Evie Update

Just like her mama

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Sara has a strange weakness for magazines. They are her kryptonite: for some reason she just cannot get rid of them. She pages through each one, carefully folding the corners down on the pages she wants to “save for later”, and then sets the magazine aside, never to be opened again.

Even when I find them 3 years later and point out that this stack of magazines hasn’t been looked at for 3 years, some kind of hoarders instinct kicks in, and we still have to keep them. The compromise is that Sara went through all the old magazines and ripped out the pages with folded over corners, reducing the volume of paper we are required to save by about 99%. Unfortunately though, the chance of anyone ever looking at them again is still 0%.

Imagine my horror when I discovered Evie paging through spare magazines and folding down corners. Could this actually be genetic? How am I going to live in a house with TWO people saving magazines? However, it was fascinating going through them all after she went to bed. She folded down so many pages, and it was just so interesting to see what she thought was worth saving in the magazine. Seriously, psychologists should do this as some kind of personality study.

Evie’s selections were decidedly bizarre, such as this picture of a cat holding its privates, folded over at least twice in two different magazines:

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In general, Evie’s selections tended towards pre-packaged junk food with dozens of those pages folder over, such as Keebler cookies:

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She did select some clothing though, such as this black leather shirt:

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But there was at least one selection to make her daddy’s heart proud…a pound of uncooked bacon:

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Ballet Recital

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Evie is still loving ballet, and was very excited about her big performance (although possibly not as excited as she was about missing swim class). This being her second year, she was even less phased than last year. I can definitely see her improvement, and the way she does the different moves and poses really starts to look like a ballerina.

If nothing else, she certainly has the smoldering look down:

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This year, Sara volunteered me to help out backstage. I was more than a little nervous about this especially since I normally have no involvement with ballet whatsoever, so I had no idea what I was doing. Not to mention the fact that I would undoubtedly be the only daddy involved, so any stupid mistakes would only be magnified. I felt like I was representing my entire gender. My volunteer duties covered both the actual performance and the dress rehearsal, for double the fun.

However, the whole thing was a breeze. The kids pretty much take care of themselves at this point, so we really only needed to help them with their costumes and herd them in the right direction. Sara gave me tissues and lipstick to take in my pocket (I’m told all the best backstage mommies have lipstick in their pocket), and I managed to be Johnny-on-the-spot with both items, impressing several actual backstage mommies (thanks for making me look good Sara!)

For the actual performance, I couldn’t have had a better seat. I was just offstage, maybe 10 feet from the action. It was so much fun to see Evie performing. She just absolutely nails everything, with her usual meticulous attention to detail. You can see in the video that she is exactly on beat with the teacher on every step. One of my favorite parts of the video is right at the start of the free dance, about 2 minutes in, when Evie launches into it before anybody else even moves. I know she’s been thinking about this for a long time and practicing, so it was nice to see all of her hard work pay off.

Evie is such a little ballet teacher. When we were backstage, she was stressing over when we were going to go, warming up, and making sure everybody was lined up properly in the correct order. She was assigned to be the “caboose”, perhaps to make sure everybody in front of her was doing the right thing. Well anyway, that’s the way Evie took it, and she planned to do her job properly.

You’ll see what I mean at exactly 1:02 in the video. When Evie sits down, she catches the eye of the boy across from her, and then quickly demonstrates to him on how he should be holding his arms. This cracked me up so much, because it’s just Evie in a nutshell, knowing every single piece of the performance and “teaching” everyone how to do their part. You’ll also notice at the very end, when they all line up, she quickly corrects her feet to their proper position.

So anyway, without further ado, I give you the Dew Drops:

ETA: Since I wrote this post, Evie has informed me that she’s started a “dance school” for her classmates. She has choreographed a “tulip dance” (because “our arms look a tulip when we do the circle”) and she is teaching her pupils in preparation for a performance she’s arranging on the final day of school. She demonstrated a little bit of the dance for us, and I assure you it is as fully featured as the one performed above.

Little Ronny Howard

/ Shane / 4 Comments

If you come around our house, plan on hearing about Evie’s old pal, Little Ronny Howard.

Yes, I’m talking about *that* Ron Howard. You didn’t realize he and Evie were friends? He probably doesn’t realize it either.

Her obsession with Lil’ Ronny began with his role as Winthrop Paroo (Evie’s love of The Music Man already being well documented), but soon took on a life of its own.

It’s amazing how often the phrase “Little Ronny Howard” can come up in a day. Never “Winthrop” or even “Ron Howard”, always “Little Ronny Howard”. It’s like her and Little Ronny are best friends; you might think he’s a boy who lives down the street. “Little Ronny Howard plays the cornet”, “Little Ronny Howard has a lisp”, or “I wonder what Little Ronny Howard is doing right now?”

The lisp adopted by Little Ronny Howard in the movie in particular captured Evie’s imagination. All these questions about lisps! Why does he talk like that? Do people really talk like that? How do you do a lisp? Could I have a lisp when I grow up? We seem to be through the lisp phase now, but she mostly alternated between practicing the lisp for herself, or forcing Sara and I to say, “Thomething Thpethal!” with absolutely as much spitting as we could muster. Even Ollie started talking with a lisp (as he always does when Evie is on about something).

It’s pretty obvious that Little Ronny captured her imagination by virtue of being the main person her age in her favorite movie (not to say that his acting was poor, because it wasn’t, but I suspect it needn’t have been spectacular to win over this particular fan). But Evie seemed to have trouble grasping the fact that the movie was filmed in 1962, and Little Ronny Howard wasn’t exactly little anymore. I really blew her mind when I explained that Little Ron is actually older than I am. I think he’s older than my mom actually. Oh, and by the way, he doesn’t even have a lisp.

You could have knocked her over with a feather.

To Evie, Little Ronny Howard is just some kid. To her, he IS Winthrop Paroo. It makes no difference to her that he went on to be a television star before becoming one of the biggest directors out there. Means nothing to her. He might as well be a boy who lives down the street. I don’t know Ron Howard any better than Evie does, but I kind of think it would put a smile on his face to know that there’s a little girl out there asking herself on a daily basis, WWLRHD? (What Would Little Ronny Howard do?)

The 3rd Annual Oliver’s Birthday Play

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A few years ago, at Ollie’s first birthday party, a spontaneous performance of the Wizard of Oz broke out. Longtime readers of the blog will be quite familiar with the fact that Evie loves nothing more than a performance of some kind, and she quickly turned this into a yearly tradition.

As the tradition has grown (and as she herself has grown), the play has turned into more and more of a production. This was the first year that she has taken it into her mind to really “direct” the play as well as star in it. She had very firm ideas about who would play each part, what the costumes would look like, etc. She has been preparing for four or five months.

This year she decided to perform “The First Christmas”, after her successfully reprising her performance as an angel. She had a line to speak in the play, so I was not surprised that she wanted to include that line in her play. What I did not realize was, Evie being Evie, she had also memorized *everyone else’s* lines in the play. Keep in mind she participated in the play in December, and it is now April. This is what she dictated to me for her play:

Fear Not, for behold I bring you good tidings of joy which shall come to all people.  For born this day, in the city of David, there is a savior which is Christ the Lord.

And this will be a sign to you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

And suddenly with the angels, there was a multitude of angels praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace.”

Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing which has happened.

I don’t think it is exactly word for word, but I still think it’s pretty good for a 5 year old who heard something 2 times 4 months ago.

When writing the script, Evie was VERY specific. Who should go first, what they should say, where they should stand. She had me write:

Silent Night (2 verses)
A little bit of silence
Angels We Have Heard on High

I will spare you the video, but Evie’s directorial debut more or less went off without a hitch, and she successfully shepherded (no pun intended) a dozen actors through their roles. Don’t mention it to her though; like any true artist she was ultimately disappointed despite her success. I think she was mainly disappointed because she wanted it to last longer (specifically, she wanted it to last an hour).

In Evie’s exuberance, it is easy to forget that it was actually Oliver’s day. She graciously allowed him to be Baby Jesus. However, Oliver insisted his baby should be Baby Jesus, and he himself would be a “manger”. Of course, Baby Jesus needed to “lie in a manger”, so he originally planned to lay in the crib with the baby on top. That wasn’t quite comfortable, so he ultimately settled for hiding in his magic box, popping out for the big birthing scene, and then sitting next to the crib holding the baby’s hand.

I’m sure Evie has already begun planning for next year. It’s a good thing, because we’ll probably need the entire year to prepare the costumes and scenery. Anybody know what union scale ought to pay?

I think she’s on to us

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“I don’t understand,” said Evie. “On Easter, the Easter Bunny brings you things, and on Christmas, Santa Claus brings you things. Why don’t the Leprechauns bring you things on St. Patrick’s day?”

She makes a good point. “It doesn’t work that way,” doesn’t seem like a very good answer. Why doesn’t it? If we live in a world where magic creatures have nothing better to do than bring you presents, and this is normal, then is it so crazy that leprechauns should bring you things too?

“It doesn’t work that way,” I said.

“It does for [my friend*]. Leprechauns bring him things all the time.”

(*Her friend with a name so Irish that I would never use it in a story because nobody would believe an Irish person would be named that.)

Eventually she gave up pestering me when she realized I had nothing more to add.

The next morning she told Ollie, “After we’re dressed, let’s go check under our pillows to see if the leprechauns left us anything!” Ollie didn’t really seem interested, but she kept insisting and asking him, “Did you feel anything under your pillow last night?” I had mostly forgotten about the conversation, but she seemed absolutely sure the leprechauns would have left something under there. I braced myself for the inevitable crying to follow.

Instead I was met with excited shouting.

Under Evie’s pillow was a card written in green crayon that said, “I Love Evelyn Lois Halbach The Leprekans”. Ollie was staring rapturously at a tiny card from under his pillow that was mostly green hearts.

Evie looked me in the eyes and dared me to say the cards hadn’t come from leprechauns.

I don’t think that she has connected this back to other things, like the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, but it seems like it can’t be far behind. In duping her brother (and me as far as she knows), she’s seen behind the curtain a little bit. She’s far too bright to not eventually make the connection between how easy it was to orchestrate the leprechaun cards and how easy it would be to fake other things.

On the other hand, she’s already demonstrated a supreme willingness to hold on to her childhood longer than completely necessary. I would not be surprised in the slightest if she ignored all evidence to the contrary, simply because she *wanted* to believe in something. I guess maybe we all do that. I guess that’s called being human.

I want her to resist. Believing in magic is something that I hope she holds on to for a long, long time. Maybe forever.