Artificially Sweetened

(I have lots of things to write about but they will have to wait)

One year ago today, P’ito landed on U.S. soil with us.

It’s been quite the year: new baby, new city, new home, new job.

July 2007	August 2007	September 2007

October 2007	November 2007	December 2007

January 2008	February 2008	March 2008

April 2008	May 2008	June 2008
July 2008

It’s been the craziest, most joy-filled year of my life.

Thank you Pili, for helping me to realize my dreams, and thank you P’ito, for making us a family of three and realizing our dream.

I don’t have words for how much my heart swells when I look at you both.

p.s. Over on the right there is a new button for “Erin’s Shop.” I first met Erin when we were visiting P’ito and she and her husband were fostering their daughter in Antigua.  P’ito has been home for a year - and they are still there.  If you would like to help us celebrate this first family day, or if you have any sort of gift-giving need coming up in your life - please click through and take a look at the beautiful crafts Erin is making using Guatemalan textiles.   In addition to being works of art, they’re also her family’s primary source of income right now.  In honor of our first anniversary of being a family - won’t you please help someone else achieve that goal?

From my local parenting magazine. Heh.

And because I’ve been told that I have been delinquent in the photo department.

Many thanks to Val for a) saving my life with that extra bottle of novolog and b) taking us to her town pool! And for all you curious DOCers out there, her castle is truly reeediculously awesome.

Are there any toddler books in the genre of “Hands are not for Hitting” except focusing on FOOD IS NOT FOR THROWING! Especially not when the house is being invaded by ants?!?

I have searched on amazon and come up dry.

(No it doesn’t mean he’s done eating. It doesn’t even always mean he doesn’t like the food in question. Yes, we try taking him out of the chair. He just loves to THROW.)

Recommendations for “how-to-keep-your-toddler-from-driving-you-nuts” books would also be greatly appreciated.

Since P’ito came home, I’ve gotten pickier about my reading material. I have to - it’s a matter of fitting my blog reading in survival in between work, chores, friends and family.  The measure of a really good book for me is when I turn to Pili and poke her and say, YOU, YOU HAVE GOT TO READ THIS RIGHT NOW and I do not care what vital activity of yours I am interrupting.  Even sleep.

I encountered quite a few of those “must read” moments in paging through Shari Macdonald Strong’s collection of essays, The Maternal is Political.  The forty-four short essays in the book cover a lot of ground, from Kathy Bricetti’s moving account of how personal and political intersected when they came “to court for a rare event in 1993: a woman adopting a baby boy in order to up his number of legal mothers to two,” to Jennifer Graf Groneberg’s breath-taking account of being moved to political action in order to protect her right to home-school her son with Down syndrome.  Okay, you have to read this.  She writes:

I’m not a political person by nature. I’m a peacemaker, a smoother-over, a find-the-middle- ground kind of woman.  But reading the language of SB291, particularly section 8, part 3, which stated that any child with developmental delays must be educated in a classroom, caused something within me to shift.  I recalled the Constitution, which until now seemed like nothing more than a dusty old document I’d read in a history book, and it’s guarantees in the preamble to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”  The words came alive for me: I was a citizen; I had rights - and if I didn’t exercise them, my sons would pay for my apathy.

The idea that holds all these diverse essays together is, as Macdonald Strong writes in her introduction, that “there is no more politically powerful act than mothering.”  Our children motivate us to make differences in the world, small and large.  I was fascinated by the range of ideas on exactly how mothering makes a difference in the world, by authors from Cindy Sheehan and Benazir Bhutto to Anne Lamott and Susie Bright.

Other reviewers have already written about my main quibble with the book, which is the lack of political diversity in the essays.  Macdonald Strong envisions a world “when the most active political groups in the world are not those obsessed with winning a war, but those determined to win the peace.”  She assumes that this will occur when “the driving force behind politics in my country [and elsewhere, I presume?] is not power or money, but maternal love.”  I am sure that maternal love motivates some of the people who believe that we are fighting a just war in Iraq.  I am sure that maternal love motivates people who believe we should abolish reproductive choice.  I’m not so sure that a mothers’ movement = a progressive political movement, as much as I’d like to believe that.  A few of the essays cross over the line of political and verge into preachy self-rightousness.

But then, just as I turn that pessimistic corner, I reread the closing essay, Valerie Weaver-Zercher’s fabulous “Peace March Sans Children,” and recognize myself.  “I’m also learning, she writes,

That social movements will go on, even if nursing mothers or parents of toddlers have to drop out for awhile. We will be back, someday, maybe when the youngest turns two or whenever we can afford to dream like activists rather than work like dogs… And when we do rejoin the movement, it is possible that we will agitate and march and advocate from a deeper place within ourselves than we had known existed.  It is possible that we will act from that cavity our children have hollowed out of us, that place where breath begins.

I can’t finish without mentioning the essays that first stopped me in my tracks, and made me wake Pili up to read them.  One was Barbara Kingsolver’s essay, “A Letter to My Daughter at Thirteen,” which described my experience of new motherhood so exactly, precisely perfectly, that it gave me goosebumps.  And I can’t leave out fellow adoptive mom Violeta Garcia-Mendoza’s beautiful discussion of the complexities of international adoption.  I can’t choose one section to quote so instead, I poke you.  Hey you - you there reading this blog - go read it. NOW.

It is 4 am and I am awake looking at consumer reports for air conditioners because it is hot and I cannot sleep.  

That’s all. And why isn’t anyone playing scrabulous at 4 am? 

So I recently refilled my mail order pharmacy supply of happy pills… I get the name brand b/c the generic is uncoated and sticks in my throat every single time.  It’s a slightly higher copay, but it’s worth it.

My previous copay for this was $80 for a 90 day supply.

I get my credit card bill and realize I’ve been charged $492!!!

I call and am told that on 4/3/08 (huh? random date?) a MAC penalty was added to that drug, meaning that if you take the name brand instead of the generic, you get penalized big time.  I was never notified of this - obviously, I’d have refilled the script before 4/3 if I knew that was going to happen!

MAC PENALTY? Do I get a happy meal with that?

A few forceful “I was not notifieds” and “may I speak to your supervisor PLEASE”s and I’m put on hold for 10 minutes.  When the woman comes back, she says that she has been authorized to give me a one-time exception, and I will be getting a refund for the amount I was overcharged.  In the future, I can have my doctor’s office fill out an “exception request form” if I need the name brand drug.

Thing I always wonder after encounters like this.  What if I wasn’t…

- educated & literate enough to read my insurance plan documents
- a native speaker of English
- privileged enough to believe I deserve better treatment
- privileged enough to have a job where I can make personal phone calls during work hours (because these folks are 9-5, baby)

I’d be screwed out of $400.  And more.

Before you get too excited, I:

1. Spent $180 dollars at diapers.com for 2 cases of diapers, 2 cases of wipes, and some frou-frou organic baby shampoo. Damn daycare - why do they have to change the babies so often?

[I'm a whore cheap. If you get baby stuff from them for the first time, and you use my referral code, you get $5 off and I get a credit towards my next order. It's MASH5183, in case you're interested]

2. Registered at the last minute for my high school reunion, despite my failure to lose 20 pounds beforehand. I’m feeling a little queasy right now…

3. Lost my facebook virginity. I may very well have been the last remaining person on earth in my age and  socioeconomic bracket who was not signed up on facebook.  Like I needed another way to waste time online.

I told you it was boring.

A few months ago I got a new meter from OneT@uch that replaces the BD one that talks to my pump.

I promptly filed it in the bathroom cabinet o’ diabetes supplies, as I have enough strips for the BD meter to last at least until the Cubs win the World Series the end of time.

I hauled it out last night after realizing that I left Old Faithful on my desk at work.  Amongst all the new meter swag was a vial of 10 strips (WOW! I AM OVERWHELMED BY GENEROSITY) and a coupon for a free gift.

You all know I love free stuff.  I got all excited.  What would it be? A faux leather case for OneTouchie? A skin for the meter to match my pump?  With great enthusiasm, I tore open the offer.

My friends, it was a coupon for twenty free lancets.

WHOO FUCKING HOO.

Have these people never heard of daylight savings time?

p.s. Some serious P’ito cuteness over in Flickrville… comment on the pictures and encourage me to post more of them

This post is for Kerri, who is off gettin’ married. A big congratulations to Kerri, Chris & the indomitable Siah Sausage. For their newlywed edification, I present the following scene from married life:

The Scene: Pili is reading aloud to me from Yet Another Stupid Parenting (YASP) Magazine Article about the keys to a happy marriage, P’ito is standing on the bench in the breakfast nook next to her.

YASP: We sneak away for dinner or for some “us time” in the bedroom

Me: “Us time in the bedroom?” Why don’t they just say UH-UH-UH-UH! (punctuated with appropriate Elvis-like pelvic motions)

P’ito: UH-UH-UH-UH! (pelvic thrusts)

Pili: I hope he doesn’t do that at daycare.

Me: (insert maniacal giggles)

Pili, sighing: You’re going to blog about this, aren’t you?

Is it really necessary to send me the same (strangely capitalized) “Now i Can GET EVERYTHING I NEED” brochure EVERY SINGLE TIME I order pump supplies?

I order my supplies online, so clearly I’m capable of getting information about your products without a 30 page high gloss paper brochure sent to me MONTHLY.

Why don’t you alleviate pain (to our environment) and extend the life (of our planet) by eliminating this brochure, which is headed straight for my recycling bin anyway.

Thanks,

AS