My Three Powers

Dear Hagen,

According to what you told us the other night, you have three super powers:

In case you didn't catch that, your three superhero moves are:

1) Lasso Rope

2) Super Coyote Howl

3) Super Coyote Jump

I'm thinking I would choose something like Invisibility. Or Teleportation. Or Overactive Metabolism.

Ella is a good choice of sidekick, though. You wouldn't want your partner in crime to be too impressed with you, now would you?

Love,
Mom

A Christmas Cry For Help

Hey, y'all - 

Some concessions have been made in light of your dad's current absence. That's a lofty way of saying that with your dad gone, I am holding things together with a very thin string. 

No way was I going to tromp through the woods with you people, looking for the perfect tree, only to bring it down with my trusty hatchet and drag it back to the car. What I WAS willing to do was stop by the Lions Club tree sale over at the Fairgrounds and let y'all pick a tree from the $15 discount row. They had some big, stately, impressive trees there, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $80 to watch something die in my living room. 

True to form, y'all picked the ugliest tree in the building. The sweet volunteer asked if he could shape it for us with his chainsaw, but Hagen doesn't do loud noises. Then he asked if he could tie it up for us, and I said, "Naw, I'm just going to throw it in the passenger seat." He laughed like I was being SO FUNNY, and then he got to watch me do it.

Shut up and get in the car, tree:

I threw the tree in the living room, and climbed up our completely unstable ladder to the attic to look for the tree stand. I told Laney, "Stand by your phone and if you hear a big crash, dial 9-1-1." This is the kind of thing you have to think about when you don't have another adult in the house. 

Didn't take me long to discover that the trunk of the tree was so tiny, our tree stand wasn't going to be able to hold it up, even on its tightest setting. Honest to Betsy, if I had enough rocks to weigh it down, I would have put the scrawny thing in a damn vase. Instead, I built a wall of splints around the trunk and duct-taped the whole thing together. Looks like a picture on a "You might be a redneck..." slideshow, but works great. 

You two got busy decorating the tree. Our friend Tyler is famous for his flawless holiday decorating, where each light and ornament must be just-so, and a lifestyle magazine could drop by at any time and shoot a great layout of his decor. He barely lets Brian participate. So I enjoy texting Tyler pictures of our decorating process with messages like, "Step 1: Pick the ugliest tree on the lot. Step 2: Let small children throw random crap at it until they get bored and walk away. Isn't that how YOU do it?" Tyler texted back: "OMG. I would have a seizure."

Sometimes, we'll end up with three ornaments on the same branch because, as Hagen explains, 'They're all friends and they need to hang out together."

In the end, our tree looks like our trees always do...as if someone had too much egg nog and dragged a bush through the holiday section of Walmart where some stuff got stuck to it. 

O Christmas tree!, Oh Christmas tree!

Thou art a metaphor for my life.

Love,

Mom

His Inner Moana

Dear Hagen,

A few days, I took you and Laney to see the new Disney movie "Moana." You sat in my lap for most of the movie, and absorbed every frame of the film without squirming or wiggling; you LOVED it. I thought it was scary as hell, and at one point, I covered your eyes, thinking you must be terrified, but you hollered out, "I WANT TO SEE!" On the way home, you asked me to play your favorite song from the movie, so I downloaded it and we listened to it on repeat.

The next morning, I buzzed off your hair in exchange for a lollipop. We do this fairly often, because you don't like it when your hair doesn't lay perfectly flat. Speaking of, we were getting ready to leave for dinner once, and I heard you say, "My belly's big. My hair is flat. I look GOOD." Not really sure where you got those beauty standards, but okay. I finished buzzing your hair and helped you out of your clothes so I could take them outside and shake out the hair.

When I came back in, I heard "Moana" music blasting (Thanks, DJ Laney), and when I looked up the stairs....I witnessed this:

AloHA HA HA HA HA.

Love,

Mom

Bye

The Farewell Tour

Hey, y'all - 

We're just a few days away from your dad embarking on The Worst Business Trip Of All Time® .

As the date approaches, we've definitely been stressing family time, and taking little trips together whenever possible. Last weekend, we went for the two-night "Family Fun Package" at Fairmont Hot Springs. Two nights at the hotel plus swimming and water slide passes, with free hot chocolates and a bag full of pool noodles and beach balls and grain to feed the llamas. 

On our way to the resort in Anaconda, MT (not a joke), we stopped in the little mining town of Philipsburg because - and I bet you didn't know this - it's home to the greatest camera and photo equipment store in western Montana. If you didn't know about it, it's probably because it looks like this:

My old photography teacher described it as "Amazon meets 'Hoarders,'" and he was not wrong. 

You can find a $2,000 Canon camera body buried under a 1986 issue of Photo magazine. But somehow, it works. Philipsburg is also home to a 100+ year old candy store, which was more of interest to y'all.

It's been unseasonably warm here, which I am going to consider a gift vs. a symptom of catastrophic climate change. It's usually snowing by this time of year, but we didn't even have to wear coats on our trip.

 Your dad, explaining the super moon:

We drove to nearby Butte, because I had never been and wanted to check it out. That took all of 12 minutes, plus lunch. 

We discovered a playground at the back of the hotel on day #2, and Hagen yelled "Mom! MOM!! Take my picture so I can remember THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!" It didn't feel special enough to be the best day of your life, but that kind of thing is subjective. Also: you had been eating A LOT of candy. 

Fairmont Hot Springs has a water slide that's (I think) 6 stories tall. If you're under 50 inches tall, which Laney just barely is, you have to ride with an adult OR you can ride by yourself if you wear a life jacket. Laney said she'd prefer to ride with an adult, so your dad and I both rode it with her over and over again until I had to say "I'm forty! I've climbed 42 flights of stairs this afternoon! Leave me alone!" So Laney said, "I guess I'll just go get a life jacket, then." And she went to the life jacket bin, grabbed the one on top and sashayed on off into the distance, by herself. 

Your dad and I floated with Hagen there at the bottom of the slide, and Laney - over and over again - walked the length of the aquatic center by herself, climbed all 6 flights of stairs by herself, and then threw herself into that tube, only to swim to the side and do it again. 

At one point, we saw a woman a little older than me come screaming out of the tube, holding her nose. She surfaced, sputtering, and yelled at her husband "NO NO NO NO NO. Never again!" She looked at me and said, "I did not like that AT ALL." Her husband said, "We could tell, because we heard you screaming all the way down." "Hang on," I told her, "because you're about to see my 7 year-old come shooting out of that sumbitch."

Laney, you remain daring and fearless and independent, and I love it.

On the other hand, Hagen stopped a man getting onto the elevator and asked him, "Now, why are you wearing that bathing suit?" "Because," the man said, "I thought I'd go for a swim. Don't YOU like to go in the pool?" Hagen wagged his finger at the man and said, "Oh, nononononono." Hagen was more of a sit by the fire in the lobby and chat kind of guy. But he did like the animals. 

We got back on Sunday at 11am, and we were so wiped out that the whole family got in bed together and stayed there all day, watching movies on the iPad and snuggling. 

Beautiful time we'll remember forever. Pass the candy. 

Love,

Mom

Stop Being Afraid and Work Harder

Hey, y'all - 

On Election Day, I picked Laney up at the bus stop and we walked to our neighborhood polling place. I waited to vote 'til I could take her with me, because I wanted to stress how important it is for you to participate in the election process. It's the least one can do as a concerned citizen; I've spent the last week thinking about the 43% of registered voters who couldn't be bothered. 

On the way to vote, we talked about how it wasn't so long ago that women weren't allowed to vote at all - when Granny Jack's mom was Laney's age, it was illegal for women. Laney found that surprising. 

Pamphlets from the late 1800s / early 1900s declared that women's suffrage would put America under "Petticoat Rule," and political cartoons seemed to suggest that the only women who would want the vote are the single, ugly ones, or the mothers who don't care about their families. That's something Laney and I discuss often: that sometimes, when people want to criticize a woman's thoughts or ideas, the first thing they'll do it call her fat or ugly. That's the lazy man's go-to way to demean a woman. So we try to always remember that our worth has very little to do with our outward appearance. 

Laney took a picture of me filling out what I'd hoped would be an historic ballot, then we went home to watch the election returns with a US map and a dry erase marker. 

In the end, it didn't go our way. That happens sometimes. 

Your dad and I lost some sleep over it. I know this, because at 4:28am a few days after the election, he got up and wrote this:

There you have it. Your dad communicates the same way Hagen eats: A lot, all at once. One day, he'll probably run for public office and I will endeavor not to be a liability to the campaign. 

I saw this tweet the other day, and it made me tear up a little:

...because maybe the girl she's talking about spent the night of Nov 8, 2016 coloring in the electoral college map with her favorite markers. 

Love,

Mom

Happy Halloween 2016

Hey, y'all -

It's been a tiring couple of weeks. I had some of those weird headaches like the one I had a few years ago, so I had to go have one of those awful brain scans. Turns out there's nothing (new) wrong with me, so that's good news. It's like the day you turn forty, you start falling apart. I'm basically a washing machine one day past its warranty.

For Halloween this year, Laney wanted to be a butterfly. Her costume was a monument to failing upward, and a constant reminder that I should have listened to my mother every time she tried to teach me something about sewing because I obviously absorbed nothing.

I found the green dress at the thrift store for $3. Score. Then I ordered the wings, but they weren't wide enough to reach all the way to her fingertips. But I couldn't return them for the adult size, because those were enormous. So I cut the feet off a pair of old socks and made armband wing holders. Then the armpit bands meant to hold the wings in place started bugging her, so we cut 'em off. Then the dress started falling down in front, so I sewed a foot of pantyhose to make a halter top, which could both hold up the dress AND give me something to stick the wings to. And it matched her skin tone. Now we're cooking.

Then of course the temperature dropped to 40 and she couldn't possibly trick or treat in a strapless dress. Well, she COULD, but then I'd have to explain at every house: "Please don't call the authorities on us; this child runs hot and wanted to wear flip flops, so it could be worse." Instead, Laney went into her ski clothes collection and picked a nice base layer which went GREAT with those nude hose.

Eh, whatever. You got plenty of candy.

Then there's Hagen. Hagen wanted to be a dragon puppy. I will refer all follow-up questions in re: dragon puppies to Hagen, because they're his invention, and he will happily talk to you all dang day long about a dragon puppy's diet and habitat and fire-breathing/snuggling abilities. I found a bear suit missing its head at a yard sale for $1 last year and had a feeling it would come in handy one day.

We went trick-or-treating with our friends the Newhouses, including their kids Emmy and Kai. Emmy was Rey from Star Wars and Kai was - of course - Batman.

Your dad dressed as a ninja in all black, thus violating every Halloween safety rule there is, and annoying the heck out of his wife. Can't tell you how many times I hollered "Has anybody seen Thor?!?" only to discover he was standing right next to me. Bet it takes you a second to spot him in this picture:

If you were a fan of how Hagen complimented the neighbors on their patio furniture last year, and wanted to talk their ears off about landscaping, you should have been with us THIS year. Every time someone said, "Oh my! What a cute dragon!," he came back with, "Well, actually, I'm a dragon PUPPY. You can tell because of my snuggly body..." etc. etc. with the dragon puppy facts, until the homeowner looked at me like "Is this kid for real?" Even my friend Jess, who is a paragon of patience had to tell Hagen at one point, as he was caressing an outdoor planter, "Yeah, yeah, the decorative kale is beautiful. NOW GO GET THE CANDY."

He started by telling this poor old man who we had never before seen in our lives that his witch decoration was a little scary. Then, "Why don't you have on a costume? You should get a costume. but not a scary one. You know what you could be?..."

I walked up to pull you away just in time to hear him say, "OK, I'm going to go inside now."

I think he was worn slap out.

About 45 minutes into trick-or-treating, Hagen said, 'Well, I think I have enough candy. I'm going home now." So Dad walked him home. But this one wasn't even slowing down:

We ran into Laney's best friend Laila, which was great fun, and then we ran home to take inventory; I'd promised we could stay out 'til 7:30p or your bucket was full, whichever came first. Next year, I'm getting you a smaller bucket. 

Love,
Mom