Over the weekend the big event was going to a birthday party for my boss’ daughter. Evie had a blast! It is all she could talk about ever since then. When we asked her right after we left what she did at the party, her only answer was “share”. Since then though, she’s discussed all of her favorite aspects of the party including watching the birthday girl open her presents (“Sit in chair! Watch!”), watching her blow out the candles, eating, seeing doggies and playing pretend with the kitchen and plastic food in the basement. No mention of the other kids, the piñata, or the lady who was hired to play music, other than to complain that it was “loud”. Her other complaint was, “Doggie kiss face. Keep her safe!” (by “her” she means “me”) She’s not a fan of dog kisses. She also got a gift basket with many exciting gifts such as bubbles, a froggie and her very first jar of play-doh. As far as the play-doh is concerned, she likes it a lot but all she wants to do is rip it into tiny pieces. Then you are expected to roll it all back together so she can start ripping again.

Other highlights of the weekend included:

• Some child was making us plates of plastic food at the party. One plate had one tiny petit four in the center of it and the other plate was covered in food, barely containing it all. “This one’s for the big guy!” he said, handing it to me.
• Evie likes to have songs sung to her while she eats. She won’t tell you what song she wants to hear, but as you try to sing different songs she says no to every one. So finally, after innumerable rejections, she was saying no to the song I was singing and I ignored her and kept singing. She said to me, “I’m shaking my head no!”
• Now that the weather has been nicer, she wants to go outside all the time. She has many tricks to try to get you to take her outside, but I guess she decided to try the straight forward approach.  She said to me,  “Good bye, see you later, I’m taking yankee doodle and the purse!” and then walked over and tried to open the front door.

We also tried to get Evie to fingerpaint, but she wasn’t very into it. As soon as the paint got on her hand she started yelling, “Wipe it off!” I guess I should have seen that coming since earlier in the day she refused to stand up in the sand box because she didn’t want to use her hand to push herself up since that would require touching the sand.