I Was Told There'd Be A Silent Night

Hey y'all -

I got an e-mail from devoted reader Clay Mercer the other day, and I think the gist of it was, "Sorry that the glory days of the blog are over." He pointed out that I wrote a ton of posts in 2010, and I seem to be winding down in 2012. For a millisecond, what he wrote appealed to my competitive nature, and I thought, "I'll show HIM! I'll write more blog posts than ever!" But then the moment passed and I went back to picking out the hundred and four dried apricots that Laney had stuffed into her snow boots, "just 'cause."

Yesterday, Hagen ripped some paper animals out of a pop-up book, and I thought, "If this were 2010, I'd write a blog post about this," but since it's 2012, I'm going to shove these pieces back in the book and put the book back on the shelf and make this whole thing Future Brooke's problem. I invoke Future Brooke a lot - it's why Present Brooke sometimes hates Past Brooke so much sometimes.

I know it seems like all I do on this blog lately is complain about being tired, but you just. don't. know.

Last night was an average night in the Burbach household, and it went down like this -

8:00pm - Hagen goes to sleep
8:40pm - After a few rounds of "Either you brush your teeth, or I'm going to do it!" and three stories, and reminding her dad that he needs to get her cereal and milk ready in the fridge, Princess Laney goes to sleep.
8:45pm - Mom and Dad start cleaning the hell out of the house, because a realtor's coming to look at it in the morning. We don't know this realtor, but have decided to hate her, anyway.
10:30pm - Mom and Dad fall into bed, exhausted.
12:00am - Hagen's awake. Crying.  Wants a bottle.
2:30am - Laney screams up the stairs, "Can I make my cereal NOW?" Mom: "No."
3:30am - Hagen wakes up, cries. Refuses to be consoled.
5:15am - Laney yells from downstairs, "MOM! THE PHONE IS RINGING!" Mom decides to ignore this, but begins thinking, "The phone's not ringing. Why would she say the phone is ringing? The only way she could hear the ringing of a phone was IF SHE CALLED SOMEBODY." Mom races down the stairs to hang up the phone, knowing that if Laney hit "redial," she's calling the cell phone of an invasive snail expert in Hawai'i that Mom interviewed for National Geographic, and 5:15am in Alberton is 2:15am in O'ahu.
5:16am - Laney decides that since she's up, she's just going to go ahead and make that cereal.
5:28am - Hagen is up for the day. 

The longest stretch of sleep your dad and I normally get is 2 hours, and it's been this way for months.

A few weekends ago, Grandma Sue offered to switch houses with us - she would stay at our house with you kids, while Dad and I stayed at her house alone. Dad and I slept 11 hours. I called Grandma Sue as soon as we woke up and asked, "How'd it go?" She answered: "It was fiiiine..." Your dad does this same thing. When he doesn't want to tell you the truth, you can always spot it because he drags out the last word in the sentence and his voice goes up half an octave. Whatever the elongated, high-pitched word is, it's a lie. Like this:

This parenting thing is a breeeeeze. 

Love,
Mom