lover" of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus's close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as "erastai,” or "lovers".

[...]

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiatied in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.

There's some controversy, of course, with more conservative commentators arguing this was simply a sort of rite for men (and one recorded case of two women, in Dalmatia) to formally adopt each other as 'brothers'. Ha!

Mikhela needs

2009-05-29T22:38:00.003+10:00

I just read this meme on Elsewhere's blog and it made me laugh. You put your name followed by 'needs' into google and write down the first ten responses.

M needs help!!
M needs a stylist
M needs our prayers
M needs care a loving family offers
Little Miss M needs your help
M needs to be in brackish water
M needs a smack
M needs new shoes
M needs a friend
M needs leg amputation

LEG AMPUTATION?? And it was all going so well, except perhaps for the smack in brackish water.

Self care strategy 1

2009-05-28T23:06:00.004+10:00

One outcome of my diary of a week of parenting was realising I needed to look after myself a bit better. I'll tell you more about that some other spare ten minutes, but as I was pondering how to do this a social worker friend invited me to join a trial parenting group she is running for the first time. So I did. She's using this model called Hand in Hand Parenting which seems nice, if eerily like co-counselling. Did everyone else go through a co-counselling stage? Or is it a hippie thing?

I won't bother explaining it too much - everyone else seems to be such instinctively good parents so it's probably what you would do anyway (unlike me, who needs to research everything and actually think about what to do - I would very rarely trust a gut reaction. On crying, for example, my impulse when they were first born was to put them outside in the pram and let them go at it. I never did this as I believe it is Bad For Babies but I followed my cognitive processes & extensive research, not my 'instincts'. Interestingly, the baby-outside thing was what my parents did for us, that being the parenting wisdom of the day, although of course I have no memory of it. )

Oh bugger there's a baby.

Gotta go.

Later:

I realised a couple of things during the first workshop. One is that I feel like we have to be a 'perfect' family to justify lesbians having kids. The standard of good parenting feels so much higher, in order to prove that we are not disadvantaging our kids in any way for the dreadful lack of heteronormativity in their lives. It's not enough to be within the normal range of okay families - we have to be fabulous. Never any disagreements between L & I, never any moments of feeling like parenting is all too hard. It's like I'm looking for permission -

Oh bugger there's a baby.

Gotta go.

Erudition

2009-05-22T19:52:00.003+10:00

If you recorded my speech today, this is what you would have captured:

Bus! Yes, bus.
Up you get. It's okay, you're not hurt.
Dog! Yes, dog.
Away from the toilet. Don't touch. Yucky.
Pearl, stop it. NO Pearl.
It's okay, darling, you're okay, she didn't mean it.
Car! Yes, car.
Sit down please. Sit down in the car. Sit down. Sit down.
Cat! Yes, cat, oh, no, that's a possum.
Bus! Yes, bus.
Bike! Yes, bike.
Bus! Yes, bus.

Shall I go on?

However, it is date night tonight and I am cooking Spanish chicken & chorizo rice and lemon yoghurt cake, both in this month's De1ic10us. The movie of the evening is S3ven P0unds. If only these snotty coughing babies would go to bed.

Dilemma of distance & ageing parents

2009-05-20T21:12:00.002+10:00

Raining and raining here -the backyard is flooded and Brisbane has been declared a natural disaster zone. I'm mostly concerned with how to keep the children entertained. If they were older I would declare natural disaster days as video-and-cooking days. As you can see from the photo, today Granny helped out with some extended reading but I don't know how many days of that the babies will bear.

Lately I'm feeling a little homesick and anxious about my ageing father in Melbourne. Careerwise, we'd be foolish to move, and Brisbane life is easy - small city, good networks, pretty parks. However I worry about Dad. When I left Melbourne he was in his mid sixties, still working...now he's in his early seventies and clearly old. Change happens quite fast, at both ends of life.

How do others manage long distance families as parents age? Will I regret it, if we don't move back?

Impromptu lobbying

2009-05-17T19:28:00.003+10:00

Today we went to a local Catholic school fete. Guess who was there? Our local member, the Premier of Queensland.

L said, 'I'm going to speak to her, come on!' I trailled after her, trying to look confident; after all, she doesn't look like a lesbian unless she's with me.

Anna smiled at her; after all, she looked like another fete mother, child on hip. Then L introduced herself, and me, and the babies, '...and I'd just like to say how much I support the surrogacy reform and how we're really hoping that same sex couples in Queensland will be brought up to speed with the rest of the country in terms of parenting rights.' (I'm paraphrasing but she was impressively articulate at such short notice).

Anyway poor old Anna. You could just see her face freeze over. She must have been thinking, Jeez, can't I even go down to the fete and get myself a tray of coconut slice any more? She smiled politely and said, in that well-practised non-committal politician-speak way, 'Well, you're very welcome to make a submission and we look forward to hearing from you.'

At the time I was disappointed, but really, what was she going to do, get into a conversation about our children? She has to say nothing, even though I suspect that actually she personally is supportive. And as L pointed out, she was with a gaggle of well-dressed women; they could well have been influential local Catholics and it could have been quite an awkward moment for her.

For a Catholic school fete, it was really quite catholic - we bumped into four other lesbian families we knew, and I spotted one other suspicious two-women-plus-child combination, and a couple of men who I'm willing to bet had a very nicely decorated apartment and a small white fluffy dog.

And we have some very nice lime and coconut fairy cakes for dessert.

And this is the only thing I'll say on the matter

2009-05-16T20:28:00.004+10:00

To honour the passing of Marilyn French, I'm re-reading The Women's Room, which was life-changing when I read it back at uni.

The men sat down. Both carried clipboards with papers on them. Both had pens. They tossed questions at her at random, and barely waited for her to answer. Val watched with horror. Chris was immobilized. She answered their questions mildly, in a small voice without explanation. She did not insist when they argued with her. They attacked and jabbed and tried to get her to retract her story. She did not seem to realize how they were treating her. She blinked and answered, and kept answering. She changed nothing, but she did not get angry, she did not fight back. They were bullying her now. 'You don't really expect us to believe that, do you?You sat out there with him for an hour!' 'He says you're his friend. He had your name. Come on girl, tell the truth!'

It's really depressing how little has changed.

There's more discussion about the whole sorry NRL mess here and here.

Do not disturb (any further)

2009-05-15T19:56:00.004+10:00

Friday nights we've instigated an at-home date night. It's simply dinner and a video, or sometimes a game of scrabble, and usually we're already in our pyjamas, but it's the intention that makes it special. We choose a yummy menu from this month's De1icious and rent a new release to try and catch up on the myriad movies we've missed since starting this parenting gig.

Tonight we have roast vegie salad with soy toasted seeds (p96) and lemon delicious for dessert (that's from Stephanie), and the movie of the week is Bound - an oldie, a lesbian classic apparently, but I haven't seen it.

Life is good.

Giggle factory

2009-05-14T22:08:00.003+10:00

Just in case you missed the last vid (it's here, down the bottom, and it's seriously cute, if I do say so myself), here's a less sophisticated update on what life is like around here:

Wednesday diary

2009-05-13T21:52:00.002+10:00

Day 7 in a mothering week

Wednesdays are our day with Granny - my mother, who moved up here from Melbourne when Louis and Pearl and their cousin Jaya were all born with a month of each other.

Grandmothers are invaluable and watching my children with my mother makes me think more about the value of having children young. Not only because my children would know their grandparents for longer, but also because of the ways it changes one's relationship with one's parents. It's like the intensity goes out of the previous parent-child relationship and gets channelled into the new grandparent-grandchild relationship. All the hopes and dreams, all the love and spoiling, all the plans for the future find a pliable, receptive new target. The grandparent and the parent finally have a joint project. And watching the way Pearl and Louis respond to my mother is a joy. You know, she's my mother, there are things about her that irk me (and possibly vice versa although it's hard to imagine), but they just dance with delight whenever they see her.

My mother and I have always gotten along okay, as long as we didn't talk about politics, the environment, refugees, indigenous issues, gay and lesbian rights (although we should be equal, we shouldn't be seeking 'special treatment') or feminism. We have generally managed to converge on disability rights as she works as a personal carer. Conversations about our extended family have sustained our cordial relationship over the years, as long as I don't mention cousin Madeleine's jail term or Uncle Paul's drug addiction. She's always struck me as an ideal 1950s housewife, a couple of decades too late.

Someone said to me, 'Grandparents are the only people apart from your partner who will listen to the minutiae of the delightful acts of brilliance of your children.' Who else will listen to stuff like:

Louis likes buses, trains, music, flowers and necklaces, particularly pearls.
Pearl likes dogs, bikes, banging things, dancing and cornflakes. She does NOT like birds, or people dressed in animal costumes.
They can say bus, train, bike, ball, car, home, no, yay! up, down, bath, tap, duck, whale and turtle, although only L and I can understand them. Also ute ('doot') and plane ('ae')
They can do impressions of a dog (pantpantpant), a cat, a monster, a cow, and a train (eeeeee - I thought this was a mistake and tried to convince him trains went choo-choo but actually, the electric trains that go past our back fence really do go eeeeee)
Pearl likes ball games and the slide, while Louis enjoys the sandpit and the swings. They both love a see-saw, possibly because they have such an advantage over other children their age, who, playing alone, get on one end of the see-saw and think, 'what's the point of this toy?'

I could go on, but my point is, that really the only person apart from L that I can go on to is Granny. It's added a whole new dimension to our relationship - finally I feel like I can talk endlessly to her about something that I'm passionate about. Also, that she's not just listening, it's a shared passion - that if I need her to, she will drop whatever she is doing to help me out.

Every Wednesday we plan an outing. We're both discovering Brisbane, so it's an adventure discovering Brisbane through the lens of toddler-friendly activities. Today we went to Redcliffe and what a find! By the beach, giant GATED park - how I love a nice big gate around my park, you can take your eyes off children for a second or three - big trees for shade, coffee shops across the road...idyllic.

We planned to pick L up from work on the way home, so the babies were fed and bathed and tucked into their car seats to fall asleep on the way home. When they saw Mummy L they perked up and I don't know whose life I thought we were leading (maybe I was flushed with success after dinner last Saturday) but I suggested we have a drink in the cafe next door. I had a very expensive glass of house white ('We don't have house wine madam,' 'Okay I'll just have your cheapest one then thanks!') and we had a plate of dips and they arrived and it all just fell apart. Sculled the wine, stuffed in the dips and scarpered before we were evicted.

Monday diary

2009-05-12T20:21:00.007+10:00

Day 6 in an experiment keeping a diary of my week of mothering.

Whoever said, 'An unexamined life is not worth living,' never spent a week examining life as a stay-at-home mother. I'm finding this exercise thoroughly depressing. I will soldier on, treating it as something akin to one of those writing exercises where you have to keep writing for fifteen or thirty minutes, never stopping your pen, waiting for the pearls to emerge from your subconscious or the universal energy or wherever that creative flow comes from.

Today was one of those stay-at-home days I dread. My playdate cancelled because of a sick child, and suddenly at eight a.m the day loomed before me like a desert, dull and featureless and incapable of sustaining human life.

There is a rough routine to our days - some sort of activity in the morning, followed by a nap from 12ish til 2ish (that's them napping, not me - and Pearl sleeps much less than Louis, so hers is more like one hour while he slumbers on for another hour after she wakes up), then lunch and a bit of playing in the backyard, finishing with a walk down to the park about 4pm, then dinner-bath-books-bed from five til seven. Basically I'm trying to exhaust them.
With no morning activity, I felt overwhelmed at the thought of entertaining the two small people for the next nine hours.

So this is what we did:

Drove around to where I thought there was a Playgroup on. There wasn't. Rang Playgroups Australia, who told me to ring Playgroups Queensland, who told me the Tuesday Playgroups in my area are full. Obviously Tuesday is a dud day for everyone.
Rang Mum to see if she wanted visitors. She was working, but we could pop in if we liked. Horrid visions of trying to control toddler twins in workplace. Declined.
Found a playground in a park. This kept us going for about half an hour, until I could no longer stand the stress of trying to keep each adventurous toddler away from all those edges. There is one park I regularly go to where the climbing frames, slides, walkways etc are only about a foot and a half off the ground, so I don't have to worry about 'spotting' both children. When people have their children spaced sensibly apart, they only have one child constantly in imminent danger - the one nine months older is competent on the climbing equipment, and the one nine months younger can't walk. With two, I'm constantly weighing up the relative risks - if he slides out from under the chain on that swing, he's not going to do as much damage as if she falls from the top of that climbing frame she's attempting to scale.
Went to the library. Much safer, and used to be foolproof, but now only keeps them entertained for a limited time before they start running up and down the aisles of books, or banging metal bookstands - you know, the ones where they display the book of the week - on metal book trolleys.
It's only eleven o'clock! Oh my god. Back to the park for some morning tea then to teach them to chase birds, an invaluable skill for when I want to sit undisturbed for a few minutes.
Into the car at 11.30 whereupon they promptly fell asleep. I drove to the local(ish) megaplex multimall (what are those places called? you know, like Westf1eld shopp1ngtown). Now they are a gift to mothers. All pram accessible. No cars once you get in. Giant chain stores so no staff around to see you trash the toy department. I had to do a few mundane jobs, the sorts of jobs stay at home mothers do. Locate a particularly unusual lightbulb. Find out whether the camera can be repaired. Sort out a Med1care claim from several months ago. Life's administrivia - how does that usually get done? We spent the whole of the rest of the day at the megaplex multimall. As long as I didn't stop moving, the babies stayed asleep until one thirty. Bliss!
Came home to meet L who was doing a flying turnaround to get changed from her day's activity (collecting data from subjects) in preparation for her evening activity (presenting the results of one of her other projects to a bunch of doctors and hospital administrators in the hopes of further funding).
Dinner and bed, bed, bed for all babies within a twenty metre radius.

This is the last year of L's study and I suspect it's going to be hard work for all of us. I slept through the first year, pregnant, happy that she had something to occupy her while I went to bed every night at six. Last year she coasted a bit, but this year she Really Has to Get the Thesis Done. And then of course, there's her work...I know, we're not living in Iran in imminent danger of being stoned to death should our illicit love come to light, and I know that I just have to get through this year, it's only another seven months but oh it's such a relentless grind. Wiping up food and wiping up bums and wiping down walls and what on earth will we do now to fill in the time?

I really need to work out a bit of a support plan for myself or I'm going to fall over.

Monday Diary

2009-05-11T22:35:00.002+10:00

Day 5 in a mothering week

Well it's Budget Eve. Today we lived very frugally. Isn't Playgroup a boon to parents? $3 for the family to attend, regardless of the number of kids. Have you been to Playgroup? None of my other friends seem to go but I think they're great, particularly when I'm at a loose end and out of ideas for twintertainment.

Playgroup is something like childcare, except it only goes for two hours, and parents (or grandparents - there are always a few of those) stay. They are set up in church halls, with cheap tea and coffee in the gritty little kitchen, and well worn toys everywhere. The kids have an absolute blast. There are free play areas, indoor and outside, as well as a craft activity of the day. Then we all eat morning tea together (so good for social skills), more play, then some stories and nursery rhymes.

Home for lunch and naps.
Washing.
Playing in the backyard in the afternoon because I couldn't be bothered walking to the park.
Making them dinner which they refuse to eat.

God! It's no wonder I haven't bothered to keep this daily diary before. I'm driving myself to tears of boredom.

Sunday diary

2009-05-10T20:47:00.004+10:00

Day 4 - An exercise in recording a week in my mothering life.
Today was our second Mothers' Day as mothers.

The babies gave L some fingerpaintings they'd done in our Playgroup activity last week. It had a terrible poem with it - one of the dangers of being a pair of critical thinkers is we rarely take things at face value. I hadn't stopped to look at the poem though, being too charmed by the thought of Louis & Pearl's first home made Mothers' Day gifts. However L had to rip it off the fingerpaintings.

The poem went something like (we threw them out so this is the gist):
My dirty little fingerprints I've left on every wall,
The tabletops and benches too, I've really marked them all
So here are some more fingerprints, I made them just for you
Because I love you Mummy, (something, something ooo)

There's a sort of humour that seems particular to mothers, about how much trouble the children are. My mother also sent me a long unfunny Mothers' Day poem about a child who learns about his rights at school and comes home and tells his mother he doesn't have to be hit or sexually abused, so she stops cooking for him and driving him places. Maybe it will seem funnier in years to come, when we're more worn down and having our children doesn't seem such an amazing privilege...does that happen?

We spent the morning at a third birthday party. A lovely things about parenting very young children is how it forces one to slow down. Pearl and Louis get crotchety with being shunted in and out of the car to several destinations, so we tend to go to one place and set up camp for the day. It leads to long leisurely somewhat disrupted conversations, and hours hanging out in parks. In some ways it reminds me of uni, when I might have an hour or two between lectures, and I'd just sit in the grounds with whoever else happened to have the same time off, having conversations that may or may not have been terribly important (boyfriend problems, coming out, rallies against university fees or for nuclear disarmament, which pubs had free nibblies with their happy hours). Of course I could have gone to the library with my hours off, but I don't remember doing that.

In the afternoon we gave each other the perfect Mothers' Day gift: I gave the sadly deprived L some time alone with the babies and she gave me some time alone. Brilliant!

I spent my solitary hours editing my homework for film school. I had to make a video. The only requirements were 1. it needed to be longer than 30 seconds and 2. it needed to have a plot.

So may I present 'The Heist'.

Saturday diary

2009-05-09T20:45:00.003+10:00

Day 3 - An exercise in recording a week in my mothering life.
Hooray! Lovergirl has the whole weekend off! It's such a wonderful luxury to have a 1:1 adult:child ratio.

Today we went to the local primary school fete. Amazingly, it was a hoot. Everything is so much more fun when you have a couple of small beings looking about as if they have just be dropped into some extraordinary fun park every time you take them somewhere new.

We bought:

an inflatable swimming pool in the shape of a train ($3)
a pull along trolley filled with plastic building blocks ($3)
a fluffy kangaroo with a removable joey-on-a-string in its pocket ($1)
a wooden board with removable letters of the alphabet ($2)
a fairy cake (L), a brownie (me) and some watermelon (babies, poor things!)
3 singlets, two tops, a little tracksuit, a green dress and a bright striped t-shirt, all for the small people ($5.25 the lot - it actually added up to $6.50 but that was all I had left in my wallet!)

The babies danced to the local community choir singing world music, were stunned by the high school heavy metal band with its gaggle of admiring teenage girls, and Louis made friends with a large Indian woman in an orange sari, returning again and again to pat her on the leg and request attention.

This evening we attempted our first evening meal out with the babies and went out to a Chinese restaurant for a special Mother's Day adventure with Granny. All in all, I would consider it a success. We arrived at six, distributed steamed rice across three dining tables and the associated carpet, and were gone by seven. Apart from the outrageous mess, they really weren't too bad - no high pitched screaming, which was my main concern. It's really a matter of constant entertainment - when the food ceased to be attractive, having a couple of books, a toy mobile phone and some crayons and paper to hand kept them reasonably docile. Also, it was one of those fantastic Chinese restaurants with the enormous fish tanks filled with our prospective meals, so that was wonderfully diverting. Choosing Chinese was deliberate - Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants seem to be tolerant of children in a way that I wouldn't imagine possible in a more sophisticated environment. I think if the tablecloth is plastic, it's a good sign, child-wise. Our first dinner out in seventeen months - the world is opening up for us! Maybe we'll try a counter meal next.

Friday diary

2009-05-09T07:26:00.003+10:00

Day 2 - An exercise in recording a week in my mothering life.
Once a month on a Friday morning I have a lesbian mums group. Nothing radical - except that we exist - we just meet in the park, bring a plate, and our children run around together. Before I had kids I imagined it would be very important to me to connect up with other lesbian mums. I hadn't realised what a shared experience simply bringing up children would be.

There's been a big leap since the last catchup - today my two were running around with the big kids (sob!) rather than just holding their hands in the air for me to lift them onto swings, seesaws and slides. Very funny they looked indeed, toddling furiously after long-limbed four year olds.

I bumped into Hae-won, my acupuncturist while I was pregnant. Sooner or later, at playgrounds, you meet the whole world. Also a lesbian, she has a four year old daughter, who is Eurasian. Like the controversial cloth nappies, when I meet other parents of Eurasian children there always seems to be a nice connection. I always feel uncomfortably like I'm talking to a supermodel when I talk to Hae-won, but she doesn't seem to realise that she is stunningly beautiful and standing there talking to an avocado-smeared hobbit. We were regularly interrupted by Pearl, and I commented to Hae-won that Pearl seemed less confident in playgrounds than Louis - she's always running back to me, wanting to hold my had, while Louis wanders off with nary a backward glance. Hae-won said, 'That makes sense - she wants the playground to be an interactive experience, and share it with you.'

It struck me how I had been negatively interpreting Pearl's behaviour of trying to engage me in what she was doing in everything we do (she constantly wants to be picked up, she doesn't sit and play by herself in the loungeroom, she has to watch me having a shower) - thinking that she still needs to develop her confidence. I wasn't trying to hurry her, but I had been thinking, 'Oh, Louis is really more emotionally developed and centred at this age.' It was really good to have another way of labelling it. I think my tendency to do this - assume interdependency is a sign of being less emotionally developed - is a product of our social expectation that babies have to become 'independent'. This then, I think, goes back to male development being the yardstick by which human development is measured - (and I am grossly generalising here based on my study of n=2) boys become independent and go off and explore from a young age, while girls like interaction, therefore the girls are not maturing as fast or as well.

And yes, I am convinced, again from my study of n=2, that there are intrinsic gender differences. Louis is an exceptionally gentle child so far, but still - right now he is building a tower of blocks then pulling it apart, fascinated, while Pearl is in the kitchen hanging out with Mummy L, chattering away. And don't get me started on their different responses to the Train Museum!

Thursday diary

2009-05-07T20:38:00.004+10:00

Day 1 -an exercise in recording a week in the life of mothering.

Theoretically, Thursdays are my day off, but the last few weeks L has been working non-stop. We're just coming to the end of a nightmare run - she's home this weekend after working for about three weeks straight. Weekends, too. Hard for her - she's hardly seen the babies - and I am really dropping the bundle on the domestic front. House a pigsty, washing piling up, dinner recipes getting more and more banal, babies dressed in the dregs and dribs found behind the wardrobe. Of course purple striped pants go with blue, green and orange striped T-shirts. After all, they're both clean and what more could you ask?

(hey! become a feminist lesbian! you too can subvert the dominant paradigm just like me!)

We spent the day at the State Library with the delightful Maddie and her toddler daughter Summer, as well as visiting friends from Adelaide. The State Library has a fabulous children's program, involving all of us adults sitting on cushions in a brightly decorated corner, singing 'Hickory Dickory Dock' and 'Incy Wincy Spider' and so on. Honestly, I never thought I'd see the day and it does not sit comfortably with my self-concept so let's not dwell on it. But still, there we all are, twinkling away 'like a diamond in the sky'.

The angel babies fell asleep at the same time over lunchtime, so I organised some stuff for my painstakingly slow documentary project. Yes, it's still proceeding, in the same way a glacier can be said to be proceeding. I should be doing more research right now. Then I need to write a press release for the local paper - 'local family left behind by inconsistencies between federal and state law' kind of thing.

Lovergirl gets back from interstate about 11pm tonight. You know, before we had children, I understood theoretically why the stay-at-home mother should get half of her husband's earnings if they split up, but now I really get it. I know - I mean, I don't know, but I assume - that it's difficult to do a doctorate while working part time to support a young family, but it's bloddy (I meant that) hard work supporting someone who's doing a doctorate and working part time (much of the 'part' in part time, of course, being in the evenings) when you've got a young family, too. I'm starting to really long for the end of the year (although occasionally L lets slip her concern that perhaps her thesis won't be finished by then, aargh). Not that I should complain and isn't it a privilege to be able to stay at home with the children etc etc...but sometimes I wish there wasn't quite so much 'at home' within the phrase, 'stay at home'.

Anyhoo, we makes our choices...

All change

2009-05-07T20:32:00.003+10:00

My new project has the worst possible combination of being mind-numbingly boring for you and terrifying for me, so I'm abandoning it. I know you will be devastated by this. No week of opinions from me - aghast!

I've had a new idea for a writing project though, to breathe life into my flagging relationship with my blog (yes it's another relationship crisis for us). So this week I'm going to keep a diary of my activities. I actually find this sort of blog quite boring to read (sorry to you in advance) - the 'I did this then I did that' sort of writing - but I realise that I don't really have any records of my this life I have assumed as a full time mother.

On to day 1.

Opinionated bitch #1

2009-05-06T22:29:00.003+10:00

It's been a while.

All the posts I think of are either mind-numbingly boring - We did fingerpainting today at Playgroup - or might offend someone - mothers who don't go to Playgroup might feel their choices are belittled by me writing that I go to Playgroup.

Anyway because the recent snafu resonated so strongly with my childhood messages - don't have an opinion, it's unladylike and rude - I've been thinking of throwing the gauntlet down at my own feet and having an opinion every day - originally I thought for a month, but I think I'll start with a week and see how I go. For a whole week, I'm going to make a good parenting and bad parenting judgement every day.

Don't bother commenting though. I'm not going to read them. I hate people telling me I'm not allowed to have opinions. It's too much like having my Sunday School teacher and my high school form room teacher and my finishing school teacher (yes I was sent to finishing school. Can't you see I'm finished?) all arranged in a semicircle chanting 'No one wants to know what you think, Mikhela'. It's just something I have to get out of my system.

Good parenting.
Yesterday I went to the Ipswich Rail Museum and I thought, I like people who take their children to museums. I think it is good parenting. I must do it more often. I'm in a very comfortable routine of playgroups, parks and Granny dates, and sometimes it seems like a lot of effort to find out what else might be suitable for toddlers. I like when my children are exposed to a whole world of ideas that are outside my own field of knowledge. Maybe they'll learn something I don't approve of! They'll certainly learn something I didn't know. I learnt that Louis is shaping up to be obsessed with trains. Don't tell me that gender is solely socially constructed! Pearl is much less interested, but is happy to go along with Louis' excitement. 'Oh, another train?' I mentally hear her saying. 'Okay, sure.' Meanwhile Louis is enthusing, 'Yes, but this is a steam train. That last one was a tilt train. And then we are going to climb up on the diesel...'

Bad parenting
I hate letting the babies cry. I'm very jealous of that element of having one baby at a time - that you can comfort them without worrying about the other crying baby. I don't think that crying for extended periods is good for any baby (not just my babies! Yes, I am generalising), but tonight, for example, L is away and for some inexplicable reason they both decided to cry from 9pm til 10pm. An hour of gut-wrenching howling, as if they'd both had the same terrible nightmare. Most of the time I spent alternately holding one (who was relatively calm while in arms, but resumed at full throttle the moment it was put down) and patting the other one on the bum while it sobbed hysterically. I did take a couple of breaks to reconnoitre for caramel chocolates from the fridge, but I felt too bad to stay out there and enjoy them - I just shoved them into my mouth and leapt back into the fray. My twin book says 'Just leave them to cry. Bake a cake if necessary, to drown out the noise' (noisy cakes she must make).

So now we're out of caramel chocolates.

Radio interview

2009-04-22T19:48:00.003+10:00

Our radio interview is here.

Remarkable - we talked for about an hour and ended up with one sentence each - in my case, I'm sure she's chosen the most inarticulate comment I made, so it's a little embarrassing (etc etc etc). But it's a good story.

Radio career ends and begins

2009-04-21T22:20:00.004+10:00

L tells me I might need to publish a retraction of 'bogan'.
She says I can have a sharp tongue.
Can you believe that?

Can I say 'unattractive'?

But if you want to hear me being opinionated in a different context, Radio National may be airing an interview with us on AM tomorrow morning, if nothing exciting happens in the news to knock us off the playlist. It's on the same sex parenting thing, of course.

All talk no action

2009-04-21T11:00:00.000+10:00

I'm too scared to read my comments!

Cloth nappy saga part II

2009-04-20T08:53:00.005+10:00

This is sooo exciting - I've never had such a controversial post as the previous one! Soon I am going to be able to get advertising on this site, or maybe get a guest role as the radio shock jock of mothering ! So, in the interests of milking it for all it's worth, here are some more thoughts on how supercilious and judgemental I am for preferring cloth nappies.

But first, some sanity:

It's great to try to move our lives in the direction of ecological righteousness, but it's also true that every human activity has environmental impact -- especially the activities of that fraction of the human population rich enough to have diapers of any kind. From the earth's point of view it's not all that important which kind of diapers you use. The important decision was having the baby.

(Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College.)

****

I think that trying to silence women by saying 'Don't have opinions because other women might feel upset,' is unfeminist. When did women become such sensitive flowers that an opinion from someone with a different point of view was enough to reduce them to quivering balls of inferiority complex? The world changes through us having visions - different visions - of how to make the world a better place. Then we have discussions (or arguments about it), then if we are so inclined, we become activists about it. For example, in my opinion, same sex parents should be legally recognised. It's not just about "what's right for us" - I want the whole of Queensland legislation to change to accept this! I'm not a breastfeeding or natural birth activist, but yay for those that are.

I think that it is important for women, for mothers, to have opinions and be proud of them. We are doing an important job. The way we bring up our children determines the sort of people they will become, and the sort of society we are creating in the future.

So think about how you are parenting, do the research, decide what you want to do, and have the guts to stand up for it.

I think using cloth nappies is better - for the environment, for my pocket, and because it looks better.
I think extended breastfeeding is better.
I think keeping my children out of childcare as long as possible is better.
I think immunising is better.
I think co-sleeping is better - for attachment, for preventing SIDS, for maintaining breastmilk supplies and because it is yummy.
I think gentle parenting (no corporal punishment or emotional abuse) is better.

I don't just think these things are better for my children, I think they are better generally. If everyone used cloth nappies, imagine the reduction in waste (with the caveat of the quote above). I think there should be paid maternity leave for the first year of a child's life so all children could have a parent at home full time. I think immunising works because whole communities participate in it. I think we are still suffering from the clever post-war era marketing ploys of the formula manufacturers (scientific=better!) so that our own mothers have very little breastfeeding wisdom to pass on. If all children were brought up gently and with positive messages, I think there would be less bullying, depression, teen suicide, drug addiction and so on.

These are my beliefs and I feel okay about having them.

Also, there are things I think are better that I don't do.

I think being a vegetarian is better for the planet - meat is very resource intensive.
I think it is better for children to watch no TV in the early years.
I think natural childbirth is better than a caesarean.

For various reasons, I don't do these. But if I'm with someone who does, I don't fall into a heap complaining about how they are so smug and superior. I've made my decisions and I'm okay with that.

I hear working mums complain that stay-at-home mums "make" them feel guilty, and I hear stay-at-home mums complain that they get no respect and they have sacrificed so much. I choose to be a stay-at-home mum and I'm happy with that - proud of it even. I think it is better. But if I chose to work, I would do so because I thought that was better - better financially, better for my sanity, or better as a role model for my children as a woman who is concerned with more than the domestic sphere.

I think that if you have low self esteem before you have a baby, you will have low self esteem after you have a baby, and other people holding back their opinions won't save you. If you feel guilty about something, you'll feel guilty - other people's words or actions might trigger guilty thoughts, but you've got to have something to feel guilty about in the first place.

I also think that me saying, 'This society would be in better shape if everyone used cloth nappies,' is no different to my readers saying, 'This society would be in better shape if everyone kept their opinions to themselves.' We want everyone to live the way we think is best. Religious nuts do it, greenies do it, you do it.

Let's all have opinions and be proud of them!

Cloth nappy review

2009-04-16T09:44:00.000+10:00

This is a serious, earnest post, just in case anyone gets here by googling 'which cloth nappies are best'. I've googled this myself a few times and now I've used a few I thought I'd pass on my experienced mother wisdom.

First,why use cloth nappies anyway?

Primarily, it's about aesthetics. I love cloth nappies. Babies who aren't in cloth nappies look like bogan babies to me now. Particularly the hot weather white-singlet-and-paper-nappy look so prevalent here in Brisbane. Bad. A bright cloth nappy and a tie dyed singlet, now, is seriously cute. I love the way their bums look all chubby. I love the funky patterns on the nappies. I love how comfy they look. I love how they look like teletubbies or tomblyboos when they are dressed.
Oh my god the savings! Especially with twins. Even factoring in three extra loads of washing a week (we have enough nappies that we wash every second day), I reckon we are saving about $80 a week.
Of course there's the environmental advantage. All that landfill! I know that there was some study commissioned by the disposable nappy companies that said that cloth and disposables worked out about the same - but that included tumble-drying every load of nappies (we only do this if it's raining so much that even nappies hung under the carport stay damp - maybe four times since we've had them), and ironing your nappies. Who on earth irons their nappies?
Cloth nappies are a little subculture. Who sits around talking about their paper nappies? Us cloth nappy mums, we love comparing. It's a little parenting decision that feels good, looks good and is fun. It's also a marker for a lot of other parenting traits - probably into organic food; possibly doing some attachment parenting; most likely environmentally aware and politically okay in other ways; and probably reasonably well educated & feel like they have some power in the world (as opposed to, 'Oh well, it doesn't make a difference what I do - I'm nobody').
Seriously, putting on a load of nappies at night and hanging them out in the morning takes maybe five minutes. A few people thought I was mad planning to use cloth nappies with twins. I want to do another post one day on the tyranny of time - this myth that we should be 'saving time' at all costs. Actually I think spending time on something you value is an enormously powerful message to my children. I value the planet, I value our finances, I value how cute they look (!) and I value their health (I don't want those icky water-absorbing gels in paper nappies next to their skin. Or the chlorine-bleached paper).

Things to remember when planning what nappies to use:

What can everyone cope with? Some nappies are easier to use than others. All-in-ones and pocket nappies you use just like paper nappies - they are shaped like paper nappies and you have them all set up under the change table and pop them on. Good for grandmas and babysitters, and partners who are not convinced.
What are you going to use when you go away? We take cloth nappies if we are driving, and staying somewhere with a washing machine and line. If we are flying, or staying in a hotel, we use biodegradable disposables - although the local supermarket has just stopped stocking them so I'm going to have to track them down online.

Okay, about the nappies:

Bumgenius: we bought & were given about two dozen of these. Lots of people swear by them. Really easy to use, and they adjust in size so you can use them from newborn to toddler (although our babies were too small as newborns to use them). Cute gelati colours, and I believe there's a bright range out now too. They are a pocket nappy (the inner absorbent cotton pad comes out of the waterproof outer layer) so they dry quickly. We wrecked ours. We washed them in hot (95 degree) water and used Napisan initially. Then we found out you're meant to wash them warm and never use any bleaches. So the elastic in the legs went, the velcro doesn't stick and the waterproof lining peeled away! A friend of mine with twin boys the same age as Louis & Pearl also uses them, and hers are in perfect condition. So I'm pretty sure it's our fault. We use them with wraps (waterproof covers) now, and they work fine.
Bonnibuns pockets: These are great - we'd figured out how to wash by the time we got these, so we haven't wrecked them. Same principle as the Bumgenius, however they use snaps (press studs) at the waistband not velcro. So 1. the babies find the snaps harder to undo and 2. the snaps don't deteriorate in the wash like velcro does. They don't cover as wide a size range as the Bumgenius - the babies will grow out of them soon, but they've been wearing them about a year.
Bonnibuns all-in-ones: All in ones (AIO) have the absorbent pad sewn into the nappy. These also work well and are easy to put on, just like a disposable, but I find the all-in-ones a hassle as they take so long to dry - about two days. In comparison, the pocket nappies are dry by evening if you hang them out in the morning, because the inner pad and the outer layer dry separately.
Totbots bamboo: these look very cute - kind of like a traditional terry nappy cut into the shape of a disposable. You use them with a wrap over the top. I'm not so fond of these because they feel very wet against the baby's skin very quickly. I use them as fill in nappies - like if I do a change and I know it's only an hour before bathtime or something. I wouldn't use them when they were going to be on for a few hours. I've just cut some liners out of fleece (see below) which solves the problem of wetness but it adds another layer to fiddle with - you lay the liner over the nappy and put them on, then put the wrap on over the top. Tricky now they are getting to the wriggly stage.
Weenees: I've had problems with these. Other people swear by them but I can't get the wee to stay where it is supposed to, and poo is just a disaster! Basically they are a pair of undies with a plastic holder for a specially sized cloth or disposable pad. They say you can use terry nappies as the cloth. Doesn't work for me. I got them as hand me downs. I'm going to get the special biodegradable disposable pads and try them - they could be a good alternative when we go away, if they work as an alternative to paper nappies.
Terry towelling squares: I finally summoned up the courage to experiment with this and they work fine as an emergency nappy. Like the Totbots, they seem to feel wet very quickly, so I use my home made fleece liners and change them frequently. There's also a trick to folding them so the leg holes aren't gaping - we had a few escaped poos during my early attempts. I'm very proud of myself for mastering the square nappy - I feel like you could leave me on a desert island and I'd be able to fashion a nappy out of a palm frond (although I wouldn't of course, they'd be naked)

Wraps:

Totbots PUL: very cute, star or polka dot patterns, do the job.
Baby beehinds PUL - plain bright colours, good for coordinating with outfits! There's not even the option of buying tacky baby blue or baby pink, which I really like. Their velcro seems particularly good quality.
Plastic pants from chain store - I bought these in an emergency - STEER CLEAR! Bogan baby alert! Also fell apart very quickly. Also puffy and unattractive. Onlny come in pastel pink or blue. Yuk. Also sweaty and nappy rashy. Yuk.
Wool Baby Beehinds: I bought these for nights. It's taken a while to get into the swing of night nappies. Strangely enough, L isn't as enthralled by the whole cloth nappy thing and just wants the simplest solution. Unfortunately, paper nappies are very simple. Meanwhile I have been experimenting with two layers of terry towelling squares, double boosted pocket nappies, and all sorts of things. Wool and fleece are meant to be good for nights as they breathe - apparently the liquid evaporates off, so they are drier and help prevent nappy rash. Kind of an icky concept, all that evaporating wee in our bed. Presumably it's just the water content and the urea is concentrating in the nappy. Anyway they work well either over 2 square nappies or a shaped insert (like the totbots bamboo I mentioned) plus a booster pad. You have to re-lanolinise wool covers about once a month, which for me is fun (more fiddling about with my beloved nappies) but I can imagine would really annoy some people (L for example).
Hand knitted wool pants from Cutie Booty: I got these off eBay. They are completely gorgeous - handknitted wool undie- style nappy covers. At the moment they are too big for our babies. We need tight fitting wraps to hold the bumgeniuses together since we wrecked the velcro.
Fleece wraps - Also for nights. Feel gorgeous, very cute colours. Fleece works by 'wicking' the moisture out. Seems to work for us. Ours are by Squeeky Cheeks, also off ebay. We bought the large and they are quite small sizings - our not-very-big babies will have grown out of them soon. eBay is cheap - about half the price of commercial brands - but the nappies are all home made. I like that look but you might prefer the tailored brand effect. Apparently eBay is no longer allowed to sell second hand nappies.

Liners

Liners are quite simple, just cut thin fleece. Someone gave us a roll of paper liner in the early days - the idea being that you lay it over the inside of the cloth nappy and just toss it in the toilet. So convenient! Only, the paper liner got really wet and stuck to the babies' legs and bum - which kind of defeats the purpose of having a nice cloth nappy! Fleece is fabulous because it magically wicks the moisture away from the baby's skin. my first set of liners I cut rectangles, using the paper liners as a template, but now I cut pyramids withthe points cut off (what is the name of that shape?) so it covers the whole of the surface of the nappy - round the hips as well- not just the centre strip.

And of course, if you are going to use cloth nappies, you must have a Little Squirt - a kind of high pressure hose you attach to your toilet.

So there you have it. I'll strike up a chat with you in the playground when I'm admiring your stylish cloth nappies.

I'll just pop over and ask for half a cup of sugar...

2009-04-12T08:59:00.007+10:00

We're staying with L's sister Samantha, in her gorgeous old apartment in Sydney. Her place is all my preconceptions of Sydney rolled into one. Her apartment is a fabulous old late nineteenth century (?) building, all high ceilings and pressed metal ceiling rosettes. We can walk to the Opera House, to Oxford St, and to children's playgrounds where sexy nannies with exotic accents talk on their mobile phones while their charges run around. Yesterday I got talking to a real live mother at one playground and it turns out she was just back from her foreign embassy for Easter to visit her family. Confessing I was visiting from Brisbane didn't sound quite so impressive! At the front of Samantha's apartment, the bay window overlooks steep rows of convict era architecturally renovated bluestone cottages and fancy new houses across to sailboats and ferries skimming across Sydney Harbour. From the bathroom at the back, I can discreetly look down onto the back of a stylish although tiny double storey terrace house and its topiary-filled courtyard, where on summer evenings gatherings of sculpted men mingle and flirt. From the bedroom windows I gaze over a three storey mansion with extensive grounds, turrets, a tennis court, a swimming pool, and stone verandahs wrapping around all three levels with little nooks filled with wrought iron dining settings. On previous visits to Sydney, I haven't seen people there. This weekend, the lights are on.

I asked Samantha, 'Is that a private hospital?' It looks like the kind of very discreet, restful place society matrons might go if they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

She thought that was very funny. 'Oh, no, that's the [insert boundlessly wealthy mogul family name here]. It's not [insert name of matriarch/patriarch]'s house, it's one of the kids.'

It's not a flattering picture of me, but I'm terribly impressed by this. This is the closest I've been to real, proper, international standard money. (When I was eight, I got Normie Rowe's autograph. I was terribly impressed then, too). As the sun sets and I'm putting the babies to bed, I watch them going about their business in their lounge/drawing/sitting room (they don't have the curtains drawn, but they're far in the distance, across at least half an acre of garden - that's a lot of garden in inner Sydney. All I can see are silhouettes - although Hitchcock plots have been built on less). Actually their business doesn't look all that interesting - sitting in their loungeroom chatting, occasionally getting up for a refill of wine - but it's famous, fabulously wealthy business.

I'm not quite sure how to finish this post but there's something very grounding about real live fabulously wealthy people right in my backyard (okay, it's their backyard). It reminds me of the first time I went to a writers' festival and realised that writers were people, not articulate gods. Look, there they are! So normal!

I think it leads to something about my childhood messages about money - bad (camel through eye of the needle and all that), but also enviable. But today's not a day for introspection.

There goes that idea

2009-04-10T06:07:00.000+10:00

L is tall and effortlessly thin. I am more...rounded.

This morning I said, 'This weekend I'm going to try and eat just what you eat.' You know, maybe thin people just naturally eat less.

She said, 'Well, I don't think I can eat all of this hot cross bun.'

Who can't eat all of a hot cross bun?

What I meant to say was

2009-04-05T20:44:00.002+10:00

Yesterday due to a timetable glitch Lola and I both worked and had to get in Granny + a nanny (This was a whole blog post in itself as Granny was deeply hurt that we got a nanny as well as asking her to do it but there was no way I was leaving two active toddlers alone with Granny for nine hours, much as they love her. The nanny just came in for the super active period from 10.30 - 2.30). It was the babies' first day without either mummy around.

Anyway Gran said the day went swimmingly, 'although Pearl wouldn't have a nap'. Nor did Pearl sleep at all that night - Lola and I took turns holding her and walking around the house, letting each other sleep for an hour before swapping. Hence the peculiar blog post preceding this one. Nor did Pearl sleep at all the next day (Saturday) - she would doze off briefly, then wake with a start, crying. She slept fitfully last night, had a big nap this morning and is now, Sunday evening, sleeping like a champion, thank the gods.

It really wasn't worth it. I know I'm being petty but $120 for a nanny plus a $40 bunch of flowers for Granny for thanks (flowers have gone up since I bought my last bunch!) plus a completely wrecked weekend...I think there won't be too many childcare days just yet.

Now if we weren't attachment parenting I know the response would be, 'You just have to keep getting childcare until she learns to be more independent...' but as our whole philosophy is about allowing them to become independent at their own pace I'll just forestall that advice (in case you were thinking of commenting to that effect).

It's interesting that it's Pearl, the bright extroverted centre of attention girl, who has had the meltdown in response to childcare, rather than Louis, who is solid and quiet and more slowly developing motor skills.

that/ll learn ya

2009-04-04T03:51:00.002+10:00

Yesterdayh c gue to a timetable glit 3.30 a.m. and l

Pearl on computer with me
sxxccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccff 3.30 am still not asleep

Wiggly gender sterotyping.

2009-04-02T08:49:00.003+10:00

I must say I'm a little disappointed with my first encounter with the Wiggles.

The music is fabulous (very easy for parents to listen to over and over and over and...) and they are very enthusiastic and positive and there is none of the silly sexualisation of children you see everywhere, and the dances are fun, and they have a Chinese man on the show and an Aboriginal man and a Greek man on this particular episode...

But WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?

Answer: dancing in the background. they don't play guitar, they don't sing, they don't have names; they just dance. Pretty little dances, Anglo girls dressed up as fairies or in ballgowns. Dorothy the Dinosaur is a female, so on she comes dressed in a tutu and sings a song about fairies. The (male) octopus (whose name escapes me), on the other hand, goes on a trip to the Torres Strait Island.

The boys play guitar and piano-accordian. They get introduced! They have two guest artists, both male (Leo Sayer & Troy Cassar-Daley). A boy baby drives the bus and I think it's the same boy baby piloting the ship.

I've only seen one video - 'You make me feel like dancing' - so maybe I need to do more of a trawl through their back issues for girls actually doing something other than being go-go dancers.

I'd buy them again because the music is good, but I can see that it begins now: I'm going to have to actively search for videos with representations of women I want them to see, to counterbalance the pretty inactivity of the girls and women in the mainstream ones.

Any suggestions?

Genius children

2009-03-31T08:52:00.001+10:00

Right now, Pearl is reading a book and Louis is playing the guitar.

I'm that proud.

Mini-me

2009-03-17T21:41:00.002+10:00

Yesterday I dieted.

I felt powerful.
I felt restrained.
I felt light and clean.
I felt virtuous and moral.
I felt in control of my body and my life.
I felt like Jennifer Anist0n and Angelina J0lie and Pr1ncess Mary.
I decided dieting was easy.

Today, I did not diet.

2009-03-12T09:58:00.002+10:00

I'm on a lesbian parents mailing list.

Here's the question (part of it- it was quite long and distressed):
it is even harder to say ummmmmm no there is no dad, no husband, no partner, no ex, no accident or one night stand or divorce I AM JUST BLOODY GAY, even when you do say he is a donor child which i am not to keep on either as it makes him diferent and it is also our business SO WHAT DO PEOPLE SAY????

then you get asked
did you see a photo?
did you meet him?
was it IVF? no it was an internet guy LOL selling sperm LOL which would go down really well
will your kid know him?
how many other kids are out there?
what if they meet one day and fall in love???

i mean for fucks sake these things to me make me more separated from the world and make me feel like i am diferent instead of just being apart of the world. does it do that to anyone else out there??

i no L once spoke of going to mums groups and people in her group after years didnt no, well thats how i have lived as well so L what will you tell your daughter?? what will others tell their kids???

So this is two questions one what do you tell people and how does it all make you feel, and two what do you tell or plan to tell your kids????

oh another question what do you do on fathers day?????

So, I, of course, couldn't resist pontificating and here is my response:

I think a lot about coming out with kids.

I think before we have kids we have NO IDEA about how 'out' we will be with kids. It is very confronting to our internalised homophobia. But when we have kids it is our responsibility to be completely comfortable with the fact that we are NOT 'normal'. We are not replicating patriarchal family structures and I think that's a good thing.

For me, it is really important to develop a sense of pride in our family structure so that by the time the kids can understand it, they see it as just part of the normal range of family structures, and also something interesting/to be proud of about us. This is partly why I am so active in LGBT rights - I don't need to blend in or be treated as 'normal' - normal is boring. We ARE an interesting family and I will talk people's ears off about it if they will stand still long enough.

I'm happy to talk about the IVF. Lots of people have infertility issues. There is some sense of failure, I think, about IVF. Why? Why not embrace it? They are IVF babies - aren't we lucky we live in a country and a state where we were allowed to use IVF? 'Do you know', I say to people, 'if we'd lived in Victoria we wouldn't have been able to get IVF because they discriminated against same sex couples until last year', People are always surprised that we don't have the same rights as them - lots of straights think gays have the same rights. Because we are so out about having used IVF, lots of straight couples talk to us about their fertility issues. Friends have rung us up and said 'my sister and her husband are infertile, would you mind having a chat with them about what IVF was like for you?' I really don't understand why it is a big deal. I think it has become a big deal because 50% of fertility issues are to do with the man, so it insults his masculinity. I don't have to take that on.

We get the father question a lot. Our donor is from Hong Kong and neither of us are Asian so his presence is very visible. Our standard conversation goes like this.

'Your children are very beautiful. Is your husband Vietnamese/Islander/Indonesian (etc etc)?'

'No, my partner is a woman. Their donor dad is from Hong Kong.'

This then leads to them saying

- Aren't they lucky children to have two mummies?

- Oh yes, my sister in laws cousin, she goes out with a woman and they are trying to have a baby

or (if they are bold)

-How did you do it? Do you know him? etc

If they ask, I tell them. I tell them the reasons why we chose known donor over unknown. I tell them about finding James online through a donors website after interviewing five other guys. I tell them how hard it is to find a donor who is happy to be involved but doesn't want to be a parent. I tell them about drawing up the non-legal agreement, and about our concerns (before we got to know James) that he would take us to court and try and take the babies away from us. I tell them about driving two hours from Byron to Brisbane when ovulating and meeting James at the gates to his secured apartments and secretly handing over sperm - we were sure some neighbour was going to think we were doing drug deals. We tell them about going to the clinic to see the psychologist, two lesbians and our queer donor, and how the psychologist assessing us had his fly down all through the interview. We tell them about how we had to interrogate James about his sex life and all the embarrassing conversations about 'if you do have an encounter with someone other than your boyfriend, we don't care, we're not judging, just TELL US'. I even tell them that James has another child to another lesbian couple, so they have a half-brother, two years older, who is like a cousin to them.

I think, the less mysterious we are, the less prejudice people have. And it's not a secret. It's all part of the children's birth story. As they get older, they will understand these conversations and not see their whole story as something shameful or weird - just something that happened that we are happy to talk about.

And father's day: we are definitely steering clear of it being to do with James, unless the children want to give him something when they are older. We are going to tell childcare/schools that they can make things for their grandfathers or godfathers - seeing fathers day as a way of celebrating and acknowledging male influence in their lives. We also definitely do not want to allocate it to one of us - one mother gets mothers day, one gets fathers day - as that would reinforce the stupid 'who is the man in your relationship?' concept.

And I have never, not once, had a bad reaction from people during these conversations. Makes me wonder how much homophobia really is in my head.

Twinsanity clearing

2009-02-28T22:35:00.005+10:00

Really sweet things

They play chasey up and down the hallway. Louis can't walk yet, so Pearl gets down on her hands and knees and crawls to make things fair.

They play peek-a-boo around the coffee table.

They giggle together.

They have interactive chats together. I think they are mimicking our conversations. Their chats have the same cadence - up down up down, with question marks and responses.

I really enjoy seeing their different personalities emerging. It's such a lesson in our role as parents. We can't change their temperament - we can only help them become the best people that they can be.

For the most part, I find the attention that twins get, and the whole 'twin club' thing, really bouying. If I'm having a hard day, and some stranger says, 'Oh, twins, you are amazing,' or 'My twins are thirty now, and still the best of friends,' I feel really validated and supported. Someone can see the effort that is going into this parenting business!

It's really lovely to see them mimicking our parenting. If Louis is crying, Pearl will give him a hug. When I'm trying to get Pearl to sleep, gently patting her bottom, Louis will crawl over and give her a few whacks too. It's not particularly helpful, but it is exceptionally cute.

I think having twins forces you to be much more relaxed about things. My philosophy is, 'if they are not crying, and it's not dangerous, don't disturb them.' I don't worry about dirt, or germs, or wee - they'll be right. Consequently they're kinda little feral babies.

Another thing I had to get relaxed about was breastfeeding in public. Politically I was all for it, of course women shoudl breastfeed whereever they want, but doing it myself took a minute to catch up. But with twins, in the beginning at least, one is always breastfeeding. No time for shyness here!

Co-sleeping. Two babies waking you up in the morning is so gorgeous - as long as they wait til six a.m.!

They really are divine. Notwithstanding the list below, I just give thanks every day for them. Haven't figured out Who to thank yet, but general thanks go out. Also I worry about dying before they grow up. I want to see how they turn out!

Harder things

Not being able to leave the house. I mean, literally, like going to the letterbox three doors down. I can't just pop a baby on a hip and wander to the neighbour's, or the letterbox, or jump out of the car to pick up a carton of milk. Everything involves prams which have to be hauled out of the boot of the car and unfolded. The bulk ice-cream delivery van comes around every fortnight and I have finally figured out how to get to him (after a year of sadly watching him go by from the window): I have my money and a little satchel ready by the door. When I hear the truck, I put the satchel over my shoulder and put a baby on each hip. We walk onto the street like that and flag him down. Then I get the icecream man to rummage around in the satchel and find the money, and put the change and my new box of ice-creams into my bag. It's rather intimate but I'm very proud of my prize. You would think I could just go without ice-cream, wouldn't you? But Ice Cream Night is one of the highlights of my fortnight. It's also a bit of a street social event - particularly on hot evenings, everyone is out on the street discussing their selections. It would just be un-neighbourly not to take part.

Freaking out every time I strap one baby in the car parked by the side of the road (we have no driveway) and run back into the house to get the other baby. Will baby 2 fall off the coffee table while I'm putting baby 1 in the car? Will the car containing baby1 get hit by a drunken driver while I'm inside getting baby 2? Is the handbrake on? Is the window down?

Having to decide who is crying harder - who deserves to be picked up more, and who is going to have to lie there and cry?

Putting them to sleep is still really hard work, although much better. If one is crying, the other won't go to sleep until really exhausted. Louis won't stay asleep if he is put into a different room to Pearl. All those books on how to get your single baby to sleep are useless. And the twin books just say, 'Close the door and go and make a cake - they'll fall asleep eventually.' I've never been able to do that. If it's not okay to leave a singleton to cry, why is it okay for twins?

I spend a lot of time with my mother these days. My mother is great, and has been an immeasurable help, and she adores Pearl & Louis...but it is a readjustment to spend so much time with her. We have different parenting approaches. You know how it is.

I know I felt really jealous last year that I couldn't do mother and baby yoga, or mother and baby swimming, or mother and baby movies, or mother and baby gym, or...you get the picture. It was just me and the twin pram and long walks through the parks. I also felt really self-conscious visiting other mums, because when they were little, whoever wasn't being held would cry all the time. So we were a noisy, messy, pooey whirlwind of a visit.

No time. Like, literally. I know all mothers say that, but don't single babies sleep for at least fifteen minutes at a stretch? I was so jealous of those fifteen minute stretches. I had a rule that if both babies were asleep at the same time, I had to lie down. I think this would happen maybe twice a week, for about six minutes at a time. Two six minute naps a week. I know, shouldn't complain, if I was that serious about it I would get them into a routine by leaving them to cry. ('They'll learn!' 'They rule that house!' 'They're just manipulating you!'). I'm so glad we did it the way we did but it was hard.

I am always covered in baby food.

Breastfeeding when we are out is hard work. I don't feel comfortable pulling my top up and doing both at once, which is what I do at home. So whoever is not being fed wails and carries on. Not such an issue now they are bigger, but it really was restricting when they were little and needing to be breastfed every couple of hours.

Happy!

2009-02-26T22:06:00.003+10:00

Okay so I got carried away on Facebook and started googling old girlfriends. Most of them I couldn't find. Clearly they have faded into oblivion. But one, let's call her Diana, wasn't even a girlfriend really. She was an affair. It was during that non-monogamous phase we all went through back then. Monogamy was a patriarchal concept designed to restrict the free expression of sexuality and affection and also a heterosexist necessity in order for men to maintain control of their wives and ensure reproduction of their seed etc etc etc and we were so beyond petty jealousies and completely able to maintain a 'primary relationship' and any number of dalliances without any emotional fallout whatsoever.

Back to Diana. Impossibly thin, impossibly gorgeous, impossibly already taken by the much-higher-social status, ever so cool C, who was 1. a doctor and 2. a prominent figure in the local S&M scene. What I was doing having an affair with her girlfriend I'll never know. She was so cool she went to the gym. They had tattoos and n*pple rings.

Actually, Diana wasn't C's girlfriend, C had a girlfriend whom we shall call J. Diana was C's nod to her own non-monogamous identity.

I SO had the hots for her. I used to catch the train to...well it was the country anyhow. The line probably doesn't even exist anymore.

So I googled Diana. She's still with C. They breed and show dogs and live in Gippsland.

I'm so happy about that.

Maybe they'll google me and find I'm making a documentary. But probably they've not given me another thought, since, oh, 1992.

(sorry about all the italics. It seemed to require greater than usual emphasis)

In the negative

2009-02-23T21:04:00.006+10:00

Today I didn't get up early with the babies. I didn't have to give them their breakfast, clean up soggy cornflakes, or tussle them into their day clothes. L did it all.

Today I didn't wear make up, blow dry my hair, or iron anything.

Today I didn't get the usual hour and a half morning baby nap time to catch up on my emails, make professional phone calls that can't have babies gurgling in the background, and do any tasks that require sustained concentration.

Today I didn't go for a walk. Or a jog, or a cycle or a swim. I didn't do any exercise at all. Also, I didn't manage to resist the coffee-and-cake deal at the Coffee Club cunningly located next to the local supermarket.

I didn't take the babies to baby gym or baby swimming lessons, or baby music or baby Spanish or Italian or Cantonese. We played in the sandpit, then we played in the bath, then we went to the op shop and played in the kids' toys section.

Today I didn't think of any particularly witty update for my Facebook account.

Today I didn't remember to take my mobile phone and missed five calls from L who probably thought we'd been kidnapped.

Today I didn't get much read of my latest library books on Islam, but enough to find out how little I know.

I still didn't find a gay Muslim person to talk to for my documentary. I have a myriad amazing Christians of all denominations, and some fascinating Jewish people.

I didn't pay my Amex or mobile phone bills, although they are high on my list of things to do. I didn't finish the corporate video I'm editing, I didn't propose those articles on parenting I'm mulling over, and I didn't sort out the admin on the children's TV series I'm working on.

Today, I didn't fantasise about getting a dog once. The hyperactive chihuahua we found (now thankfully reunited with his owner) on the weekend has cured me momentarily.

Today I didn't do the children's dinners or baths or quiet-play-before-bed. When L is home early enough, that's her job. Instead, I cleaned up the devastation wrought on the kitchen and loungeroom over the day, put on washing, hung out washing, brought in washing, prepared dinner and considered I'd gotten the better end of the deal.

I didn't successfully block out the evening television in the background. It really makes my brain short-circuit. Sadly, I didn't manage to use the three brief baby-free hours at the end of my day in a very productive way at all.

But at 2.35 a.m, pacing the house with a crying baby I'm trying to night-wean, I thought about how amazingly lucky I am.

(With thanks to Robin who nominated this poetry prompts website.)

Why St Mary's has to die

2009-02-16T21:50:00.002+10:00

"The Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, John Bathersby, has terminated Fr Kennedy's appointment from this Saturday after complaints St Mary's was no longer "in communion with the Roman Catholic Church".

At the South Brisbane church, unorthodox masses are conducted, women can preach and homosexual couples are blessed." - The Australian, 16 Feb 09

Last Sunday, I went to Mass at St Mary's Catholic Church in South Brisbane. I've never been before - I go to Catholic Mass once a year, in Melbourne at Christmas with my father. I'm not a Christian, although I grew up in the church, a dreary, rule-bound institution. I went to Mass because I wanted to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

The critics are right - St Mary's is unrecognisable as a Catholic service. Where was the mostly empty cathedral, with just a few elderly faithful huddled in corners? Where was the mind-bogglingly dreary liturgy? Where were the dirge-like songs, so suitable for funerals?

At St Mary's on this day, people overflowed from the pews and sat on the floor. Small children ran about and played in the toy corner. Lesbian couples came with their parents and their children. Aboriginal people sat next to Buddhist nuns.The place was alive with energy. Parishioners got up to ask for support with their projects: a rebuilding effort in Vanuatu; bushfire relief for for Victorians. The hymns were joyful songs of praise, energising and uplifting. The priests seem human, filled with enthusiasm and love for their parish.

It's clear why St Mary's must be stopped. Imagine the devastating impact on the Catholic Church - on the world - if congregations like this were allowed to thrive and grow! It's a vibrant, questioning community. They care about each other; they've found their spiritual home. One man found it hard to stifle a sob as he addressed the congregation: 'I'll miss you," he said.

St Mary's is a travesty of the Catholic religion. Catholicism stands for paedophilia, for misogyny, for the Inquisition, for collusion with Nazis and the brutal regimes of South America. It stands for rigidity and centralised authority and mindless obedience. It stands for a God who is petty, judgemental and warmongering. St Mary's is alive with love and joy and above all, acceptance. And there's no place for that in the Catholic Church.

It has to go.

Through to choreography*

2009-02-05T14:31:00.002+10:00

*A reference to 'S0 Y0u Think Y0u can Dance', to which L is strangely addicted. The best dancers go straight into the Top 100; the ones with 'potential' go through to choreography where they get another chance to prove themselves worthy of the Top 100.

So, my doco has gone 'into development'. Apparently, I have potential as a producer (although completely without proven history, which they really didn't like) and the concept has potential, but is not expressed that well. So it goes into development which seems to mean they tell me what needs changing, and I change it, and they see if they like it then.

I'm trying to screw up the courage to ring Important People to see if they are willing to be part of it.

'Hi, I've never made a documentary before but it's going to be roolly roolly good. And I know you are frightfully important but would you be willing to be in it? Oh and by the way you would have to come out on national TV.'

If you happen to know any important gay people (M1chael K1rby would be fabulous) please let me know.

Thank god we're home

2009-02-02T09:11:00.002+10:00

Well that was our first reconnoitre to Melbourne as a potential place to live next year and I have to say we did not see its best side.

It was SOOOOO HOT all we did was sit in dad's backyard and play in the 2-inch-deep swimming pool he built out of a bit of tarp and two four-be-twos.

It was SOOOOOO dry; the nature strips are parched dust and the trees are dying

And of course all the things we remember about Melbourne so fondly - great restaurants, great coffee, great theatre - we couldn't do what with the Little Ones. Instead (when it was cool enough) we bought iced coffees and sat in dusty scorched playgrounds surrounded by scraggy sad gum trees. We did manage to see ChaCha Sam as part of Rainbow Families' Midsumma program and that was a lot of fun - singing and dancing with your toddlers. It was nice to be surrounded by so many rainbow families.

The other great thing we remember about Melbourne - real multiculturalism, not a sprinkling of Chinese restaurants run by third generation Australians of Chinese heritage - is actually a bit scary close up. Dad's next door neighbour, a lovely woman in full purdah, (yes in 45 degrees) invited me in for coffee (Dad, of course, has never been invited in; he was a bit miffed). It was a huge gorgeous ritual involving plates of pears and nuts and honey cake and a very long process of brewing coffee - but when she asked about 'my husband' I dodged and said, 'The children's father'. I really hate being closeted - life's too short - but I had a sudden vision of Dad's windows being stoned by an angry local congregation. Actually I suspect that many Musl1m people are just as moderate as many Chr1stians, and I think that ancient Persian culture was pretty tolerant of male h0mosexuality - but in the absence of any common language (our conversation was being translated by her seven children, with much arguing amongst themselves about what their mother or I had actually said and how to translate it) I didn't want to run the risk of a transnational education campaign.

It's green and cool in Brisbane and it hasn't stopped raining since we got home.

And I have two more days to prepare my documentary pitch so it will be all quiet from me.

wogs & their gardens

2009-01-25T19:39:00.002+10:00

visiting dad in melbourne. Blog entry using phone. Dad's painstakingly bucket ing bath water on the garden. Under each tap is a bucket to catch dregs each time we wash hands, also 4 the garden. Today he got up & said 'today i can water - my days are tuesdays and saturdays'. So he went out & watered the concrete!

Look what we've done now

2009-01-22T14:21:00.002+10:00

I haven't talked much lately about our work trying to get second-parent recognition but we're still hard at work - our press release is in the paper today.

Erratum

2009-01-21T21:26:00.003+10:00

Lovergirl wants me to clarify that the Conference of Very Important People to which she has had a conference paper accepted (there is something very wrong with this sentence structure) is actually an INTERnational conference.

She's been harping on about it for days. So there you are.

Playing with the big kids

2009-01-21T21:12:00.004+10:00

Today I met a friend who is a producer. Not really a friend, but I emailed and said I'd buy him a coffee in return for picking his brains about how to do a documentary. Actually, at this point I'm just getting info on how to do the pitch in two weeks. He was incredibly gracious and informative and enthusiastic, and thought my project sounded great, and asked lots of hard questions to which I did not have answers.

'Of course, your budget will be in the $300-$400 range, or else they won't take you seriously,' he said.

I tried not to snort my coffee. It seemed gauche to clarify, but I presume he meant '-thousand'.

I had been thinking, anxiously, about whether $25,000 was too outrageous a sum to propose.

Really! What topic is that important? Couldn't $300-$400K be used to, I don't know, build a shelter for battered women or something?

Cash cow

2009-01-20T21:33:00.002+10:00

Just for a change, this year my resolution is to get on top of my money. I've been doing the fitness and drop a dress size every year since, oh, 1984 (one year I even joined a study into why people kept or didn't keep their New year's resolutions), so it's time for a change.

I hate money. It's a family trait. It's kind of morally bad to pay attention to money. I grew up with such aphorisms as 'you don't have to be rich to be happy,' and 'people with money aren't happy' and 'it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle etc etc'.

So I'm sloppy with money. I'm keeping a record, this month, of all the money I just throw away. Not even on extravagant purchases, just throw away. I'm up to $46. $10 on library fines, $6 on video fines, $15 on an overdrawn fee on a bank account, an unnecessary $15 late fee on a bill - I had the money, I just didn't get organised to pay it. Each month my bank charges me about $15 in fees as I don't bother looking for a member ATM when I withdraw money. And so on.

That's more than $60! Not a lot I realise, but that's dinner out, or two hours of babysitting, or a cleaner...!

Anyway this is the new me. Excellent parent, lauded filmmaker and so organised with money.

My moon must be retrograde in Pluto or something

2009-01-15T22:16:00.004+10:00

Very Good Day today.

I've been shortlisted.
For that documentary project I proposed.
There are ten of us shortlisted and they are selecting five for production.
I have to go in in two weeks and do my pitch to the executive producer, the something-or-other-else producer and the executive director.
WHAT AM I DOING?!!!!
Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

Also got offered 16 days of corporate training today - about an hour after I said to L, 'I really am going to need to get some work this year.'

Also Lovergirl got an email telling her that her paper has been accepted for the National Conference of Very Important People in a Particular Health Industry.

We got a cheque in the mail today, for $35, after an insurance company realised they overcharged us.

And that thing I was bidding for on eB4y? I won one today, for $60 cheaper than the one I missed out on a couple of days ago.

I love teletubbies

2009-01-12T13:34:00.001+10:00

...But probably we should stop watching it now.

And go out and buy another box of chocolates to top up the first one (see previous)

2009-01-12T11:55:00.002+10:00

Home alone after the bliss of two-mummy holidays, with only two miserable slightly sick babies and Lovergirl's birthday box of GuyL1an chocolates...if i rearrange the chocs it won't look like I've eaten quite so many.

I finished the m1lo at 3a.m. this morning. Soon there will only be yoghurt covered dried fruit balls in the house....

Bugger the other one is awake again and I haven't quite got this one down.

:(

2009-01-11T21:48:00.001+10:00

Outbid!

10...9...8...

2009-01-11T21:34:00.003+10:00

I'm bidding on eb4y. I'm an eb4y v1rg1n so it's a bit...tense, isn't it? I'm already emotionally attached to my item and I've only seen it online!

Only eight minutes to go and I'm in the lead...

That's the way they all became the Brady bunch

2009-01-09T21:45:00.002+10:00

We've had three year old Ma-chi, the half brother of Pearl and Louis, staying for a few days, with his mother, Anje. So (just to make it completely clear), Ma-chi has the same donor dad as Pearl and Louis.

Anje and Ma-chi live in England, although Anje is German. We'd met Anje on her previous visit to Australia, when I was pregnant and Ma-chi was eighteen months old. From the safety of England, Ma-chi is reportedly quite intrigued with the concept of having a younger brother and sister, although I think he found the realities of sharing toys and attention a little challenging!

We love Anje and Ma-chi. Anje is a lot like us, which is peculiar, because Donor Dan is quite different. His friends are all quite different to us too. They're younger, more closeted, less political, more urban. Anje is a feminist, a university lecturer and an attachment parent, so we connected on a number of levels.

So we all spent a bit of time with Donor Dan and his boyfriend James over the weekend. It's - unusual - creating family as we go along. The gulf is no wider than it is with my extended family of origin, and while we don't have a shared history, our children bind us in a shared future. There are awkward moments. There are bits of each other we just don't get. But we work together. Our relationship isn't about us, it's about the children.

I asked Donor Dan to pick up Louis, who was having some nappy-free time. 'He's just done a wee, so you should be safe,' I said. Poor Danny - I didn't mean to freak him out; I take wee for granted. Poo, now, is still a little harder to deal with.

The boys came over and organised dinner two nights after the kids were abed. They were our most successful nights. The daily outings were less so, partly because I think the boys find the children overwhelming. Immersed in life with two babies, we forget how crazy it can look from the outside. If I put myself in their shoes, I imagine our life looks chaotic, messy, loud and hellish. I imagine they are relieved when they leave us, with our non-stop children and our pumpkin-splattered clothes, to go back to their quiet, orderly, stylish apartment. I certainly watched Anje with the inexhaustible Ma-chi and wondered how I will cope with two three year olds.

We want Ma-chi, Louis and Pearl to see each other as kind of cousins. We've downloaded Skype so they can chat. They can work out their relationship with Donor Dan as they go along. At the moment, Ma-chi is very attached to the idea of Donor Dan. Anje says he often has conversations about his daddy in Australia. Anje is a single mother - I think Ma-chi is trying to figure out his family structure. Our kids will get the standard, 'Some children have a mummy and a daddy, some have two mummys, some have etc etc,' routine, so they may have a different way of making sense of his role.

James has even less guidance about who he is in relation to the kids, but he's keen to be in there. He wanted his mother to meet the children, so we all trooped out there for an overabundant afternoon tea. She had bought gifts for all the children (must send her a thank you note). Our donor's boyfriend's mother feels 'almost like a grandmother', she said, even though she's never met the children before. How's that for extending the ripples of familial connection? We think we're really new and radical and groundbreaking, but really our families are a variation on an ancient theme - the women bringing up the children, the men swanning in occasionally, crones everywhere taking delighted responsibility for the new generation, regardless of blood.

We can tell you don't like children

2009-01-06T21:16:00.009+10:00

Two weeks with a wide range of child-free people has moved me into a new realm of motherhood. Holidays are lovely but this was my first one with children and I made a number of mistakes. I'm going to be much more assertive about protecting their interests on our next holiday (I'll get to practice in a couple of weeks when we go down to Melbourne).

Most people do not love children as much as they think they do. Oh, they say they like them, and they do like them, in a 'Madame, Miss Pearl and Master Louis would like to say goodnight to you now' sort of way. But they don't like to do what children like to do, and they don't like the sequelae of trying to force children to do what adults like to do.

So this is what I've learnt:

1. If someone says 'cafe' (pub, restaurant), my automatic response should be 'no'. If they press, talking about how child friendly the place is, and how they don't mind children in cafes, ask specific questions such as:
- Does the cafe provide drop sheets? Mops? Buckets and cloths?
- Does the cafe have a policy of 'no drinks over blood-heat temperature'?
- Are my fellow cafegoers willing to eschew cakes, sweets and fried foods so I don't have to engage in wrestles with my children to keep them away from the crap?
- Are my companions willing to entertain themselves with a magazine while I walk around the cafe behind the curious toddler, protecting the objets d'art and preventing the children impaling themselves on anything?

2. Small children need to do something. It is no use going somewhere to look at something. Scenery, animals, art, theatre, even TV - small children do not 'behave' and it is unreasonable to expect them to. They want to use their bodies. If they can't run/jump/splash/build/play, they will whine that they are hungry.

3. If it is hot and there is water nearby, go there! Go there again! Stay there all day! Children will have an excellent holiday doing the same thing every day. They do not need variety.

4. Adults love to drive places. They love to 'go for a drive'. There is the illusion of doing something with your day, when really you might as well be sitting in front of the telly. There is also a belief that something must be better if you have to drive a long way to get there. Children are not fooled. Trains are good. Ferries are great. Buses are okay. I imagine trams are fun. Cars are bad. Do not go anywhere further than twenty minutes away, unless you plan to be away a long time. We did a day trip to Byron, which worked because we drove down during their morning nap (7.30a.m), stayed all day and came back at the time they go to bed at night (7pm). We did a picnic in the hinterland which was bad - it took an hour and a half to get there (L and I singing 'The wheels on the bus go round and round' all the way to forestall crying) and the picnic lasted maybe an hour! Then we went to a cafe! (see #1)

5. Children will be gritchy if you are out after bedtime. Or even approaching bedtime. 100% guaranteed.

I think what people don't realise when they insist we go to adult places and then spend the whole time feeling sorry for me ("Oh, parenting is such hard work" "You didn't get much of a break then, did you?") is that trying to make my children fit into adult environments is not what parenting is about. Watching them laugh in amazement as waves lap at their toes, knocking down sandcastles, eating watermelon somewhere it doesn't matter that it goes all over the floor, even the wonder of going down a slide or examining an unusual twig - they are the things I want to be sharing with friends who want to 'get to know the children'.

So when you come to visit, pack us a picnic and take us to a nearby beach, park or pool. Or just pick up takeaway and come around after the kids are in bed. You don't have to pretend to want to see the kids (I'm not a big fan of kids in general either - just mine and a select few others). Adult conversation without kids around works well for me, too.

Now that we're 1...

2008-12-28T20:51:00.004+10:00

...I've decided I'm going to use the babies' middle names as their blog names. I like their middle names, and after all the agonising over the decision, we don't really get to use their middle names. And I don't really know who those other children are, that Junior and Lucky who occasionally get a mention on this blog.

So this is Pearl:

And this is Louis:

And yes we have been to one of those frightening child photography places. I know it's out of character, and I'm kinda embarrassed about it. But all the grandparents got prints for Christmas, and they were so beside themselves with delight I'm tempted to do it every year! But you'll notice we didn't select any of the options where they superimpose your child on a bed of rose petals, or pink teddies, or whatnot.

...and a partridge in a pear tree...

2008-12-18T21:41:00.003+10:00

We're off on holidays tomorrow, a fancy house by the beach with L's family - I'm really looking forward to taking the babies to the ocean.

Blog entries you haven't read in the last couple of weeks include:
- a brief summary of the hot steamy picnic in the park for the babies' first birthday, complete with a photo of the bunny cake (courtesy of Women's Weekly Kid's Cake Book). Next year their party is at the pool.
- a much longer rendition of the excellent rainbow families Christmas picnic I organised last weekend in Brisbane. We had Santa, and races,and even sang Jingle Bells. It was a lot of fun and the kids were SO excited by the whole affair. It definitely needs to be an annual event
- an apologetic yet angry entry explaining why I've taken down the previous, very cute video. It's because it has Junior's nak3d b0ttom in it, and the federal government is introducing new anti-pornography legislation, and one reading of this legislation could be that if you have ever published any nak3d pictures of chi1dren on the internet, then you are liable to be prosecuted. And I watched a program some time ago where a respected photographer - a woman - was arrested because she had pictures of her own children nake3d. In the end she was found not guilty of p0rnogralhy, but it took something like 3 years and a lot of money. My children run around without any clothes on a lot. It's 35 degrees here! But presumably it's good policy to have no bare flesh on the internet. It's funny - I didn't even register that he was only half-clad while I was taking the video. It wasn't until I looked at the clip afterwards that I realised he didn't have clothes on.

There's much more I could say about our current society's obsession with paedophilia but it will have to wait until after the Yuletide celebrations.

Merry Christmas.

(I can't remember the last time I went this long without a computer...hope I'll be okay...)

Another doting video, I'm afraid

2008-12-11T21:04:00.003+10:00

There's nothing to this twin-parenting business. Really, they just entertain themselves.

They can do that for hours. It's freaky.

Dancing around the loungeroom

2008-12-09T09:27:00.002+10:00

They're doing it again!
OH MY GOD!
BOTH ASLEEP!
At the SAME TIME!!!
For OVER AN HOUR NOW!!

At this rate I'm going to have to take up a hobby
(or, god forbid, clean the house)

projects

2008-12-08T22:03:00.001+10:00

My next geadline is a submission to Canadian anthology on queer families. It's due this Friday. So maybe after that's in I'll have time to blog.

Blogging, is, of course, the most productive use of my time.

2008-12-08T09:11:00.000+10:00

They're asleep!
They're both asleep!
And they've been asleep for an hour and a quarter!
What should I do?
What should I do?
What should I do?

Happy birthday babies

2008-12-05T21:59:00.001+10:00

That'd be why we don't have the same rights here in the backwoods

2008-12-05T05:15:00.002+10:00

Congratulations Victorians, who now have, among other things, the right for both partners in a same sex relationship to be legally recognised as parents.

As you know L & I have been doing a bit of stuff trying to get something similar here. There are a few desultory, one-email-a-month existing mailing lists for queer families. Emails like, 'Hi Soozi I have lost your email addy could you get in touch.' I emailed a couple, to see if I could use an existing mailing list to network about lobbying for rights. The moderators of two have said, 'Er, we don't want this to be a political group.'

Fine! I'll make my own gang. And we'll be much more fun than you.

I just don't get that 'I'm not political' line. Don't people realise that just by existing you are political? If you are not working to change things, you are supporting the status quo by default, and being an agent of inertia is just as political as being an agent of change.

Sign of the times

2008-11-30T21:15:00.002+10:00

Before I had the babies, I would get my haircut at a groovy little place run by four gay boys in New Farm (equivalents may be Paddington & St Kilda - but Brisbane is nothing like Sydney or Melbourne so that's a very rough guide. Sorry, I know nothing about the fashionable gayboy spots of Perth). I would get a cut and colour, it took a couple of hours and cost about a hundred dollars. They'd give me a latte from their espresso machine.

Yesterday I went to R1vers1de Co1ffure,. I had my hair cut (NOT washed, just spritzed until damp) by a very nice lady with three grown up children. I was out in half an hour, for $22.50, without being offered even a glass of water. Tomorrow I'm going to buy a packet of dye from the chemist. I should be done for about $42 - $45 if I buy my own latte while I'm there.

And what will this add to the sum total of human knowledge, anyway?

2008-11-27T22:56:00.002+10:00

Kelly-Sam-Muriels, it's your fault that I'm still up writing the documentary application when I should be in bed while the angels are a-sleeping.

It's done now. Just gotta negotiate my way up two flights of stairs in the city with the twins tomorrow to hand in four hard copies, and I'm finished.

Look out for me, probably on SBS, sometime in late 2009, won't you?

Ha ha.

Whose idea was the nappy free time?

2008-11-24T21:33:00.003+10:00

I could try to tell you where the poo has been smeared around the loungeroom, but it will be easier to tell you the few places where it has not.

Let me just say that I'd stop right there, just before you balance your choc-chip cookie on our coffee table, if I was you.

Revelation

2008-11-21T05:49:00.001+10:00

Oh my god I've just got facebook.

As in, I've had a profile for a while, but suddenly I get it.

Don't go there! I tell myself. I really don't need another virtual time-thief in my life.

(Just going back - for a minute mind you - to update my profile...)

Messages from Venus

2008-11-17T08:58:00.002+10:00

The experience of being a stay-at-home mother is irreplaceable. I never could have imagined what an other planet it is. The culture of motherhood - it's like I've stepped through the looking glass.

Time has a different meaning here. I spend whole days just sitting with other mothers in parks. I wander through the house with a drowsing baby while the other plays in a noisy battery-operated flashing-lights wobbling-up-and-down toy car (courtesy, of course, of Granny). I wander (ok sometimes trudge) for miles with the big red pram even though it threatens rain. I talk to old ladies in the street. If both babies are asleep at the same time, I stop for a coffee so I can read the headlines of a paper. If only one is asleep, I stop in the park and put down the blanket so the awake baby can have some solo time. Sometimes I'm begging for the day to pass, for Lovergirl to be due home any minute. Sometimes I remember to be overwhelmed at what I am achieving - moment by moment, I am creating two confident, creative beings. Most often, I am running banal lists in my head: 'The nappies are still in the washing machine. What can they have for morning tea? What has she got in her mouth? His nappy's clean, he's recently slept, he's fed - why is he grizzling? What was it I wanted to do as soon as I got a minute to myself? - oh, too late' and so on.

What's important has different meaning. Someone (who?) called early motherhood 'a temporary psychosis'. It's certainly a distorted sense of reality, a disproportionate focus on the importance of these two small beings. I don't really care about whatsername Palin and her tearaway daughter. Apparently there were Olympics somewhere recently. But I've read a library's worth of parenting books. I try and remind myself not to talk about my children, or parenting in general, unless someone specifically asks. Then I try and keep my answers short. It's hard - I never imagined there was so much to think about, with parenting. But is that a distorted reality? Or just not the one that the rest of you are preoccupied with?

I don't want to return to work, yet. I know money will become an issue when we lose the single parents' pension. Some days I think I'll go crazy with the frustration of never getting anything done. Even going to the postbox two houses away is a big deal with two babies - get the pram out of the car, put babies in (insert back-arching and outraged screaming at being strapped into seats here), walk to post box, repeat actions in reverse. I've started making lists of very small tasks and sticking them up so I can cross my achievements off (I'm up to 'update blog').

Other things about the culture of motherhood: career doesn't matter. Sexuality doesn't matter. Age doesn't matter. What seems to matter most is hooking up with people who have a similar childrearing philosophy. This appears to cross all demographics - I've seen parents, complete strangers, mysteriously gravitate towards each other only to start muttering about how touchy-feely do-gooders are trying to take away their right to discipline (read 'hit') their children. The mothers I am closest to, my Friday group - I don't know what they did before they had children. But we all agree on general attachment/gentle parenting principles. The blogs I'm returning to ponder how to apply feminism to mothering.

Before I became a parent, I was concerned about preventing the descent into the world of children. Now I can see that even that attitude - that it is bad to be seen to be preoccupied with children - is part of the way we devalue parenting. 'Be a rounded person,' say friends and family, when actually most of my heart and soul is longing to be a singularly focussed person. We admire this in athletes, just not in mothers.

When I’m successful, the mindless activities that consume my days are a form of meditation. Wiping bums, consoling the crying, the perpetual treadmill of breastfeeding/ mush feeding/ wiping down babies, walls, floors, me - I can only do that and stay sane with a kind of lightness, remembering I am not what I do. ‘What I do’ is still there, eyeing me over the fence surrounding this uneventful walled garden. It will wait. The only way to stay sane is to sit here quietly and take in the flowers, rather than drive myself crazy trying to get out.

Boganville

2008-11-14T21:29:00.002+10:00

The guy on the left has had too much to drink and is having another screaming fight with his new bride.

The guy two doors down on the right is playing the greatest hits of Jimmy Barnes. Quite loudly.

And the boys across the road are taking turns riding a chook chaser (trailbike) with no muffler around and around and around the block. No helmet, no headlights.

Friday nights are really not my favourite night anymore.

And just think: you knew me before I was famous

2008-11-12T22:20:00.000+10:00

I have, I realised today, a production slate.

That's what we call it, in The Industry. You know, the fillum industry.

I'm making a corporate video (or, as we say, it's in production).

Tomorrow I'm going to meet with a kids' hospital about making a fantasy series for their in-house channel (so that's in preproduction).

And I'm putting in an application to get a grant to make a series of documentaries.

It's so cool.

Of course I'm not making money from any of these. But it's exciting to be on my way.

Slimed

2008-11-12T06:17:00.002+10:00

There are two people in my life at the moment who, whenever I encounter them, I end up feeling like...I don't know, a bug or a dogshit on their shoe or something (It's not you!).

They're not people I feel I can always avoid - one's in my professional life and one's a friend's partner. And I know if I said something, they would say, 'What are you talking about? All I said was [example]. You don't need to be so sensitive,' etc etc. And that would be true. It's not what they say, exactly, but more the way that they say it. Like, I'll be answering them and they'll turn around and walk off. Or I'll ask them a question in my dippy friendly-puppy way and they'll give a really short, terse answer. Me: 'Hi! [enthusiastic inflection] How's the planning for the 2009 creative industries convention going?' Them: 'Good.' Turn away.

See? It doesn't sound like much, does it? I try to remember to be less friendly-puppy and more terse, but I forget and it's so unnatural it feels rude. So dumbhead me tries again.

I know it's not just me. I know with the professional contact, K complained that he waited around for two hours filling in time before a meeting, and then Professional Contact wandered out half an hour late and said, 'Oh, I forgot to call you, I've decided to cancel.'

I just wish I had a way of responding that also wasn't rude, but where I walked away feeling powerful, instead of like a smudge of birdshit on the windscreen.

I'm sure you can do it. What do you do?

Every child has the right to a mother and a mother

2008-11-12T06:15:00.000+10:00

If you are in Melbourne I hope that, rather than reading this, you are heading down to Parliament to support the ART Bill.

Oh alright, just one

2008-11-11T07:19:00.002+10:00

The new regime of a brisk early morning perambulation along the river is somewhat mitigated by the presence of a French patisserie at the other end of the park.

I hope she uses her power for good not evil

2008-11-10T05:09:00.002+10:00

Lovergirl is off doing a clinical hypnotherapy course with this guy.

I'm not sure about having a partner who is a hypnotist.

But if I suddenly feel the urge to don an apron and spring clean the house, I'll know why.

It certainly won't be natural inclination.

Kiss of death

2008-11-08T21:38:00.001+10:00

So far Junior has destroyed a memory stick, a mouse and most expensively, my new Nokia N95 (mobile phone), all by sucking on them. I never knew saliva was so lethal.

Umm err

2008-11-08T21:37:00.000+10:00

Does anyone else compose brilliant erudite and incisive blogs all day long, only to lapse into single syllable incoherence when confronted by the blank screen?

I don't think this outfit works

2008-11-07T22:05:00.000+10:00

Two people asked me today if I was pregnant again.

Don't they know not to ask that unless they are absolutely, positively sure?

Santa loves queer families too

2008-11-05T09:49:00.002+10:00

So I'm organising a Christmas party for rainbow families around Brisbane. I'm basing it on fond memories of Dad's SEC work Christmas picnics of my childhood, with races and Santa giving out presents! If you know anyone who might be into it, send them this flyer.

Slightly dopey and rumpled

2008-11-04T04:22:00.002+10:00

One of the best things about my life is that L and I take turns getting up with the babies, leading to a sleep in until about 7.30 a.m. for the person who is off duty. Today it's my turn to sleep in and I've awoken (at 8.30!!) to an eerily silent house. Usually I would ring to find out where they are but you know what? Today I'm not even going to do that. I'm sure they're having a fine time in a cafe somewhere.

(Looks back wonderingly at corner she has just turned)

A brief distraction for you

2008-11-02T21:15:00.002+10:00

We went away last night; I'm excused from posting every day when I'm not here.

But look! I've been teaching myself the Vegas editing program - you can get a free trial version for thirty days, long enough to see whether you can use it.

Here's the babies' naming ceremony. It goes for seven minutes so you might like to get yourself a cup of tea and a chockie bikkie. And how crappy is the quality of youtube video? I'm going to figure out how host better quality videos. I'm sure it can be done - do you know?

Keep repeating, 'poor bunnies'.

2008-10-31T22:20:00.003+10:00

It's 2.16 a.m. The babies have colds which means they can't breathe properly which means they wake up every fifteen minutes. I try to exude 'poor little bunny' vibes, when what
I want to hiss is, 'For god's sake, will you go to sleep?'

The Victorian assisted reproductive technology vote is imminent, and looks close. If it passes, lesbians and single women in that state will be able to access ART services, and women second parents go on the birth certificate. It seems so archaic that this is not yet the case. As one of my interviewees last week said, 'I can't believe we are having to waste energy on struggling for this instead of on important issues like climate change.'

I'm on a lesbian parents' mailing list, and a woman whose partner is pregnant expressed dismay upon finding out that they are having a boy. A bunch of us mothers-of-boys leapt in and it turns out she is worried about 'not having a male role model'.

Here's what I wrote in response:

I think the whole male role model thing is crap. It's part of blaming single mothers and lesbians for not being 'good enough' parents. Don't people think boys will encounter men in their day to day lives? Our son has a donor, the donor's boyfriend, a godfather, 2 grandfathers and 4 uncles in his immediate family. Some of these are into football, some into music, some into crossdressing, some are f**ked up alcoholics (and it's not the gay ones). He will also, I am sure, form bonds with schoolteachers, sports coaches, scoutmasters and other boy's fathers. Most films he watches and books he reads will centre on the activities of male protagonists. Most people he sees making decisions about the world (politicians, industry leaders, most school principles, senior people in churches etc etc) will be men.

In short, there are men out there and it won't take much effort to find them.

The nuclear family is such a modern invention. In most cultures, the boys are brought up with the girl children in the women's camps, until puberty. Modern Westernised cultures, and in particular Australian culture, which is incredibly sexist (most other countries aren't so obsessed with blue-for-boys and pink-for-girls from infancy, for example) insist that children need to be taught their gender roles from birth or our society will be destroyed. There's a whole stream of academia about how capitalism depends on patriarchy. So by bringing up feminist boys, you are undermining capitalism - isn't that great!!

(The following bit is meant to be out of italics but I can't make them stop - annoying. I read things with a fdifferent inflection when they are in italics so this bit desn't 'sound' right in my head.)

The whole tired argument makes me furious. We are already so conscious of how we are bringing up Junior. I see the PFTC has a funding round for documentaries open at the moment. Maybe I'll propose one on women bringing up boys. I need some activity to do in the middle of the night with half-slumbrous babies.

Poogee Bay Hotel

2008-10-30T20:51:00.004+10:00

I don't know if it's made the news where you are, but there's a scandal in the papers at the moment about a family who found human faeces in the bottom of their bowl of ice cream after an altercation with the staff.

It's all true! - I have a source.

Specifically, it's my children's mother's sister's ex-husband's wife who is the centre of the drama. That's practically my best friend.

I won't be complaining in any restaurants any time soon, I tell you.

The last hurrah

2008-10-29T21:52:00.002+10:00

I'm not sure where this blog is going. What have I got to say? I wonder.

The babies turn one in just over a month. I am going to try and blog every day until then. For some reason I think this will help me make a decision about whether to continue.

I've decided to organise a Rainbow Families Christmas picnic in the park, a couple of weeks before Christmas. I'd like to meet other same-sex headed families in Brisbane, and I think it's a good time for the kids to gather with other same sex headed families. There are so many representations of nice straight families in the media around that time, it'll be nice for them to see their own family structure reflected. I'm modelling it on the State Electricity Commission employee Christmas parties I used to go to when we were kids - races with ribbons for the winners, icy poles (banana or chocolate) and a visit from Santa who hands out cheap presents. We have a thick velvet Santa suit (courtesy of Melbourne Santa events) for our Brisbane Santa to swelter in - we just need to find a fun, camp helper.

Baby awake!