Snow Angel

Retrospective

Breaking News

All photos in this post courtesy of Barnibbe Photography

Hey y'all - 

When I was little and would go to visit my grandparents in Georgia, my arrival would normally be mentioned in the social column of The Vienna News-Observer. As in: 

Brooke Lee, of Virginia, will be visiting her grandparents Mary and Woodrow Lee of Vienna.

The News-Observer no longer exists, having been absorbed by the larger - and more metropolitan - Cordele Dispatch, which advertises itself as "The Legal Organ Of Dooly County," a.k.a the most accidentally profane slogan I've ever read.

When my grandmother would mention that my visit had made the paper, I would inwardly roll my eyes and swear up and down that I would never ever live in a town where something so trifling would qualify as "news."

Alberton got a new see-saw! Alberton got a new see-saw!

We met Cedar and her family at the playground to try out the new see-saw (or, "see-saucer," as Laney insists it's called). Laney and Cedar didn't want to ride on the same one so much as they wanted to ride on the same end, so The Other Brooke and I took turns pushing them up and down. And up and down. And up and down. Just bench pressing the young'uns over and over. 

I woke up the next morning, whining, "Thor...my armpits hurrrrt..."

Brooke Burbach, of Alberton, Montana, accidentally exercised her pectoral muscles yesterday on the school playground, and is asking for prayers of support during this time of healing and recovery. 

Love,

Mom

Cheater, Cheater, System Beater

Dear Laney,

You come from a long line of competitive people, so I can't fault you for thinking you should win everything. But when you lose a footrace to Dad in the driveway, and then throw yourself down in the dirt wailing, "BUT I SHOULD HAVE WIN IT!," it's not pretty. Based on the simplest laws of physics, your 14-inch legs aren't built for speed. We see you as a short, blonde three year-old, but you apparently see yourself as a 20 year-old Kenyan.

Sometimes you yell "GO," and take off running, and when we start to catch up to you, you pick the nearest point as the finish line and declare, "I win!" By declaring the starting line, the duration, and the finish line for all your races, you have a pretty good win/loss ratio. Also, through trial and error, we've discovered that letting you win 60% of our races is the right mix of confidence- and character-building.

For Christmas last year, my friend Karen got you the game Jenga. In Jenga, you stack a tall tower of wooden blocks and remove them one at a time from the middle, until someone topples the tower on his/her turn, and that person loses, or in the parlance of our house, "doesn't win as much."

For a small person, you are incredibly good at this game. You've figured out some tricks and you can actually hold your own when you play with Dad and me. But boy oh boy is it ugly when the blocks fall down on your turn.

Yesterday, you asked me if I wanted to play Jenga, so I hauled the game out and started setting it up. The phone rang, and I went in the other room for a few minutes. When I got back, I discovered this:

You had GLUED the Jenga blocks together. Despicable. Brilliant. Diabolical. Genius.

You probably would have gotten away with it for at least a little while, had you not chosen purple glue with glitter in it.

Love,
Mom

Rainy Days & Wednesdays Always Get Me Down

Hey y'all - 

I went five days without taking a picture. I'm suffering from photo fatigue, election fatigue and fatigue fatigue. It's also possible I inherited my father's seasonal affective disorder, since all I want to do is get under a blanket on the couch and watch old movies until it's time to buy an Easter dress and eat candy-covered malted milk balls. 

_____________________________

You guys still aren't sleeping through the night. 

Laney has crazy nightmares and hollers nonsense in her sleep: BUT I HAVING A SLEEPOVER WITH CEDAR! or BUT MY MOMMY GAVE ME COOKIES! She does this at such a loud volume that it wakes Hagen up, and he starts to cry, which rouses Laney from her dream and causes her to wail, "Hagen's crying at me!"

Readers: You know when you take a nap in the late afternoon and when you wake up, it's dark out and you're confused as to what day it is? Is it still today, or is it tomorrow? Since our children wake up at midnight and 2 and 3:30 and 4-something, Thor and I have felt that strange exhausted disorientation for five days in a row. 120 hours later, we still feel like we're slogging through the same day. 

_____________________________

Jessie lost the election.

It's heartbreaking, really. She couldn't have run a better campaign, and I couldn't have been more proud to be her supporter. The man who won is an unemployed 24 year-old who directed reporters to his mother when he was accused of sexual assault, and who once wrote a blog post about women and their "angry vaginas." 

And now he represents all the women and little girls in House District 14.

Sometimes, it's hard to get out of bed in the morning.

_____________________________

Thor is sick. 

If he manages to successfully hack up that lung he's been working on, I'll take a picture of it. 

_____________________________

I'm probably not quite as down as I sound, but y'all seriously, it's been a bummer of a week.

Love,
Mom

Piece Of Work

Dear Laney,

Lately you've been a real piece of work. Leading up to Halloween, you decided you wanted to dress up as a "princess doctor." "A princess or a doctor?" I asked. "A princess/doctor," you explained. I sighed. I'm going to spend the next few decades instilling in you the idea that "Girls can be anything!" And I can't really kick that campaign off by telling you princesses can't also be doctors in their spare time. Besides, I entertained myself by imagining a typical day on the calendar of a princess doctor:

At the last minute, right as I was about to turn one of your dad's white dress shirts into a princess lab coat, you agreed to compromise and be a princess/wizard. What turned the tide was that Peg Peg had bought you a light-up magic wand at Cracker Barrel, and you liked the idea of pointing it at your dad and me and telling us, "You're trapped in the ice! Don't move! You're frozen now!"

Your dad does a very good impression of someone trapped in a block of ice. I'm scared to ask, but I suspect it's because it's happened to Mr. Let-Me-Go-Missing-For-At-Least-Twenty-Four-Hours-Before-You-Call-Search-And-Rescue before. 

What tickles me to no end is that your dad is the strong, silent type, with emphasis on the "silent." Your dad could join a monastery without having to alter his daily routine too much: Keep quiet. Drink beer. Wear earth tones. Grandma Sue says that he was such a serious baby that she called him "Mr. Baby." BUT WAIT! Sprinkle a little crazy drama major dust on those serious, scientific genes, and you get:

You went in your room last night and shut the door and came out fifteen minutes later in this Honey Boo Boo-meets-Courtney Love get-up.

I will not be disappointed if Hagen turns out to be the quiet type, because between you and me, girl, this house is all stocked up on crazy.

Love,

Mom

Trick Or Treat