What? No. I'm up. I'm up...

Dear Laney,

I promise nothing blog-worthy has happened in the past three days. Or maybe it has, and I didn't notice because I'm averaging four hours of sleep a night. Your brother plays hacky sack with my innards until 12:30am, and then you've started getting up at 4:30am, demanding some combination of hot chocolate, dinosaur movies, and potty breaks. It's enough to make me want to check in to the Hilton with a bottle of Ambien a good book and not come out for a few days.

I don't know if it's the foul weather or your crazy sleep schedule, but you seem to always be in one of those moods where stuff like this comes out of your mouth: "NOOO! I don' LIKE milk!!" (2 millisecond pause) "WHERE'S MY MILK!!?!?!?" I don't know, Sybil.

It snowed for most of last week, then on Sunday it rained all night. So all this week, we've had a driveway that looks like a perfectly groomed hockey rink. I've fallen, you've fallen, we've intermittently lost power. Yesterday, I was looking out the kitchen window at the slushy, grey outside world, counting the hours 'til your bedtime (9), and months 'til summer (6), when I realized I felt exactly like Bill Murray in the movie Stripes, right after he loses his job, his car is repossessed and his girlfriend leaves him:

But here are some random happenings and announcements:

1) Your dad confessed that the paintings we put together for the grandparents that I gave him to mail have been sitting on his desk at work for over a week. He mailed them today. So, if you receive a note from us wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving, you'll know where to direct your bewildered looks. On the plus side, Thor says he's refunding 50% of your purchase price and throwing in free postage.

2)A few weeks ago, I changed obstetricians. The new guy is great, and we learned at our last appointment that he started his career as a Navy flight doctor. So now, while he's yanking out your brother in the delivery room, he and your dad can continue to swap stories about fixed wing this, and rotor wing that. Lucky me.

3) Potty training is going really well, with one minor kooky habit: When you decide you want to go, you pull your pants down wherever you are in the house, and then waddle to the bathroom with your pants stuck around your ankles like Tim Conway on the old Carol Burnett Show*. We ask if you want help, and you say, "No - I got it." We've tried explaining that you can, nay, should, wait 'til you get to the bathroom to pull down your pants, but you're having none of that rational nonsense.

4) Ella went to the vet yesterday and was diagnosed with minor arthritis. Or, as my paternal grandmother Mama Lee used to pronounce it, "Arthur Itis." It doesn't seem to be affecting Ella's intensive lie-around-and-eat-what-the-baby-drops schedule.

25 days 'til Christmas.

27 days 'til your brother is born.

18 years 'til my next decent night's sleep.

Love,

Mom

* No, I have no pop culture references more current than 1978.

...And Representing The United States:

Dear Laney,

Uncle Nate and Grandma Sue spent Thanksgiving night with us, so they were on hand when your cross-country ski lessons continued Friday morning.

You seem to enjoy it, and you grasped the basic concept right away. You even seemed to figure out that you need to put your skis in a "V" in order to make it uphill. When you did that, your dad started tossing around words like, "prodigy." I tried to tell him it's not quite the same caliber of event as those 3 year-old piano savants who sit down and bang out Mozart concertos, but there's no talking to him sometimes.

As much fun as this day was, it held a little sadness, too, because it was the last time we were all going to see Uncle Nate before he and Aunt Brynn move to Florida next month.

When we told you it was time to get off the skis, you did this:

..which is a good representation of how we all feel to be losing Uncle Nate.

See you all at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Love,

Mom

Thanksgiving 2011

Dear Laney,

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving this year. We had Cedar and her family, Grandma Sue, and a special appearance by Uncle Nate.

We had turkey and dressing and green bean casserole and cranberry sauce and sweet potato casserole and mashed potatoes and gravy and deviled eggs and boiled shrimp and a cheese tray. There was a homemade pumpkin pie and a cheesecake. And still, you found time to lick the Play Doh.

Mom: Laney, quit licking the Play-Doh

Laney: But is SO tasty.

Even though your dad was grilling both of our turkeys, I thought it was suspicious how much time the menfolk were spending outside. Then I discovered this ancient Montana secret:

You took a nap on your regular schedule, but we decided we would wake you up when lunch was ready. When someone wakes you up prematurely from your naps, you can often be - what's the word I'm looking for - unpleasant. Your dad and I didn't want you to miss out on the Thanksgiving meal, but we also didn't want to be the ones to go upstairs and poke the bear with a stick, either.

So we sent Cedar, who I think began to suspect she was being set up.

Uncle Nate was the gift that kept on giving, playing catch with you girls and making sure Rosie was Rung Around x 100.

After the big meal, Dad took you outside for your first real cross-country skiing lesson. Grandma Sue bought you these skis for Christmas last year when you were a little over one year old. At the time, I thought they were a crazy gift, but your dad thought they were awesome. "After all," he said at the time, "one day when she's being interviewed by Bob Costas before her Olympic debut, she can say, 'I only ever missed one winter, Bob.'"

This is the kind of thought process that's taking up the vital real estate in your dad's brain.

I know it seems ridiculous that people are wearing short sleeves in these photos, but with our little house filled with people and a cranked-up oven, the place was like a disco inferno all day, minus the disco. We all had to take turns going outside to cool off.

As evening approached, so did the turkey comas, so Cedar and family bid us good-night and headed home.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Love,

Mom

34 Days

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

Baby Boy Burbach (Name still TBD) is scheduled to be born on Dec 27th at 7:30am. Vegas odds are on this one being another whopper. Here in the Burbach house, we don't make no tiny babies.

I would encourage you all to be a little extra sweet between now and then, so God will be a little more inclined to take your prayers seriously. Go find an old lady and help her across the street, even if that's not where she was headed.

-Brooke

9-1-1 to Grandma Sue

Dear Laney,

A few years ago, your dad joined facebook, only to have his account hacked. All of his friends received a message that your dad had been kidnapped and taken to London, and if we each chipped in $200, the kidnappers would let him go. Like me, most of his friends figured he might enjoy a British getaway, and no one coughed up any money. Besides, flying to England from Boonieville, Montana probably takes a day and a half, and I had seen the man at breakfast.

As a general life rule, it's good to have a calm response when presented with a crisis situation which may or may not be real. Grandma Sue seems to have a firm grasp on this rule, since she didn't alert the authorities when you called her last night to inform her that you were being pursued by bears who (it was rumored) wanted to eat you.

What I especially love about this conversation is that you took the time to ask her about HER day, and to have some small talk about your Dora panties, before dropping the bomb about the bears. In the newspaper business, that's called "burying your lead."

So just a note to any/everyone that Laney might reach by hitting "redial" on our phone: We do not have bears in our house. At least not in the winter. Remain calm.

Love,

Mom

Meatpacking District

Dear Laney,

Your dad went hunting yesterday morning with Cedar's dad, and called us from the top of the mountain on his cell phone to let us know he appreciated the bagel sandwich we had packed for him, and that he had bagged a deer. You know, pretty much the way I imagine Davy Crockett and his wife did things.

I was smart enough this time around to not go inspect the contents of his truck bed, and instead to wait until he had cleaned and brought in the generic-looking segments of deer. At that point, I could pretend that he had just come from a big meat sale at Winn-Dixie.

I didn't intend to participate in this process, called - appropriately enough - "processing," but then I noticed that your dad's system was to put a chunk of meat on a piece of freezer paper, and then wrap it like a present. If there is one thing I LOVE, it's wrapping presents, a.k.a. The Best Part Of Christmas. Also, I love labeling things with a marker. I was able to overcome my squeamishness by pretending I was doing a Martha Stewart craft project.

Despite our impressive-looking final product, your dad and I will not be going into the deer processing business any time soon. To help us figure out exactly what we were wrapping up in those packets, I had to do a Google image search for "Venison Diagram," and tape it to the kitchen cabinet so we could follow along. Again, exactly like Davy Crockett and his wife used to do in the olden days.

To file under "You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up," the whole time your dad and I were in the kitchen working on the deer, you were in the living room watching an episode of Go, Diego, Go about Diego's efforts to rescue a whitetail deer.

Your dad and I felt so dirty. Sorry, Diego. You missed this one.

Love,

Mom

Black Friday Art Sale

Dear Laney,

You've taken a serious, bordering on obsessive, interest in painting lately. I keep the door of the fridge covered in blank paper, and when the impulse strikes, you open your case of Crayola watercolors and go to it. It is not unusual for you to go through a case a day. I know that Walmart is single-handedly killing the "little man," stomping on women's rights and is probably responsible for untold human rights violations in China. Still, I want to thank them for offering the 8-color palette of Crayola watercolors for 97 cents, since I have to buy at least three of 'em a week.

You're creating so many works of art that I have them coming out of my ears. While I think each one is a masterpiece, I can only hang on to so many...

So, "Letters to Laney" is announcing its first annual pre-Black Friday Art Sale. Attention kinfolk! Are you looking for that certain something to accentuate your kitchen decor? Need a little something kicky hanging in your office? Well, choose your favorite(s) below, and I'll put them in the mail to you post haste. First come, first served. Send me an e-mail or leave your picks in the comments below and consider it done.

#1

#2 (SOLD to Peggy Spjut)

#3 (SOLD to Peg Peg)

#4

#5

#6 (SOLD to Granny Jack)

#7 (SOLD to Tex)

#8

#9 (SOLD to Connie Mercer)

#10

NOTE: Even if you ignore this offer, a painting will be chosen for you, and you will receive it in the mail against your will. Seriously, we're at maximum capacity here.

Love,

Mom

The Dance Craze Sweeping Our House

Dear Laney,

Here's another thing I can blame on Dora The Explorer, and her infernal friend Squishy the Squid:

There are certain things in this world that make me irrationally angry. And somewhere in the top ten of that list, you'll find, "People who get the lyrics wrong." One of the greatest movies ever written (in my opinion) is Bull Durham. There's a scene in that movie where rookie baseball player Nuke Laloosh is on the bus with the rest of the team, strumming the guitar and attempting to sing Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness":

NUKE

(singing softly)

Oh she may get woolly, women do get woolly,

because of all the stress...

CRASH

It isn't "woolly" it's "weary" and nobody's got stress,

they're wearing a dress. I hate people who get the words wrong.

...And Crash takes his guitar away.

I've always loved that scene.

You and your dad refuse to sing the second "Boom Boom" in the Squishy the Squid song. So last night, I passive-aggressively queued up the song and played it over and over, thinking one of you would look at the other and say, "Hey! It would appear that we've been missing the second 'Boom Boom' that the writer intended." But no - this exercise just gave you guys more opportunities to sing it the wrong way. I think I'm missing some hair now.

It's moments like this I begin to suspect we're God's sitcom.

Boom Boom Shake-A Shake-A,

Mom

How Your Dad Went About It All Wrong

Dear Laney,

It's no secret to anyone who spends any time at our house that you're tough on your dad. To make him feel better, I tell him all the time that you're as mean to me as you are to him, but this is the very definition of a "little white lie." (Another example of a little white lie: When your dad tells me I don't waddle when I walk).

I've been puzzling over what I might be doing that your dad isn't. I mean, we both agree that you're basically a tiny lunatic, but why am I better at coping with that than your dad is?

And I think I've figured it out.

For twelve years, your dad served in the Navy, where people are rewarded, praised and promoted for being reasonable. Sure, this keeps our country safe and blah blah blah, but it's terrible preparation for having a toddler. By contrast, for twelve years, I worked in Los Angeles - two of those years at a talent agency, where I was an agent assistant. This was an environment where people were rewarded, praised and promoted for being Crazy. As. Hell. A girl I once fired for being too incompetent to operate a Xerox machine is now running a medium-sized cable network. True story. The people in charge threw tantrums, shouted verbal abuse and hurled phones at their underlings.

This, my friend, is the perfect preparation for parenting a two year-old.

Your honorary uncle Brian and I worked at this agency together, where he was the assistant to a man who was so famous for being bonkers that he served as the inspiration for an equally bonkers television character. I remember sitting near Brian as he was on the phone with his boss one afternoon. From ten feet away, I could hear his boss' screaming on the other end of the line. I remember Brian calmly repeating over and over:

What plane would you like to be on, Ari?

What plane would you like to be on, Ari?

What plane would you like to be on, Ari?

This came back to me like a bad flashback yesterday as you were screaming at me in the living room and I heard myself repeating:

Where would you like your chocolate milk, Laney?

Where would you like your chocolate milk, Laney?

Where would you like your chocolate milk, Laney?

The difference, of course, is that you don't generate millions in revenue for our house... so ixnay on the razy-cay.

Love,

Mom

"Dear Katie" - Part 2

Dear Laney,

It looks like you're working on another letter to your cousin Katie in Georgia, with a shout-out to her sister Hope.

Last night, I was sitting in bed, working on a crossword puzzle, when you climbed up next to me, flipped over your Dad's thesis, and started writing. So I filmed it. Dad tried to help with the filming, but... well, you'll see. Someday, you will make an excellent producer.

I was going to add subtitles, but I think it's more fun to let the people guess what you're saying. I'll give them a clue that you seem to think Katie needs to know the lyrics to "Ring Around The Rosie," and needs to pull a rope of some sort. We couldn't figure out what rope or why, but I do know that Katie better start pulling that dang rope.

When you were finished, your side of the paper was filled with tiny little scribbles and swirls.

Dad's side read:

THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES

ON PREDICTING RARE-PLANT HABITAT

IN THE NEZ PERCE NATIONAL FOREST

I understood them equally.

Love,

Mom

The Dark Side Of Daughters

Dear Laney,

Nothing in the world is as funny to you as when you and your dad are playing, and he pretends to get seriously injured. He is the Larry and Curly to your Moe.

Most recently, you've developed a game called "I ZAP YOU!" which entails "zapping" your dad with your evil magic wand, and then your dad pretending he just got seriously electrocuted. It doesn't matter that you've done this a jillion times, your dad still falls over, pretending he was hit by a substantial amount of voltage. And every single time, you laugh like this:

[Production note: For this performance, the role of Evil Magic Wand will be played by a tire pressure gauge]

Last night, I went to bed a little worried about the width of your mean streak.

Then, this morning, I woke up to discover that it had snowed about ten inches at our house. And at first - per my usual - I was despondent.

But my next thought came almost immediately: My mama is going to be here next month, and she's going to be sooooo mad when she sees this.

And that's going to be soooooo funny.

And I giggled, just like you in that film clip.

Love,

Mom

Self Portraits - A Series

Dear Laney,

Throughout history, artists have been drawn to the concept of self portrait.

I can only assume it's this same innate artistic instinct that has compelled you to repeatedly steal my iPod and take - according to my computer this morning - about 600 photographs of yourself. Once again, I am the big dummy for assuming that every time you yelled "TAKE PICHER!!" you weren't actually taking a picture. How many times do you have to tell me before I finally pick up on your clues? 601, apparently.

Signed prints are available in the gift shop for $100.

Love,

Mom

Perspective

Dear Laney,

It's been a good few weeks for your mom professionally. I wrote a script for an episode of network TV and scored my biggest production credit ever from our kitchen here in the boonies (also from a hotel room in Georgia, and a little from Granny Jack's dining room table).

I have a little illustration hanging in my bedroom that reads, "Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life." I was on a business trip to Miami back when I was still dating your dad when I saw it in a gift shop. As cheesy as it sounds, it made me stop and think about what was important. And it was obvious to me - even in that gift shop - that the most "important thing" couldn't be found in Los Angeles - it was in the Navy, stationed in San Diego.

I bought the picture. I quit my job. I married your dad. I moved to Montana.

Five years later, I wouldn't change a thing. I just wanted to tell you that of all the things I write, these letters to you are my favorite.

TV may be fun, but you and your dad are Important.

Love,

Mom

My Mama's Gonna D-I-E.

Dear Laney,

We are seven weeks away from your brother's arrival, which should fall sometime between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I'm sure he will be mad forever that he has a birthday so close to the holidays, because each year, the whole world will be saying, "Happy birthday to you and Jesus... but mostly Jesus."

Not wanting to miss out on the birth of Baby #2, Peg Peg and Tex are planning to spend the Christmas holiday with us. This is the same woman who thought it was so cold here IN MAY that she wore my bathrobe over her clothes, and did her crossword puzzles in the parked Subaru with the heater and the seat warmers cranked up to eleven.

For fear that she won't get on the plane, I haven't told her that the temperature here has already fallen into the teens, and we've had intermittent snow flurries.

Unlike your South Florida relations, you and your dad and especially the dogs are loving this new cold weather, and are going out on lots of "abenturs" a.k.a. "adventures."

Basic sled dog math says that a husky can run 15 mph for up to 15 miles. There's a wild rabbit that lives on our road that always likes to dart out in front of the bike, then scurry away. Your dad calls him, "The Widowmaker." When you and Dad come back from your bike rides, you always say, "Mom! We go SO FAST!!" 1) No kidding. 2) I don't want to know. 3) No way are you going to catch my butt in that thing.

Last weekend, you came downstairs and woke me up by holding on to my side of the bed and announcing, "Mom! Mom! MOOOOM! Is snowing 'gain." Let me direct you to the other side of the bed where you might find someone who's interested in that news.

As for me, I'll live in a state of denial from Oct - May, just like every other year. But y'all go have fun.

Love,

Mom

What You Learned At Swim Class (Hint: Has Nothing To Do With Swimming)

Dear Laney,

About a month ago, we got a "report card" in the mail from your swim instructor. Befitting her personality, it featured multiple colors of marker and excessive use of exclamation points.

I don't know what bugged me about this - probably that we had already moved on from the swim class experience, and I didn't need someone to send me a multi-hued reminder that you refuse to get your face wet or blow bubbles. This is still true, by the way, even though we always practice in the bath tub. No, you prefer to lick the bathwater, even right after confessing, "I just tee tee 'gain."

So, what did you learn in swim class, if not the basics of swimming? Answer: You learned an unconditional love of running/jumping/splashing in a circle to "Ring Around The Rosie." And what's the last thing a hugely pregnant woman wants to do? Answer: Run around in a teeny tiny circle while bending over to hold your hands and then being forced to "fall down." Because the only thing worse than falling down these days is having to get back up. I'm like the fallen best friend in every shoot-'em-up movie... yelling "Leave me! Go on without me!" from the living room rug.

Not for the first time, I've found myself saying, "Thank God for Cedar." It seems she developed the same love of "Ring Around The Rosie" that you did, only she calls the song "Ashy Ashy." And she seems happy to run around in a circle with you all day long, even though you 'bout- near give her whiplash every time y'all do it.

Here's the two of you in ashy ashy action:

Say what you will about Cedar, girlfriend is supportive.

A final note about that report card: You are so hard-headed, it wouldn't surprise me if you grew up to swim the English Channel without once in twenty-one miles putting your face in the water. Just in case, I will save this progress report as a potential illustration for the New York Times piece.

Love,

Mom

First Golf Lesson

"Such a pretty girl to have such an ugly swing"

-Clint, Tin Cup, 1996

"The crowd has gone deadly silent. A Cinderella story. Outta nowhere.

A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion.

It looks like a mirac... It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"

-Carl Spackler, Caddyshack, 1980

My Baby Don't Bluff

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

When my baby tells you once...

twice...

three times that she's leaving?

Mister, she's gone.