I have a lot on my mind but most of it isn’t real coherent. I’m going to spew here for a bit. 🙂

The freak breeder outing was a lot of fun though only about 50% of the RSVPs showed up. I actually feel like the group size was about as large as it could be and maintain much single-group coherence. If we had more people we would have divided into factions, probably along the lines of “who already knows whom” and then it wouldn’t have been so neat as a new-people meeting. I did not bring sufficient food for myself and I did not do a good enough job of eating as the day happened. I could feel myself reaching that point where I would be a nasty bitch if I opened my mouth but I’m pretty sure I managed to just be quiet and go find additional food. I was a little bit of a drama queen about food, but that’s better than blowing up.

As Mo occasionally brings up, it’s unusual to find parents who can talk about anything other than their kids. Of course we did some amount of kid-talk (especially the two of us with five month olds–we traded lots of stuff about where we are developmentally and that was neat) but we also had a neat wide array of topics. Conversations wandered hither and yon without that artificial feeling of “I’m only talking to you because you have a child” that I get at most kid-centric places. And the zoo was fun in general.

I’m going to become an aunt again. This is pretty exciting. It also brings up some odd feelings for me for a few different reasons. Noah’s oldest brother and his wife are expecting. This same brother sired a child in high school who has been raised by Noah’s parents. Ok, that’s a common situation. I feel weird in my thinking because on one hand I feel like I don’t know how to think/talk about that situation. This isn’t OB’s (oldest brother) first child… but it sort of is. He didn’t really help raise the other child so this will be his first time being a father. And yet I have a really hard time figuring out how I feel about just ignoring the existence of the other child. Then there is the fact that this older child is nearly in-or already in high school. She’s almost an adult. I told Noah to ask her if she wants to be aunt or cousin and she said aunt. I still feel like I don’t know if I am acknowledging the full scope of her identity. And of course this is all rather masturbatory because we don’t spend time with any of them anyway. I’m really good at over-thinking things that won’t effect my life.

And then I get to thinking about the fact that Shanna has five cousins and six aunts/uncles and she’s only spent any time with two cousins and one aunt. A big chunk of that is because those are the local folks. But another big chunk is various difficult situations with family. It’s interesting how my feelings about family have changed since having her. I still feel very very very strongly about Shanna never spending alone time with Noah’s parents. I still don’t really want to be around Noah’s mother myself. I’m starting to feel a lot more conflict about willfully keeping Shanna away from the rest of his family because I don’t deal well with folks like his mother. My sister’s kids are basically grown. They will feel more like another aunt and uncle to Shanna. My brother is unlikely to crawl out of his alcoholism and drug addiction and trauma so I doubt Shanna will ever have relationships with his kids despite the fact that they are not much older than her. Noah’s brother’s children are going to be the only cousins she might really have. That’s weighing heavy on my mind.

And my mom is arriving in Nor Cal either tonight or tomorrow. She is going to mostly stay with my sister but spend a few days here. She’s going to be up here for a couple of weeks. That will be…interesting. I have a lot more compassion for her these days than I used to. She still gets on my nerves. 🙂 I have managed to train her out of saying, “And how is my baby doing?” That really irritated me. I would respond, “I’m fine. Thanks for asking. Oh, and your grandbaby is doing well too.” She now just asks about her grandbaby. Maybe I should feel unincluded. heh.

Being a mom is still the most exciting thing I’ve done. Shanna really does change almost every day. Certainly week by week it’s fascinating to see how she has changed. Now she’s wiggling around enough that it’s hard to keep her on the blanket. Guess we should start keeping the floor cleaner. 🙂 And I should get to doing any amount of kid-proofing I’m going to do. It just seems like so much work. heh

Despite having purchased airline tickets we still haven’t gotten her passport yet. I’m feeling a lot of conflict about that. We tried on Friday and uhm had some issues. It was very frustrating. We are going to get it done this week. She has to have a paper ticket so it’s already here. I’m terribly excited about going to New Zealand. Soon I will start doing more research about the area. Right now I’m focused on Spanish/Christmas/house cleaning.

I think I ran out of steam on typing. I’ve had more on my mind but Shanna is up and active.