As I am the SpaceMom, I should include some space in here. My bosses are going away the last week of September for a meeting in Spain. So is Dr. Jay. So is one of my other team members, leaving Royce and Myself as the two remaining operations personnel for our instrument. My primary boss, Paul, is not good at being out of control. He keeps asking Royce and I “are you ok with this?” “If there is a problem, what will you do?” I swear, I want to throw him a bone and say “down, boy, down!”

The biggest issue with his issues with being out of control is that I DO start to doubt myself. I know I can do this job and it is not like I can put the spacecraft in safe mode by myself. I would have to make a mistake and several other people would have to miss that mistake.

My biggest worry is that I am the on-duty person on the 24th. Dr. Jay will be in Spain already and if something happens with the spacecraft, I will need to find someone to watch the girls while I deal. It should be ok since the honking sunspot of death will be on the far side of the sun by then.

I can do this. I am capable and I am good at what I do.

I wanted to share this great photo of Luna that Dr. Jay caught in Cleveland. Isn’t that beautiful?
I love how little kids can crouch like that….

On a completely different front, I had a CAT scan today to try to understand my migraines. I am now on day 13 of a migraine. My personal hope is that I at least have a brain in there.. I don’t know if I want them to find anything else

On Sunday, I had a good/shitty day. The good part was that I took the
girls apple picking while Dr. Jay played softball with our temple. He
needs to get out and do things for himself and I loved taking the
girls. The apple picking was at a winery/orchard, so I picked up a
bottle of plum wine (yummy).

At night, the Cleveland Indians were on TV. I opened the wine, and
prepared to relax with wine, a good baseball game and Dr. Jay. Then
his brother J called. Lovely. J wanted to know why we drove to and
back from Cleveland in 1 day. He commented that in his “limit
observations of Dr. Jay” over 36 hours, that we “looked a little
stressed” and that “driving 13 hours is very stressful”. Hmm, ya
think? Dr. Jay explained that we had thought about it and we had
decided on 1 day since 2 days means a hotel stay, calming the girls,
getting them to sleep in a strange place (and neither girl sleeps
well), etc etc etc. J continued to press and then had the funny
statement that “you know, I feel much less stressed when I get enough
sleep”

(insert sarcasm font here)
NO! You must be joking? Sleep relaxes you? Wow, I never thought of
that! You mean, the fact that our girls have major sleep issues. The
fact that my 14 month old SKIPS NAPS and wakes 2-3 times a night,
might not be relaxing ? Oh hell! Now I have all of the answers!

I swear do people think before they talk?
I fully admit that I wish my kids slept better. Soleil is finally
sleeping well once she hit about 2.5 years. Sure, she comes into our
room once a week and needs to snuggle at 2 in the morning for about 10
minutes, but it is nothing like the scream fests we had 2 years ago.
And Luna is not much better. I have accepted that they have sleep
issues and that this is not something we are doing wrong, but how they
are. Soleil even talks to us about how she wishes it was easier for
her to sleep.

And yes, lack of sleep is a major stressor. But why attack us on that
front?
Sigh…

The good news? the Indians won 12-4, I had 3 glasses on wine and I
stumbled into bed and Luna only woke 3 times for a total of 3 hours
up time…

Life continues…

As you can see, I’ve made a few changes around here. I am still trying to get rid of some of that extra space at the top, but not bad.. not bad at all!

The whole situation in the South has gotten me depressed. I wish I could blog about it to get out my anger and frustrations, but I can’t. I am not sure why.

Have you ever wondered why things go crazy sometimes?

Here’s a link to the X-ray output of the sun. The sunspot group causing all of this crap is just rotating into view. Lovely
Anything above the M is BAD…. Our spacecraft is shut down right now… And we expect it to be for the next week now that the sun is spitting up again…

Sigh… I need some chocolate. Oh and I am PMSy…

On second thought, I wanted to add some more stuff.

5 years ago yesterday, I had a D&E. My first pregnancy, my little pathfinder, was gone. We had tried for a year at that point. You know the routine, the tests, the temperatures, the “I don’t see any reason why you can’t get pregnant” bullshit. And then we did. We got pregnant. and then I had bleeding, and the ultrasounds that showed a much smaller baby than expected and then the next ultrasound with no growth a week later. I still have a scar on the back of my right hand where they botched the IV during the D&E. Dr. Jay calls it a physical scar to go with all of the emotional scars. A person I know thinks that I should forget all of this since I have my daughters now… But how can you forget?
I still remember the fact that they started up everything, just to have the doc run off for an emergency C-section. I remember getting a mega headache from the drugs. I remember the raw pain of signing the “parental” form for what to do with the remains.

So tonight, I am going to give my girls extra hugs, because you never do forget the pain…

You know what I miss most of my pre-kid life? Sleep.

Sleep

Sleep

I miss knowing that I could climb into bed and not wake until morning. I miss being able to relax completely and totally. I miss climbing into bed, have sex and not listen for small children making noises.

BUT Then I wouldn’t have the little thunking of feet as Soleil runs across her floor. Hearing her open her door, open our door, run over to my side of the bed, brush my hair out of my face and say “Good morning, Mommy” when I open my eyes.

Oh yeah, this is a definite trade up. Who needs sleep?

I got my appeal! YEAH! Major fist pumping here! I should get the 4 points off of my record AND I should get $800 back from my insurance!!!!

Oh yeah baby!

or what happens when you get 72 people together in Clevleand!

Wow, what a trip! First, let me start by congratulating T-shaped girl
on the announcement of her daughter!!!

WELCOME LITTLE A!

I logged onto a private webboard just to check if she had heard and
SHE HAD! OMG I told EVERYBODY at the party that A was going to be
coming to her family soon. A few people got it, others were “oh how
nice”. Grrr. They would be thrilled if I told them that someone had a
baby, why are they not thrilled that T has her referral? Oy!

• stress
• no sleep
• excitement
• fun
• frustration
• no sleep
• cows

Here’s the set up: Dr. Jay’s oldest brother, M, lives in Seattle. He
was planning to visit for Labor Day. Since M is the one that lives the
furthest away, we were summoned to visit Cleveland too. J, Dr. Jay’s
middle brother, lives in NYC and also planned to visit. Ok. That
sounds good. THEN one of the cousins and I were emailing. We said we
should get all of the kids together. He agreed. I suggested Labor Day
weekend since M was coming. He agreed. 10 minutes later, he sent out a
broadcast email to the whole family inviting them to my In-laws’ house
for Labor Day. Ooops! Better tell the In-Laws!

Well, since my MIL’s birthday is in September, there was a decision
made to throw her a surprise party. This became an un-surprise party
as the only person in the family who knows how to organize a damn
thing is MIL. So a quiet family weekend became a HUGE party.

The trip was great for the girls. I discovered with Soleil that trips
were a double edged sword. She would not sleep well, get over excited
and other stressful things. However, she made HUGE mental leaps when
we returned home. Luna is following in this. She increased her
vocabulary by two fold in Cleveland. She can now moo like a cow. She
can say Dog and Duck distinctly. She says Thank you when you give her
something. Wow. She did NOT sleep much at all and last night was sheer
hell on getting either of them to sleep.

Family was, well, Family. Dr. Jay and I don’t always agree with his
brothers. M is, well, difficult. He is set in his ways. He was nearly
beside himself that we are waiting for our October appointment to
check on Luna’s ears and the tubes. Meanwhile, his wife, L, was
offering holistic treatments. While I don’t dis holistic treatments a
priori, I don’t accept them without research either. Dr. Jay was quite
amused at the dichotomy between M and his wife.
M refused to believe me that kids have 45 minute sleep cycles. He
didn’t understand how I could believe that. Perhaps I pay attention?
Perhaps I read that and then watched Soleil as a baby and realized
that it was true and I could get her down for a longer nap if I patted
her at 45 minutes during a light end of a sleep cycle?

L has a way of making me feel like a 10 year old. She is very
dismissive of me. Case in point: we all went to the local county fair
(next county over). I decided Soleil could have popcorn for
dinner. (ok- anyone who wishes to argue about this can go take their
kids to a county fair and find something healthy to eat. I rest my
case) I said “well, it is only a once in a lifetime thing to go to the
fair” (half joking). L could not believe that I would not go to a fair
every year! She completely belittled me for saying that. Perhaps if
she realized that half of my family are farmers and that I knew how to
milk a cow before I knew how to read she would understand. We went to
the Erie County Fair EVERY YEAR when I was growing up. We stopped by
the dairy barns to see our cousins’ cows. We stopped by the pig barns
to see the prize winning pigs, we visited the beef barns to see if
anyone bought our cousins’ bulls in the auction. I don’t think she
gets that this is a part of my life that I had already done. To her,
it is a different side of life. To me, it is another part of my life.

Before anyone gets upset about county fairs,I think I would still
go to the ECF if I still lived in Western New York. But I don’t and I
don’t have any ties to the local fairs. It’s just not that exciting or
exotic to me.

Another annoyance was the dresser. (ok, I am in bitch mode here, so
bear with me). M and L have been bothering MIL and FIL about this
beautiful bird’s-eye maple dresser they have. Finally, MIL allowed
them to have it because she was getting sick of being bothered about
it. To make up for it, she told me that if there was anything we
wanted when they down sized next, let her know and put dibbs on it. I
immediately said “Dibbs on your table!” They have an amazing 20 person
table that folds down to the size of half of a card table. Wood, I
think there are 7 leaves. She knows that everybody loves that table. I
then said “but I expect you will keep that when you down size” She said
“no, I don’t think we will”. We discussed for a bit and I said that in
all seriousness I wanted her to get the maximum use out of it and THEN
we would take it, but only then. We were in no rush to take it from
them. Well, when MIL told M and J that she had told us to make dibbs
and that I had dibbed the table, M took Dr. Jay aside and told him it
was tasteless for me to put dibbs on the table. I felt terrible. Until
I mentioned this to a few cousins and they all said “that just means
that M wanted it himself!”

In the end, we had a really long talk with MIL and she believes that
Dr. Jay and I think much differently than his brothers and she doesn’t
mind how we think at all. I felt much better after talking to her
because I really feel a bond there. I wish family wasn’t so far away.

So Spacemom is back. I will post our family photo soon!