What I'm Thankful For...

We had Thanksgiving at Jeff and Abby's house this evening. Lots of food, lots of fun, lots of kids! My belly is really full and I'm ready for bed, but I wanted to write down a few of my thoughts. First, I have to give a shout out to my husband for his squash dish. I don't know exactly what was in it, but it was squash, cheese, onions, butter?? Not sure what else, but it was delicious! My nephew Alex had three helpings (which surprised me that a kid would like squash). So, there were great eats at dinner...Turkey, stuffing, crannberries, vegetable dish, squash dish, potatoes (both regular and sweet), and LOTS of pie. While Christmas is my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving is my favorite food holiday.

And since it is Thanksgiving, I thought I would make a list of things I am Thankful for...

1. My husband. Even when I want to strangle him, I love him. He is the Ying to my Yang. We are very different creatures, but we balance each other out.

2. My son. It's been a little over 8 months since he moved in and its been a long road but I can't imagine life without him. He frustrates me, he drives me crazy, he is a pain in my butt. He also makes me laugh and he's fun to hang out with and he's smart and sarcastic and he's freakin' adorable.



3. My family, My immediate family- Ken and Paulette; Kristi, Steve, and Bryce; Jeff, Abby, Alex, Justin, and Audrey; Aaron, Lori, and Maya. And my extended family- Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, second cousins, third cousins, etc. They make me laugh, they keep me going, they are my rock. I love hanging out with them and I know if I need them that they will be there.

4. My friends. I have been blessed in such amazing ways by all the people that are a part of my life. Whether I talk to them a couple times a week, once a month, or once a year- I am one of the luckiest people in the world when it comes to the amazing people that are part of my life. Although we are spread out from San Jose, CA to Providence, RI to Raliegh, NC and everywhere in between. I love them all and I miss them all. And as husbands and wives and partners and babies are added to the mix, it just makes the web of connections and love even larger.


5. My gardens. Winters are a hard season because I can't be outside working in our flower gardens. There is something about digging in the dirt that is good for the soul.

6. Books. Where else could I ride on the back of a dragon, hold the hand of a dying friend, and hear about romancing a vampire. They are my escape, my release, and I believe the world would be an incredibly sad place without them. 7. Work. There are days when I want to walk out and never come back, but there are other days when I feel incredibly passionate about working on policies that impact the lives of low-income Missourians.

8. Drinks. Honestly, I've become less and less of a drinker...maybe one or two per week but sometimes I just really really need a big drink!

9. Art. I don't get to do my own very much anymore, but I love sketching, painting, stained glass, or just plain crafty stuff. It makes me happy and it relaxes me in a different way than #8.

10. And finally...this blog because it makes me write out my thoughts and feelings and provides me a place to release frustration and express joy. It reminds me how far we've come and how far we have to go!

P.S.- Sleep...I do love my sleep (just like my momma!) and that is where I'm headed... Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

A Trip to the Magic House

William and I traveled out to SOCO (that means South County) to the house that I grew up in from age 7 until I left for college. A little over a year ago my little brother and his wife bought it from my parents because they were building their dream home. I'm really glad it stayed in the family. It's nice to go over and still walk into the room where I slept for over 11 years of my life. I can walk in there and see my bookshelves filled with Legos and Transformers. I can see my Star Wars Wallpaper and my funky blue carpet. It has all changed now, but just walking in the room makes the memories come back.

Anyway. I digress. Me and William headed to my little brother's house to pick up Maya and take her to the zoo. My little brother and his wife have been going through a LOT lately and Lori had just had emergency surgery the day before (although I will tell you that even with surgery that girl was keeping her hair appointment the next day. She was going to make Aaron carry her in there if necessary). So we thought we'd give them a break and do something fun with Maya.

Well, Maya wasn't so sure she wanted to go with us =).

Although they hadn't been giving her all the details, kids are perceptive and know when things are amiss. She felt it, and didn't want to leave her mommy and daddy's side. She cried and threw a fit, but eventually she got in my car. William sat next to me with big eyes and asked "Why is she acting like that?" I said "I don't know, why do you act like that sometimes??"

As we pulled out of the driveway, Maya is crying and says "I...I....I don't want to go to the zoo." I say "Well sweetie where do you want to go?" "I want to go to the Magic House." Well I'm a sucker for Maya and so is William truth be told. And so the three of us headed to the Magic House.

Let me say, if you don't live in St. Louis and have never been to the Magic House, you are missing out. It's fun for adults too. I took my friend Melanie there and we couldn't stop laughing and being goofs. It really brings out the kid in you. There is a three story spiral slide that is so fun.

Needless to say we had a blast. As soon as we said we would go to the magic house, Maya was fine. The two of them painted pictures, went down the slide a million times (or at least 30), fished with magnetic poles, played pretend in the treehouse restaurant, and learned all about different science concepts without knowing they were learning.

William does really good with Maya. He is sweet and gentle and protective of her. And she loves him to. She calls him silly Willie.

Of course we followed up our Magic House trip with McDonald's. William and me are suckers for McDonald's too. Ask Lawrence, it drives him nuts. I can't help myself. A number 2 with a Coke. I love fountain Cokes. So we ate and I watched the two of them play in the McDonald's playroom. And I was a kid again. Going down the slide, having wars between the Lego men and the Decepticons, having the Autobots save the day, and laying in bed in the summers with my clock radio under my pillow and listening to the Cardinals games as I fell to sleep.


You never get those days back. But having a kid lets you relive those days a little bit. It's weird how certain smells or sights bring back the most vivid memories. Even pulling up in Aaron and Lori's driveway to drop off Maya brings back memories of pulling into that driveway thousands of times after late nights with friends and just laughing, as well as driving up with my eyes full of tears. I remember when I said goodbye to my best friend Paul Roggow when he moved back to Nebraska and I pulled into that driveway and sat there listening to the radio and Everybody Hurts by REM came on. I just sat and cried. I'm not good with change. I like things to stay the same. But the older I get, the more reality seeps in that everyday brings change. That you have to enjoy what you have and not get lost in the memories. But I still like to take walks down memory lane. There are lots of good people on that path that made me who I am today. And I think of them often and I look at William and I hope we are creating the same types of memories. The good ones. The ones that make you look back and smile and laugh and cry and want to be a kid again. I hope that happens. I hope he looks back and can smile someday.....

Grandma's 60th

Can you believe that Grandma Barker turned 60!

I can't. It's amazing how quickly time passes and how the years start to fly by. I can't believe I'm 33. It seems like yesterday I was hanging out on the porch of 1015 Dana, smoking cigarettes, and half-heartedly playing wiffleball in our matching walgreens t-shirts. Sorry that was a college flashback.

Mom had a good birthday. No surprises...she hates surprises. Just a party with the extended family and funny presents (she got a granny racetrack. It's these grannies in wheelchairs that race around the track. HILARIOUS!). William loved it. Of course.

It is so bizarre to have a nine year old. All of my friends have babies or are having babies. I have a kid that is already obsessed with being a teenager.
William- "When can I get a cell phone?"
Matt- "When you can pay for it?"
William- "Do I get a car when I'm 16?"
Matt- "If you can pay for it?"
William- "I have a girlfriend."
Matt- "You're too young for a girlfriend."
William- "When will my bedtime be 10pm?"
Matt- "When you are 20." =)
William- "You are so mean. I wish I was an adult. I can't wait to be 18."
Matt- "I wish I was a kid again."
William- "huh?"

The realization hit me the other day that we are almost to double digits. 10 years old. I started to become very unbearable around 12 (Ask my 60 year old mother. She still remembers). That means I have 2 years, 3 until he's a teenager. When did this happen? It gives me panic attacks.

We were watching TV the other night and he sat next to me and wanted to snuggle. I put my arm around him and thought..."How many more of these do I get?" I feel sort of cheated out of all the snuggles.

I'm trying to enjoy it while I can, but he is so mouthy and argumentative. It's overwhelming. I fear the teenage years and they are right around the corner. Yikes.

We just started him on a new night time medicine. It's for his anxiety. He acts out a lot in the evenings when his ADHD med wears off. I don't want him overmedicated, but we've looked into this and anxiety causes sleeplessness and agitation. He has both of those. I hope this medicine helps. It seems to be helping him sleep at least. A nine year old with sleeping problems. Jesus, I used to sleep like a baby at 9 years old. Now at 33, I can't sleep at all- but the child deserves to be able to sleep.

I'm rambling. I'm anxious. Maybe I need a pill.

It was a good birthday. A delicious cake. The edges were coated in mini-chocolate morsels. So good. And there was a grannie racetrack. What more can you ask for?

Marriage Equality Rally

One of the downsides to the election was that Proposition 8 passed in California, which erased the marriage rights for several thousand gay and lesbian couples in that state. It made the election results very bittersweet, especially because Arkansas also passed a proposition that essentially banned gay and lesbians from adopting (it banned single people from adopting and so also effects straight people).

In response to the passage of Prop 8, the gay and lesbian community came together to plan rallies for Marriage Equality to be held on November 15 at noon. One of these rallies was planned for St. Louis and so Lawrence, William, and I headed downtown to support our peeps and families like our own.

It was a very cold day, very cold, and yet a couple hundred people came out to speak out and give voice to our community. We met up with our friends...Gary, Jamie, Jelena, Ian, Charisse...and froze our butts off.
William was very unsure of this whole concept of standing around listening to people speak into a bullhorn about the rights of gays and lesbians. As a typical nine year old, he was initially intrigued and then the novelty quickly wore off and he was ready to go home. However, when we first got there he looked around at all the people that were of all different ages, gender, race, and income levels and said in the typical loud William voice- "Are all these people gay?" Yes, little man most of them are gay, but not all.

It was one of those activities that most kids don't experience. Looking around I didn't see any other kids in attendance. It's hard to know how exposure to this type of event will impact him in the long run, but hopefully it opens his mind and makes him a more accepting person. I think that sometimes kids that have been through what William has been through often close off their world because it is safer. They wall themselves off because change and differences can overwhelm them. My hope is that William, through therapy and our support and love, will be able to open himself up to different experiences and people. I want him to embrace a world that is different than him and not to shut it out.

Exposing him to events such as this is the first step...

But for now, let's get out of the cold. =)

"NeverDads" - Loss, Grief, and Separation

The many moods of the little man.... They can be so frustrating and so annoying, but sometimes you just have to step back and laugh. As the holidays approach, I'm beginning to worry. In our adoption classes they said that the holidays stir up lots of feelings of loss, separation, and grief. These kids are just torn from their families and thrown into the foster care system. Their whole world is thrown into disarray. Even though they come from abusive or neglectful families, they are their families and it is what they know and have learned to deal with. The foster system is a huge unknown. I can't imagine being seven years old and being taken from my family and placed with some random family. How do kids deal with that?

For William it was worse. He was removed from his home and taken to a residential center as an emergency temporary placement. His first night there he was given the wrong medicine. They had to take him to the ER. I can't imagine being seven years old and going to the hospital without your parents, surrounded by strangers. It is no wonder the little man has anxiety attacks when we go to the doctor.

Luckily when William was released from the hospital he was placed with a foster mom named Scarlet. I thank God for that women every day. She had William in her house for a little over a year while the state drug its feet on placing him with us. He didn't get passed around, he wasn't in a crappy foster home, he was with a women who loved him and cared for him and also gave him structure and discipline. And now he is with us and the holidays bring feelings of excitement and joy and family togetherness, but also feelings of sadness and loss and anxiety. This results in the many moods of William.

Lately he has started referring to us as his "NeverDads" as in "You're never gonna be my dad." He says it as a joke, to get our goat...but then when we just laughed and didn't react to it, it became a sort of term of endearment. It seems to be sort of a transition word. He isn't ready to call us Dad or Pop or whatever, but he's searching for something to call us other than Ryan and Lawrence. And so we are his NeverDads. And we laugh...and we mourn for our losses...and we celebrate the good. We are human and we are a family and holidays will never be the same. They will always be mixed with lots of different feelings. And that is OK. That is life... Our family is different, we always will be. And that too is something William will celebrate and be frustrated by and be angry about and hopefully someday he'll embrace. Right now though, we'll focus on making it through the holidays...

OBAMA!!!!!

OK...so first off. Doesn't our little munchkin look like President-elect Obama?? =)

All right, I'll admit it. I have been obsessed. I had Obama fever. Say what you want...say that I swallowed the kool-aid or blue pill or whatever. I am a believer. I truly don't understand how you can't be. I listen to his speeches and I get choked up. I read his speech on race last spring and I openly wept at work. Apparently there is an optimist inside of me that never died (I truly thought that after 8 years of W. that I was a full blown, always think the worst, pessimist).

When they called Pennsylvania and then Ohio I felt my throat constrict. I thought...this is really happening. This country is moving forward in a huge way.

I wasn't prepared when they called it. It all happened so quick. (Or quick compared to the last two presidential elections where I stayed up all night.) I was sitting on the couch and flipping channels and it happened. They declared Obama the next President of the United States. I didn't even feel it coming. I just started crying...sobbing actually. It was like this weight just lifted off my heart. It was one of those moments when the stress and tension just leave your body, you let down your guard...and boom...the emotion all hits you. It was a bizarre couple minutes...I truly felt like I had lost my mind. I was crying, smiling, and laughing all at the same time.

I'm sure you all think I'm nuts by now. And maybe I am crazy to put so much belief in one person. But this election means the world to me, my husband, and our son.

My son, who has been through crap that most people laying on their death beds haven't been through, can now look at our President and see reflected not just someone who looks like him but somebody that represents all that he can achieve. No, William will probably never be President. But he knows that the sky's the limit.

And if you think this stuff doesn't really make a difference let me tell you a little story. The other night William and my mom were driving in the car and out of nowhere William says: "You know that Barack Obama is half black and half white." My mom says: "Yes he is. His mom was white and his dad was black." William says: "That's how I am. I wish that I was one or the other instead of both." My mom says: "Oh sweetie, but you get the best of both worlds." (which I will give my mom props for because it was an excellent response under pressure. William pulls these conversations out of nowhere and the pressure to not say the wrong thing is enormous.)

The conversation ended there and William was off on another topic. But this stuff affects him. To white kids he is African-American. To African-American kids he's white. It's a tough world to be stuck in and I know that he struggles with it a lot and gets picked on at school, at his after-school program, and in our neighborhood.

But now he has someone to look up to that also has a white mom and a black dad. And as much as he wants to pretend that he doesn't like being told he looks like Obama, he secretly loves it. I see it in his eyes. (Even when he's chanting "John McCain, John McCain, John McCain" when Obama supporters are canvassing our house.)

And for me, Obama represents the future. Moving away from the hate and division that has permeated politics for the last decade. I can't even explain what it feels like to be used as a political wedge issue. It amazes me how casually people throw out stuff about gay people. I just want to scream. "I'm not some abstract concept. My life is not a political game. My family is not the devil. I'm not trying to destroy the fabric of society."

I'm just trying to make a space for me and my husband and our son to live our lives. To have the same rights as everyone else. To not have to explain to my son why our Facebook pages say we are married, but we aren't really married. And to see the confusion in his face. To explain that some people don't want us to have that right and they think being gay is wrong. I don't want to tell him about the harsh realities of life and how cruel people can be.

But I don't have to...he knows. He lives it. He is a bi-racial nine year old with two white gay dads. He knows the cruelty of teasing. He already experiences it on a daily basis. He hears the laughter, the nasty words, the mean-spiritedness of people's comments.

But now there is hope. H.O.P.E. We just want to live our lives. To carve out our niche. Don't we all have enough of our own crap to deal with. Do we have to heap that sadness on everyone who is different than us?

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Isn't that what it's all about.

I know I'm a cheese, but I can't help it...Obama is our next President and I have HOPE in the future and our son's future. I can't stop smiling.

Tricks and Treats...

HALLOWEEN...the night of ghosts and goblins and LOTS of Candy! I loved Halloween as a kid and let's be honest, I loved it as a teenager too. Yes I was one of those obnoxious older kids who still went out each year. But at least I dressed up!

For many years in my 20's, Halloween fell off my radar. I guess I outgrew it or there wasn't the same feeling to it. The magic of it just went out for me.

And then, along came nephews and nieces, and that old feeling of loving the holiday came back. I loved going to see the kids all dressed up. Seeing how giddy they were to go out and collect candy door to door.

So, this year just added a new layer of excitement. William, of course, HAD to be SpongeBob!! Being the procrastinator that I am, I was up until 1am the night before making his costume. I think it turned out cute, although the box I used was heavy duty and I didn't realize how heavy it would be on his head. I drove him to school so that he wouldn't have to lug it on the bus. He got embarrassed right as we drove up to school and he told me later that when it came time to put on their costumes William didn't want to put his on. Luckily, one of his teachers had dressed up as SpongeBob too (she pinned kitchen sponges to her shirt and had a name tag on that said, "Hello, my name is Bob) and she was able to encourage him to put it on. He said everybody in the gym loved it. It was so cute to hear him tell the story. Anyway...below is our little SpongeBob.

That night we went over to Jeff and Abby's house to go trick or treating with the cousins. It was hilarious. Lori, Abby, and me walked around the neighborhood with the kids while Jeff handed out candy. Grandma Paulette came by to see all her grandkids dressed up. Maya was the princess from Sleeping Beauty, Justin was a photo enforced stoplight, Audrey was a little pink pig, and Alex was a fighter pilot. Justin was hilarious because he would take his hat off between houses and when he would knock on the door he would ask, "Why are adults afraid of me?" The people would say, "I don't know." And he would put his hat on and say, "because I'm photo enforced." People got a huge kick out of it. It was a fun night and we were able to avoid a candy free-for-all and have agreed to spread out his candy haul over the next couple weeks! =)