We spent our Fourth with good friends, first hanging out at a family friend’s pool and then spending a semi-quiet evening at home.

Really, what more do you need? Cute kids + Beer + Good Friends + Delicious Food = Awesome.

Apparently, slides are rather horrifying. At least, they are if you’re my son.

Alex has never really been into slides. Every once in a blue moon he’ll go down a slide, but mostly he will climb to the top and then say “no down.” He doesn’t want to go down it. If I hold his hand he may consider it, but even then it’s a long shot.

I can’t say that I totally blame him. I mean, letting yourself fall down some unknown material that, in theory, will take you down to the ground? No idea how fast? No idea how sturdy? Who came up with this?! Not exactly reassuring. But I loved slides as a kid.

One of our local playgrounds here is often referred to as “The Blue Slide Park.” It is so called because it has, well, a blue slide. A big blue slide, to be precise. I spent many, many, days going down this slide as a kid. In fact, I probably have gone down this slide more times in my life than days I’ve been alive. We would go down in every direction, with cardboard or wax paper under our butt, knees, back, to make us go faster. Every time Alex and I go there I wax nostalgic for those times as I see the scattered cardboard boxes all over the place.

When we went to this park the other day, Alex and I went down the big blue slide together a few times. As long as I am holding on tight (and I mean tight! Kid will yell at me if I don’t have both arms wrapped snuggly around him) he has a great time feeling the air rush by him on our way down. But this day? This day he decided he would try it for himself.

He walked up and up.

And then he stopped, came back down most of the way and decided that close-to-the-bottom was the best place to start his sliding:

One day he’ll go down that slide, all by himself, on cardboard. But until that day I’m happy to see him making progress, and even happier to see that he is still a very cautious child.

When did this happen?

All of the sudden, out of the blue, with no warning at all, Alex has become a kid.

We have conversations. I mean, they aren’t particularly deep conversations, but they are conversations nonetheless. He has a personality, and he’s not afraid to share it. He has opinions about everything. Not only does he walk, he runs. Not only does he jump, he pretends to fly.

He tells me what he needs in words 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time he will take me to what he needs or otherwise show me.

My baby is no longer a baby. He is no longer helpless.

Alex up and turned into a kid. How do I make it stop?

The wonderful Trinity at Phanatically Speaking recently tagged me in a meme. The rules of the meme:

The Honest Scrap award is given by other bloggers who consider a blog’s content or design to be brilliant. The awardee must then post ten honest things about themselves and pass the award on to other bloggers who fit the bill – in other words, whose blog is brilliant.

(Can I take a moment and say that I blushed when I read that? I feel so special!)

So, ten honest things about me, in no particular order (unless you count the order of how my mind comes up with ten things):

1. I have lived in over 18 different places in my life. I have lived all over the city of Pittsburgh, in houses and apartments, and lived in Florida for a (not so lovely) short time during my sophomore year of high school and Massachusetts during my three years at Smith College.
2. I get cold really easily. When most people are comfortable, I’m cold. When most people are complaining of the heat, I’m comfortable.
3. When I cook, 90% of the time it is with some asian influence. I find “American” food horrendously boring, and I rarely find meat and potatoes to be anywhere near as good as stir fry on rice, indian or thai curry, or udon noodles topped with just about anything. I use soy sauce, ginger, chili paste and sesame seeds more than seems possible.
4. I have successfully lost at least 40 pounds. I estimated my starting weight when I began this weight loss journey in January, so I don’t know the exact amount. I am very happy about it (though I still have a bit more to go), but very not amused that this weight loss has given me gallstones and the need for surgery in August.
5. I didn’t learn how to study until I left Smith College. While I was a pretty good student during my three years at Smith, it wasn’t until I was home with an infant and limited time to focus that I really learned how to study. I currently have a 115% in one of my classes thanks to a great curve, but without the curve I would have a 98%.
6. I know nothing about pop culture. If you name a singer, actor, model, or just about anything to do with the behind the scenes of movies and TV, I won’t know who you are talking about. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part I never know what people are talking about. It obviously doesn’t bother me enough to put any effort into learning about these things. But I do know all about the Real Housewives of everywhere and Jon and Kate.
7. I kind of have 7 siblings. My father was married before he met my mother, and with his first wife he had 7 children. So, I have 7 half siblings. And something like 23 nephews and nieces, including many who were my nephews/nieces before I was born.
8. I want to have another child. One day, not now or any time soon, I would like to have another child. I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, though I always pictured myself as a mom of an older boy and a younger girl about five years apart. So, here’s hoping I can convince Zach of that!
9. My mother has bipolar disorder. She was diagnosed when I was in fifth grade, and I grew up in a very, very, independent manner after that. It makes me sad to know that she thinks she was an “awful mother” to me after fifth grade, but I don’t view it that way. I figure: I turned out well, so she must have done something right.
10. I would go vegetarian if Zach would. I don’t want to have to deal with making separate meals, and while Zach has become very willing to eat many vegetarian meals I prepare, I’m pretty sure he would have a conniption if I took all meat out of our diet.

And now I must tag:

Jen at jayesel
Dawn at Red Pen Mama
Sarah at Becoming Sarah

Photos taken by my mom yesterday afternoon.

We’re house hunting.

As of now, it looks like it is very likely that we will purchase a duplex with Zach’s parents.

For many people, that would be a horrendously awful thought. I’m lucky: I love my pseudo in-laws. I absolutely adore them, and we get along fabulously. Besides that, having babysitters that live next door? Awesome.

They came to visit this past weekend, and while they were here we looked at a bunch of places all over the city and, gasp!, in the suburbs. While looking at houses can be a lot of fun, looking at duplexes can be rather depressing.

Most of them were tenant occupied, and some of them were downright nasty. Not only was the worst offender a disgusting mess, to the extent that you literally could not walk across the floors of the bedrooms, but also? The house reeked of marijuana and cigarette smoke. There were two young children there.

Fortunately, they were not all bad. And our fingers are crossed that we will be able to work something out.

Also fortunately, Alex was an angel all weekend while we went into and out of the car, into and out of houses, walked around messes (not the pot-filled house!) and up and down the streets all while skipping nap time. He hung out on Zach’s back, said hello to the tenants, and was genuinely charming the whole time.

While life may be pretty inhospitable for a lot of people, Alex had a fabulous life on Zach’s back for the weekend. Even if the two of them combined make for a double furnace turned on high on 80-degree-100%-humidity days.

I don’t talk much on my blog about my personal beliefs. At least not in a blatant way. But I have posted before about one thing that I truly believe in: equal rights.

Yesterday, Zach, Alex and I joined a small group of Zach’s coworkers at Pittsburgh Pride. We even got to wear fancy schmancy Google Pittsburgh Pride shirts that stated, “We are here.”

Why is this something I care so greatly about? Am I gay? No. Do I have any gay relatives? No. Some of my closest friends are gay, so I suppose that increases my passion. During college, one of my closest friends was transgendered. But I’ve cared about equality long before I met any of them. At least, I cared about in this sense: I thought everyone was equal, so until I came to the harsh realization that everyone was not treated equally I didn’t know to care. I think it was around fifth grade that the bubble of loveliness popped and reality sunk in.

I care about equality for my son. And for you. And your current or future children.

Alex is still a baby. He doesn’t have a sexuality the way that we think of sexuality. He isn’t gay or straight; he isn’t gendered. He is my baby and he deserves to have every single chance at success in this world as the next person. If he is gay as an adult, I don’t want him to suffer because of it. I don’t want him to feel one ounce of shame or guilt because of who he is. And I sure as hell don’t want him to feel the pain of not being able to spend the rest of his life with the person he loves in the same capacity as a heterosexual.

I want Alex to be happy and healthy. He will probably be just like his father: crazy smart, super cute, and heterosexual. But if he isn’t? He shouldn’t have his rights taken away from him.

Of course, Alex was very supportive of the cause. He held on to those rainbow balloons like it was his job.

I promise I didn’t put them there. I wasn’t trying to suffocate my son in the super hot and humid weather. I think he liked the privacy.