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Living on kid time July 8, 2008

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Lately, I have been swamped. This week is a total kid time week. We have Girl Scout camp this week. The bus for girl scout camp picks up at 7:30ish and leaves at 7:35. Yesterday it was there at 7:20! (we are used to the school bus coming at 8:35). In addition, we need to pick up Soleil at 4pm. This makes for an early and shorter than normal work day. The truth is, you work on kid time sometimes. This week is definetely kid time.

I know that as the kids get older, kid time will be more (being the mom car service) and less (Sorry mom, gotta be with my friends). Right now, I try to go with it. It’s hard, but I do try. I get nervous that I am not putting in enough at work, that I am not putting in enough mom, and not putting in enough lover. I worry that the house is going to hell in a handbasket. That I need to fix the hole in the bathroom wall, get the living room ceiling painted and get a lighting person in to assess adding recessed lighting in the living room.

But yesterday, while Soleil spent a Monday at camp, Luna and I spent the day together and it was nice just being on kid time.

45 minutes—PSA June 18, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Parenting 101 , 7 comments

Di d you know that a 4 year old (almost 4) can scream for 45 minutes straight and NOT lose consciousness? Bummer.

This has been your public service announcement of the day 

Making Lemonade June 13, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Parenting 101 , 7 comments

The Cake for Luna’s Pirate and Princess Party tomorrow

Oh no! What is this?

The Princess Cries"Is that a…cannon ball?"

Who Would do such a thing?

ARRR! A Pirate!

PSA: Books About the Ice Age May 8, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Parenting 101 , 1 comment so far

IF you should allow your 5 year old child to select her own books out of the public library and she happens to choose a 3rd grade level book on the Ice Age and it should happen to mention the animal diatryma, DON’T READ IT BEFORE BEDTIME. She is still awake and telling me she is scared that it will come and rip her apart!

 

Oy vey! 

A little bit of Terror in my life March 20, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Depression, Religion, Parenting 101 , 2 comments

Do you remember Mambo Number 5?

A little bit of Monica in my life
A little bit of Erica by my side
A little bit of Rita’s all I need
A little bit of Tina’s what I see
A little bit of Sandra in the sun
A little bit of Mary all night long
A little bit of Jessica here I am
A little bit of you makes me your man

Ah, how I love that song. And today, I sing the title of this post to that refrain.

You see, today is Purim. My girls are dressing up for the celebration. We are even picking up Soleil’s best friend R (who has a half-day of school) to come join us! We have costumes! We have money for tickets to play games and food. We have Graggers. So where’s the terror?

I can’t stand places where I am cramped in and surrounded by people. It starts simply enough. I may be at the mall in December. The first indication is a little bit of color overload. I start to classify every color I see. Then I start to organize the noises and conversations I am hearing. I don’t hear white noise or chatter, my brain actually starts to interpret all of the signals I am getting. In a very crowded place, like the temple will be tomorrow, I am going to get bumped and brushed past. This starts to trigger anxiety.

I know all of this is going to happen. I hope I can step back and watch from a distance. I hope I can step out and let my brain relax a little tomorrow. Or else, I will have the anxiety and terror of too much going on!

Sigh…

Days 5 & 6: the return of Daddy March 7, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Parenting 101 , 2 comments

Yesterday was Day 5. It was a long day. We got out of the house in a timely fashion. I even got Luna to daycare early. Then I got in the office and got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work to be done. Time to do a break down of tasks! :) Oh wait, I’ve done that recently!

 We had a team meeting at 11, so I got what I could get done in the morning, testing new code for the detector housing heater turn off and other fun things. The team meeting ran until 12:30, followed by a quick lunch at my desk and then it was time for temple school.

Normally, Jay works from home on Thursdays. This way, he picks Soleil up from school and drives her to temple school. Then he goes to the library and works some more (thank you for free wi-fi!).

I was not so lucky. I drove into work because I had to take Luna to her daycare anyway. Then I drove 11 miles back home to get Soleil from school. 5 miles to the Temple. I met with a friend. Then I drove 6 miles back to get Luna and met another friend for dinner and her daughter.

Whew!

I got a text on my phone this morning. Jay is back in the country. We spoke for a few minutes. He should be landing about..oh…now! (10:30EST) and he’ll be at the office in about 1 hour!

We survived!

Now we just have survive until March 20! The deadline for the Chandra proposals! Jay will be working hard on those! 

 

Day 4: Meet the Space Family March 6, 2008

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Okay- The title works better with our real name there, but hey, Not going there!

We watched Meet the Robinsons tonight. Very nice. I enjoyed it, although the scene with the peanut allergy freaked Soleil as she has a friend with a peanut allergy.

Luna ran away the first part of the movie. I remember that Soleil went through this phase of being afraid of the movies. It will settle out. I know it will.

All in all, we had a great day/night yesterday. Jay switched his flights a day early. He’ll be home Friday morning instead of Saturday! Yippie!

This weekend is Girl Scout central. We have Girl Scout Shabbot on Saturday, Girl Scout Sunday on Sunday, and our meeting and ceremony for the winter on Sunday afternoon. But we will get it all done! I know it!

 

Day 3: The scream of the Nazgul March 4, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Parenting 101 , 5 comments

If you have seen Lord of the Rings, you know what a Nazgul is. Tonight, Luna was one.

I tried to send them towards bed early. They were given a time to get jammies on so we could chose a TV show. They asked to play longer. Fine with me! So I set up the timer, warned them when it was getting close to zero and let them play.

Then Luna lost it. She didn’t want to have snack, books and bed. She wanted to watch TV. She knew they made the choice not to watch it. Sigh. Then she screamed because she didn’t want snack. Then she wanted a different book than Soleil. Then she screamed because I used the Superman toothpaste instead of the Princess toothpaste. Not that we HAVE Princess toothpaste. Apparently, that’s at the store. But she wanted it. And then she screamed because she got a blue flosser instead of a red flosser.

I finally got her in bed at 8:25. And THEN the fun began. She started sobbing for Daddy. Daddy daddy daddy daddy. Screw mommy, just want daddy. I stayed very calm during all of this. In part of my mind, I feel that we baby her too much. She is 3.5. She should be able to not need someone with her. Of course when Daddy is gone, it throws her into a panic, so she doesn’t sleep as well. So of course I need to give her more attention. But of course Soleil more attention. Which is why Luna finally feel asleep at 9:50 and Soleil is watching the Vancouver vs Colorado hockey game with me.

I made lunches at 10. Put the garbage and recycling out at 10:15. I am exhausted.

How do you single parents do it? Or parents who have the partner travel a great deal? HOW? 

Day 2: I’m F*cked March 3, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Life...otherwise, Parenting 101 , 2 comments

Day 2 did not go as well as the start of this trip. Fortunately, the kids have school for the rest of this trip!

Mondays are home with mom days. At 2 am, Luna came in and told me she was lonely. She fell asleep quickly, but then snored all night..and stole the covers… Grrrr At 7, Soleil came in and the PBS love fest began. They watched TV until my alarm went off. I showered, fought with Luna over what she was wearing. She currently has 2 dresses she loves. She wants to wear these EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! UGH

Finally, we’re all dressed, fed and the girls run off to do art work while I am trying to herd them for gymnastics. Needless to say, we were VERY late to gymnastics. Sigh.

After that, we cleaned up our mess so our cleaner can actually clean tomorrow. This took an hour. Oy!

Then we had lunch and Luna’s ear appointment. As a baby, When I started this blog, Luna had to get ear tubes after 6 months of ear infections. At that point, she had hearing loss in one ear. Lovely. In the past year, she’s often asking us to repeat ourselves. It worried me. We met with my ped and the tests showed her hearing looked okay, but maybe her adenoids were causing problems. So in to the otolarengologist. Great. So we went. Today. Of course her hearing is absolutely perfect and there’s no sign of fluid in her ears. The doctor talked to us and after a quick discussion, we decided to check the adenoids. They are blocking her nasal passages by 90%. And this is when she doesn’t have a cold. It’s entirely possible that when she has a cold, it affects her hearing. It also explains why the child snores like a lumberjack. We could have them removed, but since they normally shrink after the child is 5, I don’t want to put her through surgery. Sigh

Of course, Soleil complained the ENTIRE VISIT. I swear if I heard "I’m hungry" one more time I was ready to toss her through a wall! And we had lunch RIGHT BEFORE we went! UGH! We already had "consequences" for being snotty to me this morning, so I was running out of options.

We did have a good time adding another layer onto the fort, but it was tough. My back is sore and all of this snow lifting is a pain on my back. We had a snow ball fight and had fun, but then the girls started demanding. I hate when that happens because I get so upset with the I want I want I wants

We managed to get ready for swimming, but we were running late (again!) and I thought we would only be 1 minute late, but no, we hit a traffic jam caused by an accident and were 10 minutes late. Grrrrr. So I had no time to work out myself.

The one redeeming part of today is that I have a set of sisters who are watching the girls for 2 hours while I am sitting less than a mile from home at Starbucks. I need the calm….. 

 

And wtf is up with my fav bloggers going away? First Figlet, now Mrs. Figby? I am so sad!!!! 

Editted with: HEY! I won the Leapster backpack on ebay! Woot! I couldn’t find it anywhere. It was "out of stock" at every online retailer!   

Day 1: In which we do pretty damn well March 2, 2008

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(this post is backdated to keep the chronology correct)

Last night, Jay flew to Sunny Santiago Chile. He has a meeting on Star formation down there. When the meeting came up, he mentioned it to me in passing. I told him to GO. He thought about it and it turns out that he was accepted to give a talk. This is good. He keeps deprecating himself on his career, but I see that he is becoming more and more called upon in his field. He’s been great for the past 6 years, limiting the meetings he’s gone to, but now it is okay for him to get out more. The girls are older and while 3 is still young, I know that Luna will come around.

This is a monumental trip, however. This is the longest trip (7 days) that he will have been gone and I am the single parent. We’ve always had a grandparent or pair come and stay for at least part of his long trips. This is the first long one without help.

Day 1 went well. The bedtime on day 0 went great, but I still didn’t sleep well. I never sleep well at first. And then I don’t sleep well when he returns. Go figure. We have friends visit in the morning, we played in the snow and made a snow fort with a styrofoam cooler. (yes, we have THAT much snow). The cooler made our blocks. The fort is currently 3 levels high. (we did 2 levels on Sunday). Then we ran out to get our pottery that Soleil and I painted last week. Soleil decided to paint a piggy bank for Luna because Luna didn’t have one. It came out great!

We had an early dinner and then printed out coloring sheets from the Internet and we took them to Friendly’s for ice cream. The wait at our Friendly’s is terrible, so I figured the coloring sheets would help. It did!

So day one ends, and we survive!