Back to the grind

One hour until Carina goes to daycare for the first time in a week! I don't know how she can possibly sleep as little there as she does. Her schedule should be stabilized now, and she had a 2 1/2 hour nap this morning. Then she got up for a bit less than an hour to eat and she's back in bed already! That's more than she sleeps all day at daycare and it's only 1:00 pm!

Meanwhile, I just love October. The weather is soooooo nice. I hope we don't burn all of the nice fall weather during the mission. I'd like to squeeze in a camping trip before it gets cold.

A Marvelous Bowl of Blended Carrots

Carina tried carrots tonight. The first few bites were her usual "must-eat-as-fast-as-I-can" faces, and then she started to look a little puzzled. A slightly apprehensive look dawned on her face as she doggedly chased the next spoonful. After a few more bites, it was a race to see if I could scoop up the carrot mush as fast as she was spitting it out. She was still a trooper, though, she didn't refuse to eat the mush until it was almost all gone.

One door closes

For what seems like the kabillionth time, I had to cancel my flying lesson today because I've got a head cold. I swear, I've been getting almost as many as Carina. Am I not supposed to have a functioning immune system by this time in my life?

Except for the cold, today was a good day. Gavin, Carina, and I spent most of the day holed up in the game room. We played with the baby. I watched some football, and Gavin played some computer. The dogs alternately slept and stuck their noses in our faces looking for pets. Sometimes, just staying home is the best thing.

Cute Butt

I'm not sure why, but it seems that people greatly enjoy seeing babies in clothing with cute things on the butt. Carina has had clothing with the following things on the butt:

- A giraffe
- A teddy bear
- A frog
- A jack-o-lantern
- The Star Wars logo

The other night at fish night, Sarah took a picture of the jack-o-lantern butt. It is a very cute sleeper.

I sometimes surf the bulletin boards on Babycenter.com, and there is one woman who has as part of her "signature" a collage of pictures of her kid's butt with different patterned diaper covers. No joke. What is it about those tiny little tushies that we love so much?

What do you know?

Well, what do you know? An on-time launch! I was so sure the weather wouldn’t allow it. Now for 14 days of flying in space.

Carina is sick again, and I think she gave this one to me. I have a pretty stuffy nose. Fortunately, if I can make it through tomorrow, I get Friday and Saturday off. Hubby should get home Friday afternoon, so I can sleep extra if I need to.

The Rockies aren’t doing so well in the first game of the World Series. 13-1 in the 6th – yikes! I hope all that time off didn’t kill all the momentum.

Cold Front

Even NASA waits until the last minute to do things. I have to work from 8:00 PM - 5:00 AM tonight, but I still had to go into work this morning to finish up some of the last minute work. It's not done yet, but I needed to come home to get things ready for Gavin's parents who are generously going to watch our daughter for four days.

After saying goodbye to Gavin, I packed Carina into the car to go to day care for a few hours. It was about 80 deg outside. 4 hours later, I picked Carina back up at day care. It was about 60 deg outside. That's right. An honest-to-God cold front came through Houston today.

Fire

I’m sitting at my console in Mission Control, working a very slow simulation. Suddenly, the guy sitting next to me turns to me and says:

“Do you smell smoke?”

Me: “Now that you mention it, I do smell something.”

We start looking around, and then the guy behind me pops up. “I smell smoke.”

Within 10 minutes, there are guys in the room with air quality sniffers looking for the source of the smell. The smell dissipated pretty rapidly, though, and they didn’t find anything.

That was the most exciting thing that happened all day. I got to hand over to my next shift, though, that if they smell fire they should report it immediately.

October

October has always been my favorite month. It has a lot going for it. It is the month of my birthday, my favorite holiday (Halloween), and it is the epitomy of fall. Fall has also always been my favorite season. I like the leaves turning and cool weather. Even the fall "scents" are my favorites: pumpkin, cinnamon, cider.

After moving to Houston, there was even more reason to love October. At some point during October, the weather here passes this magical line. All of a sudden, the weather is nice. And not just nice in contrast to the hell we've been in for 5 months. Really nice. Go walking in the middle of the afternoon instead of watching football nice.

That week was this week. It's gorgeous outside. I went on a 2.5 mile walk this afternoon, and came back basically unsweaty. It was awesome.

Thirty-one

Before I started writing this post, I went back to look at what I'd blogged about on my last few birthdays. Uh, nothing. That's right, this is the first post I've actually written on my birthday, EVER. I'm not sure if that's a sad comment on this year or not.

On the whole it has been a good, though unremarkable day. I woke up with hubby still in bed beside me for the second time this week, which is a very rare occurance, indeed. A nice one, though. I went to work, where I am insanely busy getting ready for STS-120 and doing early work for STS-123 and talking to those crazy military types. I picked up Carina from day care, and had fun feeding her cereal (although she doesn't seem crazy about it - maybe she'll like oatmeal better than rice cereal). I gave her a bath, which she loves. I made her laugh, which I love. I let her play beside the computer for a bit and then put her to bed just now.

I've been thinking lately about that thing that everyone with kids tells you when you're about to have a baby. "You won't believe how much they change your life." I always thought they meant things like seeing movies, traveling, and sleeping at night. Now I think I realize that's not what they were talking about at all. It's about what you live for. That smile. That little voice. The next new thing they learn. That hug.

John Stewart had a guest a couple months ago that wrote a book about how Americans aren't very good at identifying the things that make them happy. He said that people think they're happier with kids, but that they're actually happier thinking about their kids than actually being with them.

I feel bad for him. He has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

Backlog

I found this post that I started writing a couple weeks ago and never published. The outcome of the story is that I won't be in danger of getting arrested for abandoning the baby at home. It will require a lot of coordination, though. AND, there's only a 10% chance that weather will allow a launch tomorrow. Which means multiple pre-launch shifts. Joy.

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Working with a baby is tough. I mean that in the every-day sense, and also in the special circumstances sense. You see Gavin is going out to JPL for a week the same week that STS-120 launches. My shift is ~2PM to 10PM, so Carina definitely can't stay at day care that whole time. We had asked Gavin's mom to come help us for the week. She very obligingly rearranged her vacation schedule so she could stay with us for that week, and then she had a little accident and broke her leg!

She's drafted my father-in-law into service for diaper and lifting duty, so they will be able to cover us Monday through Thursday at 7:30. I think Cari will be able to come over Thursday night. Then either Gavin will figure out how to get back for Friday, I will have the day off or ??? I really don't want to pay a full week's tuition at day care for 4 hours on Friday, but I'm not sure what else to do. Many of the folks that I know are home during the day are going to have their own stuff going on that week.

Baby Food Face

We took Carina to the doctor today. She weighed in at 14 lb 9 oz! The doctor said to start giving her solid food, rice cereal first. So, tonight we put her in her Bumbo (love that thing!) and made our first foray into spoon feeding. It probably didn't go as well as it could have, since she also had shots today and was feeling a little under the weather. We got baby's first food face on camera, though.



I've been intending for a while to post some video of her splashing in her bath. Once she figured out how to do it, she got really into it.



And to round out the baby show, here's her playing with one of her toys. I think it's still a bit of a mystery to her how it works. Gotta work on that cause and effect reasoning!

The Swaddle

I think Carina is growing out of “the swaddle”. I tried wrapping her up like normal for bed last night, but she started struggling and crying. I unwrapped her, and she smiled and went to sleep. The only problem with leaving the swaddle stage is that we were using the blanket to keep the pacifier in her mouth until she fell asleep. Now we may have more false starts. The good news is that we don’t have to do it at 2:00 AM anymore.

We were thinking about taking Carina to spend her first night in a tent this weekend. I’m looking at the weather forecast, though, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Saturday night and Sunday are listed as “Slight (20% ) chance of thunderstorms”, but then the little icon they are using is a dark cloud with buckets of rain coming out of it. Now, normally I don’t let a little thing like a rainy forecast cheat me out of a camping weekend. With the baby for the first time, though… I don’t want the dark cloud, but a little thunderstorm wouldn’t be terrible. I don’t know.

Speaking of weather, though, it’s turning out to be a nice day here. 82 deg outside right now, and even better the heat index is only 82 deg. Yea for it being October!