Carrie has continued to blog at K-9 Kid Rescue.
In her most recent post, a 1 minute video, she and Cody play the super heroes, and they rescue some hikers (played by Pearl and Scout). Fasten your virtural seat belt. This story is a real cliff hanger!
Circle of Moms recently announced their Top 25 LGBT Blogs, and The Other Mother made the list. Hoorah! To check out the other winners, click here.
New house, blank walls. You know the story. So yesterday, while Marcia was completing a work project, Pearl, Carrie, and I whipped up an art project.
I read about this project here and was planning to do it on my own, but the grrrls were interested in helping. The white lines are made with painter's tape, and each field is a different color, so it really is easy enough for children.
I like the way they turned out. Pearl's comment = they look like they were painted by real artists! Carrie's comment = don't worry Baba, I'll finish them tomorrow while you're at work.
Yes, pals, it's time to ring in a new year. Happy 2010! Click here to check out the Holiday Sound Poem 2009. [time = 1:23] Remember it's audio, not video, so you won't see any pictures.
You can also check out a few of our previous holiday missives:
2008 holiday poem
with bonus grrrlville impossible video
If you miss the blog and want to keep up with our comings and goings, add Marcia and me as your friends on facebook. Hope it's a wondrous year for you and yours.
Grrrlville
After five and a half years of blogging, I've decided to stop. Thank you for reading, responding, and just being there. I've enjoyed the process and hope you have too. If you are in the habit of following along with our family and want to stay in the loop, please add me and Marcia as friends on facebook (let us know how you know us) and also on twitter. We would love to stay in touch.
Be well. Enjoy each day,
Grrrlville
For Local Blog
in Houston
Thanks to you you you, The Other Mother is currently in first place in the Best Blog category at Go City Kids Houston. If you have a sec, you can vote once a day. Voting ends on July 15th.
We're traveling tomorrow. Next post will be from California!
The Other Mother has been nominated best blog on Parents Connect Houston. If you have a sec, and feel the love, step over here and cast your vote, please.
Mombian sponsors the Blogging for LGBT Families blog carnival each year to orchestrate our hundreds of voices in praise of LGBT families around the world. Feel free to join in.
This year Monday, June 1st, is Blogging for LGBT Families Day 2009. It is also Marcia and my 12th anniversary. Lots to celebrate today--love, families, and happiness.
Marcia and I first met because two of our mutual friends wanted us to meet. It was awkward and artificial. It was not a date, but it was most certainly SET UP. We were helping one of the aforementioned mutual friends move into a new apartment. We "ended up" in the same car for each run. It was 5 months later that we decided that maybe they were right. I guess they were.
Last year we both forgot our anniversary. We managed a little better this year, even arranging a date night at an outdoor concert featuring Esperanza Spalding this past weekend. A dozen years together. That's something, I think. Something big. Wow.
Love is what it's all about.
Thanks, sweetie. And happy anniversary!
Get ready, get set! June 1st is the 4th annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day. Anyone can participate. Get the scoop at Mombian and say hi to Dana while you're there.
Pearl and Carrie are now old enough and occasionally even willing (!) to do an art project with me. The way it works is: I ask if they'd like to do a project. Both say NO with great conviction. Then I say that's okay, and I start working on the project myself. At some point they begin to get interested and usually they join in.
Sunday we made bead necklaces. I have been admiring (and waiting patiently until I could utilize) Kathy Barbro's blog Art Projects for Kids. It's dreamy! Kathy often derives her projects from real artists or from real artistic techniques. My sense is that these projects bring out the best and most creative from the child, and the end products are often very beautiful.
Thanks for celebrating Blog Reader Appreciation Day 2009. Over 100 people from across the globe signed up on Bloggers United and you can read their posts from the Bloggers Unite site. Here's a list of other participants:
To be added to this list, just leave your link as a comment. I will do the rest!
This is just to say, dear readers: thanks.
Thanks for putting up with my incessant questions, my wacky blog carnivals, my excessive sharing of my toddlers' "art", my photos ad nauseum, and my five years worth of poems and stories. I appreciate your participation in this community more than you might guess.
&
Today is Blog Reader Appreciation Day. Feel free to post a tribute to your readers on your own blog. Over 100 people from across the globe signed up on Bloggers United. You can sign up there or simply leave a comment and I will add you to this list of participants:
Writers in the Schools (with special poetry month give-aways!)
Bloggers depend on loyal readers but rarely get a chance to really thank them. Blog Reader Appreciation Day gives bloggers a chance to pour on the love!
After the taxes are filed, on Thursday, April 16, please join us in thanking and celebrating your blog readers with special tributes, posts, contests, and give-aways.
Sign in here or simply leave your url as a comment below.
Feel free to chose a badge for your post and use the tag:
brad2009
Apologies for my recent silence. I'm sick with sinusitis, bronchitis, et cetera itis but hope to be back to blogging soon.
[photo taken by tom harle via flickr]
The Other Mother has hit another milestone. It's been 5 years, folks. I started the blog a week before Pearl was born, and she'll be 5 next week. Here's a link to the first posts from way back in 2004.
Other good blog news: The Other Mother made the “Top 100 Healthy Mom Blogs” this year, as did our friends at Mombian. The list was compiled by RNCentral, a blog for nursing students.
A five star day, I'd like to think.
Here's a loud shout out to all the winners of the TLL Lezzy Awards for 2009. Hooray, hooray!
Best Lesbian Entertainment/Culture Blog: Dorothy Surrenders
Best Lesbian Humor Blog: Grace the Spot
Best Lesbian Parenting/Wedding Blog: Lesbian Dad
Best Lesbian Feminism/Political Blog: Pam’s House Blend
Best Lesbian Personal Blog: This Girl Called Automatic Win
Best Lesbian 50 and Over Blog: just eat your cupcake
Best Lesbian Gender Bender Blog: Sugarbutch Chronicles
Best Lesbian Sex/Short Story/Erotica Blog: Sugarbutch Chronicles
Lesbian Overall Blog of the Year: Dorothy Surrenders
Congratulation, bloggers! And thanks to our friends at TLL for organizing the awards and bringing the community together around these great blogs!
Just wanted to thank everyone for participating in the What About Love blog carnival in celebration of Freedom the Marry Week 2009. It's been great to read the many different responses to the Some/things. My favorite part about the carnival was the sharing of stories. Stories are the fabric of our community, and whether we've actually met in person or not, we unite virtually when we share them, both as writers and as readers.
Over the past week during the carnival I've been traveling and have probably missed some of your posts. Please leave comments where I have omitted your link or need to correct it.
Blue is my favorite color, and it always has been. In my writing I use the word "blue" often. It seems to represent all that is. In this photo, for instance, of earth taken from outer space, the demarcations between land and sea, earth and sky, are impossible to distinguish.
Today's post is dedicated to all of you in the process of trying to start a family. I rarely share my own poems but here is a rare exception. I wrote this about before Marcia and I started to TTC (trying to conceive) process.
Blue That’s Almost Blue
To
a Child, Unborn
A calm moon lends a hush within the room
the night outside fills its envelope with dread
a claw of hope scratches its name across clay
I don't know what to feel because I’m rising into
deep blue music a ceremony of inner weather
I marvel over an imagined, sleeping infant
who dreams of islands I've never visited
never will He and I are two
bodies trembling and separate now and always I
hold my breath, a hostage of the sky.
by Robin Reagler
published in Runes
888888
Note: This post is part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. Feel free to write your own post on your blog or facebook page. Then leave the link to your "something new" post, and I will share it with the group. Check out the other posts on this topic:
About.com: Lesbian Life by Kathy Belge
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook and YouTube
The Birmingham-Luther Family Blog
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
When it comes to outfitting the kids, I love hand-me-downs. I love that they're free and easy, of course. That's a given. But mostly I love them because they're full of stories.
The red shirt that Carrie is wearing in this picture first belonged to her cousin Max. He's 15 now. Red was and still is his favorite color. Then it was his sister Sarah's, then Pearl's, and now it's Carrie's. I look at it and remember my niece and nephew. I remember how they grow up so fast--Max is already 5'10"! Perhaps this is overly sentimental on my part, but I really see the shirt as a connection from one kid to the next. Sibling to cousin to friend, and on down the line.
88888
Note: This post is part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. Feel free to write your own post on your blog or facebook page. Then leave the link to your "something new" post, and I will share it with the group. Check out the other posts on this topic:
About.com Lesbian Life by Kathy Belge
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
We have a new pup named Cody. He was a sweet little Jekyll of a boy until exactly 3 weeks after his arrival. On day 22 he transformed himself into 100% pure Hyde-bound hell-on-paws animal chaos. Grrrlville was pretty chaotic before we adopted this fellow. What were we thinking?
Cody has a lot of Marley in him. He aspires to bipedalism. He loves fun and food, and his definition of both of this items is extremely broad. He's scared of Moriah and water. Pearl and Carrie adore him. When visitors arrive as our door, Carrie warns, in the loudest voice she can muster: HE'S NOT TRAINED. She's right about that.
Cody loves the chill winter days. He runs awkwardly, in an unpredictable lope, gulping down gallons of wind and chasing the brittle leaves. He is my boy.
88888
Note: This post is part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. Feel free to write your own post on your blog or facebook page. Then leave the link to your "something new" post, and I will share it with the group. Check out the other posts on this topic:
About.com Lesbian Life by Kathy Belge
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook
The Birmingham-Luther Family Blog
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
SoCal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills
Our cat Moriah is 20 years old. That's 96 for you or me. Or am I presuming too much? Perhaps there are a few cats who read this blog? You never know. My teacher, the poet Adam Zagajewski, knew my cat when she was a newborn kitten. He and Moriah were neighbors. He begged me, Robin, teach this cat to read before it's too late!
I dare say it is now officially too late. At 20 Moriah is not taught; she teaches. And she is one stern taskmaster. Cody the pup is terrified of her. The rest of us play it cool, but we inevitably do exactly what she says.
I never really wanted a cat. As a kid I was frightened of cats myself. But something happens when the cat in question is yours. In other words, one might fear or dislike CATS but still like one cat in particular. Does that make sense?
Moriah was a gift, one given, not one received. My partner wanted a cat for her birthday. Twenty years later the partner is long gone but the cat remains. For whatever reason, I do love her.
Once when Moriah was a kitten I wrote this description of her:
The marks on her face look like a mask. Who is she? Sometimes she leaves for days. Her eyes send out beams of light into the night. She is a hunter. And then she returns to me, small ball at my chest, kneading, needing.
Although it's been many years since Moriah has done any of these things, the magic is still in her. If you know her, you know what I mean.
88888
Note: This post is part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. Leave the link to your "something old" post and I will share it with the group. Check out some of the other posts on this topic:
About.com Lesbian Life w/ Kathy Belge
Melissa Beattie-Moss on Facebook
Susan Bernstein on Facebook
The Birmingham-Luther Family Blog
I probably think this blog is about me
Life induces thoughts, mostly random
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
SoCal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills
You can join the blog carnival at any time until Feb. 14. This list will be updated throughout the week. To be added, leave a comment with your url. For the blog carnival guidelines, click here.
Melissa Beattie-Moss on Facebook
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook
The Birmiingham-Luther Family Blog
I probably think this blog is about me
Justin's Girl on MySpace
Knot so Different: The Aisle Less Taken
Life induces thoughts, mostly random
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
It's Freedom to Marry week, and equality is what it's all about. The nonprofit group Freedom to Marry has organized activities throughout the week that encourage dialogue between all people.
“Conversations with the circles of people around us are the prerequisite to winning, the key to helping them push past their discomfort, complacency, or indifference to becoming supportive of our equality.”
--Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry Executive Director
In order to facilitate these conversations, Freedom to Marry is sponsoring a number of programs,
including 7 Conversations in 7 Days. If you are a blogger, you can kick off the week by joining the blogswarm. Visit Mombian for more information on that.
As you may know, I am organizing a blog carnival this week, as part of the celebration, and YOU are invited. This afternoon I'll post a list of everyone who is planning to participate, so if you haven't done so already, please let me know. Here's the schedule:
Tuesday, Feb. 10... Something Old
Wednesday, Feb. 11... Something New
Thursday, Feb. 12... Something Borrowed
Friday, Feb. 13... Something Blue
Saturday, Feb. 14... Valentine's Day: Celebrate Love
For more complete guidelines, click here.
Next week is Freedom to Marry Week. Who wants to celebrate LOVE?
I hope you will join me in this blog carnival, which we began last year. The way it works is simple. Each day next week, post to your blog or facebook page something on these topics, according to the "olde" wedding tradition:
Tuesday, Feb. 10... Something Old
Wednesday, Feb. 11... Something New
Thursday, Feb. 12... Something Borrowed
Friday, Feb. 13... Something Blue
Saturday, Feb. 14... Valentine's Day: Celebrate Love
You can post a photo, a memory, a poem, some music, or a combination. Try to surprise us. And once you're done with your post, if you leave a link in the comment section, everyone will be able to check out what you've done.
Feel free to link to The Other Mother, using the "Something" badge. If you're not a blogger, you can participate by leaving a comment. I will be posting links to all contributions here. Just leave the URL as a comment. You can participate all week or whenever you have the time. I'll start by compiling a list of participants, so let me know if you're "in".
If you want to make your story easy to find, use the keyword something2009 .
I was tagged by Christine Martell and feel obligated to reveal to you today seven things you really don't need to know about me. Where shall we begin?
I have absurdly narrow feet. For me, buying shoes has never been a bit of fun.
I have balance issues. I can't ice skate or roller blade. In yoga, my standing tree pose almost always is accompanied by a loud "timber"!
I never sleep enough.
I steal things. These green numbers, for instance, are stolen from Christine Martell. Nice numbers, yes? I do not steal tangible things. I've never shoplifted. But I often swipe beautiful jpegs on the world wide web. My blog Big Window is the living proof.
The year after I finished my MFA, I read all of Jack Kerouac's books. This year I appear to be rereading them.
I like coloring in coloring books. Always have. My favorite of the kids' coloring books are here and here.
One day I hope to live on a beach, even if it's just for a month or two.
&&&
And now, to complete this meme, I must tag 7 other bloggers. The lucky winners are:
If you're a Mombian fan, you can vote for that very great lesbian mom blog today. They've been nominated Best Large Blog in the Weblog Awards!
10. She Is - Pearl's Birth Announcement (March 2004) includes a recipe for smothered okra!
9. Birthday Rap - Marcia's Song for Robin's Birthday (September 2008)
8. Question of the Day: Politics and the English Language (October 2008) your thoughts on the BIden/Palin debate
6. Meet the Blogger: Polly Pagenhart of LesbianDad
5. A Costume Question (October 2004)
4. Reader Appreciation Day (April 2008) introducing a meme for bloggers to thank the readers
1. She Was Really Saying Something (Feb. 2008) introducing a meme to celebrate Freedom to Marry week
Starting today eight lesbian bloggers are launching 8 Against 8, an eight-day collaborative online fundraising drive to defeat Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that seeks to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in the State of California. The campaign aims to raise both funds and awareness. Visit the 8 bloggers and support Equality California.
The 8 Against 8 campaign donation page is located right here.
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