lost childhood

for most of brooke's life, (she's 7 1/2 now & don't you forget that half!) i've kept a file on my computer called, "brookisms" and i would add to it any time she did something funny or cute or bizarre. i've kind of imagined that one day it could be made into a book or something, at least for us, so we'd be able to remember my girl's wonderful, quirky little sayings & behaviors that are so easy to lose from your brain in the course of a life.

last fall our computer got hit by lightening, even though it was turned off & plugged into a power strip. this is the second time it's happened, but this time it fried our motherboard. we took it somewhere to see if it could be fixed & they said, no, but they could save all our stuff onto an external hard drive & for the low, low price of $125, we'd be able to take it home & hopefully get it all moved over onto a new computer. i went back & forth about it since i hated to spend the money, but if i didn't, pictures would be lost, but more importantly, that brookism file would be gone. big, deep breath..... yes, do it. the memories are worth it!

it took a couple months before we got a new computer & then it was only because of my good friend jen who got a new one & gave us her old one, which wasn't even very old. then it was a couple more months before we were able to go pay for the external drive & bring it back home, safe & sound.

this morning i was feeling a blog post rolling around in my brain & it was going to be some kind of highlights reel of brooke's best moments to date. i was hoping to access that file & cherry pick the best ones & put them in it. i started a hand written list of ones i knew i wanted to include & then asked chris if he wanted to add in any of his own. that's when he decided to tell me that the file i was planning to dig into later - gone. when we got the hard drive back from the computer shop, chris got onto it to move things over that he knew i'd want & that's when he found that everything is encrypted. it's gobbledy goop & after spending a large chunk of time (that i knew nothing about) trying to figure out how to retrieve it correctly, he gave up. he's usually really good at doing anything that needs to be done on our computers. he's not great w/ hardware, but anything software is his cup of tea (or maybe i should say coffee).

i sat here & pulled my face into my shirt like a little kid & cried. just thinking about all those fabulous memories being lost forever into my clogged up brain is just too sad for me to even express. i felt like i was going to throw up. i thought i'd done well to put them into a file on my computer since i generally lose anything on paper & i didn't want to be like so many moms who don't write anything down. i wanted to always be able to look back & remember brooke's childhood. she's the only kid i have & probably the only one i'll ever get, so i have to treasure every little moment!

i don't know if there will ever be a way to retrieve or decode my most precious possession, but in the meantime, here are a few of those tiny little moments in time that have amused me & i want to save forever.

1. when brooke was 2, she got a piece of doll furniture where she could put a baby in the little high chair or give it a bath or change it's diaper. it was just the right size for a 2 yr old to play with & she spent a lot of time putting her dolls and stuffed animals onto it. one morning she got up shortly before we did & when i got up, she took me over to the doll thing & showed me that the tub was full of water & she had bathed her cloth bodied baby. i thought that was pretty cute & then asked her how she had gotten the water into the tub. she said, "i pee pee." thinking surely i was misunderstanding something, i asked her to tell me again. she said it again, "i pee pee." i smelled the doll & sure enough, that baby'd been swimming in pee! i asked her how she got a tub full of pee & she showed me that she took it over to a living room chair w/ an arm on it & then dangled her bare butt over the side of the arm & peed straight into the tub below. there was quite a bit of pee in there & i can't imagine that my 2 yr old had a bladder big enough to hold about 2-3 cups of liquid, but there it was. i still to this day wish i could have seen that happen, but i guess if i'd seen it, it never would have happened because i'd have put a stop to it way before it got to the full bathtub, dolly getting nasty stage.

2. brooke had spent a week with my parents without chris & i for the first time when she was about 2 1/2. it was the first time i'd really been away from her, so i was really feeling the love when i got there to pick her up. i grabbed her up in my arms & squeezed her with my heart & my soul feeling all full & overflowing. i whispered into her ear, "i love you so much! i missed you!" she leaned over to my ear & whispered back, "happy waxy day."

3. i love to kiss & nibble brooke's ears, especially right after bath time. i sometimes tell her that they taste like something sweet or good & one day she decided to return the favor. she chewed on my ear for a minute & then said, "mom, your ear tastes just like men's feet!"

4. one morning we once again let brooke get up before us & normally she would just watch some pbs cartoons & munch on dry cereal. this day when i woke up i noticed a horrible smell. it smelled like puke & something else. great. what a way to start the day. when i went into the living room, i found brooke dancing bare foot in a pile of parmesan cheese that she'd dumped into the carpet. she was so happy & smiling & told me, "i like sparkle cheese on my toes." that horrible, sick locker room smell stayed with us for much longer than i'd care to admit.

5. once i was bathing brooke when she was about 3 & i told her that i loved her. as usual, she didn't reply. she never would say that she loved me, she would only say it to daddy. so this time i said, "don't you love me too?" and she looked sweetly at me & said, "you are the best kangaroo ever!"

6. once brooke walked into my room, having just woken up from her nap & gone to the bathroom. i was napping too because i never wanted to pass up an opportunity to get some sleep. she leaned into my face & said, "hi mommy." it was then that i noticed the smell. it was fantastic! so fresh, like a hawaiian breeze! and it was coming from my child's mouth! then she smiled & held up the plastic shell of a glade plug in. she had taken it out of the thing in the wall, gnawed through the filmy cover & eaten all of the jelly, smelly stuff inside. this was the first time i called poison control.

7. at lunch one day, i was sitting next to my adorable little girl who was about 3 at the time, watching her eat & thinking about how lucky i was to have this wonderful miracle child. i was smiling at her & she kept looking at me strangely like she wished i'd stop staring at her. so i said, "when i look at you like this, my eyes are telling you that i love you." she replied, "when i look at you like this, my belly is telling you that it thinks you're very powerful."