4:45am

4:45am.  Lilith Fair mix on the PA system.  Starbucks in hand.  Just shorted the very nice taxi driver (just a little) because I can't do mental math at this hour.  This has been a long month-5 Wednesdays, 6 round trip flights.  Lots of broken sleep and a baby who always knows when I'm leaving.  To much time in anonymous spaces: southwest terminals, public transit, inexpensive hotels (as opposed to cheap motels).

What I'm not doing today: trick or treating with my ladies.

That isn't a true complaint, because we're still lucky, but just a statement of my complete discombobulation.  Hopefully a little girl will wear her dino costume without complaint and I'll get to see lots of pictures.  LB is saying more and more two word phrases.  She is a friendly girl and will say hi to the other parents at daycare and chatter to them about various things including her mama, her stroller (or "ride" she is so urban), and going bye-bye.  At home, she love to make various animals, real and stuffed, go night-night.  Her bear is okay with this game, but our little dog isn't so convinced.

[Dear lord, now they're playing some old Aimee Mann (90s not 80s) on the PA.]

Hungry Dino, who soon became Angry Dino.

Mamas

LB is in the midst of a modest language explosion, which is incredibly fun.  She knows she has a mama and a mommy, however, she calls us both mama and collectively we are the mamas.  This weekend my parents were visiting and she also called grandmom and granddad "mama."  LB definitely uses mama in several ways.  Mama refers to me and to B specifically, and even if she uses the same word, she knows exactly who she wants.  Mama also refers more generically to grown up or maybe grown up caregiver.  I know that she has called her old DCP "mama," but would also call her by her name.  LB can point out mamas and babies in books, which is pretty simple: mamas are big and babies are little.  It occurred to me when LB kept pointing at my dad and saying "mama!" that she doesn't have a language for men.

LB has a gramps and a granddad, and she also has a few friends she likes very much who are men, the man friend of her old DCP, the husband of her babysitter, and several neighbors.  But we have never talked about these people as a category.  If we knew these people through LB's friends, it would be natural that they would be "daddies" or "papas," but they are just a random assortment of people who happen to be men.  So, without meaning to, we seem to have realized the lesbian feminist separatist dream.  I'm sure Paul Ryan is choking on his communion wine as I admit publicly that my gayby has no language for men.  Without language, does a category of men exist for LB? Do men have any power in her world? I told B that it's probably time for us to head out for Wimmin's Land to keep this thing going.  Instead, being the hopelessly conventional types that we are, I expect that within the next month LB will know both "granddad" and "gramps" and all men will be some variation on those words.

LB in her new "boys" shoes.

Liminal Space

It's Tuesday, so I must be in Baltimore.  I left the house at 4:30am, and as I was catching the bus up to work at 9:00am I realized I'd already been up for almost 5 hours.  So if nothing I write makes any sense, just keep that schedule in mind.  Getting up at 4 really sucks, and it disrupts B and LB as well.  By the time I get to Baltimore, I usually feel okay, but this is not so fun.

On the upside, I think all this coming and going is making LB much more aware of us.  She seems much more aware of the mamas, and wants to know where we are, and gets upset when we leave.  Not always fun, but so mature. 

Last week we, that is all of us at gate B19 in BWI, watched the debates.  It was an americana moment as we all worked together to figure out how to turn on the sound on the t.v.  Then there was an arriving honor flight (flights of WWII and Korean War Era veterans who fly to BWI to begin tours of D.C.). So the night was spent watching, clapping, watching, clapping, etc. 

Tonight (Wednesday) we are delayed again, waiting for our pilot.  So far I've seen one woman who refused to board her flight as the doors were closing because she lost her pillow.  She lost her pillow because she left it unattended while she went and got food.  Once she found the pillow, she didn't seem to understand why she couldn't get on her flight.  Then there was another unattended bag. 

I don't really mind airports, but my body feels so wrecked from the traveling, and poor sleep, and traveling.

Axes and Fisher Cats, Oh My!

Hell Month is over!  We are all living together under the same, very nice, roof.  Dogs and baby have been transported north, as has a house worth of stuff.  It's such a relief to be settled here, but I have also begun extreme commuting back to Baltimore or one or two days a week, and LB is picking up lots of nice new cold bugs.  Hell Month has been replaced by the mid-level stress that we like to call life.

Providence is a little different than Baltimore.  Sadly, there are fewer feral cats to meet on our walks.  I don't know that I've seen even one outside cat since we've been here.  On our first visit to the farmer's market we saw a man carrying an axe.  Admittedly, he was just taking it to get it sharpened, but still, I think there must be an ordinance against that in Baltimore.  The next day there was report of a fisher cat attack on the front page of the ProJo.  Basically, we're living in the country.