There's a Person in There!

I think we're on the cusp of the twins starting to get some personality. It's strange how one day they are just kind of little wiggly lumps with vacant eyes, and the next you see them give you a look and you're like "Dude! There's a person in there!"

Screecher is starting to lose his worried old man look in favor of curious little boy. Worried old man was funny, but I kind of like the one that makes him look like a baby more. He's still pretty quick to cry if he doesn't like how things are going. He has a pretty intense pre-cry pouty face, too.

Squeaker is just going to be a sweetheart, that's all there is to it. She makes cute little coos when she's comfy on your shoulder, and cute little squeaks when she's not liking the way things are going. She smiled a coulple times today, and we're debating whether they were almost real smiles or just gas. (If it's gas, she has cute gastrointestinal distress, too.) She didn't cry at all during her bath tonight, which is a relief. You'd think during those early weeks that bathtime is highly invasive baby torture from all the screaming. Still not getting any splashing so I think it's more about tolerating the torture better, but we'll get there.

Gavin says we should nickname Carina Screecher to go with the twins nicknames. She's definitely at that age. Although, I think it's cutest when she puts a finger to her lips and whispers "We have to be quiet, the babies are sleeping" in that over-exagerated 2-year-old way. She's loving the higher frequency of pizza nights that we've been having since the twins came home. She keeps charming the delivery people by jumping up and down at the door yelling "Yea, pizza! Yummy!"

I went to the mall today since it was rainy. I can't go more than 10 feet without having to stop and answer the same questions.

Yes, they're twins.
They're 8 weeks old.
They're fraternal - a boy and a girl.
They're going about 5 hours between feedings once a day.
Yes, I was surprised when I found out.
No, we don't have twins in either family.
No, they're not my first, I have a 2-year-old as well.
Yes, I have my hands full.

Pronunciation is Key

I'm trying to put Drake down at the same time Carina is getting out of the bath. I thought I could change him and get him into bed while she played in the tub, but she was inexplicably not interested in playing for a long time tonight. I duck out of the bathroom while she's brushing her teeth to get the diaper changed. I hear her come out of the bathroom and go into her bedroom and figure she can entertain herself for a bit without me. I have Drake on the floor getting his new sleeper on when Carina comes into the nursery.

"Mommy, I'm copulating."

"You're WHAT?!" I look up at my naked 2-year-old wondering what innocent statement my adult mind has morphed into that sentence.

"I'm copulating!"

I sit there with my mouth open, frantically trying to figure out what she is telling me.

"I sitting on my diaper."

A giggle escapes me as understanding dawns. "Oh, you're cooperating! Good job, sweetie! Let me put Drake in his blankie, and I'll come put it on for you." Smiling to myself, I'm already blogging this in my head.

"Mommy, was that funny?"

"Yes, that WAS funny."

As I put her diaper on, we practiced saying "cooperating". She still puts an 'l' in it, but I think I got it to "cooperlating". Not as funny, but more appropriate.

Mythology and Rodents

Someone, unfortunately I can't remember who, gave Carina a book about the constellations called Once Upon a Starry Night for Christmas. I am totally smitten by her learning to say Cassiopia, Andromeda, Perseus, Hercules, and the rest. She always tells me that she doesn't like Orion's name. And she can't wait for Perseus to get there to save Andromeda from the sea beast. The book ends with the story about Argo, which she knows is "hers". (Carina is the keel of the great ship Argo.) Every time she tells me that "Pegasus is a winged horse" and "'Dromeda is a princess" it melts my heart.

She also, for whatever reason, has been asking me to make squirrels out of her play-doh on a daily basis. Here's the first I did, and it's pretty good if I do say so myself.


After I finish she wants to cut them up with the scissors. I'm not sure what to think about the fact that she seems to get great joy out of vivisecting my creations. I guess I should just be glad she's not asking for dogs or babies.

Slave Labor

Since I've received a few worried phone calls about the contents of the blog, I guess I'd better post something cheerful instead of just venting today.

Carina has really been taking to being a big sister, as we thought she would. She always wants to help and recently has decided she really likes washing baby bottles. Right after I snapped this picture, Gavin asked her if she could say "slave labor". (She can.) She also brings the babies toys all the time.



Aside on the photo: Only a dad would hold his twins like Rambo packing double heat.

I took the twins today and met some people for lunch. As we were eating, a lady from the next table came over and asked if I was "zoyapunk". (That's a screen name I use a lot.) She's from the local Mother of Multiples chapter and recognized me from my profile and the two babies I was toting around. I've been telling people for a while that having multiples gets you access to this underground club. Only other parents of multiples really understand what you're going through, and they are always sympathetic and wanting to help you get through the day. You also have no idea how many multiples there are around until you have them yourself. The local MOM group is really fabulous, and I've very much enjoyed getting to know some of them over the internet. I hope to go to the meeting next week and meet some in real life.

Last night I went to book club. It was so much fun. None of us enjoyed the book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but that didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves. Next month we're reading Playing the Enemy. In addition to having an excuse to hang out with some great ladies once a month, the expansion of my reading repitoir is a good thing.

One final cheerful thought: Today is Friday, and Gavin has 2AM feeding duty for the next three nights thanks to the three day weekend. 6 hours sleep, here I come!

Christmas 2009 - Best Ever

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Both parents were up feeding two tiny mouths.
The stockings were hung above the dogs reach
In the hopes that St Nicholas would not fall asleep.
The newborns were happy to eat and to sleep
The four hour cycle of feedings we keep.
And I in my sweat pants and pa in his too
Had just gone to bed for an hour or two,
When near to my bed arose such a clatter
I blearily woke to see what was the matter.
Away to the crib I stumbled and felt
And found a baby fussing for milk.

I could go on, but I made my main point and that is a really, really long poem.

Christmas 2009 is sure to be a memorable one. Carina had a fabulous time, enjoyed all her gifts, and was excited to give Eleanor and Drake theirs. She got a play kitchen from her Grandma and Grandpa Sheppard that was a big hit, and has been working the rest of the way through her toys at a steady pace this morning. The Tigger and Pooh Bear she got from Great Grandmother Sigvor have been declared "her favorite". She and Gavin are currently building her first lego construction.

It is strange to be home for Christmas. Even when we've stayed in Texas before, we've gone to Conroe for the celebrations. With three kids to tote, though, it was a no-brainer to stay at home. Fortunately, the newborn twins have gotten us out of most of the disadvantages of hosting. Mike and Meg are currently cooking dinner for us while we wait for the next round of feeding to commence.

Eleanor and Drake at 3 1/2 weeks are having a few awake periods now. They were both up for about an hour earlier today. I'm currently having the first of what I'm sure will be a continuous cycle of guilt trips about twin-rearing. This one has to do with not being able to focus on them individually while they're awake like I would a single baby. There's always something that has to be done right after feeding them like pumping, or washing bottles, or paying attention to Carina. It's not that I didn't expect this; nobody ever told me twin babies would be easy.

In spite of the difficulties, this has been the best Christmas ever. It is the first one Carina really "got", and we have our precious new babies. The problem has more been that there is too much wonderful stuff going on to focus on individual blessings.

Merry Christmas to all our friends and relatives!

Update

Yesterday I snuck out of the house for an hour to go to Target. My major objective was met by obtaining 3 pairs of XL pajama pants and two pairs of XL sweat pants. All these pants will end up being so huge on me that I won't be able to imagine that I was actually big enough to wear them. But, I am now much more comfortable.

I stepped on the scale a few days ago for the first time since before going to the hospital. I was both shocked and pleased to discover that I am now forty - 40!!! - lbs lighter than I was the day before the twins were born. It took me months to lose this much weight after Carina was born. Like six months. Meanwhile, I'm still wanting to eat the world due to the extra calorie demands of making breastmilk for two babies. Merry Christmas to me!!!

Things are pretty much the same with the kids.

Carina is being a wonderful big sister, helping out with feedings and diaper changes, and giving both babies kisses on the tops of their heads.

Eleanor is gaining weight like a champ now - her weight check this morning came at 6 lb 4.5 oz!! She's still not sucking well enough to nurse; it might be a lost cause at this point. I've been letting her "play" at the breast a few times, but she doesn't want to hold the nipple in her mouth. I might take her in to see a lactation consultant now that her weight has stabilized. Fortunately, I am not having any trouble pumping enough to keep up with her feedings, so she's getting breastmilk anyway.

Drake is nursing pretty well when he wants to, but sometimes is more interested in sleeping. I'm usually nursing exclusively during the day and then offering a bottle after nursing at night. I can't deal with 2 1/2 hour feeding cycles at night when I konw we could be doing 4 hour cycles. We've been doing OK with letting the twins get on different feeding schedules during the day and then synching them back up in the evening.

October Light and Mental Videos

Do you know what I mean by "October Light"? There's something about this month of the year, every day about 6PM the light gets really awesome. All the colors look brighter and the air looks clearer. I don't know what does it. Just yesterday as we were driving home, I looked up and suddenly exclaimed "October light!". Gavin was totally with me. The strange thing is that there was October light again tonight, but the weather was definitely not Octoberish. I know my friends and family "up North" are already mourning the loss of summer, but here in the great state of Texas we're still waiting for the muggy to go away. Today was terrible.

Lots of sci-fi books have this idea of a future where our brains are constantly wired in to a network that records our every waking moment. In general, I don't get the appeal of that idea. However, there are moments when I wish I could turn on a video camera inside my head to preserve moments forever. One of those times was a couple days ago.

Carina and I were alone on the sofa (Mommy's favorite place to play these days), and I was talking about the babies. She pulled up my shirt so she could see my belly and then started patting it. She looked up at me and asks "Sing 'Twinkle' to the babies?" She then proceeded to do so, singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' in a soft voice while rubbing my tummy. I hope I never forget that.

Artwork

Daycare does an art project nearly every day. Most of them are just coloring or finger painting pictures of whatever their theme of the week is. This month they have been doing "My Family". Today she came home with this.



The writing didn't really come out in this picture, but the apples say "Mommy", "Daddy", "Carina", "Baby 1", and "Baby 2". How adorable is that? I think the ladies at the daycare are almost as excited about our babies as we are.

Carina likes the new van a lot. She was really, really upset that she had to ride to daycare today in Mommy's old car.

Sunday

I feel today the ominous beginnings of swelling in my feet and hands. If you had any contact with me during the last months of my pregnancy with Carina, you know why I have been awaiting this day with trepidation. It was too much to hope that I wouldn't have any edema with the twins. I considered every day I went without any signs a victory. I think the honeymoon is over, though.

Carina is spending a few days with Gavin's parents at their place. It is very strange to be home without her. Gavin woke up very early this morning because he thought he heard her. I've been vegging in front of the TV with my laptop most of the day, and I can't shake the feeling that there's something I should be doing. Meg thinks she wants to do this once a month, but I'm not sure I can give my girl up that often.

Tried to go car shopping today, but I guess dealerships aren't open on Sundays? That's one out of the two days a week that we have time to do this activity, and they aren't open. I didn't expect them to be open this morning, but come on how about 1-5PM?

Reading List

For the last week or so, Carina has brought me the same two books to read before bed every night.

The first is There's No Place Like Space by Dr. Seuss. My favorite part about reading this book is that when we get to Pluto, she does her very best to convince me that the planet should actually be called Goofy. There's no doubt who her favorite Disney dog is.

The second book she wants to read is The Baby Owner's Manual, which is the most awesome book about baby care on Earth. It's not really written for a 2-year-old, so we have to be a bit creative about how we read it. First we turn to the diagram of a baby and name all the body parts. This particular diagram is of a boy baby, so if we have a boy I will have the advantage of having already introduced her to the boy part. (Can't wait until she brings that bit of knowledge up in mixed company.) Next we turn to the page with the different kinds of strollers, and she tells me which one she likes. Then we turn to the diagram about swaddling, at which point we take a break from reading to repeatedly swaddle her teddy bear in her moon and stars blankey. Depending on how many swaddles we go through, I might let her also look at the page with the diagram of feeding solids. On this page, she points out all the messes that the baby has made, and asks me to clean them up.

I can just see myself 5 months from now trying to keep up with the needs of two newborns, with Carina constantly going "Mommy, so-and-so made a big mess! Clean up!" every time one of them spits up.

Want to Go Back

Every time we go to Sigvor's I want to stay forever. I could sit on that deck and look at the bay every day for a very long time.

We had a great time catching up with everyone, and of course Carina was a big hit. She was particularly interested in Bruce, who is the fiancee of Jo. Jo is Sigvor's daughter from her first marriage. Bruce is probably around 60 and very San Fransisco Bay Area. Carina was fascinated with his hats and bushy white beard. I'm not sure she ever got up the courage to talk to him directly, but she would point to him and whisper in my ear "Bruce".

I was particularly amused that the minister that married Jenny and Nick was wearing Berkenstocks.

So, time for a funny Carina story. I think the endearments are getting out of hand. I don't know what it is about having a kid, but you call them lots of stuff in the profusion of your love. Things that you never thought you would say. Things you have no idea where they come from. In Carina's life I've called her "Cha-cha", "Chicabee", "Bubble-bum", and other similarly strange things.

Anyway, all that is to explain that I don't really know why I started calling her "Doll-face". I have been tending to do it when I'm just about ready to pull her out of her car seat. So after a very fun afternoon at Tilden Park in Berkeley that included a train ride, carousel ride, cows, sheep, and goats, I was getting her out of the car and I said "OK, you ready to go Doll-face?"

She handed me her sippy cup to hold for her and responded, "Here you go, Doll-Face."

Day of Doctors

We jet off tomorrow for 5 days at Walt Disney World with my sister's family. I plan on leaving the laptop here and not checking my e-mail until we return on Monday! (Very exciting.) We're staying at the Caribbean Beach Resort on the property, and should be having a ball all week.

I'm exhausted from the pre-trip hoopla in addition to the all-day doctor visit marathon I ran today. I had an uneventful eye appointment in the morning. Early afternoon was an OB appointment. Both babies are still looking great at 10 1/2 weeks. Since the doctor couldn't pick up the heartbeats yet with the doppler, we got another ultrasound. We saw each of them move a bit, and both hearts are beating away. The photo is on my Flickr stream - Blogger seems to be having trouble posting it right now. The baby labled "A" will be born first.

I think I'm taking this whole high risk pregnancy thing to heart. I'm more nervous about this on than I was about the last one. I worried a bit with Carina, but I never really got nervous before an appointment that something would be wrong. I totally sighed in relief when I saw both those hearts beating today. They made us an appointment with a perinatologist (a doctor that specializes in high risk pregnancies) in a week just for an assessment. So, my saga of seeing doctors all the time will be continuing. It will be about that time that I may be getting an MRI on my hand as well. (I'll complain about that some other time.)

To round out the day of doctors, I took Carina to her 2 year appointment. After a slight false start in not realizing their office had moved, we had a very successful appointment. Carina was very cooperative with the doctor, and even smiled at her once or twice. The doctor says that you can usually double the height of the child at this age to figure out how tall they'll be as an adult. Carina is 37" tall. Do the math - that's 6'2"! Wow. Maybe she'll be the volleyball star I was never tall enough to be. :)

Two Years Old

Carina turned two years old on Wednesday. How unbelievable is that? It seems like we just brought her home a few weeks ago. We had a pretty low-key birthday since it was in the middle of the week, but we're having a BBQ tomorrow evening. It promises to be a great time, with an expected 6 kids and 18 adults in attendance! Her big birthday present from Gavin and I is a slide for the backyard. We decided to put it together tomorrow during naptime, so her big surprise is still to come.

What is Carina doing at 2? She's very proud of her burgeoning abilities. We've been pooping on the potty pretty consistently for a week now (Mom and Dad rejoice!). One of her favorite new phrases is "Watch this!", which she usually uses before hanging off the side of the dinner table or sofa. She still likes cuddling and gives the best hugs and kisses in the world.

Pop Goes the Weasel

Meg and I taught Carina "Pop Goes the Weasel" this weekend. She loves it! She gets a little carried away with the improv, though.

Coming Up For Air

So I hear from several people that I should be updating more. Especially after our big news last week. What can I say? Work has been I-N-S-A-N-E this month. I've been simming 3-4 days per week and trying to fit the close-to-launch data publications, meetings, and other duties as assigned into the remaining days. Not to mention that I am suddenly looking at a bunch more visits to the doctor(s) than I'm normally used to.

At home things are busy as well, especially considering the fact that once or twice a week my body decides it needs 12 hours of sleep instead of the normal 8. I had hoped I wouldn't be quite as fatigued this time - dream on, Jen.

I'm having all the normal first trimester stuff. I don't really think the first trimester is worse than the third, but you get a lot more sympathy in the third because everything bothering you is visible. Swollen ankles - visible. Big belly - visible. Painful gas and bloating - not visible. (Thankfully.)

My parents are coming down here Friday, and I'm very excited. Carina is so fun to show off right now. The verbal explosion is amazing to watch on a daily basis. She understands so much about the world around her. It's also nice to be able to start to talk about things that are bothering her rather than just doing the whine-cry thing. Don't get me wrong; she still does that. But, at least I can see the beginnings of reason.

Status

I don't want to keep people in suspense, so I can tell you today that Carina seems much better. She didn't vomit at all yesterday, and is just upset that I won't asceed to her constant requests for milk. Daycare said she was much more her normal happy self.

As for my hand, it's about the same. The antibiotics seem to have controlled the infection, but it's still definitely infected.

Looking forward to Gavin getting home tonight.

A Rough Patch

I'm having a rough week. This post is one long whine - be warned.

Friday I went to the doctor to have my swollen sea urchin hand examined. He put me on hefty antibiotics and referred me to a plastic surgeon to remove the spines.

Carina started vomiting on Saturday. Just twice both in the morning. She seemed fine on Sunday.

Monday morning I got to work and called the plastic surgeon's office to schedule an emergency appointment for the afternoon. I then started working on getting the trajectory for STS-400, which was due Tuesday, ready to publish. At 9:30, the daycare called and said Carina had thrown up. She seemed OK after, and they could keep her if she didn't throw up again. Gavin was on his way to the airport already for a work trip. I told daycare to let me know if she threw up again or seemed unhappy.

At lunch I went to the plastic surgeon. I was expecting him to give me a local and dig the spines out with a needle. Instead he looked incredibly concerned and asked a bunch of questions about which antibiotics I was on. In the end, he told me that he wanted to give the antibiotics another week to take the swelling down and then schedule me for surgery under general anesthesia. The words "fillet the skin back and wash under it with antibiotics" were mentioned. After that, I decided it was better not to think about it too much...

I raced back to work after the 2 hour appointment and frantically tried to catch up on my trajectory. Was hoping to get it done Monday - no dice.

Picked Carina up 3 minutes before daycare closed and went to the store to pick up prescriptions for pre-surgery stuff and another gallon of milk in case the milk was bad and that's why Carina was throwing up. Carina didn't eat dinner, and though she didn't throw up again she was pretty fussy like her tummy hurt.

Zoya was carrying her back leg entirely off the floor all night. Great, I bet that other knee blew out and she's going to need another $3000 surgery.

Tuesday I took Carina to daycare hoping she'd be OK even though she didn't eat any breakfast except milk. I had a Flight Readiness Review at work and really couldn't stay home. Daycare got through the deadzone in the conference room at 9:30 to say she had thrown up again. Feeling terrible, I asked if they could keep her anyway since I had my pitch coming up and still needed to finish the trajectory. They agreed.

The rest of the day at work passed in a whirlwind of activity, although I did get everything done. Managed to call the pediatrician's office and get the following advice:

- No milk for 24-48 hours: done
- 1 tsp clear liquid every 5 minutes for 4 hours, then double that every 10 minutes for 4 hours
- After that, bland starcy diet
- Take her to the hospital if she stops peeing

Are you kidding me? Set aside the fact that I was hoping to get another 2 hours of work in, and there was no way the daycare would follow those instructions. I think Carina would start refusing after 3-4 times of trying her to take a tsp of liquid every five minutes. Decided to follow a more sustainable plan of giving her a quarter cup of clear liquids every 15 minutes.

It's 10:00 AM on Wednesday. Daycare has not called yet to tell me Carina has puked again. Maybe I won't have to take her to the pediatrician today after all. I'm waiting on inputs from flight planning so I can finish my backup day trajectory for the flight, which has to be done this afternoon. I am really, really looking forward to my mother-in-law coming down this afternoon and helping with Carina. I have to be at work at 6:30 AM tomorrow.

Friday morning Roxy goes into the vet to get a lump removed from her paw. Hoping that is benign. Tuesday (Gavin's birthday for all the good it's going to do him) I am scheduled for apparently fairly major hand surgery. Won't be able to eat after midnight, but have to come to work to work a sim shift before going in for the surgery. Ugh. Zoya scheduled for teeth cleaning on the 27th, but might cancel that if she's going to need orthopedic surgery soon.

Help.

This and That

Work is so incredibly busy this month. As STS-125 is scheduled to launch on May 12 and land on May 23, with a rescue mission waiting in the wings, followed a few short weeks later by STS-127 launching on June 13... there's a lot going on this month. I'm doing sims for 3 flights, "conjunction FDO" duties for one flight, and Lead FDO duties for a flight. Throw in a DoD meeting and attendant coordination, and I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to find the time. Plus, my parents are coming down for another short trip, so I'll want to spend some time with them.

Carina's lingual explosion continues, but she seems not to want to talk much in front of anyone except Gavin and I. Tonight's longest phrase was "Daddy, your dinner is right there." (Food is very important to this kid.) I think Grammy and Grandpa-pa got her to open up when they had her for 4 days. Hopefully the few days my folks will be here in May will be enough to get the same thing.

Roxy has a "mass" in her paw. The vet thinks it's probably benign, but not 100% sure. I scheduled her for surgery to remove it. This kind of thing makes me nervous because we lost a dog when I was a kid to a tumor. Here's hoping it's nothing worse than it always is when you have a dog recovering from surgery.

Sense of Smell

When we were trying to get pregnant the first time and I was daydreaming about having a baby, I usually thought about the first time I held my niece when she was about three months old. I remembered cuddling with her asleep on my shoulder. I thought about how strange it would be to feel a baby moving inside of me. I was incredibly impatient for it all to happen.

I'm guessing other moms will understand this next comment, and probably all others will not. What I think about now as we're working on #2 is the Smell.

Did you know babies smell? I'm not talking about the diapers here. The baby. Smells. The Smell is a sweet mixture of breast milk and something else that is just baby. Each baby's Smell is a bit different, and your baby's Smell is the best smell in the whole world. Not because it's particularly pleasing, but because it turns on a bunch of hormones that make moms feel good and nurturing.

Lying in bed the other night, I had a moment of imagining so strong I actually smelled the Smell. I swear my breasts started trying to produce milk again on the spot. This is how I know I'm ready for another child. I yearn for the Smell.

Yes, biology is strange.

Favorite Color

Gavin: So, Carina, what did you do at school today?

Jen: Colors, I think, they had some on the floor.

Gavin: Really, did you do colors?

Jen: Yep, there was blue...

Carina: Blooo

Jen: And yellow...

Carina: Yewow

Jen: And purple...

Gavin: Purple is Mommy's favorite color! What is your favorite color, Carina?

Carina: ...airplanes...

Tiaras and Dog Collars

Picture time! We've definitely slowed on the picture taking. These are all the good ones I've taken since Christmas.

She's fascinated by the dogs' collars. Whatever, it makes her happy.


She got a tiara for Valentine's Day. Interesting.


It's hard to tell, but day care did her hair in pig tails again.


She loves these blocks from Grandma Sheppard.

Yea! x 20

Carina was in a great mood tonight. With leftovers heating in the microwave, I put plates out on the table. Carina comes running in from the living room. "Yea, dinner! Yea, dinner! "Yea, Mommy!" Yea, plate!" Then, upon finding her plate still empty, she picked it up off the table and brought it to me in the kitchen. "Plate?" She totally looked like Oliver saying "Please, sir, can I have some more". Except that she was smiling.

Then everything was exciting. "Yea, chair!" "Yea, milk!" "Yea, lada!" (enchiladas)

Until bedtime, that is. Gavin went up at around 9:00 to take away the toy she'd been banging around for an hour. Luckily, we found a sitter for tomorrow so we aren't going to be keeping her up late for Cari's birthday dinner at Melting Pot.

The Pledge

Carina has been asleep for almost 3 1/2 hours now. She likes her new daycare class, but sometimes I worry about how obviously tired she gets every week.

When I dropped her off the other day, her class was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I have to admit I've been curious when I see her sheet come home with "What I learned today: Pledge". That seems awfully complicated for 18-36 month olds. So I stuck around for a few more minutes to see.

One little girl was given a flag to hold in front of the class. The others were cajoled out of their blankies, stuffed animals, and so forth and arranged so that they were all mostly looking at the flag. The teachers asked them all to put their hands over their hearts. Most kids responded to this request by putting both hands on their tummys. The teachers then recited the pledge, while most of the kids stared open mouthed. Then they all clapped.

Well, there I hear her voice upstairs. Time to play again. It's gorgeous outside - I think we'll go to the park.

Vocab

Carina has added a few words to her vocabulary over the last couple weeks. Most of them are things you might expect.

Santa - "tanta"
Reindeer - "eineer"
Shona - "ona"
sticker - "sti-a"
Elmo - "Elmo" (Seasame Street knows what they're doing. Elmo is easy for kids to pronounce.)

I was surprised, though, by her adept use of tunnel - "unnel". I think that's a vote of favor for the pop-up play house Grandma Sheppard got her (it has a tunnel entrance).

The Joys of Parenthood

Today was one of those days that Becca likes to call "birth control". Carina is not feeling so well. Gavin woke me up at 8:30 with "You need to watch her for a bit. She puked in the hall, and I need to clean it up." Yikes. Then the pooping started. I think Gavin and I each changed 3-4 VERY messy, stinky diapers today. She hadn't eaten much all day, so we were pretty happy about the few bites of food she took at dinner.

And then it happened.

Knowing that she'd already thrown up once today, I probably should have been quicker on the reaction when she started making gagging faces after dinner. But honestly, had I gotten to her, I'm sure my main thought would have been to try to get her away from the carpet. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have anticipated that from 2 feet away, she would projectile vomit almost perfectly...

Into my shoe sitting in the middle of the living room floor.

Snow!

The big, big, BIG news today is that it snowed last night in Houston. Really snowed. Accumlated on the grass. Was STILL THERE this morning. In fact, there's still a bit left on people's roofs and shady areas.

This is huge. This is the kind of thing you text all your friends about, write about on your blog, take pictures of, and generally talk about. It makes the front page of the Houston Chronicle. If Carina had been slightly older, I would have thought about waking her up to play in it.

Carina is running a fever of 100.5 this morning, so I'm at home. She has been incredibly cuddly all morning, which is awesome on one hand, but I know it means she feels rotten. I hope this is a 24 hour thing and she sleeps it off with a long nap and early bedtime.

No Posts

Oh, my. My poor little blog has been so neglected recently.

It turns out that when all of Johnson Space Center takes off a week and a half for a hurricane less than a month before a scheduled Shuttle launch, things are a wee bit crazy when everyone gets back to work. Wee. As in I-made-myself-sick-I-was-so-stressed-out crazy. So.

Then a week later, the Hubble Space Telescope suffered an electronics failure that scrubbed the aforementioned mission for 4-5 months. So.

Still behind. Still working like a madwoman to catch up. But catching up to a different target now.

In other news...

Carina has cut about 5 new teeth in the last two weeks. Her smile is now white instead of gummy. On the down side she did bite me the other day. I'm hoping she just didn't relized yet that teeth hurt. She is running everywhere!

Cari had surgery on her foot Monday. Feel better soon, Cari!

It looks like I will get to go to Seattle for a recruiting fair later this month. SO excited to see my college friends!

Learning English

Even though Carina's vocabulary is still pretty limited (it mostly consists of subtle variations on "ba", "da", and "ta" - no matter, we understand her), she has a couple more complex words. Surprisingly, when we were in Wyoming she started reliably saying Jackson (pronounced "Daksa"), which was pretty cool. There's a little boy in her class who is also named Jackson, and the teacher was very impressed the other day that she is saying that word. Then we took her home, and she pointed at a picture of her cousin and said "Daksa" several times. I'm glad her cousin seems to have made an impression on her, since they are just 4 months apart and should have a lot of fun playing with each other over the years.

Her other complex word, by complex I mean two syllables, is flower (pronounced "fowwwoww" or something similar). She only kind of half has the meaning of that one. She never calls a flower anything else, but she also fairly reliably calls butterflies flowers. Maybe she thinks it means "pretty".

Current vocabulary (for posterity - most recent at top):
nice "nye"
zebra "zera"
nose "nooow"
flower "fowwwoww"
bath "ba"
bear "baaw"
Jackson "daksa"
balloon "baoo"
bird "bir"
duck "da"
dog "dah"
milk "mewl"
mama "mama"
daddy "dadee"

Wyoming

We are having a great time in Wyoming, as always. Monday and Tuesday we left Carina with her grandparents and did some hiking. We went to Lost Twin Lakes in the Bighorn mountains.

It was about a 5 or 5.5 mile hike in. This is the first time I've used my new backpack for actual hiking; I bought it before our trip to Patagonia, and we haven't been backpacking since. I was pretty tired by the time we got up there, but I can still walk a ways, it seems. We camped below the "lower" Twin lake. Before hiking out on Tuesday, we were discussing hiking up to the "upper" lake. Gavin turned to the side, though, and said "I'm interested in what's up there." So, we climbed a small mountain, instead.


We've been mainly playing with kiddos since. Carina is having fun with Cousin Caroline, although Caroline is a bit much for her sometimes. Carina has also definitely started talking. In addition to "daw" (dog) and "meel" (milk), which she's been saying for a while irregularly, we have heard new words "bir" (bird) and "Dacks" (Jackson).

Photos Galore

I haven't done albums in months, but today I went nuts and made albums for the second half of Carina's first year. They're on the Baby Countdown page here. It's probably a bit much for most people. But, she has grandparents and they read this site.

Why did I have all this time on my hands? Because I'm sick. Again. This is after the stomach thing last week that had everyone convinced that I was pregnant. My runny nose isn't a patch on Carina's, of course, but unlike some people I do care if I have snot running down my chin. (Ew!)

Really, You Have a Blog?

During my ascent sim last night, which was boring for me since they aborted every single run, I spent the time comparing baby notes with the guy sitting next to me. At one point I went to the blog to find a picture of Carina to show him. It has been a while since I posted any! We'll take care of that.

Having fun in the garden at Grammy and Grandad's.


Playing distrustfully with that messy birthday cake.


Finally eating some birthday cake.


A great one I got of her first trip to the neighborhood pool.


This is why the dogs have been banished to lie at least 5 feet from her chair during mealtimes.

Mid-June Already

We are told Carina took three steps at daycare yesterday. I've seen her take about 1/2 of a step myself. I can't believe we're almost to the walking phase. I expect she'll be getting around pretty well by the time her cousins get here next week.

Speeking of her cousins coming - where did the last month go? Last time I thought about this it was almost a month away and all of a sudden it is next week.

I'm stuck in a two-day meeting of which probably about 1 hour cumulative is going to be interesting to me. I hate that. At least I remembered to bring my laptop so I can work on my e-mail.

Florida Wrap

We're back. Our last three days in Florida were spent at the beach, and at Disney World. It has been years since we were at Disney, so we had a great time seeing all the updates. We made the most of our two days there; we visited Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom. We rode the new Toy Story ride (SO COOL!), saw Fantasmic, the SpectroMagic Parade, and the MK fireworks. We stayed out until midnight yesterday, even though we knew we had to get up before 7:00 to leave for the airport.

Florida was amazingly fun, but we were very ready to get back. We were both pointing out babies around Carina's age all the time in the parks. Carina was asleep when we got to Grammy and Grandad's, but she didn't make us wait too long. I heard her talking in her crib, so I cracked the door and stuck my head in. At first, she just stared at me. Then her eyes got huge - I mean HUGE - and she started running in place. Very satisfactory reaction. :)

So, now we're home, and tomorrow I go to work to see if the fact that we're flying means I'm less behind than I normally would be... I can hope. We actually got back home at around 4:00 this afternoon, so I have at least had time to do some stuff around the house.

Happy Birthday, Baby

One year ago today (in about 3 hours at 12:45 PM), Carina arrived. It is absolutely unbelievable that it has been that long. And yet, also unbelievable that we ever existed without her. It seems like her little arms around my neck and her little face snuggled into my shoulder are as necessary to my existance as breathing.

Her party yesterday was a huge success. She pulled in quite a haul, as expected. Everyone loves shopping for kids. In addition to enough clothing from Grammy and Grandma to keep her dressed to the 9s for the next year (or at least 6 months) of her life, she got some very cool toys. There were several aviation-themed gifts, including this Elmo ride-along airplane that has more buttons on it than Cari's Prius. This was both an adult and child favorite; Becca set about getting it out of the packaging right away as Aerik was fascinated.

The slip-n-slide got lots of use. ("Not for adult use", whatever. I think we proved that thing is fun for ages 3 to at least 31.) They've gotten quite a bit more sophisticated since our Version 1.0 we had as kids. I remember it was always a challenge setting up the sprinkler to evenly wet the slide, but that has been taken care of by the addition of an integrated sprinkler tube on the side. And then there is the splash pool at the end - definitely satisfying. The water in the wading pool was also dirtied with grass clippings from all the comings and goings. I never turned on the sprinkler as it didn't seem to be missed.

Carina opened her presents, and then had to go take a nap. She woke up in time for cake, but she was still groggy and wouldn't eat any of it. She did play with the frosting a bit on her hands, thoroughly decorating the table in front of her. No cake on the face, unfortunately. Maybe we'll try again tonight with a smaller piece.

Don't Blink

Don't blink
Just like that you're six years old and you take a nap and you
Wake up and you're twenty-five and your high school sweetheart becomes your wife
Don't blink
Just might miss your babies growin' like mine did
Turning into moms and dads; next thing you know your better half of fifty years is there in bed
And you're praying God takes you instead
Trust me friend, a hundred years goes faster than you think
So don't Blink
- Kenney Chesney

I've been feeling like this is the soundtrack of my life right now. Carina turns 1 in a little more than two weeks, and I can't believe it! It seems like just last month I was driving to the hospital with enough adrenalin in my system to make a horse jumpy. And just the other week she started eating people food. And just yesterday that she started crawling. In about 2 seconds, she'll be walking.

The problem is that blinking is an essential human function. I would be happy to remember every second, but no matter how hard you try it just blurs together. I can practically see her growing every time I watch her for 5 minutes straight, and time will not SLOW DOWN for me. So I take a lot of pictures and try to stop blinking.

Blink.

Damn.

Left Foot, Right Foot

Carina is learning to walk, and boy does she love it! Sunday, we had her in stitches by sitting a few feet apart and encouraging her to walk back and forth between us, holding Gavin's hands and then mine. Then last night, I stood her up holding on to this pushalong/ridealong car she has, and she walked 5-6 steps with it. Tonight she crossed the floor a few times with it. We've both seen her stand unsupported for a few seconds.

As always, she's being careful Carina. I remember when Caroline was around this age and learning to walk with her pushalong elephant, she had to keep walking faster and faster to keep up with it. TOTALLY out of control! Carina is keeping her balance, though. The car has gotten ahead of her a couple times, but she's always stopped and rocked back to get it in a more stable position.

I thought about getting a video tonight, but my camera was out in the car. Soon - gotta capture those first steps.

Lemons

It's funny to find instances where Carina takes after one of her parents. This time, it's lemon slices. Dad likes to suck on them. Who knew she would too?

Hickory Dickory

As I am getting ready this morning in my hotel room, from the next room over I hear a small voice floating through the wall.

"Hickory, dickory, dock
The mouse ran up the clock"

I smile, then sniff. Suddenly, I miss Carina so much I have to sit down with my laptop and shuffle though the last set of pictures I have of her.

In some ways, I've been enjoying this trip away from the baby. We've been out at dinner every night until 10:30 or 11:00. When I get back to the hotel after work, I can just sit down and relax rather than feeding, bathing, and putting down an increasingly tired baby.

But I have also been finding myself daydreaming about chubby cheeks, gummy smiles, and babling voices. I have missed my evening cuddle. I wonder what she's doing new today.

*hugs* to Carina

Baby's First Ski Trip

In spite of hurting my knee, the ski trip was not a complete failure. Our one day of skiing together was quite nice. Here's Gavin at the top of a couple double blues we tried early in the day. I have another nice panoramic shot from the top I'll have to add at home after I stitch it together.

And here's pictures of the both of us with Carina watching the Rusted Root concert from our balcony. She liked the music just as much as either of us. She didn't seem to mind the cold air, either, or the snow. That girl just rolls with it.

Back Home

It's nice being home after being out west for a few weeks. Roxy is curled up at my feet, snoring softly. The trips out to JPL were both great, I got a lot out of it. And some cool pictures, which will be posted later this weekend. Utah was fun, even though Jen bummed her knee. And I got a kick out of showing some pictures of Carina around. Lots of 'awwwws'.

(Lack of) Sleep

Carina had a rotten night last night. She got home from daycare completely exhausted, but she just sat and played in her crib for 40 minutes instead of sleeping. So, at 6:30 I got her up, fed her dinner, gave her a bath, and by 8:00 I was putting her back down. She slept until about 9:30. Then she got up again and cried. I took her a bottle. She sucked it down and cried when I put her back in her crib. I changed her. She smiled during the diaper change and cried when I put her back in her crib. I let her cry. She cried. I gave her another half bottle. She drank most of it, and then wanted to play. I put her down again and she cried.

Finally at about 11:15 I gave in and let her get up and play for about a half hour in her room. I was majorly irritated by that time, and had determined to let her play but not interact with her. That lasted about 10 minutes until she, in an effort to engage me, crawled up and stuck her smiling face right in mine for a kiss. I laughed in spite of myself. I love that kid, even when she’s keeping me up.

She finally (after some more crying) went down at 12:30, slept about an hour, woke up and fussed for another hour. Then at 2:30 AM, finally went to sleep for real.

The thing is, every time I went in there, she would want to get up and play. Not at 1:30 AM, girl! I am sooooo glad she’s normally a good sleeper.

Design Block

The other night I was amusing myself and exploring PaintShop by working on a custom design invitation for Carina's 1st birthday party. I like what I've done so far, but I'm at a loss as to what to do with the background. Maybe a couple catapillers? Flowers? What goes with alphabet blocks? And an apple?

(Completely random aside - I just saw a trailer for a new movie with Jackie Chan AND Jet Li in it. Gavin's head is going to explode!)

Anyway, back on the invitation... I welcome all ideas. I thought about just sending it to Sarah and seeing what she came up with, but I'm having fun doing it. I just need help getting past a little creative block here.

Yummy Leaves

I've been disbelieving the parenting literature that says to start trying to teach babies Carina’s age about limits. Surely she’s still too young to understand "no". The word is often met with an innocent smile and a repeat offence. However, I saw something this weekend that makes me think maybe it is possible.

We went on a walk Sunday afternoon, and after getting back to the house I put Carina down on the lawn to play for a bit. She had a grand old time feeling the grass and the dead leaves that have reappeared all over the lawn after my grand raking day last month. Anyway, since she’s still in the stage where her tongue is used to explore as much as her hands, I was keeping a sharp eye out for the grass and leaves going into her mouth. Every time she started to put a leaf in there, I’d place my hand between the leaf and her mouth, say "no", and move her hand down. When I did it, she’d get a concerned look on her face and then offer me the leaf as if to say "Oh, do you want it, Mommy? Here you go." Then I’d smile, take the leaf, say thank you, and tell her what a good girl she is.

Do you see it coming? Twice, right before we went inside, she started to put a leaf in her mouth, but before I could get my hand into position and say "no" she stopped, held it out to me, and smiled! Once might have been coincidence, but twice?

Easter Photos

Carina's grandad took lots of great pictures on Easter weekend.

I love my Grammy, and Grammy loves me!

We got her "Easter toys" instead of Easter candy.

You guys, this dress totally messes up my crawling!

Grandad labled most of these "Carina Happy". I guess that pretty much summs it up.

She's starting to climb, people!

Shona is way more willing to get up close and personal with Carina than our dogs. Carina loves it usually, but that nose is cold!

Dustbuster

Carina is enjoying her newfound mobility. She’s starting to get annoyed when you want her to lie still, say for a diaper change. She’s also very good at finding dirt in the corners of rooms. She will crawl over, pick up some dog hair or a piece of grass and hold it up to me as if to say “Mommy! Look what I found! And guess what? THERE’S MORE!”

Tomorrow is my last shift. It will be Undocking day. I’m glad the mission is winding down – I’m ready to get back to normal working and family hours. Working in the office again after a mission is always a bit of a letdown, though. We have skiing plans for the first weekend in April, though, so it will be all good.

If you’re in the Houston area, set your watch for 8:28 PM Tuesday night. Go outside and look to the Southwest. Three space vehicles will be passing over: ATV, then ISS, then Shuttle. It should be a really cool sighting.

Inspecting

I have three more shifts left during this mission after today. It has been a long, long mission. March has almost completely passed me by while we've been in space.

Today is the "late inspection" day. We're taking pictures of the Shuttle's wings and nose to look for any damage from orbital debris hits. After today, my console is on the downslope of the mission. It will mainly be about getting ready to undock and land. In non-trajectory world, though, there is still one EVA to accomplish tomorrow.

I'm feeling a bit blue about working this weekend. Meg and Mike are down to celebrate Easter with their grandchild (Gavin and I barely enter into the equation anymore!) :) I'm kind of bummed that I didn't get to see their reactions to seeing Carina crawl for the first time, as I was already at work when they arrived. Oh well, it looks like my parents will be here in a couple weeks, so I'll get to see that.

Saturday

Today was nice. Stayed up until 2am playing online. I lost my spaceship to a catastrophic hail of lasers and missiles, and lots of my friends lost theirs, but we had fun. Slept until 0815, did some dishes and then went upstairs to check on Carina. She was awake, just laying quietly in her crib and playing with her feet. Big smile for daddy. Back downstairs I surprised her with a bowl of rice instead of the bowl of oatmeal she's used to. Several more big smiles. More big smiles for mom, for dogs, for sunlight, for dinner time and feeding herself chicken and brocilli mush from her bowl, and then after bath time there were smiles and stares of wonder for moonlight and the sounds of dusk.

In a nice contrast to most of this week, nearly every time today Carina went to sleep without a fuss. Even though she's only spent a few hours a day at day care in the afternoon, it's been hard getting her to unwind at the end of the day. Some evenings were spent with her crying loudly except for A) bites of food, B) some gulps of milk, and C) bath time. Given all that took a few hours, it was a lot of crying. But today she was great.

Today was nice.

Sploosh

9:47 PM and it actually feels like the middle of the afternoon to me. Missions do strange things to my internal clock.

I'm very much looking forward to the weekend. I'm excited that I'll get to see Gavin for more than 2 minutes. I'm also excited that he'll be there to get up with Carina so that I can get my first 8 hour stretch of sleep since last Friday. I got through this week by telling myself that I went through a worse spell of interrupted nights last June, but you do forget how tired you were with that newborn.

Becca and I went out to lunch today (had the best bread ever at Tuscany Bistro, by the way). By the time I got back home, Carina was getting a little tired, but I needed to take her to the daycare anyway in about 20 minutes. So in order to keep her up and happy while I got her bag ready, I sat her in the kitchen over by the fridge and gave her my car keys to play with. She sat there jingling them for a few minutes while I started making here a couple bottles to take, and then I realized that I didn't hear them anymore. I looked to where she had been, and she was no longer there. I looked the other way, and there she was - crawling very deliberately across the kitchen floor. I proceeded to watch, bottles half made and formula powder everywere, as she crawled straight up to the dog dishes and SPLOOSH! plunged both hands into the water bowl giggling madly at the huge fountain of slobbery water that fountained over her head and onto the floor.

No doubt the idea of my baby daughter playing in the dog water and later sucking on her fingers is just something I'm going to have to get used to. For today, I was unable to restrain my yuk response entirely, and those little hands got dried as soon as the bottles were capped. I think we are officiall into the "getting into everything" phase, though.

Approaching the Ides of March

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Jen's working the mission and it's coming along pretty well. They've had a few pieces of space junk to avoid, and that's about it. She gets home a little after midnight so I get to see her for about 5 minutes before we both fall asleep.

Carina is feeling better, after her 104+ deg fever over the weekend. She still has a runny nose, but, it's not very bad. Attention, oh unsuspecting world: she is now crawling! Last night she crawled 5 feet towards me in the kitchen while she was very unhappy and hungry. Tonight she was crawling around in the room upstairs, chasing the dogs and me. We've been trying to get the dogs ready for this over the last few weeks, and I think they're doing pretty well. Roxy let Carina climb a little on her without getting grumpy, and then Carina left her alone and went on to something else. Zoya's pretty gentle with her now too. We're also working with Carina to get her to softly pet the dogs, instead of fiercely grabbing their fur and skin.

No one likes the fierce grab. She's pretty strong!

My work is coming along. I'm splitting my time between the Mars Science Laboratory mission I've been working on since I graduated and the Orion capsule that we'll fly after we retire the Shuttle. For the Mars mission we've been spending time figuring out what crazy scenarios can break the entry guidance while it tries to get us within 10 km of the target, and how we can counter that without hamstringing the guidance. The desire is to have a robust guidance that still delivers the spacecraft to the target on both good days and bad days. Some of this is done in the flight software. Some of this is done in how we operate the spacecraft. Many of these ideas we've been carrying of for a few years but haven't had time to really start looking at them until now. Meanwhile, the project pushes forward with successful parachute tests in wind tunnels, with flight software being tested in thousands of simulations, and with flight hardware being delivered and assembled. Launching in Summer 2009 doesn't really feel that far away now. :)

The Orion work I'm involved with is interesting, mostly because its new for me. I'm not doing much guidance work with it because I don't have the time available to really sink my teeth into it. But a few weeks ago there were some URGENT! items that had to be addressed pretty quickly as the design settles down for this year's Preliminary Design Review. I've been working with some people to figure out some of the ops concept for the capsule entry and recovery, how often we would try to splashdown where, where should we go if we can't wait in orbit for some reason. It's working with maps and orbit dynamics and constraints such as ensuring the safe disposal of rocket debris, acceptable weather for the capsule to splashdown, where our recovery forces may be, and getting enough sunlight prior to spacecraft return so the batteries have enough juice to last through entry and the time spent bobbing in the water afterwards. The last few days we've been chasing after an issue where one system team's assumptions turned out to be too constraining for us to fly missions, so we had to work out a reasonable constraint that balances our ability to fly the spacecraft and also doesn't drive their system to an extreme.

It is fun designing a spacecraft. It is also a lot of fun figuring out how best to fly one whether it's at Mars or at Earth. That is why I'm pretty glad to be where I am in Mission Operations, getting to help out with both.

Besides work and playing Carina, I haven't done very much lately. We went out on Sunday for steak with Becca and friends in celebration of Becca's birthday; Carina tried to eat the crayons. Jen and I also watched Innerspace on cable. Jen had never seen it. That took me back to some memories when I was a kid. I totally forgot Meg Ryan was in it... must have been one of her first movies since she didn't headline it.

Patacake

I know I just posted videos, but I'm so proud. Look what my girl learned to do!

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Amazingly, I had a few minutes today to put together some recent baby pics and movies.

She can stand up now herself by holding on to us or the furniture.


Gavin really liked this one. He seems to have a thing with me wearing stupid stuff on my head.


And then for movies...

This first one is several weeks old - just to capture her laugh.


This one is more recent - just having fun.

Best Friends

Oh boy, have I been working hard. Not as hard as some people I could mention, but pretty darn hard. I've done document or presentaion editing at home every day this week except one. I hardly dare mention it, in case I invite a catastrophe tomorrow, but at this point I still think I'll get the weekend off.

When I dropped Carina off at day care this morning, I spent a few minutes talking with the teachers about starting to feed her the school's food. While we were talking, one of the other babies crawled over to the spot where Carina was sitting. Now, I've been told that Carina and Mackenzie are good friends, but I haven't had a chance to watch them together much before. They weren't doing much, just looking at each other and reaching out to touch each other a couple times. But, it was unmistakably social interaction.

I found myself a bit jealous of Mackenzie. Unreasonable, but I'm sort of used to being Carina's only "friend" (well, besides Daddy). It made me start thinking that one day she'll be a teenager, and will probably not consider me a friend at all. She'll rather spend her time with her Mackenzies than me. Another reminder that I need to appreciate every day.

The Stumbling Edge

We went ice skating today for Cari's birthday. It was really fun, but I'm not nearly as good at it as I remember being. Not that I was ever good at it, but I used to be able to not look too awkward.

After skating, we went to eat an early dinner. By this point Carina had been up for four straight hours. We were hoping she'd nap in the restaraunt, but no dice. Dinner took quite a while, and by then end it was 7:00 PM and she hadn't slept since 1:00! For all that, she was still her happy self while we were there.

The problem, of course, comes after we get home. She's overtired and fussing instead of going to sleep like she needs to. I think she just now finally settled down - no crying for the last 10 minutes or so.

I'm going to try getting in my first solo cross-country tomorrow; the weather didn't cooperate today.

Making Friends

We've had a pretty social month. First, Kennda was in town for a few days. We got together with her, Becca, Cari, and the Pettys. Carina and Aerik got to know each other a bit.


Then last weekend, Carina had a play date with Lily. Here they are playing in their nearly identical exersaucers.


Carina had fun helping do the laundry this morning.

Bad Cooking?

My cooking made Carina throw up last night.

All right, it probably wasn’t the cooking. She still has issues with texture, and it was new and probably a bit too lumpy for her. Still, she took a few spoon fulls, made a face, gagged, and threw up.

Anyway, Carina is officially 8 months old now. 8 months! That’s 2/3 of a year! It definitely doesn’t feel like it has been that long since she was born. Although I am starting to get nostalgic about when she would happily cuddle in my arms. I get about 5 minutes when she first starts sucking down a bottle, but that’s about it. Even though she isn’t crawling yet, she doesn’t really want to sit still. The favorite passtime is now bouncing.

I got some cute pictures of her and Lily at their playdate this weekend. I don’t have them downloaded yet, though. I’ll try to do that tonight.

Yes, She Was Indeed Born

I finally got Carina a birth certificate, nearly 8 months after she was born. You'd think that pretty much everyone would need/want a birth certificate for their baby, and that the certificates would therefore be easy to order. Not so.

I realized a few months ago that, hey, we never got one of those! Remembering that we filled out some paperwork for a birth certificate at the hospital, I called them. "Oh, you need to call the county and order it; here's the number."

So, I called the county. The lady asked if I needed a real one. Uh, yes?! "Oh well we don't issue real ones here, but we do have a computer printout that's good for most things." Like passports? "Oh, no. You'll have to order one from the state; here's the number."

So, I called the state. 5 phone menus later, I'm told that I need to either come in person to the office downtown, or I can go to the web site and mail the form in. I mail the form in, after following all the instructions. It gets returned because I didn't include a photocopy of my (the mother's) ID. That wasn't in the instructions. (Aside: Why only the mother's ID? It's like fathers don't exist in our baby culture.) I return the application with a copy of my drivers liscense, and finally we get a birth certificate out of it.

I'm glad that I thought to do that before I really needed to. All-in-all it took a couple months. Now, I need to start the passport rigamorole. I think I'm going to start working on Gavin to agree to a trip to Europe this summer.

Losing Sleep

One of the frustrating things about having a baby is that every once in a while there will be a day that's completely different for no apparent reason. Case in point: Monday night. Carina woke up 6 times - crying, wanting to be held, unwilling to be put back in her crib. The last time at 3:30 AM, we decided to just let her cry for a bit. She probably cried 10-15 minutes before going back to sleep.

The next day, she went back to her normal 12 hours straight sleep.

What the hell?

I'm glad that she's normally so happy, but it always makes me feel like she really, really needs something when she cries. It really sucks when you can't understand what she needs.

Twist and Shout

Unfortunately, this came out a bit dark, but it is hi-larious! Turn on the sound or it will only be mildly funny. :)

A Real Trooper

Carina is the best baby. I mean, she is sooooo good. She went to sleep about 10 PM in the airport, and she slept all the way to Oakland. She woke up in the airport in Oakland until we got the car, but then she went back to sleep for the night. Not once did she cry while we dragged her around the country in the middle of the night. She woke up this morning her smiling self and is only a bit more tired than usual.

I'm thinking this means that Carina travels well. So, now I'm asking myself, where should we go this year?

Snoozing

I think Carina inherited her sleeping habits from me. When we don't have the daily necessity of getting up in time to get to day care, we tend to sleep later every morning and stay up later every night. Gavin says that we're just getting her on Pacific time early, but by the time we head back to home she's going to be on Hawaii time at this rate.

I bought my brother-in-law a game called "Masons" for Christmas. We played it a couple nights ago, and it was pretty fun. It's sort of in the "Settlers" category of games. It doesn't have the trading aspect of Settlers, which is one of my favorite things about the game. Masons can be played by two people, though, which could be very useful.

Howdy from WY

Well, we made it to Wyoming, finally. Carina did very well on the airplane. We took her in to the doctor today, and her ears still have fluid in them. They may or may not still be infected, so we started her on a new antibiotic. She's still feeling well, though, so it's all good.

We've had like 18" of snow since we got here. There was about 15" at my parents on Christmas Day. Then we got a few more today. Carina doesn't seem to like the cold too much. Especially if it's windy.

There are tons of kiddos around this year. But we can't seem to get them all awake and happy at the same time for a picture. We definitely need to do that soon.

It Never Rains...

Apparently, it's not enough that Carina's fighting off an ear infection AND a terrible cold. You see, about a week ago (right before she got sick), she learned to roll over from her back onto her tummy. She hasn't figured out how to roll back yet, though. What this means is that when she's asleep, she'll roll onto her tummy, wake up, and start to cry. It also means that swaddling, which we've been doing since day 1 as a means of comfort and also a means of keeping her pacifier in her mouth, no longer works. About all it's doing is trapping her arms so she has no chance of rolling herself back over.

Now the dilemma is that she has to learn to either sleep on her tummy, roll herself back over, or not roll over in the first place. But, I'm also kind of reluctant to let her fuss too long because she needs her sleep to get over the sickness. So Gavin and I have been going in to flip her back over and put the paci back in periodically. Did I mention that this has currently been going on for about half an hour? With no signs of slacking? And that we've been doing it for a week?

Oh yeah, and I think she gave me her cold. :P

Better

Carina feels a lot better today. Her fever is down to between 100 and 101. She stayed up for more than 20 minutes at a time and wanted to play. She smiled. :) We still have lots of boogers, but she'll get over that.

We are going to have to delay leaving town until Monday. Plane tickets between now and then cost about $1100-1200 per ticket. I'm kind of bummed - this was going to be the longest we'd been in Casper for years. We'll still be there for a week, though. And we'll have a happy and healtier baby.

Meanwhile, I "get" to go do the things at work that I was going to miss by leaving Wednesday. Including a sim at 8:00 AM tomorrow. So, it's bedtime.

Ear Infection

After another really tough night last night, it was obvious that we couldn't get on an airplane with Carina today. She was obviously completly miserable, and her temperature had spiked to 103 deg. So, we cancelled our tickets and took her to the doctor instead. Turns out she has an ear infection. So, now she is on antibiotics, still feeling pretty miserable, and we don't know when or how we're going to be leaving for Christmas.

Our original plan was to fly from Houston to Casper today. Then we were going to fly from Casper to Oakland on the 31st and spend a few days with Gavin's grandmother. We were returning directly from Oakland to Houston on Jan 4.

Recreating that itinerary is now going to cost us no less than $760 each. Not including the $200 we forfeited for cancelling the flight today. With 5 fewer days in Wyoming.

:(

Tears

Carina is sick, I mean really sick, for the first time. Runny nose, cough, presumed sore throat, temperature of 101.6. So tired she can't keep her eyes open, but keeps coughing and waking up. And crying, crying, crying.

I know that as the parent of a non-crier, it's kind of bad form to complain about the few little spats we do have. But, when your baby almost never cries, you know that the tears are actually about something. She's tired. She's hungry. You pinched her finger in the seat buckle.

I'm just not hardened to seeing my little angel's face all red with big, fat tears running down. It breaks my heart, and I would do anything to fix it.

For Tracy...

Apparently, I've been terribly remiss in posting photos of the Chunk-A-Monk. Let's remedy that a little.

This one I like to call: I'll smile when I'm on my belly, but only if that other baby smiles back!


She won't consider washing dishes entertainment for long.


I love the doggie, and the doggie's scared of me!


Isn't that cute? With the slobber all running down her chin?

18 lb 6 oz

I was pretty close. We went to the doctor today, and I thought Carina would be about 18 pounds or so. Babies are supposed to double their birthweight in the first 6 months. Carina did a bit more than that. :) She's supposed to start growing a bit slower now, and have a smaller appetite. I would never have known that from how she ate tonight. I couldn't spoon the peas and carrots out of the bowl fast enough to satisfy her.

I'm Thankful For

We had a great time in Conroe for Thankgiving. We didn't do much; ate some yummy turkey; watched some football; played with the baby. It was perfect.

Just last Wednesday I was having trouble believing that it was actually Thanksgiving. Today, I'm having the typical post-holiday reaction: "I can't believe I have to work tomorrow." And have to work, I do. I have so much to do in the next three weeks or so before we take off for Christmas, it isn't even funny. I'm also a bit worried about being lead for the first mission after the holidays and taking 2 1/2 weeks off, but I'm trying to sooth the guilt with the idea that nobody else will be at work then either. I do expect that it will make January that much more hectic, though.

Auntie M and Auntie L

I can't belive that Thanksgiving is over already. This fall has gone by so quickly. Carina had fun having her Thanksgiving dinner (squash and peas) at the table with us while we had dessert.



Lauren and Melissa have been having fun getting reacquainted with Carina. She's so much bigger than the last time they saw her.

My flying plans for tomorrow are pretty likely to be scuttled by weather. It's hard to be terribly upset about not having to drive 1 hr each way to get there, though. Here's hoping for next weekend.

Camping Recap

Camping with Carina is definitely different. We picked out a camp site and set her down in the shade to watch the trees for a bit. Gavin and I started pulling stuff out of the car, but before we could start setting up the tent Carina decided it was time for food! Meanwhile, another car had shown up and parked in the camp site right next to us. I was kind of hoping that when they heard the baby crying they'd choose to head down the road (there were plenty of open sites). They stayed, though.

Well, at least they knew what they were in for. Carina came down with a cold that night. Her nose was getting all stuffy, and about every four hours during the night she woke up and fussed for 15-20 minutes until she made her nose run enough to clear out. Gavin says that they actually packed up and left about 1AM when it threatened to rain. (They had no tent!)

Fussy night aside, we had fun. We found our way down to the cove near the camp site and Zoya went swimming (there was a little lip, and Roxy wouldn't jump off it). We tried walking the other way a bit, but the dogs were getting burrs in their feet. Carina was tired anyway, so we went back to the camp site.

The next day, we drove to the other side of the pinninsula where there were beaches. I dangled Carina's feet in the water, and she seemed to really like it. I think she's going to be a water baby! I didn't put her all the way in; it was a bit cold.

All in all, a mostly sucessful first outing! Many more to go.

Camping with Baby

It took us one more month that I thought, but we're going to take Carina camping tomorrow. One night only - we figured it would be better to start small. The first thing we debated was where she should sleep. We finally decided that the family bed concept might be best for camping. I had to go get a car roof carrier since we can't fit all the equipment in the car with the baby and the dogs. I think we've got it all set, though. I'm excited!

My parents flew through Houston today on their way to the Caymans for a dive trip. Thanks to all the airport security these days, it wasn't really practical to take Carina up there for a couple hours to see them. It seems like such a wasted opportunity, though. Mom called me from the airport; I could tell it was killing her to be so close to her granddaughter without seeing her.

Conciousness

Everybody pray/hope/whatever for good weather at KSC on Wednesday. I'm ready to be done with this one. I totally got cheated out of my good hours. I was only supposed to have to do 4:00 AM once this mission, but I have to do it again tonight, and the night after that. And the night after that if we don't land on time. And crazy people are even talking about another day of extension if the weather doesn't cooperate.

I want to sleep at night again.

Carina is starting to really amaze me with her emerging abilities. She's started reaching for and grasping things now. And then trying to eat them. She can sit by herself for a short time, but she gets tired/bored of that pretty easily and topples over. And cries if you aren't there to catch her. She's decided carrots are OK. Mommy needs to make her something else to eat soon. You know, once I'm not keeping the vampire hours anymore.

I got in some flying today. I had to call my instructor for advice on whether the rough running I felt was OK or not. He told me to run the engine at high RPM for a bit to see if it was just a fouled spark plug. It was. It was rather hazy today, and a bit tough to see the horizon. I did pretty good, though. I practiced steep turns and did much better on them. I also landed in a higher crosswind than I've seen recently very well. I was proud of myself.

OK, I'm sure this just sounds like rambling. I tend to go stream of conciousness at 2:00 AM.

she has good taste in movies!

Last night AMC was playing The Hunt for Red October, so we watched it. Carina was fascinated by the movie! Maybe it was the sonar sounds, or the ocean cloaked submarine profiles, or Sean Connery's accent, but Carina had a great time.

And then, for an encore, AMC played a widescreen version with tons of factoids on the bottom of the screen! If only I had known before I had spent two hours watching it. Oh well. I guess I had to watch it again. Not many people can say they've watched 5 hours of The Hunt for Red October in one day. Except, perhaps, the film projectionists. And the people that made the film. And Sarah's family.

Did you know that:
- Sean Connery often felt sea-sick when they tilted the submarine control room?
- The principle screenwriter was offhandedly offered the Chief of the Boat (CoB) role on USS Dallas, and consequently kept writing his character into more and more scenes? The screenwriter and director together acted out scenes before cutting the shooting script.
- The sub yard that Jack Ryan visits was a real submarine drydock in San Diego, the first time the US Navy had ever let a film crew in to see one? They draped tarps over the propeller section since its design was (and is) classified.
- They used many US Navy crewmen for the Dallas and Reuben James scenes?
- They used Russian immigrants and US Coast Guard crewmen for the Red October?
- Most of the Russian immigrants refused to sing the Russian national hymn?
- Sean Connery wasn't the first choice for Ramius, but the previous actor had to withdraw when production was delayed?
- The director wrestled briefly with the selection of Connery? He wanted the audience to question Ramius' motives for much of the movie and he was worried that with Connery, no one would believe he was a bad guy. But he decided, hey, it's Sean Connery, we'll live with him!
- Once James Earl Jones signed on, a lot more actors came out of the woodwork to try to join the cast?
- The movie was being produced as the Berlin Wall was crumbling? The director had already thought to make the movie like a second Russian Revolution (homage to The Battleship Potemkin classic), and the real world events just prior to the release of the movie really hit home.
- Clancy loosely based his story on an article he had read concerning the Soviet frigate Storozhevoy that attempted to defect? The Russians declassified the 1976 incident just as the movie opened. The frigate had made it to within 21 miles of Sweden before being forced to surrender.

Beautiful Baby

Before going to work tonight, I took Carina out for a walk around the neighborhood in the stroller. Every time I'd look at her for a little while, she'd smile as if to say "Hi, Mommy! I love you!". And then she'd go back to staring at the trees with a tired look on her face as if to say "Why am I not in bed right now?". That girl would do nothing but sleep if she didn't need to eat 5 times a day.

This is the second weekend of the mission. This is right about when I start thinking that I've been working an awful lot lately and I'm glad it will be over soon. The EVA went well today, so we should be trying to land next Wednesday as planned. Much work is still ahead of me, though.

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.

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.