Evie has an imaginary friend that she talks about sometimes, named Shi Shi. Shi Shi doesn’t come up all that often, but I imagine as time goes on she will probably come up more and more.

So, the other day I was laying on the floor in Evie’s room and Evie said to me, “Shi Shi is in the closet. Open the door, she wants to come out.” I was like, “No honey, nobody’s in the closet.” She absolutely insisted that Shi Shi was in there to the point that I actually started to get a little creeped out. Eventually, I slowly cracked the door open, half expecting some alien to jump on my face and suck my brains through my nose, but of course nothing happened. I closed the closet quickly and asked Evie if Shi Shi had come out and she said, “No, she’s still in there.” So I opened the door a second time thinking maybe Shi Shi was the ghost of some murdered child who died in the closet and now lives in our house. “She came out,” said Evie and nonchalantly went back to playing with her barn.

Apparently I had a similar story when I was a kid, in which I insisted with such fervor that my imaginary friend was coming to dinner (Casper the Friendly Ghost in case you were wondering) that my mom started to think maybe someone (something?) really would show up for dinner.

Evie has been cracking us up lately by calling Sara and me “guys”. Like, she’ll say, “Guys? You’re done eating?” Definitely one of the best part of having kids is when they say these very adult things and just crack you up.

Speaking of good things about parenting, I have been very proud lately of Evie’s manners. She is very polite and I even overheard a comment from a stranger at the museum about how well mannered she was. She consistently says “thank you” and “please” (although this one takes some reminding. She mostly only uses it if it looks like you are going to say no) and she’ll say “excuse me” when she wants to get by somebody (I get a kick out of hearing her say, “Excuse me Nala” when Nala is in her way) and she says “no thank you” if you offer he something she doesn’t want. She’s also pretty good about “bless you” for sneezes.

The other day she was rocking in her chair and, thanks to her Richard Scary book, she said, “That’s piggy manners!” (as opposed to kitty manners. It doesn’t hurt that her favorite animal happens to be the one to have good manners)

In other news, we made some lemon oregano drumsticks the other day and they looked so beautiful coming off the grill I actually had to take a picture. And the smell! Oh man, it smelled like some sort of festival or something was going on on our back porch. I actually had two different neighbors comment on the smell! Let me tell you, that is putting your grill to full use, boy howdy.