The Brookston Family Blog
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Our good friend Suzanne was at a party over the weekend at a friend’s house. There was a cute little dog on the sofa, lying on its back. Suzanne watched another party-goer rub the dog’s belly and moved in to do the same. All was going well until she started rubbing closer to the dog’s chest, closer to his head. The dog freaked and lunged at Zan, biting off her lip in two places and also on her arm. A calm and thinking person at the party rescued the lip and it’s been re-attached. They should know by the end of the week if it took or if grafting will be necessary. I talked to Suzanne this evening and she sounds in good spirits, all things considered. She’s on good drugs and must visit the plastic surgeon every day for the next week. She’s spending the week at her parent’s house in the South Bay. Please give her a call or send her a card to let her know you’re thinking of her and wish her a speedy recovery. I know she’d appreciate it.

Porter, Sarah and Alice send Suzanne get well wishes.

NOTE: Suzanne’s Useful Tip #1: When transporting severed skin tissue, do put it on ice. Ice is not good for preserving skin apparently, because of how it affects it. The best way to transport tissue is in a saline solution.

My friend Chantal sent us this very funny cartoon called Licensed to Pill. It’s sung to the tune of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire. Make sure you wait until the very end to hear the disclaimers, which are almost as funny as the video itself.

Sarah slept in this morning, but when she finally did come downstairs the kids were all over her.

Snuggling with Mommy, before Mommy’s had her coffee.

Last year we got Porter a “My First LeapPad,” which is a learning device from Leap Frog, a company that specializes in educational toys. It looks like this:

You play by using the red electronic pen that’s attached and press spots on the page like a touch screen. By pressing a green button marked “Go” it tells the device what page you’re on so it knows what to say and what you can do there. On each page you can touch objects to help you learn something about them or play a game of some kind that helps with identifying objects, learning relationships, etcetera. The spiral notebook is detachable and there are a number of different ones available, with a computer cartridge that you stick into the side of the blue handheld case, sort of like the old Atari 2600 cartridges (though much smaller). In that way, the things you can do with the LeapPad are limited only by the available cartridges. In addition to the four that came with it, we also got Porter a Wiggles and Thomas the Tank Engine cartridge. So far the Thomas one is his favorite, not surprisingly.

The problem with the LeapPad has been one of repetition and not quite getting how to use it. When we first got it for him, which was more than a year ago, he’d page through the spiral book touching things randomly. About as far as we got with him was to push the green button but he couldn’t seem to listen to the instruction for each page. His patience was too thin and he wasn’t able to absorb anything. So we put it away. From time to time in the intervening months, he’d ask to pull it down again and he’d play with it for a short period of time ranging from a few minutes to off and on over a couple of days. Each time he’d seem to make a little progress. He’d show slightly more patience with it or he’d figure out how to do a little bit more with it, but he’d always hit a wall. And when he hit the wall, he’d just start doing the same thing over and over and over again. He’d obsess on one page and press the same button or buttons repetitively until we’d take it from him and put it away again. And that’s how it went every time.

Yesterday he again asked to play with it. And again he did a little better with it this time. In fact, time he managed to even play one of the games and listened through it well enough to complete a few of the tasks the game asked of him. He showed more patience with it overall and seemed to have a little better grasp of how to play with it. He even tried the Wiggles cartridge, but it didn’t last long and we returned to the Thomas one. Eventually, he did hit a wall where he became fixated on the page with Thomas, James and Percy and some cans of paint. But it never got to the point where we had to put it away, which is a good sign, and it’s still out so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Porter with the electronic pen, trying to decide which button to push.

Playing with his LeapPad.

Pressing the “Play a Game” button.

Pat is one of the founders of the Real Beer Page, the first big beer portal on the internet. He was also kind enough to host this blog. (thanks Pat). Pat also has a son, Jack, who’s a little older than Porter so we’ve seen him at birthday parties from time to time, though it’s been a little while. These days, I usually run into Pat at beer events. Happy birthday Pat.

Pat (at right) with Tom Dalldorf in New Orleans for the Craft Brewers Conference in 2003.

A self-portrait of me and Pat at Falling Rock in Denver at last year’s Great American Beer Festival.