Brookeday

My sweet little girl has turned 2 years old. It was truly amazing to me when her birthday rolled around this year. Brooke is such an essential part of our family, but she blends in so seamlessly, sometimes it requires a birth day to remind me of what a precious gift she is. I love all my children equally, but because she is so self-sufficient and precocious, it can be very easy to get distracted with the high-maintenance nature of my other two. But with the foot-breaking and the birthday, it has freshly reminded me of what a treasure I have in my littlest girl. I love her.

Ah, yes, the foot-breaking. Brooke has dealt with it remarkably well, and she has already begun running (yes, running) on her casted leg. That is not a problem until she gets to a non-carpeted surface, where she instantly becomes Apollo Ohno and careens into the nearest immobile object. I find myself daily begging God for her not to break something else until she has at least healed from her most recent break.

For those of you who do not know the cause and diagnosis, Brooke fell down the stairs of our playset, and as a result, has a hairline fracture in her heel bone. She will have her cast on for a total of 3 weeks (hopefully). How grand. But, like I told Steven, of all the things to have broken considering her fall, she is very fortunate. And, a certain older sister has been very put out that she does not have a pretty pink cast as well. When Brooke and I returned from our day-long pediatri-orthopedic excursion, Anna informed me she wanted to break her foot also. "No" was the answer, by the way.

Cutie Patootie's birthday celebration was very low-key this year. She opened her presents, enjoyed some ice cream cake: the usual.

She thoroughly enjoyed us singing to her. I don't think she knew what to do with all the attention.

















But she did enjoy the attention, that's for sure. She wouldn't blow out her candle because she was way too busy enjoying all of our attempts to coerce her into doing so.


















She still is not big on the whole present-unwrapping thing. She enjoys her gifts, just not unwrapping them.

Which worked out well since Anna the Family Manager was at Brooke's disposal for the de-wrapping.

These pictures were included solely because of her hairdo:

Brooke had a happy day. Thank you to everyone, again, for the gifts, cards, cash---we so appreciate your kindness and generosity. As I'm sure you are aware, and are hopefully not offended, thank you cards are outside my scope right now. I will get better about that soon (I hope). But, since you are reading this----THANK YOU!