Saturday, March 22, 2008

Meet Uncle Brent


For those that do not know, yes, I have a baby brother who was a bane to my existence while I was growing up. His name is Brent and he was a pain in the butt while I was growing up. I imagine that all little brothers are a pain to their big sisters. However, somehow he and I managed to grow up without killing each other.
Brent has been missing from our life for awhile now while he went off to find himself. He is back now and dare I say all grown up, mature, and responsible. I almost don't know who this man is. (Did I say he was a man? That is weird to think about, much less say!) I guess for the most part I will always think of him as a little brother and not a grown-up man!
The kids think he is super cool because he does neat things like rock climb, drive a pick-up truck, work with big tools, and he used to play football on a real team, not just in the yard! HJ is in awe of his Uncle Brent because of all of this and the fact that Uncle Brent is taller than Daddy.
So when we sat down for an early Easter dinner, Uncle Brent joined us. My Mom made a great dinner of roast, baked potatoes, homemade bread, and a strawberry spinach salad. She also made chicken nuggets for the kids because she does not believe the kids should have to suffer with eating anything they don't like at Grandma's house. So anyway, Brent was talking to HJ about how good the salad was. He offered HJ a spinach leaf out of his salad and said lets eat it together. HJ looked really skeptical about the whole thing after all it was green, in the shape of a leaf, and looked suspiciously healthy. I went on to tell HJ that Uncle Brent is taller than Daddy because Uncle Brent eats a lot of veggies and they make him grow tall. HJ was sold. He and Brent popped the lettuce leaves in their mouth and HJ chewed it all up and proceeded to eat about 8 more leaves with Uncle Brent! That is just amazing for my little boy, who gags when I make him eat anything green. HJ wants to grow tall so bad that having an example of someone eating veggies and being taller than Daddy was enough in his little mind to make him eat. It didn't hurt that after dinner Grandma measured him again and he had grown 1/4 of an inch more than the last time he measured. He is now 40.25 inches tall! He is on quite the growth spurt. Anyway, he attributed this growth to eating spinach and has said that he will continue to eat spinach leaves now! What a wonderful thing for Uncle Brent to do! For someone not used to being around kids he is turning into a great uncle.
However, in my effort to keep it real and give everyone a clear picture of my life, I feel like I should include this story about my little brother. After all, I am still the big sister and it is my job to torment him (and I don't think he reads my blog and this is pretty funny!)
Anyway, years ago, when my Dad was sick, he enjoyed making all of us sit around with him and watch old home movies. You can imagine how much fun this was for my brother and husband. However, they were both such good sports about it. We all sat around and pretended to be as fascinated with these old home movies as my Dad was. Anyway, we never knew where Dad would start with these historical videos. Would he pull something recent like Brent's football days or would we have to watch endless videos of babies? You could hear the inward grown of the men (again I say that hesitantly about my baby brother!) when the video started and on the screen there was a young woman holding a baby and talking to it. Now in all fairness, in the typical style of the 70's you could not tell whether this baby was a boy or girl because of the beautiful and fashionable dress used back then. I think the baby was dressed in harvest gold or burnt orange or some other awful color. Anyway, the lady caught Brent's eye and he looked surprised and blurted out the first thing to come to his head "Wow, she is hot! Who is that lady holding the baby?" At that point in the room there was a stunned silence as we all collectively whipped around to look at Brent. I can't remember who said it but I think it was me that said "That is Mom holding me!!!" At that point Brent turned the reddest I have ever seen anyone turn and then the red turned to green as he fought down the sickness upon realizing that he had just been attracted to his own mother and thought she was hot! We were all on the floor rolling laughing. That one cracked even my stoic Dad up. Brent has still to this day not lived that one down. It is a classic!
So there, now you have a more fair picture of my brother. The super uncle/sporting champ and the bumbling boy. All together they make for a man I am proud to call my brother!

2 comments:

Aimee D said...

how sweet! I'm so glad that he's popped up again and back into your lives. Happy Easter!

Joy said...

Wow! I am so excited to hear about Uncle Brent and that he could come to an early Easter dinner! What a praise! Thanks for sharing the fun story with us as well!!! ;)