Evie Update

King Me

/ Shane / 1 Comment

For Christmas we received a beautiful, handmade checkerboard from my step-father Ron. It was sort of the right gift at the right time, because it’s a game that Evie was really ready for; not too difficult, but more difficult than the kids games she had been playing before.

We’ve had our ups and downs with checkers, but overall she really enjoys it. The problem is that she doesn’t really have anybody else at her skill level to play with, so playing checkers is usually just a series of humiliating defeats. I’m actually pretty impressed; I’m not sure if I would still want to play after being crushed 10 times in a row. Sometimes she needs a little break, but soon enough she’s right back at it.

Finally, the other day, she had her first win. Suddenly it was my turn to suffer a crushing defeat.

2013_01_11_9577

 

 

Although I had a momentary lapse in concentration which caused everything to go downhill very fast, this was a legitimate win. She beat me fair and square, and not for lack of effort on my part. Oh boy was she excited:

2013_01_11_9580

For someone who has experienced the agony of defeat, she sure doesn’t hold back on the gloating if she feels she’s doing a good job. A little prematurely, usually.

She hasn’t nabbed another win since that game, although she almost had Sara the other day. But she has certainly been improving, no question. She has a couple of strong tendencies that hurt her a little bit (well I’m not going to tell you what they are, I want her to get some wins), but she’s certainly mastered the main concepts.

How long should we wait before we introduce chess? 🙂

Photographers

/ Shane / 2 Comments

For Christmas, Anna gave each of the kids a disposable camera to take pictures with. This was a great present, and the kids loved them. Of course, these “old fashioned” cameras do not allow you to see a preview of your pictures, so after watching the kids take their pictures, I was anxiously awaiting the results.

Side note, do you know how hard it is to find a place that actually develops film these days? We couldn’t find anywhere that could do it without sending the film out for a week.

Anyway, we got the pictures back and I have to say, they’re not as bad as I thought they would be!

Sure, Evie had a few head-choppers:

4_0005

and extreme closeups:

12_0013

but there were also a decent number of surprisingly good pictures:

26_0027

and:

5_0006

And even a few more artistic shots, like:

11_0012

Is it just me, or do these kind of look Instagramed? I guess we’ve come full circle.

Oliver’s were not as good as Evie’s perhaps, but still not too shabby. Maybe sometimes he gives equal frame space to me and the toilet:

5_0006 (2)

but he’s got some good ones too:

10_0011

It’s sort of interesting to see the world through Oliver’s eyes. For starters, his viewpoint is very, very low to the ground:

17_0018

Also, it was interesting to see what he was interested in taking pictures of, such as this picture of the stove he insisted on taking: (the apparently filthy, filthy stove)

18_0019

Of course, this was Ollie, so you know he had to take a picture of his taco:

20_0021

Ice Skaters

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie and I have been ice skating up a storm lately. She got skates of her own from St. Nicholas this year and, since the rink a few blocks from us is run by the parks district, it is free to skate if you don’t need to rent skates. This means it’s very easy for us to drop in whenever we feel like it, even if it’s just for 30 minutes.

All the extra practice time in the past few weeks has been paying dividends like crazy. The first time out my arms ached afterwards from holding her up and having her cling so tight. Fast forward to the last time we went, and she’s either lightly holding on to my hand and telling me to skate as fast as I can, or outright skating by herself.

ice skating 005

She’s not skating like she was born to it just yet, but it’s obviously only a matter of time at this point. The more she goes, the more confident she gets, and the more confident she is, the better she skates.

Ollie has been extremely jealous about Evie’s ice skating exploits. He has been begging and begging to be able to go. Finally we found a time for us to all go as a family, and he got his chance.

If the skates gave him that much trouble on dry land, you can imagine what he was like on the ice.

I guess I kind of forgot how hard it is to ice skate the first time out, even though it wasn’t that long ago for Evie. It was extremely difficult to take him around. He couldn’t support any weight on his skates at all and had no idea how to keep his skates together. Because he’s so short, I had to bend over double and sort of drag him by the armpits. Half way around on our first trip, my back and arms were hurting so bad I had to stop and take a rest. It was a lot more difficult than I expected.

Ollie did a great job though, and by the second time around he was already keeping his skates together and starting to put a little weight on them. He even did a little walking on his own while holding on to Sara and my hands. That’s the thing I really noticed with Evie; every minute spent on the ice resulted in an exponential increase in ability.

At the end of it all, he was happy, but *exhausted*.

ice skating 006

The Door Incident

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Evie and Ollie were fighting as per usual, however, this time it ended with Ollie’s hand getting stuck in the hinge side of a closed door. I was close by and I swooped in when I heard the screaming. It looked bad at first, but luckily he didn’t sustain any permanent damage.

This is something that is of particular concern for me. When I was in college, I saw a man’s finger get cut off when the wind swept through the dorm and slammed the door while his finger was resting on the hinge side. It was a relatively traumatic experience for me (probably for him too), and something that I’m sure I’ll never forget.

As you can imagine, this was running through my mind during the whole incident, and I felt the need to impress upon the two of them how dangerous playing with doors could be. Evie felt really bad about the whole thing and made a series of signs to hang on every door in the house.

All of the signs indicate that you should not put your hands in doors, but this was my favorite of them. Notice the severed finger falling to the floor, and the little finger stump left on the hand. Even Ollie aught to know better than to put his hand in a door with a warning like that.

Surgery Successful

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Evie is now the proud recipient of two brand new ear tubes, at the expense of her adenoids.

Originally, the surgery was scheduled for 2:00. So the plan was for her to go to school in the morning, and for me to arrive at the hospital at about 2:30 or so before she woke up. However, on the morning of the surgery, they called and insisted we move the surgery up to 9:30 a.m.

So I missed the entire thing, but from what Sara said, I’m glad I wasn’t there. Evie woke up in a bad mood. This was expected, but quite a bit different than her reaction the last time. She was so angry with Sara, that she was actually damaging her already sore throat with her screaming. She was mouthy, and surly, and the only thing keeping her from swearing was that she didn’t know any swear words. She was also coughing like a chain smoker, further irritating her throat, and eventually needed a breathing treatment.

Ollie was such a good little brother, sitting quietly with her surgery doll in his lap and waiting patiently. He was also very concerned about the baby that came into recovery while they were there, wanting to check and be sure he was alright every few minutes. He was at the very height of 2 1/2 year old behavior, and impressed the nurses. For his efforts, he was rewarded with apple juice, a popsicle and 8 cookies. The funny thing was, several people asked if he and Evie were twins (I’m guessing probably based more on his size than his proper behavior).

By the time I saw her, she was pretty much back to normal. Her voice was a little scratchy, but that was about it. We snuggled under a blanket on the couch and read Christmas books until my voice was the one that was in danger. She was eating like normal, acting like normal, and didn’t complain one iota about pain.

Most importantly, her hearing was already *significantly* improved. I made sure to keep my voice pitched well below what she could hear only yesterday, and she had no problem hearing me. We even tried some whispering. She isn’t back to 100%, but it is night and day better. This is such a huge relief, you have no idea. Unfortunately, it means I’m going to have to get used to little pitchers having big ears again.

Certainly, seeing her hearing so much better with practically no recovery time really makes me feel like this was the right decision. Now we just wait and see if this helps her stay healthy.