Christmas in July? Halloween in December.

Because it is almost Christmas I thought it was about time to post the girls Halloween photo. That's just the kind of mom I am.


Here they are at Emily's preschool party. Emily was a witch, although it's clear she isn't wearing her hat, and Claudia was a little black cat, although she is sans ears here.

Whaddya want? It's Christmas!

MRI Update

Just a quick post to let everyone know what little I found out at the oncologist on Monday. Right now it looks as though I will need another six week round of radiation. The good news is (was there good news?) that the doctor has said that I can put off starting the treatment until just after the holidays. That is good not just because the holidays would be hard if I was feeling awful from the treatment, but also because to get the radiation the girls and I are going to have to move to Iowa City (more than three hours away) for the six weeks.

There is still a lot we don't know yet and I will update this as soon as I know any more.

Thanks to everyone for their good wishes. It means the world to me.

Emily turns four!

Even as I write these words I can't imagine that I have a child that is four years old. How could that possibly be? It is only made worse by the fact that Claudia looks so much like Emily did at 18 months and so I seem to be reliving Emily’s babyhood at the same time that she is growing in to a school-age child in front of me.

On Sunday, the 30th, we got together with Eric's family for birthday party number one. Emily decided on an Eloise themed cake from a bakery for the event. Here she is looking longingly at the piece she picked out: Eloises face from the very center of the cake. Of course, why not that piece?

For some reason Blogger won't let me put the one of her sticking her face into the cake to eat it, so you'll just have to imagine that.

After we ate she opened gifts. Slippers are nice.

Birthday cards are... confusing? Painful? Personal attacks?


On Emily’s actual birthday, she opened the gifts from Eric, Claudia, and me. This was a small, understated affair that consisted of her taking possession of her own store, which she has lusted over for more than a year, since we went to the Omaha Children’s Museum.

She also received some dolls and doll clothes, which were also a big hit even though it sometimes seems as if every vertical surface in our home is covered in dolls and their gear. Because what every house full of real baby crap needs is a bunch of pretend baby crap.


On Saturday, Emily finally had her first “friends” birthday party after having to postpone it a week due to illness. There was nothing understated about this affair. It was a “Tea at the Plaza with Eloise” extravaganza. And, I think Eric put it best when he said, “Well, this is a real manly man party.”

The girls began with a scavenger hunt for boxes containing different dress up items. Once they collected them all, the girls gathered at a large, tulle covered mirror to dress for the tea party.



The glint of the sun off the mock-rhinestone jewelry was blinding.

Once dressed, the girls enjoyed a spot of tea.

Next came the gift opening. I have never given a child's party before and I must say that we had a stroke of good luck here. When it came time to open the gifts, the party girls were looking a little ticked off that Emily planned on keeping what they had brought for her, so we decided that it was a fine time to hand out the goodie bags, which in this case were pink hat boxes filled with little china tea sets and other treasures for the girls to take home. Emily got to open her gifts and the guests got to open their. Everyone was happy.

Lastly, each girl got to decorate her own five-inch cake. The results of all the piped frosting, colored sugar, and sprinkles mounded on top of the small cakes was more than a little nauseating for the adults present. All the girls got to eat one slice of their cake and then the rest was sent home with them in a bakery box with personalized label and tied with a ribbon. Well, all the girls except Emily had one slice. Emily dumped her frosting and sugar into a mountain on her cake and then dug into the center with a fork. Is it just me or is there a theme of bad cake manners here?

A blog AND a digital camera? God help us all!

For my birthday I got a digital camera and so I have been documenting everything in our lives since then. While it isn't what I would call an exciting life, it is a full one.

This week:

A) We all continued to be sick and grumpy, but there were moments of comforting kindness to be found here and there.

B) Emily and Claudia rediscovered the joy of suckers. Sadly, Emily has yet to master the precise art of headband wearing, which drives me crazy.

C) Claudia continued to enjoy the freedom of being able to feed herself. These pictures are from two separate meals but on the same day.

D) We took in my nephew Ryan's elementary school football game with our dear friend, Evie. I am not just "not a fan" of sports; I loathe sports. But I do get a kick out of all of the ten year-olds out there in their giant pads.

E) And, lastly, Thursday night we took part in the Belmond Fire Department Open House by riding around town on top of a fire truck in the 20-something degree weather. This is life on the edge in a small town, hanging perilously off an engine cruising down Main Street in the dark.

I blame Martha

The week before last it seems that Emily mentioned to me that she'd like to have a little tea party in the park someday. While that may be what she said, what I heard was Martha Stewart in my ear singing siren songs of fruit kabobs and sandwiches in the shape of flowers.

This was no little tea party in the park. This was a move furniture, set up tents, bake homemade brownies until midnight the night before kind of shebang.

Lanette was kind enough to bring her camera to document the entire thing for use in my commitment trial.

Exhibit 1: Emily who probably just wanted PB&J and juice at the park, but she is kind to put up with her mother's over-the-topness.

Exhibit 2: The girls mid tea party.

Exhibit 3: The girls are joined at last by Carson who was invited and was at the park the entire time but who, once he saw the table said, "Wait a minute. Is this some kind of TEA party? No way!" And off he went to do rough and tumble "boy things" until the girls lured him back with fruit kabobs. Ah, sweet, sweet fruit kabobs. Is there no end to their power?

I have no idea why Emily is making that face, but I do know that it wasn't because Carson joined them. We haven't gotten to the cootie stage yet.

By the way, in the background please notice my fabulous $700 van. I just realized tonight that we got it two years ago and it still runs if not exactly like a dream then at least far from a nightmare. I say, $700 well spent!

Some people get a great deal of pleasure showing off their expensive things, I am perhaps a bit too far the other way. If I could piece together a mode of transportation for free it would make my year. I am doing pretty well so far since my bike and the trailer together were only $21. Anyway, back to the tea party.

Exhibit 4: Claudia who was not invited to the kid's table but instead had to sit with the moms until the big kids went off to play and only then could she sneak over and knock down all the teapots and cup in protest for such shabby treatment.

Scenes from a garage sale

Imagine someone you love and trust goes through your things while you’re sleeping. This person paws your things looking at them not with the sentimental look of adoration you would, but with a cold, critical eye. This person sees only the scuffmarks and tears, not the memories of the past and the potential for the future.

Once through your things, this loved one goes back, gathers up what he/she wants and takes it away. Sure you don’t realize immediately what things are gone—your grandfather’s pocket watch, that DVD that you love but haven’t watched in months, that sweater that makes you look like you have breasts or that you are 10 lbs. thinner, or both—you don’t realize they are gone but you loved those things, and you will be heartbroken when their absence registers.

Now, still oblivious to the betrayal, you join your loved one for what you think will just be a fun day out at a friend’s house, but you are wrong. Instead, you are forced to watch strangers buy your things and carry them out of your sight. You are powerless to stop any of it. You feel as though parts of you are being ripped away.

That’s what Friday must have been like for Emily, except that the things I took to sell included unused baby toys, torn pop-up tents, and rarely watched Blue’s Clues videos that might cause ADHD.

Nonetheless, her gut wrenching screams of, “That’s my stuff! They cannot have it! THAT’S! NOT! FOR! SALE!” echoed throughout Belmond this weekend as though I were selling off her body parts. Despite my best efforts to quiet her she pled with me, breathless and panicked, “Mommy… get that back. Please, I need it. I play with it all the time. Please, please, please Mommy.” She tried to force herself from my arms to chase down the shoppers like they were her family going in another line at Auschwitz, hands reaching out, tears streaming.

It is only because Emily treats every event lately like she is being carried off to a death camp that I can watch her act like this and continue doing whatever thing it is that is causing her heartbreak. So, I held her with one hand and sold her things with the other, and soon she was over it enough to eat donuts and play with the other kids.

I did, however, notice last night when we were with my in-laws and they asked her about the sale that she had this weird sort of expression on her face that reminded me of the one that my brother used to get after he’d been removed from a situation, spanked for misbehaving, and retuned. It was this look like something awful had happened to her and she had accepted it but that it was maybe even worse that the adults in her life could sit around talking about her assault like it was okay, that really bothered her. Or maybe she was just tired and I’m not as over it as I thought I was.

Had I really done this awful thing to her? I would feel an awful betrayal if Eric sold my things. Does it seem weird to anyone that we do things to our kids that we wouldn’t want done to us? Would absolutely everything I do as a parent seem this strange if I over thought it this much?

This was my first garage sale experience as a mom (having one that is) and my child was the only one out of all the families there that had a problem with it, so this time I’ll chalk it up to tired child and even-more-tired-mom. Because, despite Emily’s best efforts I sold her things, and mine too, and the sale was a success.

Movin' on

I have, thus far, received nothing but lovely comments about my insane, pointless ramblings on this site. But, because I feel a bad subjecting the innocent people who come here just to look at pictures and receive updates of the girls to my aforementioned musings, I have decided to move them, the musings, not the girls, to a new site.

What is it that Abraham Lincoln once said? “It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Yeah, that’s not happening.

Anyway, if you think that it may be your cup of tea, or if you just want to laugh behind my back at what a loser I am, feel free to visit http://katesasterisk.blogspot.com/

In a funny side note, I looked up the meaning of “musings” earlier when I was writing this to make sure that it was an appropriate word. It turns out that it is absolutely not, at least not in this context.

mus·ing (my z ng)
n.
1. A product of contemplation; a thought. “an elegant tapestry
of quotations, musings, aphorisms, and autobiographical reflections” (James Atlas).

I am nothing, if not capable of an elegant tapestry of autobiographical reflections.

When I grow up

There was this funny game that we played at my bridal shower, lo those many years ago. The hostess, Miranda, called Eric up before hand and asked him a series of questions about us as individuals and as a couple. The point of the game was, I think, to show us that even after living together for eight years we didn’t know each other at all, and therefore we had no business getting married.

Or, maybe it was just for fun.

Anyway, one of the questions she asked was, “ What has Kate always wanted to be?”

The correct answer, and the one I gave, was, “A writer.”

The answer Eric gave? “James Taylor’s wife.”

I was thinking about this recently because Emily has started school (I know, I know, it is just one half day a week, but still) and I was trying to imagine what I would do as a job once the kids were both in school. Eric is pretty nice about the not holding down a job thing now, but I bet once there are no kids at home all day he’ll be expecting me to contribute a little. Between my little and odd experience and the small town, the choices are a bit limited.

And so I started thinking about what I wished I could do. I love writing, but it isn’t exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. First of all, liking something and being able to do that something are two very different things. Second, being a writer didn’t seem like the kind of thing that real people did for a living. It seemed like the kind of thing unreal people, famous writers I would never meet, did. And so it seemed that writing was out, through no fault of my own.

But then, a year or so ago a friend of mine published a book, and I don’t mean that she printed it out at Kinko’s, nor did she even do some self-publishing thing on the Internet. She really published a real book. And there were reviews and reading tours and all sorts of writer-like things.

I would religiously follow her blog and think, “Aw man, now she’s reading in New York City and drinking at artsy bars and all with her baby in tow. Why can’t I be reading and drinking and artsy?” There were all the drawn out details of all it took to be her. She was constantly posting reviews and reading schedules and letters she’d received, and it all seemed like a little much for me.

And so, the problem, I think, is twofold. It’s true that to actually be a writer I would have to be smarter than I am, a far better writer than I am, more interesting than I am and um… actually having something to say might be good too. Oh, and spelling and grammar might help.

But, it is clear from her blog that I would also have to be driven and self-promoting, two of the many things I am not, things, in fact, I could never do. So, maybe the fact that I’ll never be a writer really is beyond my control. But, I am not without options.

Does anyone know if James Taylor is available?

Ugh, portrait time again

When is it not time to have pictures taken? It seems like between the two girls I'm suppose to have them taken about every two weeks.

These aren't even great pictures and yet I still bought a car full of them which means that you can either:
A) contact me to get your very own copy or
B) create any crappy image of Girl 1 and/or Girl 2 and offer to sell it to me.

On notice!

The best part about having tumors is the outpouring of kindness from everyone. Sometimes it comes in strange, irreverent ways, and those are the ones I like best.

Thanks to Dean and Cynthia for this. I had it printed out and stuck on my fridge for more than a week before I saw the Wright County Attorney entry. How self-centered am I? I didn’t even see Eric there.

For those who don’t know this is Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (Comedy Central) and his On Notice board. If you don’t partake already, I highly recommend the nightly cocktail of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Trust me, you won’t even miss the pseudo-news, “new life-saving information, report at ten”, this isn’t news it’s a commercial crap that is the local ten o’clock news, although you will be scared to death at the complete apocalyptic nightmare the world is in at any given time. But it’s funny, really funny. I’m not sure how that works, but it does.

An open letter to Mrs. Sifert

Monday is registration day in Belmond and, among other things, we are going to be giving Emily's teacher a card.

Am I a little crazy? Oh yes!

But I encourage all parents to offer your help to your children's teachers. Maybe you will be a little less over-the-top, but lend a hand if you can.

Dear Mrs. Sifert,

I wanted to take a minute to introduce myself. Sure you think that you know me. You see me around town with the girls. But you should also know: I am one of those mothers.

Emily is, of course, one of the most important people in my life and I want the best for her. That doesn’t mean that I think that she is perfect or that she can do no wrong. But it means that I want her to have the tools and opportunities that can make her into a kind and happy adult. If she turns out to be the class bully (God forbid) I want to know.

You are her introduction into the world of education and I am thrilled. I couldn’t have asked for a more kind and generous, fair and just person to usher her into the sometimes overwhelming world of… okay, okay, I know, it’s only three-year-old preschool.

What I am trying to say is this: you mean the world to me. We are neighbors in this small community and you are going to be the first person that my daughter spends much time with, aside from family. If I can make this year easier for you in anyway, just let me know. I’d like to think that I am the very definition of an enthusiastic and helpful parent.

Whatever you need I am there for you: If you need someone to cut out hundreds of laminated letters, I can do that. If you need someone to plan and throw sweet little juice-and-muffin celebrations or over-the-top-crazy parties, I can do that too. Maybe you need someone to do a newsletter or classroom blog, I’m there for you. Or if you need someone to paint the classroom… or sew smocks… or clean. I can do it all.

Well, I can’t actually paint, but Eric can, and I can get him to the school.

I have also enclosed a gift card to Target to help with any extras you might need for the classroom, or for whatever. Maybe what you need is some chocolate for yourself. Believe me, I understand and I am happy to provide it for you. Eric and I feel very lucky to be able to meet the needs of our children and we would be more than happy to help out throughout the year if there is anything you need (supplies, pictures of the children developed, more chocolate.) Just let me know.

Emily and I are looking forward to the school year. Thank you for everything… and consider yourself warned.

Sincerely,
Kate Simonson

No news is good news…

…but when your neurosurgeon calls you back right away, that is bad news.

The results of the MRI came in this week and they were um… not great. We were concerned about two spots in the thoracic area from the April scan and it turned out that the concern was valid: two tumors were found between my shoulder blades. The scan also showed three tumors very low in the sacral area.

For those who are keeping score, that is a total of five tumors.

There was more odd news in that the doctor said that it wasn’t the tumors causing my symptoms. I have another, unrelated, degenerative spinal disease that is causing problems.

I'll write more about this and what it all means later. Right now I am just sick of thinking about it.

There is some good news at least: all the Simonson cars are up and running again, so we've go that going for us, which is nice.

This week in break downs

It begins: Eric's Saab broke down two weeks ago.

We hadn't really worried too much about it nor rushed to fix it because we have two cars and we live in a small town and so the girls and I could get most anywhere on foot or on this fine vehicle.

Sunday night, while I was out Lance Armstronging it with the girls, the chain broke.

Monday the girls and I took the van to Ames (an hour away) to get a new bike chain. On the way back the van broke down and left us stranded on the side of the road.

Thursday Eric tried to mow the lawn and the brand new mower wouldn't start.

Saturday the girls and I borrowed my father-in-law's car to go to Ft. Dodge for a few hours, because at this point we had no wheeled vehicles of any kind of our own that worked. On the way back to their house a belt broke off, leaving us stranded on the side of the road.

Can we borrow your car?

Other terrible trials the Simonson girls suffered through this week

After I wrote about poor Emily having to swim and eat chocolate, all in the same day, I realized that last week was especially hard for the girls.



There was ice cream.

And we had cake in the park to celebrate our friend Rochelle's birthday.



There were some actual tears when we all had to go home. Here Emily and Krista comfort one another.

What were you thinking?

Oh you foolish, foolish people.

Last week I wrote that I thought that I should keep my long-winded opinions to myself and people contacted me to tell me that they liked these posts. I mean people took time out of their busy, child-raising lives to write and call and tell me that they enjoyed my rants. Someone even told me I should write a book.

Eric was less supportive.

"Honey, people like my blog. Someone said I was a good writer. They said I should write a book. Do you know what that means? If I wrote a book, two people might check it out from the library!"

"That's how cults start, you know."

"Cult hits or the 'Don't drink the funny kool-aid kind?"

"The kool-aid ones."

Anyway, cooler heads have prevailed and all books have been put on hold, but I did leave the child-raising to someone else this weekend and I instead spent my time polishing up my soap box.

You'll be sorry.

The sweet, sweet life of Emily

Last week Emily took swimming lessons here in Belmond. She was absolutely fearless about the pool, but sweet Amy, her instructor, made her a little nervous. I guess that means that I don't have to worry about her going to a stranger offering candy, but if a swimming pool came up to her on the sidewalk? She'd go with it in a second!

I'm not sure what Amy is promising Emily here, but whatever it was, it worked.

Soon Emily was jumping in like a pro. She even touched the bottom of the pool, her face completely under the water.

The first day Em didn't want me to leave so Eric, in his shirt and tie from work, Claudia, and I all stood by the side of the pool. On day two our friend Megan was visiting so we (no Eric this day) walked to the far end of the pool and sat.

The weather this week has been a hell-like 90-some degrees, so on day three I brought out the big guns. I told her if she let me go sit in air conditioning for her half hour lesson I would get her some chocolate. She went for it. Maybe I should watch out for the strangers with candy after all.

In the end, I realized that I had paid big money for my daughter to take private swimming lessons (group ones aren't offered here until the kids are out of kindergarten) which she loves, and then I told her I would give her chocolate if she went. What in the hell has this world come to? I can tell you right now that my mother would NEVER have bribed me to do something fun. "Hey honey, if you let me take you to Chuck E. Cheese's I'll buy you a car."

I think this family has swung too far to the "nurturing" side of parenting. Tonight there will be spankings, just because.

Which actually makes me think of something funny. We don't actually spank in our house and we tell Emily regularly that we don't hit in our family, mostly when she has just hit Claudia. And while we do this because hitting to tell your kids that hitting is wrong just seems stupid and because Eric seems all the child-hitting and-spirit breaking he needs to at work, I have noticed that Emily has no fear of us. We do the time out thing here and while Emily isn't crazy about sitting on the stairs, I would doubt that the fear of having to do so keeps her from doing anything.

I'm not saying that I want my kids to be scared of me, I want them to know that I would protect them and that home is a safe, loving place to be, but it would be nice to be able to threaten her with a punishment and have her even pause slightly before continuing what she was doing.

Just watch, in 25 years it will have all swung the other way. This generation will think that their parents were too easy going and our kids will be using stocks and pillories on thier kids.

And then I can sit there and say things like, "Kids these days are so ill behaved, what they need is a swift trip to the stairs."

Let's go swimming...

Here we are at the pool in Belmond. It was the first time that any of the three of us had been there. We managed to make it three years in this town without showing anyone here what I look like in a bathing suit. But last week, as temperatures climbed near 100, I decided I didn't care if the Belmond Independent was there taking pictures.

They weren't, were they?

Emily and and her friend, Krista in the baby pool. The water is only a foot and a half deep but Emily feels you can't be too prepared.
Claudia couldn't care less what the town thinks of her in a swim diaper. Nor does she care what I think about drinking the pool water, so that is a challenge.

Just shut up already!

It has not escaped my attention that lately my blog postings have become a bit... prolific. And I'm not sure that the fine people who are coming here to see how Emily and Claudia are spending their summer are wanting to read my astute observations on everything from birthday parties to Oprah guests. I can hear the yawns across the miles. Clearly, though, that hasn't stopped me from writing it. I think this must be the writing equivalent of liking to hear yourself talk.

That said, I promise that should these one and two a.m. rambling continue that I will create another blog for what is clearly going to be the great American novel, and I will leave this space for oooing and ahhing over my children. They are far better than anything I have to say.

Just call me Judgey McJudgester

Since I think that it’s pretty safe to say that it is mostly my women friends that check out this site, I thought I’d put a link on here to an interesting article. I like to think that I am usually a pretty open-minded person although it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that I am not.

Also, I especially hate it when moms judge each other. I think that all moms are probably doing the best they can, and so, short of abuse, I think that it is generally a better idea to support rather than villanize. Enough fighting about whether or not it is better to stay at home or work outside.

That said: I'm going to judge away.

About a year ago I read an essay written by author Ayelet Waldman about marriage and motherhood. Waldman had been featured on Oprah on a show entitled, “A Mother's Controversial Confession.” While I would like to say that I never watch tripe like Oprah, and especially shows involving phrases like “controversial confession” I would be lying. While I am not glued to the couch every afternoon at four o’clock like Eric likes to think that I am, I do, from time to time, enjoy a little of the guilty pleasure that is Oprah Winfrey.

Anyway, the show centered around the buzz created by an essay that Waldman wrote for the book "Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race and Themselves", an anthology edited by Kate Moses and Camille Peri, In the essay Waldman goes from a gloating announcement that she is the only mommy she knows having any sex to saying that she loves her husband more than she loves her children. And not just that she loves him more, but that she could more easily imagine a life after the loss of all four of her children than one after the loss of her husband.

“An example: I often engage in the parental pastime known as God Forbid. What if, God forbid, someone were to snatch one of my children? God forbid. I imagine what it would feel like to lose one or even all of them. I imagine myself consumed, destroyed by the pain. And yet, in these imaginings, there is always a future beyond the child's death. Because if I were to lose one of my children, God forbid, even if I lost all my children, God forbid, I would still have him, my husband.But my imagination simply fails me when I try to picture a future beyond my husband's death. Of course I would have to live. I have four children, a mortgage, work to do. But I can imagine no joy without my husband.I don't think the other mothers at Mommy and Me feel this way. I know they would be absolutely devastated if they found themselves widowed. But any one of them would sacrifice anything, including their husbands, for their children.”

(Read the essay in its entirety at http://www2.oprah.com/tows/booksseen/200504/tows_book_20050420_kmose_b.jhtml)

I was horrified. I am definitely in the Mommy and Me group. Not only would I sacrifice Eric for the girls but I can tell you that he better damn well do the same to me.

Maybe I am less fazed than Waldman by the idea of widowhood because my mother was widowed at my age and so it is something have thought about, no obsessed about, since I was a teenager falling in puppy love with the boy in from of me in English class. I have always been acutely aware that I should be prepared for such an unlikely event.

Maybe it is because my own membership in the neuro-oncology patient club has given me a gift in the knowledge that I will almost certainly not outlive either my husband or my children, which is just fine by me.

But, I think that my problem with the essay lies in the idea that I feel like parents should be crazy in love with their children. And while I will be the first to admit that motherhood is hard work that sometimes leaves me grumpy and exhausted, that exhaustion doesn’t make me love these kids any less.

I mean my god, who looked a their child in the delivery room and thought, “Eh, that nose looks better on her dad?”

Perhaps it isn’t that she doesn’t love her kids any less than I do, maybe she just loves her husband more. Sure I love Eric, but admittedly we do not have the long talks about our wonderful marriage that Waldman and her husband do. I do not consider Eric the sun around which my life revolves. I consider us friends (although not the best either of us has) and partners both in life and in this job we have made for ourselves to raise these girls.

Eric and I have a marriage that’s best qualities right now, in the depths of brand new parenthood, are the fact that neither of us has to worry about cheating and we both know that the other will wait this thing out. We joke about divorce about 23 ½ hours a day, but when it comes down to it we both know that, at least for now, inertia is strong enough to keep us from going anywhere. Famous last words? Perhaps.

That said, I just finished her book Love and Other Impossible Pursuits and I loved it. I guess the old saying is right: never judge a book by the ridiculous crap its author has said in the past that offended you… or something like that.

It's hard out here for a... parent

“Mommy, if you die, would I have to take Claudia to school in the wagon with me because there wouldn't be anybody to watch her?”

Death and dying is thick in the air around our place these days, and not just because I have an MRI on Wednesday to see if the symptoms I have are being caused by the tumors rearing their ugly little heads.

I walk a fine life with Emily of trying to remember my parents--to have her “know” them in any little way, and scaring the absolute bejesus out of her when I mention them.

This much she knows, although how much of it she actually gets, I may never know: She knows that at one time I had parents, like she does. She knows that I have told her that they would have loved her like crazy if they had gotten to meet her. She also knows that I no longer have these parents. She knows that my dad died when I was her age and that my mom died when I was a little older. It’s hard to say what any of this means to her.

The idea that I once had a mom and dad and that now I don’t seems to scare her. She asks me all the time if I miss them and whether I was sad when they died. I tell her the truth. Well, the most basic truth.

I tell her that yes, I miss them. I don’t tell her that I miss them less and less now that she and Claudia are here. That somehow they fill a hole that I thought would be gaping and weepy my whole life long. I don’t tell her that the idea of this sometimes makes me sadder than the sadness I feel that they aren’t actually here. That the idea that someone could be everything to you, then just be gone, and that then one day you might just be over it seems too awful to believe, especially because right now those girls are everything to me and I am sickened by the idea that they might ever be gone from me, and that I would be able to just go on living.

I tell her that yes, I was sad when they died. I don’t tell her that I remember yelling at my mom that she was a liar when she told me that my dad was gone and would never be coming back. I don’t tell her that that besides the memory of that moment, I only have one other memory of him at all, even though I am sure that he loved me with the same fierce, breathtaking love that Emily’s father feels for her. I don’t tell her that I was so sad when my mom died when I was seventeen that I graduated from high school early, moved away, leaving everyone I knew, and then flunked out of college. I don’t tell her that I was so sad that I truly never thought that I would get over it, that I almost got a tattoo of a song lyric, “She won’t recover from her losses” because I felt like it was already felt like it was tattooed on my forehead, that it had become who I was. I don’t tell her any of this.

But I do tell her that people die, and that while I will have to die sometime, I don’t think that I will die anytime soon and that I am doing everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen for a long, long time. I also tell her that if I did die she would absolutely not have to take Claudia to school with her. Daddy would have a babysitter for her and Claudia while he was at work and that he would be home at night, just like always.

I let her know that no matter what there would be a line of people around the block that would take care of her. I tell her this because I was a child that worried. I thought about these things all the time and it never helped when people would tell me not to worry about it. I worried anyway that bad things might happen. I still worry, but now it's because I know bad things can and do happen. There were no family members that stepped up to take my brother and I when we were orphaned and this is not a fate that will befall my children. So I guess I mention that one as much for myself as for her.

While I wish Emily didn’t have to know that people die, that her father and I might (will) die, I do want her to know that I will always try to tell her the truth and that if she is worried about something than I take it seriously.

So, I don't know, maybe in the end I am walking this fine line, and maybe I am tripping over it. It will, no doubt, be hard to say for sure until Emily is in adult therapy.

Coffee table:1, Claudia: 0

Just in time for the holiday Claudia had an altercation with a coffee table at Grandma and Grandpa's house. It wasn't pretty. The table came out of nowhere and sucker punched her.

However, you think that bump on her forehead looks bad? You should see the table. Okay, not really, but as you can see she looks really broken up about the whole thing so I'm letting her think that she won.

In an unrelated story, our dog, Ben, had a run in with the vet (my sister-in-law, Lynn) who decided to remove a couple of old dog warts on his head and face. The years are not kind to dogs.

And what did you do over the holiday weekend?

I can name that diagnosis in three symptoms

I am now one of those mothers.

Emily will be four in three months, yes I said months, and already I have begun planning her first party with friends as though it were some high society wedding. In my defense, and yes I realize that people with no defense are the kind of people that say things like, “In my defense,” this is a homemade party with a theme based on a literary figure. While I certainly have my shortcomings, buying plates and balloons with television show characters on them is not one of them, although I’m sure that day will come soon.

Obsessed...
The theme is Eloise, based on the Kay Thompson books. Well, it is more like tea at the Plaza with Eloise. Okay, it is really just “How much pink crap and candy can Emily get me to buy as long as she says that she wants it because she likes to read?” party. She knows that the “love of reading” button in me is huge and will let her get away with a multitude of sins.

Delusional...
Be that as it may, I am obsessed with all things Eloise and Plaza Hotel and black and white and pink. Emily and I have a pile of things to be made and this weekend I actually found myself looking at silver catalogs from my in law’s jewelry store and thinking that it seemed almost reasonable to order a bunch of fancy silver things on which to serve a roomful of four through eight year-olds sandwiches cut into dainty triangles. Perhaps we could skip next months mortgage payment and instead by a three-tiered serving tray. Perhaps I need more sleep.

I thought that these were the kinds of things that first-time mothers of single children did. Wasn’t I supposed to be over all of this now that number two is here and number three is working his or her way into conversations and negotiations? Wasn’t this sort of over-the-top behavior supposed to be gone by now?

Manic...
This does not bode well for the future. Emily and Claudia’s birthdays are six months apart. That means once I build a giant sugar cube replica of the Plaza in our yard, hire a middle-aged British woman to play nanny, and buy a pug like Weenie for Emily’s party, I will have six months to start building giant topiary pandas, or whatever we happen to read about by then, for Claudia’s birthday.

God help us if she starts loving Clifford The Big Red Dog.

Does a tiara come with that title?

While I can’t say for sure that there was any kind of official voting or anything, I think that it is clear by this evening’s problems that I am, in fact, the World’s Worst Mother.

I have two children and tonight (it is 1:20 am now) neither of them has slept for more than about an hour at a stretch. And because they haven’t coordinated their wakings (or maybe they have and this is just part of the plan) it has been a seemingly endless up-and-down-every-twenty-minutes-or-so kind of night and I don’t have enough Paxil in my system to take anymore.

This is not to say that I haven’t tried to be a good mother, the kind that has children who do things like sleep at night. In fact, I have tried to walk a perfect line between the Dr. Sears school of non-stop comfort and support, and the Ferber camp’s goals of self-reliance and self-soothing. As it turns out, I have been an awful failure all the way around.

When Emily was born we co-slept partly for it’s ease with nursing and partly because at the time we were living in a tiny one bedroom apartment in the Twin Cities and there weren’t a lot of places to put her. Once we moved to the land of more than reasonable real estate prices she had her own room and crib and she took to them both with ease.

That is until the move to the “big girl bed” almost a year ago. The child we could put down awake, kiss goodnight, and shut in her own room has turned into the child that fears everything. Now our evenings consist of lying next to Emily for as long as it takes until she falls asleep. Some nights the routine is fifteen minutes, other nights there are hours of mind-numbing questions (generally a perfectly good, yet poorly timed question that is answered patiently and completely followed by “Huh?” or the exact same question that was just answered) and performances of the entire score of The Sound of Music done while lying on her back in the swirling acid trip colors of the Disney Princess nightlight.

Then once she is asleep and the sweet, sweet sounds of The Daily Show theme song begin to echo through the living room and replace the grating “So long, farewell…” in my head I hear it: the amplified cries of Claudia on the monitor.

Claudia. Poor child number two. Honestly she has gotten the short end of the stick since day one. While portraits were taken of Emily at birth, 3, 6, 9, 12 and 18 months, and two and three years, Claudia got them only a birth, 4 and 7 months. She is now 14 months old and if the other mother’s knew how poorly I have performed just the chronicling portion of my motherly duties they would be calling DHS right now.

Anyway, back to the sleeping, or lack thereof. Claudia has never even been introduced to a crib. She wouldn’t have the first clue what such a thing might be used for. She is still nursed to sleep in our bed in basically the same manner as she was from day one, and by that I mean about fifteen times a night. What in god’s name have I been thinking this last year? Isn’t the idea to learn from your experiences? Not, apparently, in our household. We seem to live by the idea that if you narrowly avert an awful traffic accident through sheer dumb luck, the next time you head to the store you should just close your eyes, hit the gas and go. Why bother with things like decision-making and critical thinking?

So here we are with the girls: the one that has deviated from the track, and the one that has never even heard of the track. And the parents: the dad that wants to blow off steam with a little video game action, and the mom that just wants a little time without children on her to sit agape at the condition of the world as brought to her by Jon Stewart.

Is it too much to ask that children turn out despite the best efforts of their parents?

The ersatz sounds coming from the monitor say yes. Here we go again.

No one makes life difficult like a sister

Today Emily and Claudia spent their time torturing each other.

Emily carried Claudia all over Grandma and Grandpa's house, even though Claudia made it very clear that she disliked such transportation.

Then, once Emily had settled down to watch a little TV (because, yes, I am the worst mom in the whole world, I allow some TV) Claudia tortured Emily by turning off the TV 500 times in 10 minutes.

But, when all was said and done, and bath time imminent, Emily got out a pink, cotton candy- flavored Popsicle (yes, I allow those too) and shared it sweetly with Claudia.

Brushy Creek: Ft. Dodge's summer hotspot

Here are the girls enjoying the lovely beaches of Brushy Creek, just outside of Ft. Dodge. While you may mistake it for the Virgin Islands, it is really just a little pond in the middle of nowhere in Iowa.

Here is sweet Evelyn with the girls.

Claudia always looks so serious about everything in photos.

Even sand.

Who packs the winter coats for the beach?

This is the lovely Fillenwarth Beach Resort in Okoboji, IA, the place we are going today on our vacation. It is a lovely resort with swimming and sandy beaches just right to make sand castles on. Perfect for a relaxing week with the girls, except that it is 56 degrees outside!

Check back soon for vacation pictures of our blue-tinged girls, wrapped up in blankets on the beach, enjoying a midwest summer. Ahh, Iowa in June.