Daycare… April 18, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Kids , 1 comment so farDaycare just sent me a bunch of photos of Luna…
Here are two…
Love this kiddo!
Random thoughts of a random world April 18, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Religion, Go Team Go Team Go Team, Ghost in the (sewing)Machine , 4 commentsFirst, I want to say "THANKS!" to all of you who commented on Luna’s doggie blanket. As Omegamom predicted, she now sleeps with the ratty old blankey and her new doggie blankey. This is fine with me, because I just wanted her to have a blanket she loved that covered her whole body! As for the straight stitches, I purposely didn’t show you the one edge where there was an exciting play on the hockey game and I sewed too fast and the one seam went all over the place.
To make the blanket, I got 1.5 yards of fleece that Luna picked out. I trimmed the edges square. Then I folded a 1 inch edge on each side, top stitched that down. I folded it again 1 inch and top stitched it down with a 5/8inch allowance. Then I added another top stitch right along the edge of the fold to a) hold down the edges so Luna didn’t pick up the edging and b) to add that second row of stitches on the good side of the blanket. Easy and quick. She loves her blanker.
Game 4 is tonight in my series. Go Sabres.
I try to be a reasonable person, but sometimes I tend to lose it. One issue that hits hard is religion. I have posted before about my feeling of being non-Jewish in a Jewish family. Lately, I’ve been hit on-line and IRL about converting to Christianity and about Atheism in general.
One of my core beliefs is the religion is extremely personal. It is not for me to tell others how to believe. I mean, it is a belief. Faith is only faith when one believes in it. Not cold hard proof, but a leap of faith. Why should others push me to believe a certain way? Why?
A recent study found doctors believe (note that word again!) the religion plays a role in healing. This is not surprising to me, nor is the fact that the more religious the doctor was, the more likely he/she would report that religion plays a large part of healing. The quote that struck me was:
The most telling part of this outcome,” said Dr. Farr A. Curlin, the lead author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago,
“is that it shows that what doctors bring to the data, whether
religious or secular, seems to have as much to do with their
interpretations of the data as the data itself.”
Again a BELIEF, not evidence or fact or data. I do think it is important that if you have a strong belief to stick with it. To work with it, to live your life that way.
The problem arises when people try to insist religion is right for everybody. In this study, Americans tend to trust Atheists the least of all types of religious (or non-religious people). The key quotes here are
"It tells us about how Americans view religion," said Penny Edgell,
an associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher. "Many
Americans seem to believe some kind of religious faith is central to
being a good American and a good person."AND
"I know atheists aren’t studied that much as a sociological group, but
I guess atheists are one of the last groups remaining that it’s still
socially acceptable to hate," Foley said.AND
First-year pharmacy student Amanda Wawrzynia, however, found the study reasonable.
She said she would have ranked atheists at the bottom of the list of those sharing the same vision of American society.
"I would rather have my kids marry someone of a different religion than someone who has none," she said.
Hmm, so if you believe in G-d, then you are a good person? And if you don’t believe there is a G-d, then what? You’re an evil mass murderer? Of course that can’t be true. We are all well aware of people who believe in G-d who kill and are cruel to others. What we aren’t aware of are the 10% of Americans who are Atheists. Atheists in general don’t go around with their lack of a deity exposed. Odds are that you know an Atheist without realizing it.
There’s been a backlash lately against Atheists. A lot of it goes to a group of Atheists who are trying to convert others to their view point. In my opinion, this is no better than those who come to my door, ignoring or ignorant of the mezuzah on the door post and hand me literature on why THEIR version of the bible is best.
Listen, All I want is to allow people to live peacefully. With their religious choice, or lack thereof. Why does it matter so much to others what you believe? Why is it so important to push your religion down other’s brains?
I’ll love you forever April 17, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Mom Phrases , add a commentAn open letter to my girls:
Yesterday, something terrible happened. Luckily, we were painting, hanging glass shelves, playing Wonder Pets, saving Baby Jaguar, and making cookies. We missed it. But the truth is, one day, you two will leave my side. You will be out in the world.
I can’t protect you. I wish I could. I can’t be there every time someone says something hurtful. I can’t be there when you make a mistake and need help picking up the pieces. I can be a phone call away to listen. And Dad and I can teach you all of the different ways we have learned to deal with such things, so you can deal with them too.
But I can’t protect you from these things. I can’t protect you from the evils out in the world. However, I will always be here to love you. No matter what. No matter how big of mistakes you make or what terrible things may happen to you, I will love you…
And that is something I can do
love,
Mom
Only I could do this! April 16, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Home wreckers , add a commentI got a new glass shelf for my bathroom last week. I didn’t get a chance to put it up until today…
I measured twice. And then drilled. Leveled and put in the anchors, then I drilled for the second support.
And promptly hit the vent pipe. A nice clank of drill bit against the pipe. Lovely…
I then got frustrated and repositioned everything, Ripped out the anchors. Then I was off by 1/4 inch… Sigh. pulled out one set of anchors and finally got the stupid thing up
Around 12:30 I realized I forgot not just my AD, but my thyroid meds too. I am now very dizzy and nauseated…..
Word to the wise, don’t miss your antidepressant. I hate this feeling…
Walk all over me! April 13, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Ghost in the (sewing)Machine , 7 commentsI finished Luna’s blanket!
Here’s a quick photo!
Where Imus went wrong April 13, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom , 1 comment so farI have been listening to the Don Imus affair and waiting. I knew he would get fired. It was just a matter of time.
Why? Because of his terrible racial and sexist words?(and believe me, I was pissed when I heard what he said)
Not really, I knew it would happen because he attacked people not in the public domain.
When you run for office, you automatically put yourself out for attack. When you are an actor or any type of public figure, you put yourself out for attack. Professional athlete? Yessiree, you are a target.
But collegiate women in an amateur sport? NO. That is not fair game. These women have not become public domain simply by playing a sport for their college. You can claim "first amendment" for Imus all you want, but there is a level of acceptability and you do not slander private citizens.
On a personal level, it is never acceptable to attack people with racial and sexist comments. But I do understand that certain people open themselves up for it by going into the public eye.
BTW- a word to the wise, I can sew a straight seam while watching a hockey game, but I got very excited when my team scored a goal and I hit the pedal a little too fast and skipped a few stitches! Oops! 
Fortunately, this was on the first turn of the edges and tonight I will finish the blanket with a hockey game that doesn’t involve my team (we won, 4-1 !)
And it launches Nu-kler weapons! April 12, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Weblogs, Life...otherwise, Go Team Go Team Go Team, Ghost in the (sewing)Machine , 5 commentsOkay- Interesting thoughts and comments. You folks make me think. Thank you!
So about a month ago, Silvia, my cleaner, vacuumed my phone charger. I then tried to charge my phone that night and well, being of German blood (no offense Dirk) I forced the sucker into the phone. This caused irreparable damage to the charging part of the phone and now my phone would only hold 12 hours of charge regardless of the battery. I tried a few new batteries and a new charger. Sigh. I let the guy at work know that I need a new phone.
It came yesterday. Good Lord this thing could start a nuclear war! It is an LG VX8300. It has a camera (with a flash!), it’s an MP3 player, the camera takes video, I can watch video on this sucker. Good Gracious! I never imagined I would ever want such a thing. I just wanted a replacement speaker phone. But hey, now I am trying to figure out how to convert some of my music to WAV files and get it on a micro SD card (tiny little sucker).
On Tuesday, I went shopping with a friend. We stopped at a fabric store. I bought a cute pattern for the girls and some fabric! I hope to make them each a sundress before summer. You think this is too ambitious? I do! But I will go slow and see if I can do this. Sleeveless helps because I am terrified of sleeves!
Tonight, I will work on a new blanket for Luna. She is using this silly wrap that someone bought Soleil when she was a baby. The thing has holes everywhere. It drives me nuts that she loves it so much because it doesn’t cover her anymore. We bought a 1.5 yard piece of beautiful fleece. It is red with black dog prints. I trimmed it last night and I am going to baste the sides tonight (at least one side).
And I will do this while watching my Sabres! It’s Playoff time! Go Buffalo!
Thinking out loud..on adoption issues… April 11, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Weblogs, Parenting 101 , 9 commentsthere is an odd debate(?) on adoptive parenting going on. Basically a woman who is debating adoption is feeling unsure. She put this out there on her blog. Others commented and there is a ton of ancedotal "my friend did this.." crap in the comments. Then other bloggers jumped in to discuss some of these issues and items that came up in the comments.
I feel funny (odd, peculiar, not humored) by these conversations and debates. While meandering the infertility route, we did our second IUI with drugs. Our RE (reproductive endocrinologist) was not very optimistic. Since infertility treatment is covered in our state, you must try all of the avenues, in other words, we HAD to do two rounds of IUI + drugs before we could move onto IVF. He was very honest with us. He didn’t see that this would work. He wasn’t sure IVF would work either. We were diagnosed with "unexplained infertility" (which means "I don’t know what the F is wrong with you guys"). Discussions continued in our house.
One day we went for a walk on some hiking trails. I told Jay, "tell you what. I am not sure this bio kid thing is going to work. I am willing to use the resources we have and do 2 IVFs, but I am not going to wait forever for a child to join our family. How do you feel about adoption?" He was quick and to the point " I would have no issues as long as we adopt a Jewish child. We want to raise a Jewish family and somewhere there is a child whose mother wants him/her to be raised Jewish."
We discussed this for a while.
We continued with the treatments. Somewhere I wanted to have a biological child to know I wasn’t broken. Somewhere I didn’t care how the child came to us. We came to an agreement: we would do two and only two rounds of IVF. In addition to doing the IVF, we would start talking with our Rabbi about adoption via a Jewish agency. It would be as open as possible in the sense our child would know where they came from. We did not yet discuss open adoption or other issues.
The surprise came that I actually got pregnant with the second IUI+injection cycle. I had troubles with the early stages and thought we lost her twice. But she came to us.
When she was one, the discussions started again. I had a checkup and my ob/gyn asked if I wanted a referral back to my RE. No. Here was the plan. 6 months trying without help, mostly to get us in the mindset of having another child; then back to the RE starting at what worked last time. If this and 2 rounds of IVF failed, we would start pursuing a Jewish adoption. I did not want an only child (not that onlies are bad, it’s just not what I wanted for Soleil).
Imagine my shock when I got pregnant the 3rd month! And promptly lost it. And got pregnant the 4th month. And had very low progesterone. By some miracle, she hung in there (although a complicated pregnancy again) and we dropped our plans for IUIs and IVF and adoption.
So here we are, a family of 4. Both of my children are biologically related to me, but it may not have been that way.Our parenting methods would have been similar. We may have changed some things if our child came to us in a different way, but not by much. We would have instilled the same values and love that we currently do..
This is where I step on toes….Did I put adoption as a "second choice"? Did we put IVF as a "second choice"?
Is it odd that I saw all of this options as a pathway to having a child? That I needed a plan? That I knew eventually we would have children to raise, whether they were blood relations or not?
The blog debates interest me, but they make me rethink our choices in the sense of how I view other’s families.
I cannot change what we have done, but I certainly can try to understand the issues that others are bringing up.
And so I listen and read, and think…
Well, That was a mess! April 10, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Life...otherwise, Kids, In A Family Way , 1 comment so farIt is nice to be back at work. My office needs to be cleaned, I need to finish a memo, but hell, I just got through half of my email, and I think a break is in order!
Travel with an almost 3 year old is hard. Luna was, well, a fricken lunatic on this trip. Sorry, must be blunt to save my sanity. We went to the Cleveland Zoo on the 80 degree day. She LOST it leaving because we didn’t see the tigers. When I say lost it, she bit me twice, leaving bruises (although that is not that hard to do, I bruise if you look at me the wrong way), she cried so hard that she threw up three times, twice on me, once on Jay. We were leaving the zoo with a screamer and all of the parents are watching us (yeah, that does wonders for your psyche!). I kept telling her the animals were tired and needed to eat dinner, and go to bed. She kept screaming "No, the sun is up. The animals are NOT sleeping" Oy! For the record, once we got her in the car seat, she was asleep in 30 seconds. No joke!
The trip back to Boston was just as fun! The first three hours were Luna screaming that she wanted Grandma and Grandpa. Lovely. Again she screamed until she puked. Thank you for vomiting 1 mile from a parking area! That way we could clean up. A pleasant bit of luck is that Luna just trained herself for potty. Worried that we might not make it, I put a waterproof crib pad under her in her car seat. That absorbed most of the vomit…
I suppose the trip was good. We had fun, and for 3 days Jay and I got to sleep until 9am! Bliss! But the girls are still young enough to want Mommy all of the time and I ended up being the primary caregiver. Then when we got home, I was able to send them to daycare 1 day, and then the 3 day weekend (I don’t work Mondays).
Luna is going through changes. She just moved from toddler to preschool at daycare. In our state, at 2y9m, a child can enter preschool, which has a higher student-teacher ratio. She had been told for 3 months that she was going to move up and she knew preschoolers go potty. So the girl put incredible pressure on herself to train herself.
One day in March, she decided to wear panties. That was it. We had 2-4 accidents a day the first week. Then 1 or less a day (mostly poop). Now she will go to the bathroom on her own to poop and come out with her pants between her ankles and proudly announce that she pooped! She is trying her hardest to be a "big kid" and this is causing multiple meltdowns as she is still not 3.
I find this stage of parenting to be very difficult. The changes between 2-3 are large as are the changes between 3-4. However, the independence and the need to feel like a larger kid is there more in the 2-3 stage.
For myself, this is an exercise in restraint. It is hard and I am looking forward to the 1 hour massage that my ILs bought me for my birthday present .
(I was planning on a massage on the day before the trip BUT Soleil got cereal in her eye(DON’T ASK) and I ended up dragging her halfway across the state to see an eye doctor as the ped thought she had scratched the cornea. She didn’t, but it threw all of my plans into a blender!)
I hope to recover in relative calm and relaxation the next week. Work will be fun as our instrument had a major anomaly on Saturday during a Target of Opportunity, and my bosses (both of them) are away at a meeting starting today. But at least work isn’t going to strip off all of its clothes and piss on the floor like Luna did Sunday when she got mad at me….
Back in Town April 7, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Fun with Crohn's Disease , 3 commentsWe are back. It has been a long strange trip. I have many things to discuss. But first and foremost, I must point out that we are not keeping kosher this year. Crohn’s and no bread is not okay…. So until we are in remission (we, yes, it is a family disease), then we are not keeping kosher. We are doing the best we can, why do I feel so guilty when I know that any rabbi would give an okay for skipping the kosher for a health issue?
