A little over a week ago, ParentDish underwent some changes -- a spiffy new look, integration into AOL Living, and so on. On that same day, my family made a pretty big change too -- my wife Rachel and I welcomed kid number three into the world.

For those wondering about the name, it's Ezra Lincoln Sinasohn and, yes, my mother-in-law approves. I'm not exactly sure where Ezra came from -- I think Rachel just liked it -- but Lincoln comes, obviously, from the president. You know, that equality, freedom, hippy guy from 150 years ago. There is also a traditional middle name in my father-in-law's family that has the same initial and ending sounds -- this is an attempt to sneak that in without stirring up too much family politics.

Ezra weighed nine pounds, four ounces at birth -- not a record by any means, but still hefty -- and was a little over twenty inches long/tall. Our other kids, Jared and Sara, are thrilled by the new arrival. Rachel is recovering, slowly but surely, as we settle into the age-old routine of feed, burp, diaper, repeat.

The California Supreme Court has just ruled that the state has no business checking what's in your pants before allowing you to get married. Yep, my beloved home state has decided that love, not sex, is what counts when making a long-term, if not lifetime, commitment to another. This makes California the second state (after Massachusetts) to allow anyone to marry.

This is wonderful news for the families that have, up until now, had to try and explain why a child's parents can't get married when other parents can. It also sends a positive message to kids that love does not equal sex -- sex can be a part of love, but it's not the only, or even the most important, part.

In reality, the decision (PDF) appears to be limited to saying that you can't call a legal relationship "marriage" for one group and "domestic partnership" for another, solely because of gender and sexual orientation, but the implication is that marriage is for everyone. This is, most certainly, a great step forward.

I suspect I may be going to some weddings in the near future. If this ruling has opened up a new possibility for you and your partner, I can, from experience, heartily recommend Stern Grove here in San Francisco as a wonderful location for a wedding. (Happy anniversary, Rachel! What a wonderful present!)

If you asked me, I'd say that, yeah, my kids are pretty smart. My son Jared entered kindergarten reading at a second-grade level and both he and my daughter, Sara, picked up on one-to-one correspondence pretty early. Still, I've got at least another decade before six-year-old Jared even starts to think about college.

Not so the parents of Moshe Kai Cavalin. At ten-years-old, he's already in his second second year at East Los Angeles College and has plans to transfer to a four-year university next year. Cavalin plans to study astrophysics and is very interested in the concept of wormholes. "Just like black holes, they suck in particulate objects, and also like black holes, they also travel at escape velocity, which is, the speed to get out of there is faster than the speed of light," Cavalin says. "I'd like to prove that wormholes are really there and prove all the theories are correct." That's pretty fancy talk for a pre-teen.

While I have no doubt about Cavalin's ability to handle the learning side of college, I worry about the social side. I have a brother who went to university at sixteen and had difficulty dealing with twenty-year-olds drinking and acting like, well, college kids. I just hope his parents plan to address that side of the college experience and help him deal with it appropriately.

No kid should be left alone near a swimming pool or body of water, let alone in it. I'd even go so far as to say the same for adults. Anything can happen, and if you're near water, you want someone else around just in case it does. The argument against swimming lessons for infants is that parents might become lax about watching their kids around water, thinking that they are somehow magically waterproof.

While that might indeed be true, that wasn't the case for Amanda Jelley. Even though her two-year-old daughter Elizabeth had been taking Water Babies classes since the age of eight months, she still kept the door to the family swimming pool locked. At least, usually. For whatever reason, the door was left unlocked and her daughter found her way into the pool room.

"She was running around but suddenly she went quiet so I began looking for her," said Mrs. Jelley. "She was calling 'Mummy, Mummy' but she wasn't panicking. It just sounded like she wanted me to look for her. When I saw the door was open I just went cold. I thought that was it. I thought she had gone under the water." It turns out that Elizabeth had indeed fallen in the pool.

An eleven-year-old Canadian boy battling Leukemia has decided he doesn't want to undergo any more chemotherapy. His family doesn't want him to suffer anymore chemo either. The Children's Aid Society, however, has taken the boy into custody and is forcing him to undergo therapy. He was diagnosed at age seven with acute lymphoblastic leukemia which is curable eighty percent of the time.

After being cancer-free for a year following a previous round of chemotherapy, the disease came back and he started treatment again. Now, however, he wants to switch to alternative treatment including chelation therapy, oregano and green tea. "He told us that he didn't want to undergo any more treatment because he felt that it wasn't going to give him quality of life, that he felt that it would probably take away his life," said the boy's father.

A judge had earlier ruled that the boy was not capable of understanding what it meant to refuse chemotherapy. According to his father, the boy has fetal alcohol syndrome and is somewhat intellectually delayed.

Thirteen-year-old Ralph Hardy wants to be a politician some day. In order to prepare for that role in society, he's already begun practicing some of the well-known aspects of the position -- he swiped his father's credit card, ordered up some food and hookers, and settled in for a party in his hotel room.

The Texas teen had his father's credit card company send him an extra card and then ran up a $30,000 bill, ending up in a hotel room with some friends, a couple of call girls, and an Xbox. The boys played "Halo," a shoot-em-up video game with the girls, a choice, sadly, I probably would have made as well when I was a teenager.

The jig was up, however, after a delivery man told police that the teens had asked him where to find some girls when he arrived to deliver Dr. Pepper, Fritos, and Oreos. Ralph told police that the scheme would be okay with his dad because his father had not had a chance to get him a birthday present. The dad had been planning a surprise trip to Disneyland.

It seems to me that when he gets a little older, Ralph Hardy will fit in just fine in the world of politics. At thirteen, he's already mastered part of the job that seems to occupy most of a politician's time.

Kimberly Jacobs went to school in a shirt bearing symbols of her religious beliefs. Actually, she did it several times -- enough to be suspended five times. Jacobs attended Liberty High School near Las Vegas, Nevada which requires that students wear khaki-colored pants and a solid-colored shirt in either red, white, or blue.

Jacobs felt that her freedom of expression was being infringed upon and the ACLU agreed. The civil liberties organization took her case to court but the federal appeals court found that the school's uniform policy did not infringe upon freedom of religion or expression. The ACLU plans to request a rehearing of the case.

"This has implications not only for schools but for all sorts of free speech. Wearing a message on clothing is like the armband in 'Tinker,'" said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the ACLU in Las Vegas. "Tinker" refers to the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District in which the Supreme Court ruled that wearing an armband to protest the Vietnam War was constitutionally protected speech. "What this decision essentially did is overturn 'Tinker' and precedent," Lichtenstein added.

I'm not sure I agree that this ruling conflicts directly with Tinker, but then, I'm no lawyer. I'm also not a huge fan of school uniforms, although it seems the one in question is fairly benign. On the other hand, it does seem to me that we need our young people to stir things up and protest the status quo.

Adventure Moms is a group of mothers. Sure, there are tons of mommy groups out there, organizing playdates, taking stroller walks around the local mall, discussing the latest parenting books. This one, however, is different. The group plans less traditional mommy outings such as rock climbing, sea kayaking, and fencing.

Naturally, they leave the kids at home for these activities. "Having kids is an adventure in itself," said thirty-nine-year-old Jenn Keohane, a mother of two. "It's so all-consuming, you lose a part of yourself, the person you used to be before you had them. By the time my kids got out of the baby phase, I realized something was missing." The group, she added, "enabled me to get back a little of what I used to have. Even though it's only half a day once a month."

Mind you, everything on their list is either something I've enjoyed doing in the past or would love to do. Alas, since having kids, such opportunities are few and far between. If you're in the same boat, perhaps you should consider starting a similar group in your area. And if anyone wants to start an Adventure Dads group, by all means, let me know.

Generally speaking, moms have a lot of power at home. Some moms, however, wield a lot of power outside the home too, and that takes a lot of effort and determination. Dana over at Mombian has compiled a list of the most powerful lesbian moms in America. These are women who are not only caring for their kids, but are also making a difference in the world.

The list includes a lot of women we hear about all the time -- Melissa Etheridge, Mary Cheney, Rosie O'Donnell -- as well as some you might not have heard of at all -- Lisa Brummel (senior vice president for human resources at Microsoft), Megan Smith (vice president of new business development at Google), and Karla Drenner (Georgia State Representative).

Of course, everyone's definition of power is different, but I think we can all agree that these are women who are definitely higher up on the ladder than most. And if that weren't enough, they're also all moms -- probably the most challenging and difficult job on the planet. Cheers to all of them!

Sadly, there appears to be a dearth of movies that feature female leads at all, let alone mothers, except, perhaps, on the Lifetime channel. As XKCD points out, the ratio of male-to-female lead roles is definitely out of whack. Can you think of a big-budget film with a female lead (where the female wasn't just a love interest)? Sure, there's Tomb Raider and The Devil Wears Prada, but for every movie like that, there are literally dozens -- if not hundreds -- of movies with male leads.

Now consider the plight of the mother in Hollywood. Or, rather, lack thereof. Moms seem to be just an afterthought. Someone to give context to the male lead's homelife. Frankly, that kind of sucks. Still, I was able to come up with some maternal movies for Mother's day. Take a look at my list and then see if you can add any more in the comments.