Evie Update

Okay Dancers…

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie has started ballet class. Now, I haven’t had much experience with ballet, so I kind of thought it would be mostly goofing around, maybe learning a little dance routine to perform at the end. I am surprised to learn that it actually looks like ballet, even from the first day. Between almost looking graceful and the little ballerina  (excuse me, dancer) outfit, she looks so grown up!

My favorite part is the funny things they do to teach them the ballet moves, such as bird beaks and open windows, painting the ceiling with your feet, and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on your feet. They sound so silly, but when Evie does them you think, “Oh yeah, that actually does look like ballet when you do it.” They’re just really good descriptions.

Anyway, what you really want to see is the adorable video, so without further ado:

The Daily Sob Fest

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Whining and crying have become the constant background noise for my life.

Evie is going through an extremely difficult phase at the moment. Everything is “wrong”: she didn’t want to wear her snow pants, she DID want to wear her snow pants, you picked the wrong hat, you won’t play hide and seek, you found her too quickly when you were playing hide and seek, you weren’t supposed to sing along, you WERE supposed to sing along, etc.

Picking out clothes for the day is particularly difficult. The daily power struggle got to be such a hassle, that we had to make a rule that Evie is no longer allowed to pick out her clothes. Whatever an adult picks, she has to wear.

I don’t know that this has been a success exactly. We did get rid of the power struggle, but we replaced it with over an hour of sobbing, pleading, and whining every morning. Her socks don’t feel right. She wanted a dress today. She DIDN’T want a dress today. Her tights don’t feel right. Her turtleneck doesn’t feel right. Her pants don’t feel right. The thing is, it really doesn’t matter what you pick, it’s not like you could have made a different selection and avoided the whole disaster, she just automatically demands the opposite of whatever you pick. Only to have the whole thing repeated again at night with pajamas.

Did anybody else have this issue with their 4 year olds?

I’m just so tired of constantly fighting with her, constantly telling her to hurry up, constantly threatening her with everything from, “You’re going to miss breakfast” to “Should we call school and tell them you’re not coming today?” to “No story tonight, you missed your chance”.

When Evie was one, everybody said, “Just wait until she’s two.” When she was two, they said, “You think that’s bad? Wait until she’s three!” Then it was four, and I have to say, that’s the worst so far. I’m hoping it gets better from here, since nobody has yet told me, “You think four is bad? Wait until you see five!”

Big Anthony and When He Was Born

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By Evelyn Halbach

Chapter 1: Born

When Anthony’s mother was born, I don’t know why, but he was magic. Anthony was there and met Strega Nona. When Strega Nona was littler, she used to meet other people and she already knew that Anthony was born, but Anthony’s mother didn’t know that.

When Anthony’s mother first met him, he was 10. She didn’t know that he was her son. He didn’t know that he was magic, and he didn’t know that his mother was his mother instead of somebody else’s mother. So he decided to find out, and the mayor told him and gave him a golden badge.

Then he was 12 when his father met him. His father didn’t know that he was magic, and his father decided to find out, and he asked the priest if Anthony is magic. He decided to give a speech (the mayor told him).

Chapter 2: Cake

On Anthony’s 13th birthday his sister met him, and she didn’t know he was magic, and she decided to make cupcakes for him anyway, and she planned a big party, but it was already his birthday. And he planned a birthday party for her. Then they had an Easter egg hunt. Then they all ate cakes and made cookies with chocolate. And then they decided to go on vacation and had adventures. And they decided to make a house there – not a real house, but a tree house, and they never came back. They didn’t know it, but it was just a dream. And Strega Nona came and woke them up. And Anthony didn’t have a sister.

Chapter 3: Sister

Anthony, when he was grown up, it seemed like he was 100, and he met Strega Nona who told him to come to her house, but never to touch the magic pasta pot. One day he told the townspeople, and they said, “No”, and he told the priest.

Chapter 4: Die

Big Anthony dead and his sister is crying (this was the best illustration in the book, but there were many others)

When Anthony was dead and he went to heaven, everybody went to heaven, even the angels that were down there seeing Jesus, for it was Christmas night, and it was the first Christmas night. When it was the first Christmas night, Jesus was coming up too, and Mary and Joseph came too. Everybody came, except for Strega Nona because Strega Nona means “grandma witch.” Grandma witch is a mean thing.

The End

Evie’s Watch

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You just never know with Christmas presents.

It is kind of a long story about how it came to be that my brother gave Evie a watch for Christmas, but suffice it to say that it was thrown in at the last minute just so that she would have something to put in her purse. The watch is huge. I very much doubt that it would fit around my wrist; it could probably fit around her waist. The face of the watch itself is the size of my fist. It’s probably twice the size of the face of my (adult) watch. It weighs about 5 pounds, and she can probably use it to work on her biceps.

So imagine everyone’s surprise when she saw it and acted like she just unwrapped the Hope diamond.

Oh man, she couldn’t have been more excited. “It’s a watch! A real watch!” She was running around showing it proudly to everyone. “If you need to know what time it is, just ask me!” It hasn’t been forgotten since Christmas either. Every night she takes it off and puts it in the bowl next to my bed where I put my watch, and every morning she gets it out and puts it back on.

She can’t tell time. The numbers are all Roman Numerals, so she probably couldn’t read it even if she could read a clock. The watch falls off if she hangs her arm down straight. The watch itself would be huge on an adult male, much less on a little girl (there’s a reason why Uncle Nathan decided to get rid of it). She couldn’t love it any more. It’s the best Christmas present she got (tied for the best with the paper dolls).

The thing is, if we knew she would like a watch so much, we could have gotten her one that was intended for a kid. Small, light, digital, perhaps with a couple of butterflies on the sides. But you never really know what’s going to be a hit, what is going to capture a kid’s imagination, and what is going to be a complete and utter failure.

The Dangers of Book Learnin’

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Evie has always been into reading books. The trouble with learning the English language from a book, is that you learn to phrase things in ways that people just don’t say. I have noticed Evie doing this quite a few times. For example, the other day Evie walked in and said:

“Something is queer in this room.”

Meaning strange of course. I wish I had more examples, she does this all the time. Anachronistic little turns of phrase that she picked up from a Little House book, an old fairy tale, etc. This is especially worrisome because we just finished reading Pollyanna.

Pollyanna seems to be some kind of endurance test to see how many synonyms for the word “said” can be used in a single piece of literature. Nobody ever says anything; they always exclaim or sigh, retort or rejoin.

“You are the most extraordinary girl!” ejaculated Aunt Polly.

Ejaculated? Seriously??

Yes, seriously. At least a dozen times, someone ejaculates in that book. So far I haven’t heard Evie use that one in conversation, but I’ve been holding my breath a while now.