Category Archives: Kids

Lunar Tides

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We are going through a very rough patch with Luna right now. She has always been a very external emotional person. She takes her anger out on other people, she exercises her lungs often and well, and she fails to comprehend that other people have emotions too. Ah- the joys of being 5.

Okay, maybe I am being too harsh on that last one. All children under 6 have no concept of selfishness. The universe still revolves around them. We tell them to share, we talk about how our friends feel when we are selfish, but the truth is, the cognitive abilities of young children are just not there to work well with empathy. I know this. Wait, my BRAIN knows this. The parent who is holding the doorknob of her door while she is grabbing the handle and screaming "I…AM…CALM…I…WANT…TV!" at the top of her lungs wants her to figure this out NOW!

She was the biter in the toddler classroom. When her friends upset her, she would just go for the jugular, or the hand. She liked biting hands or shoulders. We had to hold her tightly to prevent her from biting us. She would sometimes calm and then when I hugged her, she would bite my shoulder. It took a long time, months, of working on getting her to use words instead of teeth or hands to explain her displeasure.

Now, I feel like we are back at square one. Soleil feels ignored, but she is a wonderfully empathic person. She was built with empathy and her issues were trying to balance her selfish nature with her empathy. Until she was 6, the selfish would win out and her concerns of others would fall down. Somewhere, in her summer she turned 6, there was a rapid change. I can only hope that this happens to Luna as well.

Luna turns 6 in 1 month. We’re torn between thinking "She’s only 5" and "damn it! She’s almost finished kindergarten" and even her teacher points out that she is one of the least sharing and immature about sharing in her class. It’s hard to find her. And I know SHE is having trouble finding her. I KNOW in my heart that she wants to learn how to calm. We are giving her lots of tools, but I don’t know if she understands what angers her.

I mentioned this issue on face book (in 1 sentence form) and someone commented that screaming was not allowed in her house. I would love to know how to do that. We already take away privileges if she screams. We have natural consequences (I can’t read as long of a book if she spends 15 minutes screaming. That’s 15 minutes I can’t read). We try to appeal to her selfish nature. It hasn’t been working.

We had different issues with Soleil at this age. But now? We have to focus on Luna. And that is hard. So hard to teach her who she is and how to calm down.

You’re just like everybody else….PRESSURE.*

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* Thanks for letting me borrow, Billy Joel

 

Pressure. Stress. Tension. All normal parts of American life. But not for a 5 year old. Yesterday, Luna had her last skating lesson of this session. I have her signed up for the next one and I am supposed to get a form for the next competition from her coach. I was very upset with her coach. 

Some back story: Her first group coach, P, had to get a "real" job according to her husband, because the ice skating gig wasn’t bringing in enough money. So she got a job and had group coach 2, C, run the program for a few sessions. Luna soared with C. C was the right mix of hands on and helping to position Luna’s body, and goofy when Luna needed to goof. P is now back and she is so harsh on Luna. In fact, in one lesson, she told Luna that if she didn’t work harder, she wouldn’t let Luna do the competition. Now, understand two things: 1) Luna loves the skating. In no way, shape or form are we pushing her. Any competitions are her ideas. 2) She is still 5. Her birthday is in June, so she is the youngest in her class, the immature one, the little one (figuratively). You can’t tell a 5 year old something like that. She’s not cognitively ready for it.

There are 8 levels of Basic Skills in figure skating that one must complete to start freestyle. According to C, Luna has finished level 4, she needs work on one item, but is doing items in levels 5 & 6. According to P, she gave Luna her level 3 patch and refuses to give her level 4 until she has mastered the last element. Luna was upset. As was I!

She is 5. She loves this sport. I am not going to put undue pressure on her. To tell her she has to be absolutely perfect on everything at this stage is, well, too much. I am planning on calling the second coach, C today. I spoke to another mom at the rink yesterday. She has her 11 year old working with C. I will talk to C about semi-private lessons with the 2 girls and see what C thinks. I would rather do that, than have Luna’s spirit crushed.

Why do people put so much pressure on kids? Seriously. If you think she is Olympic material, fine, but don’t crush her soul in the process. I just love to see her have FUN out there.

And even if she isn’t Olympic material (which I seriously doubt she is), I want her to just do this for HER. Not me, not her coaches, HER.

Why the pressure?

A Photo Essay of Hawai’i (warning- lots of photos)

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Warning: This is mostly a post of photos, it may take a while to load.

View from the hotel
 

We learned about the Ancient Hawaiians

 

We walked on the lava coast at the place of Refuge (ignore my thighs..)

 

We got sand in our shoes

 

We saw dolphins in captivity

 

and Humpback whales in the wild

 

We hiked down to a beautiful black sand beach at Waipio Valley

 

 

 

And we swam at the black beach

 

 

 

 

We even hiked back up again

 

We enjoyed a resort luau and made Dr. Jay dance with the hula guys

 

 

We drove across the Island to see a volcano in action

 

 

And to walk where the volcanoes had thrown their lava

 

And where it ran over a town

 

We saw the sea and the lava meet

 

 

All in all, I would say we had fun

 

 

 

Oh, and the meeting was A-okay!(note- Name tag…see it really was a meeting!)

 

The books forgot to mention this…

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Being astronomers, our life is full of electronics. Both Jay and a I are fluent in calculator, I am fluent in several programming languages (but not python or LOLcode) and we have abandoned the home office for an entirely wireless setup including having our iTunes connect with a served disk in one room and with airports that are directly connected to our stereo receivers.

We are the geeks. The kids are way into imaginative play. They like to use their blackberries (ie- the blackberry pearl phones that Jay and I no longer use because they both died) to facebook and play games. Yes, they make up video games to play and facebook each other on their (non functioning) blackberries, only once in a while being interrupted by phone calls.

Why do the parenting books not explain that you can snort you brains out when your kids do things like this?

Last night, I needed to go out. Jay has the kids alone most of the weekend as I am attending a birthday party for Mrs. Figby, a former blogger. I was making myself a beautiful satin dress, but the pattern was too small for the measurements it claimed. I am so angry about that. I let out all of the seams, but it is still too small. Damn. I can’t get the zipper on the side up the last 2 inches. So I decided to punt and I went to Talbot’s Outlet last night and picked up a very nice LBD on a major sale ($36 for a dress that was originally $174). I decided to take the girls with me. I realized that I had never really taken the girls clothes shopping. Luna corrected me and said that she picked out the fabric for most of the dresses I make her, which is correct, but still, I don’t actually take them when I shop (because I do most on-line!)

After buying the dress and explaining why I have a nice little roll of fat on my belly (it’s from YOU TWO! YOU DID THIS TO ME), I took them to the discount shoe haven warehouse. Luna nearly fell over seeing the rows and rows of designer boots! Soleil immediately asked where the kid section was. I had to explain that there wasn’t one here and didn’t I just buy her new sneakers in October? Hello?? She said "But MOM, You don’t get my STYLE" (said with all of the drama of a 14 year old). So I took them to Payless Shoes around the corner.

 

Is there anything cooler than shoe shopping with your girls?

Luna picked out THESE:                                                While Soleil picked out THESE:

 

Since I needed something that was more adult I got these little flats

Twins?

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Last night, Luna finally got her ice skating dress that I bought in early December. It was an ebay find and there were some mail screw ups, but it finally came. She needed to get in it ASAP. After stripping to undies (including socks because "Mom, I can’t try it on with socks"), she got dressed in it. She did twirls in the mirror and tried some of her poses..

Then she found the matching scrunchy. She begged for me to put her hair back. And this is what we got.

When did my FIVE YEAR OLD start to look so much like her sister? And when did she start losing that baby fat!?!? Yikes!

Soccer Mom? I think NOT!

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We recently took advantage of my parents’ visit by making Dad go car shopping with Jay. It was more along the lines of car buying since we had already narrowed down the car we wanted and the features we wanted. Then we called and emailed dealers for their best quotes. From there we decided who to start with and where to move from there.

In the end, we came home with a 2010 Toyota Highlander. Not the hybrid because we couldn’t justify the cost versus the ecological impact. We had decided on the Highlander for 2 reasons: We often cart around more than 2 kids and in Massachusetts, kids need to be in boosters until age 8! AND minivans scare the crap out of me! Now we have this honking vehicle with lower gas mileage than either of us have had before (we’ve both had small cars or sedans), but I really like it! The kids have been using the third row, although we need to hide it for our trip to Buffalo. There is plenty of room for all, we can hook up out mp3 players to the car and listen to our music… It’s a nice car.

This made me think about being a soccer mom. Strangely, only Soleil has played soccer and Luna wants to this spring. I will see. Luna is really our big sports girl. We just signed her up for another ice skating competition. This one is in January. I just got a new skating dress from ebay for her. Her last one is getting a wee bit tight in spots. This is a little odd since she is 5 years old. Think about this. A 5 year old girl is in her second basic skills ice skating competition. On her request. SHE wants to do this. She is now learning some cool stuff like the bunny hop (put one foot on the toe picks and then push up in a hop and glide on the other foot) and cross overs (those are TOUGH). She is looking more and more graceful on the ice. Scary. It is just plain scary to me!

Soleil is really into hockey. She loves going, but last week was the first time she actually went for the puck. She is afraid of doing something wrong. I’ve told her to not stress it, but you know that she does stress it. Maybe I’ll be a hockey mom instead of a soccer mom, but more likely, I’ll be a skating mom. The Olympics are coming up and I hope that Luna likes to watch the ice skating competitions. She will probably love that!

When did life change from a mommy to a mom of kids?

An unexpected call

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Our lives are a combination of decisions and luck. In the United States, we are lucky to have been born here. Even if we are born into poverty, we have chances to move forward, there are limited support nets and we can try to use them. We may be born into a wealthy family and have more opportunities from the beginning. We may be born into an emotionally stable family, which sets us up for a warm and caring childhood and adulthood. You may be born with a life long disease, you may be born with a mental disease. These things are luck.

And then there are the decisions. We often think that we have decision trees, but they tend to be bushes or brambles more than trees. Decisions can come back upon themselves and we can’t always see a clear pathway from one decision to another. These are far more complicated than just "oh I shouldn’t have done that". Right now, I am in the Boston area. I could have been in Germany if the job offer to Jay for here hadn’t come through. Or perhaps Flagstaff if the Naval Observatory had the money to hire Jay the year he was looking for jobs.

A whole other set of decisions are made during our lives when we started a family. We waited for the launch of Chandra before even trying to have a child. The logistics of two scientists on the same project and trying to be pregnant were too difficult to work on. But eventually, the OAC (orbital activation checkout) was complete and life moved forward and we started trying to conceive. By 2001, I had become very discouraged and we were seeing a doctor. I was open in the fact that we were having difficulties with having a child. I got pregnant once, only to lose that pregnancy. I then went months with pain, emotional and physical, while trying to not make sex a programmed item.

While during this process, I met a great deal of women who were in similar situation. We held our breath together for each other and offered shoulders to cry on when our menses started each lunar cycle. Somewhere in early 2001, Jay and I were awoken by a phone call.

Being early morning, we answered in case it was a problem with a family member.

"Nance? Hi! Sorry to wake you. I need to talk to you"

"that’s okay, is everyone alright?" I yawned to my friend.

"well, I have some news, but I am not sure how you feel about it"

My stomach sank. I was sure she was going to announce a pregnancy. She had an earlier pregnancy that had also miscarried, so I was sure that was what this call was about.

"um, okay- shoot"

"I know you and Jay have been trying for a child. I know this is a tough thing, but my good news is that I have a person who just gave birth to a baby boy this morning. Would you like to adopt him?"

I think there was a brief moment when the entire world stopped spinning. Or perhaps the bed itself started spinning. I immediately thought of the room we were planning on being the baby room. I thought of what we would need to buy to have a baby in the house. What would we need to suddenly go from childless couple to parents. What would happen if the child was reclaimed by the birth mother, as a close friend had happened after 44 days.

"Nance? Are you still there?"

I looked over to Jay and he raised a quizzical eyebrow. I took a deep breath.

"Yeah, listen. We haven’t gotten off the infertility road yet." My heart was breaking. "We haven’t exhausted what we are willing to do" I think I had some tears at this point."We aren’t ready to look at adoption yet. I still want to try to have a child that is from us." How stupid does that sound? A parent is a parent no matter how their child comes to them "I’m sorry. I don’t think we can do this"

"Hey, that’s okay. I just figured that before they turn to an agency, to ask you. I know how badly you want a kid"

I think we had a few formalities and then we hung up. I snuggled into Jay’s chest and cried. The truth of the matter was simple. We were still working on getting me pregnant. We were still working on what was causing our "unexplained" infertility. I just wasn’t mentally, emotionally or intellectually prepared to jump off of that branch and onto the parenting branch at 6am in the morning with limited discussions.

It’s not that Jay and I hadn’t discussed adoption. Our plan was 2 children. Jay was leaning towards 3, but my depression changed that. We had the luxury of having IVF and other ART treatments covered by insurance and damn us if we weren’t going to use them. But if that failed…we had started talking of adoption. Jay’s religion and culture was important to him, so important that I agreed to put it in our Kettubah that we would raise our children Jewish. He wasn’t to go through a Jewish adoption agency. That’s all the info and planning we had. If IVF failed, we would mourn that stage and move onto adoption.

One call, one morning and we could have changed the entire course of our lives. Maybe I would have not tried to get pregnant anymore. Since the pregnancies caused my depression to explode, maybe I wouldn’t be fighting my demons.

But then… I wouldn’t have Soleil who was conceived on October 31, 2001, born July 23, 2002. (Hey, it was an IUI and I was pretty ill that day, so I stayed home to hand out candy early!)

And we wouldn’t have Luna. At least not this Luna.

The decisions we make…the reasons, sometimes they are worth it in the end. I wouldn’t trade my girls for my depression. They are part and parcel.

Just call me Mom

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It’s starting to sound like all I do is complain here lately. My favorite stalker would tell me that is all I ever do, complain, but nevermind her.

I had a great day with Luna yesterday. We’ve been working on Mom days. Where I play Mom. Occassionally I do some astro work, but mostly, I put the crackberry away and just hang. We played Uno yesterday (Hannah Montana Uno because the unlisenced character Uno isn’t cool enough). I really enjoyed yesterday. We got some errands run, we bought a book (an abridged copy of Black Beauty) and went to the bank (lollipop alert). She ice skated for 2 hours (she stayed for public skate) and we had McDonald’s…

It was a fun day. I really enjoyed it.

In the frustrations of life, trying to get everything done, trying to stay healthy(STUPID thyroid), I sometimes forget that one of my best roles, is just Mom.

The ghosts of 9/11

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I always wonder if Bin Laden chose 9/11 because it was our emergency phone number. Or because 11 stood tall and strong like the twin towers. Or was this just a random day chosen out of the twisted hatred in his mind?

Today, Soleil read the headlines in the Boston Globe. 

"Mom? What’s special about September 11?"

"well, about 8 years ago, some people who hated America took some airplanes and flew them into buildings"

"Why?"

"because they hated America. Sometimes people who hate fail to stop and think about how evil they are being"

Luna chimed in: "What happened to the people in the building?"

"some escaped. Uncle K was there. He was in the hotel between the two buildings. He left the hotel and watched and reported until he couldn’t watch anymore. He left and the buildings fell down right after he left"

"was he okay?"

 "Yes, but we didn’t know that for a while because everybody was calling everybody"

"well, at least people got out of the building!" (Soleil is always looking for the bright side)

"Actually, honey, almost 3,000 people died that day. The people on the lower floors got out."

Luna: "why not the high floors? Too many stairs?"

"no they couldn’t get past the floors where the planes hit"

We talked about the Pentagon, flight 93 and how those passengers sacrificed themselves. We talked about the two flights, flight 11 and flight 175 leaving Boston.

We talked about airplane security and how they understood that this is why we have to take off our shoes and jackets and why their stuffed animals need x-rays at the airport.

"We’re safe now, right mom?"

I don’t know guys. I really don’t know. Seeing what is going on in America with congressmen showing blatent disrespect for our president? Seeing people bringing religion and race into politics again? I just don’t know.

This parenting thing can get tough.

Twins

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When I first got pregnant with Soleil, I hoped for twins. It had been two long years of fertility issues and I had no clue if I would ever get pregnant again. In fact, we started calling the pregnancy "Mr. Peabody and his pet boy Sherman". After 6 weeks, we could finally get a peek and it came down to "Mr. Peabody". We changed that to "Peabody" later on in case she was a girl.

Yesterday, I got my wish of twins. Am I pregnant? Hell no, you would have to pay me far too much money to ever go through pregnancy again.

Yesterday, both of my girls came home with a black left eye! Yes! (fist pump).

Luna actually did hers first on Saturday by goofing off and falling from the couch directly onto the coffee table. Solid oak supports. Damn the solid oak. Damn you all to hell! Anyway, she has had a nice shiner.

Then yesterday, camp called to let us know that Soleil had hit her face into another kid’s head. Lovely. Now they both have black eyes!

They are cute little bruised twins! No photos. Right now, they won’t let me, although Luna is now getting the secondary bruising around the eye socket coming out. Very cool!