The Graduate

Dear Laney,

The graduation ceremony for your gymnastics class was held last night, so you're no longer a "Firefly." I guess now you're a "Lightening Bug" or a "Cricket" or whatever. Actually, I guess what you are now is a "ballet student," because you told Grandma Sue you're done with gymnastics and want to be a dancer.

Here are some of your moves from the Skills Demonstration your class put on last night:

Someone needs to warn ballet you're coming. 

Love,

Mom

It's The Little Things

Everybody, Over Here!

Dear Hagen,

There's an old joke that at the Last Supper, Jesus must have said, "Hey guys - let's get a picture! Everybody on this side of the table!"

It's the same thing with your teeth. That first incisor came in and started rallying his friends. You have 9 teeth and they are all on the left side of your head.

But with that one side, you can demolish a ribeye. Amen.

Love,
Mom

Cedar's Party: Here's The Poop

Hey y'all -

It was Cedar's birthday last weekend, and to celebrate, her family planned a trip to the hot springs. The trip was not without incident.

As a general rule, I try not to mention poop on this blog, because nobody wants to read about it. I don't want to scare the childless readers away from procreating, and I don't want to trigger any PTSD in the parents who've lived through it. So I'll endeavor to be as delicate as possible here.

There will come a few times in every parent's life when s/he will encounter a Poop That Shall Live In Infamy. My parents can still tell the story of how, as the result of a particularly harrowing incident when I was a baby, we came to be banned from a seafood restaurant in Gulf Shores. Mention Laney's "Dried Apple Poop of 2010" to your dad and me, and we'll still shudder like we've just slugged back a shot of cheap tequila.

We were on our way to the hot springs when the car started to smell. Laney and I played a few rounds of "It wasn't me!" before determining that the cause of the problem was the sleeping Hagen. We made it to the hotel parking lot; the room wasn't ready and wouldn't be for quite some time, so I knew I was going to have to change Hagen in the back of the car. When I picked him up from his car seat, I discovered that he'd had what those in the diaper industry would refer to as a "blow out." From his neck to his ankles, people. On his clothes. On his seat. On his hands. On his feet.

If I had more disposable income, I'd'a hosed off the baby and abandoned the vehicle.

I got him laid down in the back of the SUV on a beach towel, reached into my diaper bag for the wipes and discovered they were frozen. I'd left the bag in the car the night before, and because this is Montana and it's only the end of March, they had frozen solid and I was looking at an icy brick of unusable wet wipes. OF COURSE. In the end, I took a bottle of water and a pile of dirty clothes I happened to have in the back of the car, and cleaned Hagen off using water and laundry. I tried to only use things that belong to your dad, because I felt like in some way, he should also be participating in this catastrophe.

My friend Will has made up a little bluegrass jingle about my life that he sings to me sometimes in a nasally whine:

Pioneer Mom! Pioneer Mom!
How does she do it...all day loooong?

As the snow was falling around me in that parking lot, and I was ruining several of your dad's favorite T-shirts, don't think I wasn't singing that song, loud and proud.

Love,
Mom

P.S. I did eventually get you bathed off and the day took a turn for the better. Happy birthday, Cedar!

The Mouth On This One

Dear Laney,

The stuff that has come out of your mouth lately has been incredible. 

On the drive to Cedar's birthday party yesterday, I handed you back a juice box. You like to put the straw in all by yourself, and you have a cup holder on your car seat, so it's usually a pretty turnkey situation. But yesterday, as I was pulling on the road to Hot Springs:

Laney: I can't get my straw in my juice box, dammit.

Mom: Surely I heard that wrong. What did you just say?

Laney: As if I'm hard of hearing I SAID: I. Can't. Get. My. Straw. In. My. Juice. Box. Damn. It.

Mom: Laney, that's not a very nice word to use, so let's try not to use it again.

Laney: Rolls eyes at Mom's cluelessness. I wasn't saying it about YOU, and I wasn't saying it about Hagen. I was saying it about my STRAW.

Mom: I can't believe this child is arguing with me about context. 

A few days ago, we were driving to town, and your dad asked you what you wanted to do after school.:

Laney: How many times do I have to tell you...

Mom: Pull the car over so I can beat her. 

This is why we're enjoying the phase Hagen's in, when the only noun at his disposal is "this!" Everything is "this." Certainly not, "This, dammit." 

At least not yet. 

Love,

Mom

How To Become A Prima Ballerina, In Four Easy Steps

You can order Laney's instructional videos for just four easy payments of $19.95. Then you too will be able to walk on your tippy toes in a circle, hop hop hop, and finish it up with a round of jumping jacks.

That's just how Nureyev did it, nyet?

Y'all Just Don't Know

Holy smokes at everything this week has brought:

1) We (appear to have) sold our house. After three years of cleaning my house for strangers, we got an offer, countered, agreed, and signed some papers. Bing bang boom. Now I have 4 weeks to figure out where the heck we're moving. The inspection is next week, and Thor is running through the house, fixing up all the things that might raise the eyebrows of the inspector. I never knew how many things were wrong with my house, 'til Thor started trying to fix them all in a week.

I've never been through the home-buying process before, so it's all pretty alien and anxiety-inducing for me. We met with the mortgage lender yesterday - a meeting I had lost sleep over for a week - and it went surprisingly well. "What did you think was going to happen?" Thor asked. "I thought she was going to ask me what the hell I've been doing with my life, and then question all of my choices and then demand I leave her office at once. Probably in a German accent." The only part of that that came true was that the lender was a German lady.

We're going to be moving into Missoula, which will save us two hours a day on the interstate and $600/month on gas. I'm not even making that up.

2) Thor got a promotion, but we'll make time to celebrate when he's done installing those baseboard heaters.

3) Laney learned to write her name. For a while now, she's known how to make the letters, but she's preferred to draw them all on top of each other. Last week, I said, "Hey Laney, let's try a crazy, out-of-the-box idea, and put them all in a line!" She shrugged like, "If that's what you're into..." and then wrote her name (along with a picture of my glasses) -

Thanks to everyone who's been talking to Jesus on our behalf in re: the sale of our home. I guess He finally got tired of hearing from y'all and made it happen. Thanks for your persistence and support. 

Love,

Brooke

St Patty's Party

Hey y'all -

Every year, your school hosts a St Patrick's Day party. This year, I was on the planning committee. I will be the first to admit that I'm a little Type-A when it comes to party planning. My house can be falling down around me, but your birthday is by-God going to have coordinated invitations and tableware. When Hagen was five months old, your school hosted a cookout at the water park. They served raw burgers and hot tea and I got so frustrated, I cried a little then blamed it on the postpartum hormones.

I know this about myself: I'm high strung, and I can't abide an unorganized event. At the same time, when I get pulled over for speeding, and the officer asks me to produce my license, registration and proof of insurance, I look at him like I couldn't possibly locate all of those things. Everyone is their own unique potpourri of crazy, and this is mine.

For the party, I put together a treasure hunt. Each kid got a passport with a list of activities, and as they moved from classroom to classroom, they got to play carnival games and get their passports stamped and earn tickets that could be redeemed for prizes at the end of the night.

Your dad and I made a magnetic fishing game, so the kids could "catch" their names. (index cards + paper clips, dowel rods + hanging magnets). Your friends Rainie and Shea helped us test it out the day before the party:

I set up a "photo booth" in one of the classrooms, and laid out all of Laney's dress-up stuff on a table, so everyone could put on a funny costume and have their picture taken. The kids loved it:

But the teachers loved it more:

Great time had by all -

Love,
Mom

Preschool In The Backcountry

(all photos and video courtesy of the Barnibbe Family)

Dear Laney,

I think I've mentioned before that, along with three other families, we participate in a preschool co-op in Alberton. Every Wednesday, a different family takes a turn hosting all the kiddos. Last week, it was Cedar's turn, and Cedar's dad Todd took all you kids on a hike in the mountains above Alberton. I was glad he did this, because lately when you go for a walk of more than 20 feet, you've been sighing and saying, "Whew, my knees are sure getting tired!" I'm suspicious that your dad drops you off at the assisted living facility to hang out when I'm not looking, because I have no idea where you would have picked that up.

Here's a clip from the video Todd shot on your walk, with my notes/commentary beneath:

• 00:04 - Yes, Shea is yelling about finding bear poop. This hike is off and running.
• 00:38 - If there’s anything funnier than Laney bundled up in winter gear, I don’t know what it is. 
• 1:23 “I have a different kind of lemonade at my house.” Not really. She had a Capri Sun at our house one time and decided to call it lemonade. “It doesn’t taste sour” because it’s actually fruit punch.
• 1:48 When Todd says, “I like the juice that your mom makes with limes and oranges,” I'm pretty sure he’s talking about margaritas. 
• 1:56 I have never made a strawberry pie in my life, and I consider most fruit-based desserts to be a waste of my time.
• 2:27 I’d give cash money to see the look on my grandmother’s face when she watches this video and hears Todd delightedly exclaim, “Hey guys! I found more elk poop!” A bunch of it!"
• 3:04 Cedar asks, “Laney, do you like Bo On The Go sometimes?” Bo On The Go is this irritating-as-hell cartoon on Netflix that the girls watched together one time. It was mostly about how important it is to exercise, so Laney put Bo in the discard pile and moved on with her life.

When you got back from your hike, you all glued the items that you'd collected to a map:

Oh, yes. That's elk poop glued to the top of your map.

If you ever question how much I love you, know that I once proudly displayed poop on the wall of my house because you thought it was important enough to collect and share.

Love,
Mom

Don't Blink

Hey y'all-

Uncle Nate blew through town yesterday, and we got to spend a few hours with him. He's headed back to Florida, so it might be a while 'til we see him again.

Sure do love him, though.

-Mom

Swimsuit Cover-Up

Helluva Weekend

Hey y'all -

This weekend we...

- Woke up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to clean the house.
- Evacuated the house so a realtor could show it.
- Drove Dad to the airport so he could get some flight time in.
- Went to McDonald's so Laney could play on the playground and Hagen could eat the Deluxe Breakfast Platter.
- Went to the park downtown so Laney could play on the playground and Hagen could sleep off the pancakes.
- Watched Laney ride the carousel, but this time, she only wanted to sit on the bench and not on a horse. Are you sure? Yes, I'm sure. Are you sure? Yes, I'm sure.
- Picked Dad up at the airport.
- Went to the Cracker Barrel so Laney could color her menu and Hagen could eat the mac n' cheese platter.
- Dropped Dad and Hagen off at Grandma Sue's to sleep off the macaroni. Carb coma x 2.
- Said goodbye to the boys and Laney and Mom went swimming at the indoor water park. Laney slipped and conked her head on the concrete pool deck.
- Gave Laney a dozen "Look at my finger" tests to be sure she didn't have a concussion.
- Got the family dressed and back together.
- Went to Finley's first birthday party. When asked for birthday present suggestions, Finley's dad said, "Well, he likes Scotch, but who doesn't?" So that's what we got him: Scotch and a sippy cup.
- Spent the night at Grandma Sue's, since she was out of town and we didn't feel like driving home.
- Woke up on Sunday and had bagels.
- Drove home and dropped off the boys.
- Picked up The Other Brooke and Cedar and Laney and Mom went to Jessie's house to help her get her garden ready for plating.
- Saw a baby chick start to hatch.
- Had Cedar over for a play date.
- Had Cedar's parents over for dinner.
- Fell into bed, exhausted.

Whew.

If you think I'm writing individual paragraphs about those things, you're crazy.

Love,
Mom