Oscar was a young otter...

...and Brooklyn doesn't like to hear about him. Every time I try to read her Oscar the Otter, my favorite children's book, she says, "Noooooo," whilst shaking her little noggan. Brooklyn empasizes her negative replies by holding the note. From a quick "no" one can't really infer she's not cool with something, since she says no pretty much to everything. However from a long drawn-out "noooooooooo" you know she really doesn't like something. One of her little quirks.

Anyway, Brookers is in Utah. Brittiny left her there with Mom and Dad and flew home to CT. We hear that Brooklyn has really been enjoying herself on her extended stay and extra time spent with all her Gparents, Aunts/Uncles and cousins. That said, Brittiny and I are really missing her and anxious for her safe return on Wednesday. That said, we're having a really nice time w/o her, though I hate to admit it. We've been able to accomplish a lot this past week and SLEEP a decent stretch as well. It only took us about 40 mins to be ready for church, a record in the post-Brooklyn era.

Here are a bunch of pics that we've been meaning to post. Enjoy... or, if you're think we're an ugly family, don't enjoy.

Brooklyn in New Hay Hay's Wooster square. She got tired chasing around lots of squirrels. If you remember, we got no deal with the squirrels!

Brookers standing at the top of her li'l tikes slide, sporting a Sundress courtesy of the Boofay Ltd. summer collection.

Brooklyn standing in from of our Apt, looking at something. Sometimes she looks to me like a miniature teenager.

Here is Brookers and me, moments after I arrive home from work. Seriously, better than anythin in this world is her shouting "Dah-dee!" as she runs toward me with her little outstretched arms.


OOOOhhhhh, I almost forgot. My friend, Phil, introduced me to a really great newer singer/songwriter: Paolo Nutini. Definitely chk out this video of him singing my personal fav, These Streets. http://youtube.com/watch?v=swIKGLqIitI

Buncha old pics I never posted...

... so check them out and feel free to leave bawdy comments at the bottom. Kellie Redman, I'm thinking specifically of you:

Brooklyn, Brittiny and our Christmas tree. Yeah, it's April, so we should probably take that tree down. But if we wait long enough it'll be closer to Christmas '07 than '06, so we can just leave it up, right?

For an Epperson family Christmas tradition we're going to build a cake...er, I mean, gingerbread house as part of an FHE activity. The above picture is the first installment of said tradition. Brooklyn loved it because she got to eat a lot of candy. How much candy, you ask? Her dukie that night smelled of peppermint.

Brooklyn will someday be a double-fisted drinker. For now, it's double-fisting the binkies...

This is the evening I got back from London/India. Brooklyn was so sweet to me, she kept yelling "DAH-DEE, DAH-DEE!!" and running around the living room.



Brooklyn in her Indian digs. She looks really cute in this outfit, kindly purchased for her by Sushila Pradhan of UBS, Hyderabad branch. Once the weather gets a little warmer, we'll dress up Brooklyn and take her to the DQ for a nice dinner.





So one Sunday afternoon after church Brooklyn and I surprised Mom by visiting her at the Hospital. Well, we took over some lunch and played around in the lobby area waiting for her to come down to eat. Brooklyn took to running in circles around the large fountain centrally located in the lobby. I ran around with her. At one point, she became a little dizzy and sort of fell backwards into the fountain. She was shocked: the water was cold! I reached into the fountain and pulled out my baby girl, soaked from head to foot and sporting a now 11 lb. diaper. Brittiny was surprised when she came downstairs to find the two of us--me in church clothes and Brooklyn working that nostalgic hospital baby blanket look. On the bright side, we eventually got this sweet Yale New Haven Hospital t-shirt from one of the Ped's nurses. Brittiny doesn't let me watch Brooklyn alone any more.

Here's a pic of Sheree and Brooklyn when they went snowmobiling. Baby car seats look really funny strapped to snowmobiles. Wait, I think they went sledding.

Brooklyn and Henry are down with Baby NCMO, and this picture is the proof.

Why does Jersey have all the toxic waste dumps and New York all the Attorneys?...

Jersey got first pick...

So what's been going down? Guess not too much. Brooklyn gets a little cuter every day. She also gets a little heavier. I picked her up and tossed her toward the ceiling - she's one heavy punk. The other day as I prepped her for her bath (eg, chased her naked butt around the upstairs) I noticed that what junk she lacks in the trunk she makes up for in her baby gut. The baby gut is a strange phenomenon. It's as if the baby's midsection has hit middle-age all by itself. Any ways, here are some pics:

This is Brooklyn hanging out with Laila Haraj-Sai. Brooklyn pretty much plays all the time, hangs out with friends, lets other people bathe her, change her clothes, etc. Someone tell that freeloading kid to get a job already...

Here's a pic of me at Tower Bridge, the Thames river below. You can tell from the photo that it was raining. I was in London a total of 33 days. It rained on me 32 of those days. No kidding. It rained on me so much that I was reluctant to take a shower.

Tower of London in the background. It's a really old castle that was once home to the Royal family or the Flintstones or Hugh Grant - I wasn't really clear on what my tour guide was saying because I was still adjusting to his thick accent. I asked at the front desk if they had a tour guide who spoke AMERICAN and trust me, that didn't go over very well. Did you know the ToL's guards were called Beefeaters because in the olden days they had to taste the King's food for poison - and you thought your job sucked?!

Behind me is the State Capitol building where Charlonian's Ball is held. Every May teenagers get dressed up in tuxes and/or gowns, rent convertible mustang's from Hertz and try to get their car to roll UP gravity hill (for the non-Utard's this won't make any sense). No, seriously, it's St. Paul's, a very, very cool old cathedral.

This is the view from St. Paul's. I tried to get a picture of the Gherkin - an odd rocket-shaped bldg not far from UBS - so you could see this freaky thing, it's pretty cool.

I harp on this building b/c my first couple of days in London I was completely lost getting around. People kept giving me directions based on the Gherkin. I was too polite or embarrassed to say: Sire, just show me on the map where I have to go because I have no idea who this guy Gerkin is or where he hangs. Instead whenever someone would gesticulate wildly off in some direction, then another, then another, then another, and say "... you'll see the Gherkin on your right and Bob's your uncle", I would just nod and say, "Oh, yes, next to the Kurklemin, perfect, cheers" and walk away purposefully in the direction where the guy first pointed. It sometimes took me an hour more to get to the Gherkin which was actually so close to the UBS building that they shared a bus stop. But at least I didn't have to be man-shamed by admitting I was lost, which is bad, but as a note to any ladies out there: the only thing worse than a man having to ask for directions is having to ask for an follow-up explanation of someone's directions, no matter how confusing they were in the first place.

Oh, then after a couple of days schlepping around I figured out that the Gherkin was this building (infra) what I had walked past every day and had secretly titled: what Michael Jackson would build if he had become an architect instead of a weirdo:

Stop, collaborate and listen...

I hate people who eat with chopsticks. I don't mean Asian people, I mean other people who learn to eat with chopsticks later in life because they're always going to Asian restaurants. You know who I'm talking about - the people who have that smug, self-satisfied look on their face the whole time: "I've traveled extensively throughout Asia... I'm very familiar with your ways, Master Chen... I'll just be going with the chopsticks. And let me take the liberty of ordering for our party: we'll have the mooshoo hock chin chaooooo...' I'm very sophisticated, I'm a world-traveler. I think I mentioned that earlier..."

The real question is whether there's an American restaurant in downtown Beijing where the locals get to pat themselves on the back for eating with Silverware: "Ooooohhh, I go with the fork... I'm a real world traveler..."

Anyway, the reason you're all here: pics of little Miss Brookers.

Here's Brookers in front of our tree.

Brittiny and I at the Hospital's yearly Christmas dinner at the Omni hotel in New Hay Hay. We had a good time there -- there was a dance floor, so Brooklyn ran around for three hours with the other kids. She was really tired when we finally left the party... I just noticed that I use the red-eye correction in Adobe Photoshop and it makes us look creepy.

Here are my two precious ladies. Brooklyn was a sweetheart all night, playing with all the kids and shaking her groove thang on the dance floor. Her dancing is hilarious, but already way, way better than Dad's moves. We bought Brookers this red Christmas dress for the w/end's Christmas parties... She looked really cute.

Nephews Jake, Jaxen and Gerrett. Definitely they're up to something...

Here's McKenlyn Eustachias Povey, Brooklyn's newest cousin. Okay, so I made up the Eustachias part b/c I don't know if she has a middle name and I woke up with pressure in my ears. She's looking good, though, and a LOT like her older brother, Jaxen.

Greg Giraldo is hilarious...

Not a ton of new stuff going on in our lives. Have posted some Halloween pics below, along with recent shots of Brookers