I think i just made the defining descovery. I can say "select * from tablename where dates > '2011-05' and dates < '2011-07'; This returns all records for may and june. I am assuming that that is because it registers '2011-05' to be the very first of the month of may rather than the last. Pretty logical, although that was not my first thought. I can now write a database access method requesting that this very query be used with the dates as a variable, but it would just have to be changed to '2011-06' and '2011-07'. I find it peculiar that I cannot just say dates = '2011-06', but even that is somewhat logical, just not easy.
Any further ideas would be apreciated, but my acute problem is already solved.