Getting their requests in early

This is a picture the the Ft. Dodge paper put on their website after the girls and I were caught visiting Santa on Friday. If there is a less attractive position for a very pregnant woman to be in than squatting down, I can't imagine what it is.

Here Santa is asking the girls what they would like for Christmas and I am translating from very quiet, shy girl speak into English. The two girls ahead of us in line had each written a book, the heft of which would rival War and Peace, of their wish lists. My girls are much less greedy. One thing makes them as happy as a hundred.

When Santa asked Emily what she wanted she said a fish, that's it, nothing else. "Really?" Santa inquired, "Nothing else?" she said, "Mmm, maybe a tank for the fish." (Hear that Dean and Cynthia?)

Next Santa asked Claudia what she wanted. She answered, eyeing the box of candy canes that Santa gives to all the children that come to see him, and said that she wanted a candy cane. "Anything else?" asked Santa. No, that was pretty much all she wanted.

Here are the girls on Santa's lap. Clearly they are thrilled.

Halloween!

Ahh, Halloween! Here Claudia (as a Lion) and Emily (as a bride) sit just before heading off to trick-or-treat on Wednesday.

Although we did have a big, uncarved pumpkin on our front step you cannot see it in this photo as someone took it earlier in the week. We have decided that it was a poor child that could not afford a pumpkin of his or her own and not a total jerk that was just trying to be mean. Somehow roving bands of poor pumpkin less children make us feel better about our loss.

There was a smashed pumpkin in the street around the block from our house. Luckily, it was a pumpkin that had clearly been carved and so, although there was a great sadness about the destroyed pumpkin, the girls didn't seem to suspect that it may have been our beloved, still missing pumpkin splatted there in the street. The girls were obsessed for two days by the pumpkin roadkill, begging me to drive that way home any time we were out. They would crane their necks to look out the windows while pleading, "Drive slower! Please slow down so we can see it!" Then, once they had worked up the courage, the three of us walked over to see it up close and that seemed to give them the closure they needed.

Also, in general, we do not have a mini trampoline sitting against our front steps but we are in the process of fall cleaning and everything is being cleaned and stored (or at least moved somewhere else) and this trampoline was on it's way to the garage for the winter.

From out of the mouths of super hereos

At Emily's Halloween party on Wednesday another mother and I were approached by a little boy in a Spiderman costume that was quilted in such a way as to make him look muscular.

We smiled our little room mother smiles and then he looked up at us and asked, "I really like being Spiderman and all, but why do I have these big boobs?"

You can be happy and vomiting at the same time, who knew?

I feel a little like I have fallen off of the face of the earth these last few months. Here’s our update.

Eric and I are thrilled to be expecting out third little bundle of joy in January (a boy, they tell us) but it has been a hard road for me this time. With Emily I had no morning sickness, with Claudia just about 12 weeks worth, and with this one it had been a virtual 27-week, non-stop vomit fest!

So much so, in fact, that I lost enough weight from the beginning that even now that the problem has subsided a little I am still not back to my starting weight, let alone carrying any “pregnancy pounds.” Not that I am complaining about that! I haven’t ever been six weeks pregnant and still in my regular jeans, let alone at 27 weeks.

I did however get a prescription for anti-nausea medication and a stern warning from my doctor that if I didn’t knock off all the vomiting, he would have no choice but to put me in the hospital. You’d think if I could stop because of a stern warning I would have stopped weeks ago just form the sheer lack of fun I was having.

So, for those of you that didn’t know anything about this… and that would be most of you, I’m sorry to have taken so much time to announce it. We are thrilled beyond words and can’t wait for the arrival of our newest little baby no name!

Feel free to e-mail names to us at katesimonson@yahoo.com or add them to the comments here on this page. Eric and I are notoriously bad at coming up with baby names in a timely manner and this baby is no exception.

Some summer highlights

Perhaps the biggest thing to happen this summer, and I do mean this summer, since here kids begin school weeks earlier than I did as a child, Emily went back to school! Here she is, on the first day of four-year-old preschool, standing in front of the house, looking quite excited.

Sadly, she has not been this excited since. She loves school once she is there, but the drop offs are still a little hard for her. A little hard we can do. It was the sobbing Emily, teacher-pulling-Emily-from-me-while-I-walk/run-away-trying-to-wait-until-I-get-out-the-door-to-sob-myself fun of three-year-old preschool that I just couldn't handle.




Here is Claudia on the floor of the dining room enjoying a little school of her own. Clearly she has already figured out that it is better to be the teacher than one of the students.

Here are the girls at their cousin Kyle's birthday party. Kyle is one of Eric's sister's four children who, along with their parents Lynn and Brian, live on what I can only describe as a child's fantasy land acreage. They have, among other things, their own soccer field, a trampoline, a huge pool, and the biggest private-family playground structure I have ever seen. I secretly imagine sneaking over there at night to play with their stuff, Lynn and Brian waking to the sounds of me jumping on their trampoline.

Here Emily is enjoying the pool and Claudia is enjoying the perks that living in the country bring: like giant corn spiders! Both girls are crazy about snakes and spiders and bugs of all kinds, so these spiders that big cousin Ryan caught were a huge hit!

Okay, so Claudia getting her bangs cut wasn't exactly a highlight of our summer, the faces she makes while having her haircut are pretty funny!

Here are the girls, fast asleep with Uncle Brant. The girls asleep was always a highlight... and I mean that in the best way possible.

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.