The day I took the pregnancy test is so vivid in my mind. “A line is a line is a line,” I chanted under my breath as the faint blue line appeared, a shadow of its twin. I took a second test the next day, just to be sure. That one had a little screen, on which the word “pregnant” appeared. That one, I took for truth.

And now, suddenly, it is over five years later, and we are a family of three. My partner, The Boy, and I have made our way through the forest of tantrums, over the slough of potty training, and past the desert of night-waking, and into some kind of shining, sand-shifting city of Preschooler. Preschoolerland is subject to sudden changes in weather, occasional earthquakes, and lots of invasions by “bad knights.” You have been warned.

I don’t know how to tell you about these years. So much of it is lost in the fog of sleeplessness and hormonal changes and constant adaptation to our son’s new development. It is hard to even remember how much smaller he was just last year, until I see him in a photograph, head not yet reaching my dad’s shoulder as my son stands beside his wheelchair, and look at him now, so much taller, limbs stretching and toddler belly shrinking to muscle and leanness. He was tiny as an infant, when I was pumping at work to try to leave enough milk for my partner to give him while I taught. So little of our experience is particular to two-mom families, or to LGBT families in general. It’s just family stuff.

The hardest question he has asked us, so far, is “Why don’t I have a daddy?” He has said, often, how much he wishes he had a daddy. At first, this was painful. “He needs to see more two-mom families!” I thought. “Who has been asking him that question? Aren’t we good enough for him?” But when we asked, really, what it was he wanted, it turns out he wants his friends’ dads. And us. He wants a daddy, or two, to come live here with us. This has been easy to counter – there just isn’t room in our house for a daddy or two, and if we take a daddy from someone else, they’ll be sad. At first, we suggested that having a daddy would mean not having one of his mamas, but this didn’t make sense to him; apparently two is not the only number of acceptable parents, as long as the number includes someone who will take him fishing or play tackle football with him (we don’t. Yet.) He just wanted some daddy to walk into our lives and be his.

We have pointed out to our son, that he has men in his life who love him, and I’ve been grateful that my father has been able to be with him so much this summer while my partner and I are at work. My stepdad, too, has been an active part of our son’s life, and he does a lot of carpentry and building projects, which The Boy adores. There are kind men at our church, my partner’s awesome employees at her coffee shop, and other men we hope to include in our son’s circle of guys as he grows.

But the daddy question is only a tiny part of what we deal with. Even in our progressive city and increasingly accepting state (Yay, Minnesota!!), we see the pitfalls around us, waiting to entrap our son into believing there is something wrong with his family. There is our own internalized homophobia and gender bias, that makes me defend his male role models. There were the lawn signs last autumn, proclaiming marriage as “one man and one woman” that I was so glad he couldn’t read. Applying for financial aid for his school meant digging up paperwork and calling the IRS for forms that would be completely unnecessary, had we been able to file our taxes jointly as a legally married couple.

We had some worries when he started school, about how he would be treated by other kids, and about how we would be treated by other parents. There have been questions, from other children – preschoolers are nothing if not candid – about who I am, if they’d only seen my partner dropping The Boy off at school. Other parents have simply been friendly and wondering when we can schedule playdates. I don’t know that this would be true in another school, but since The Boy is happy where he is, it doesn’t much matter right now.

Although the laws are changing, and we can get the proper documents now to make taxes and wills and such flow more smoothly, the fact remains that when the three of us go out together, we are an incredibly visibly queer family, in a way we aren’t when only two of us are together. Our little family is obviously two moms and a kid, and he is very obviously both of ours. So far, this has been okay. No one has said anything, no one gives us dirty looks, and if they do, I am glad not to have seen them, but I am afraid someone will. I am afraid someone will make our beautiful family ugly in my child’s eyes, and that fear makes me both angry and sad.

I recognize that I am writing from a position of extraordinary privilege. Racial privilege, middle-class privilege, “first-world” privilege. We live in a neighborhood and a metro area where it is safe for us to be Out. I talk about my family at church, at work, and with strangers at coffee shops and grocery stores. My family of origin loves and accepts us. My son’s teachers and classmates know he has two moms. The sly weasels of fear can mostly be kept silent and at bay, but they sometimes start to whisper in my ears, and I have to list the people who love our child to shut them up.

At this moment, my two-mom-having son is standing on the couch, arranging the cushions to create a pirate ship. The Boy is active, imaginative, self-centered, loving, dreamy, tenacious, dramatic, silly, smart, and entirely adorable. I have been floored by his love of battle and fighting; I was always a peaceable, dolls and books kind of child. He adores sports, and he and my dad go to baseball games together and fly in his tiny Cessna. I had no idea that two women could end up with such a clearly gender-conforming son. Then again, he likes fairies, so all is not lost.

Parenthood is entirely different from what I imagined it would be, and parenting with my wife is not what I thought parenting would be when I was a little girl, rocking my dolls and planning out all my children’s names. It is harder. It takes so much more love and compassion for myself than I ever, ever dreamed. And it is richer, more nuanced, more shades and glimmers. My partner and I are not the same parent; we each mother our son differently. He has two parents; he has the parents he needs. I firmly believe that children choose their parents, and that we are the ones he chose.

Sara, who lives and works in the heart of the Midwest, holds a MSEd in Waldorf Education. She uses story, myth, and legend to teach and inspire. She shares her life with her partner, Melanie, and their son, Anders.