What the girls have been up to

Well, here it is August. The summer has seemed at times to drag along so slowly here in this house.

You literally cannot win with these children these days. Emily, who still will not wipe herself after going to the bathroom, hates to wash her hands after using the toilet, using the aforementioned lack of touching as an excuse. Still, in our house there is a “cross the threshold, wash your hands” policy. So, about ten times a day, after wiping wet and soiled parts that do not belong to me, there is the inevitable argument about hand washing. For the most part I tell her to do it and we drop it there, but sometimes, for no particular reason she fights on, and some of those times, just because I cannot possibly be so invested in each and every detail in this house I tell her to forget and just go on. Then, like some sort of spy Eric has embedded in the family, she tells me that Daddy ALWAYS makes her wash her hands, and so, really, shouldn’t she do it?

Plus, it has been so hot and muggy and just plain awful outside that the days just seem to drag on endlessly. But even as I write that I look up and suddenly it is August. School is going to start in two weeks and soon fall will be here and then, maybe, I can breathe again.In the meantime we have had a lovely summer full of short trips and tons of time with family and friends. There have been no Make-A-Wish type events. We have filled the days with swimming, a few whole-family naps, just about every frozen treat known to man, and lots and lots of yummy sweet corn, butter running down our chins in little rivers. There has been very little illness and no injuries, so really, what more could we ask for.

The girls are funny and beautiful, smart and so creative. I am happy beyond words that children seem to turn out so well from pure dumb luck on my part. For those who have been harassing me about updating this site (you know who you are) here are some snapshots of them playing in our “back yard” which at our house is located on the side of the house. Enjoy!

No snack for you!

I think that the Department of Human Services may be about a block away from my house. Eric is probably filing CINA petitions as I write this. And even if neither of these things is true, the fact remains that I am an awful failure of a mother, or at least Emily’s teacher thinks so.

First, a little background: one day a week Emily goes to three-year-old preschool. Her teacher, Mrs. Sifert, is a woman who is so clearly made to be a preschool teacher that it makes my breath catch at our good fortune to have her for Emily’s first two years of school. That said, I have developed a pathetic need for her to like me. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to hide the fact that I am clearly an impostor mother-want-to-be that has no idea what she is doing when it comes to raising children.

I fret about the clothes I send Emily to school in, vacillating between wanting her to look nice enough that it’s clear that she comes from a home with responsible parents, but not so good that it looks like she lives with tyrant parents that won’t let her make such minor decisions for herself.

I am a room parent, and not just a room parent. I am the head room parent. I was in charge of calling the other mothers to plan the room parties. I spend about $25 every time they send home one of those book orders even though our house is bursting at the seams with books. I even sent her a letter at the beginning of the year, which, if you read between the lines, clearly begs her to like my child and me. But, it turns out that any good I may have done up until this point doesn’t matter.

Last Friday, after waiting patiently all year for the privilege of bringing snack, we were told by another mom that her son was on his second go ‘round. A tiny bit outraged, and a whole lot worried that we had been passed over because all the other families had gotten together to talk about how none of them wanted their children eating anything that came from my house, I nonetheless screwed up my courage and went to ask Mrs. Sifert if there was some sort of misunderstanding.

And what did this woman, on whose judgment all my parenting self-esteem is hung, say? “No, there’s no misunderstanding. She was given a date on which she was responsible for snack, she just didn’t bring it.”

SHE JUST DIDN’T BRING IT? Was she kidding? She thinks that I looked at the notice, balled it up, threw it in the trash, and just thought, “Screw that. I’m not feeding a bunch of Emily’s friends.” She may as well have just kicked me in the stomach.

I tried to tell her that I would never forget to bring snack but she continued to offer excuses that all boiled down to the single point that I had screwed up. And she said it in a kind of casual way that may have meant that it was really not such a big deal either way, that perhaps they have some sort of contingency plan in place so the kids don’t just sit there starving to death and staring with hatred at the kid whose loser parent was too good to bring them basic sustenance, but that I am sure actually meant that this came as no surprise to them. That they has all written me off long ago and that, in fact, the head-room-parent thing was just meant to be ironic, like when they call the biggest guy in the group Tiny.

I knew it!

So what now? Emily had no school this week. But next week I will have to go drop off my child again to spend one day a week with a woman that I am convinced sees me for the thirteen-year-old in thirty-three-year-olds clothing that I am. She knows that deep down I have no idea what I am doing. And next year, when Emily is in four-year-old preschool four days a week, I will have to work even harder to pretend that isn’t true.

Let’s just home DHS makes it here in time.

The Easter Bunny

Here is a photo of the girls all decked out for Easter. The smile Emily has is because she is SO excited to be holding a REAL LIVE BUNNY! Claudia's look is because she has, once again, realized that we, the kind of people that take pictures like this, are the family that she is stuck with. Or, maybe she just has something against rabbits. I left off the photo of her, dressed all in frilly, pink silk strangling the Easter Bunny.

Link fixed

For those of you that were bothered by the fact that the link to our house website didn't work, it is now fixed. I guess some people are bothered by links that go nowhere.

Also, I should mention that there is nothing new at the site, it's just that now you can get there.

Who we are this week

We have been gone so long from this Internet documentation of the girls’ lives, and they change so quickly, that I feel as if I have to introduce them all over again.

Emily is passionately striving to expand her vocabulary. She has mastered the most important things: “Where is the food?” “What is that food?” “Can I please have some food?” And, to a lesser extent, “May I have some food?”

She won’t go hungry.

Now she is on to the luxuries of language. She rolls words around her mouth as if learning English by taste. “Palm tree. Paaalllllmmmmmm. Palm.” It is, in a strange way, a bit like watching an office romance unfold.

Emily eyes the word from across the room. You can see it in her face when she hears it. She begins by asking about it, trying to be subtle, but it is clear whom she fancies. She may as well be asking if it is seeing anyone.

“The fire is so delightful...” I sing.

“Sing that part again… the fire part.” She asks.

Finally she begins slipping it into conversations where if not exactly out of place it is nonetheless awkward at best. “This dinner was delightful.” She says, though much of it sits untouched on her plate. Better yet, it comes out deyightful.

Also, she can now write all of the names in our family, including the pets, so they adorn absolutely everything. Stick figure pictures now have labels. No ears, mind you, but names.

And Thursday, while talking non-stop about who-knows-what (she gets that from me!), she told me about something she had typed out. “I put in z, y, x…” I tuned out for a bit while the string of letters seemed endless and without reason, then came back in again as she said, “e, d, c, b, a.”

“What did you say?” I’m not so good at hiding when I’m not listening. “Did you just say the alphabet backwards?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do it again.” And she did, and not the way that I would do it, by saying one letter and then singing through the alphabet until I got to the next letter. She said it, albeit slowly, as though she was reading it. Apparently, her strength will, most likely be, in passing sobriety tests. So she’s got that going for her, which is nice.

Claudia, on the other hand, has given up what little language she had acquired and has instead embraced a single, solitary word, changing only her inflection to fit the situation.

The word? Mom. Or, more specifically, “Maaaaaaaaam”. Or “Maw am.” (said with a teenagers distain) Or “Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.”

Oh, and she’s decided to change her name to Jo Jo. So much for months spent combing baby name books.

Question seven: What the...?

Wednesday night at the dinner table we decided to teach Emily the game of 20 Questions. She is big into games now and actually she has been playing an informal version of this very game for months now, making Eric guess some detail about her day over dinner.

She is learning to write now and so usually he has to guess from phonics, “It’s starts with duh, duh, duh. What do you think it is Daddy? It has four legs. Duh, duh, duh.” Then Eric spends the next 20 minutes throwing out more and more outrageous answers until Emily has collapsed with laughter.

“Donut!” He’ll yell enthusiastically.

“No Daddy. Donuts don’t have four legs!”

“Dump truck!” And on and on like this until the end when the answers don’t even begin with the right letter anymore and I imagine that Emily can hardly believe just how dumb her parents are. My god people, it’s a dog for goodness sakes!

So, Wednesday we explained the rules to her and she picked the stray dog that we saw in the yard that day as the answer. By the way, should you ever find yourself in our house at dinnertime playing this game and what starts with “duh” and has four legs just isn’t coming to you, let me give you this hint: the first round is almost always a dog. Wednesday was no different.

Eric asked a few questions, narrowed it down to a four-legged domesticated animal that barks, and then asked what I think was supposed to be the outrageous question: “Can you eat it?”

“No,” Emily said quickly. Then she paused and clarified, “Well, we don’t here. But in some other countries they do.”

At our weekend home

Here the girls try horseback riding while weekending at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

For some reason, the weekends don't seem to be all that relaxing for Eric. I can't imagine why.