Evie Update

I’ll see you a 5k, and raise you a 5k

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Just a month after running her first 5k, Sara ran a 10k at Navy Pier last weekend. For some reason the chip didn’t record her time, so that means it doesn’t count and she has to do it over. No, just kidding, but it was a little disappointing. Sara’s unofficial time was 70 minutes, 50 seconds, which is pretty awesome. Especially when you consider this race was a lot more hilly than the 5k she ran.

To me, a 10k is a lot more serious that a 5k. The 5k had people who were just out for some fun, or just wanted to support the charity. This race didn’t have any jokers (to be fair, a lot of them were there to run the 10 mile, which is even more serious than the 10k). You can’t just show up and run a 10k the way you can a 5k. Therefore, I was twice as proud of Sara as when she ran the 5k. 🙂

Sara’s mom, dad and sister happened to be here, so they got to attend and cheer Sara on. And Oliver is still saying, “Go mama! Go mama!” if anybody happens to use the word “race” in a sentence.

Since the race happened to be at Navy Pier, we were basically sitting under the Ferris wheel the whole time. Evie has always wanted to go on a Ferris wheel, and talks about it whenever we go by Navy Pier. So as we were walking by, Sara figured, why not?

Did she enjoy it? More than I would have, that’s for sure!

She didn’t seem to be phased at all by it, but when she got back on the ground she told me that “Mommy was annoying me” by trying to sit opposite her to take a picture. She wanted Sara to stay put, right by her side. Every time Sara would move to the other side of the car to snap a picture, Evie would immediately move to that side of the car as well. I can’t blame her for that, though, considering I didn’t even want to get on the thing in the first place!

Magical Daddy

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When I was a kid, I used to *love* magic tricks. I read books about them, I watched tv programs about them, and I bought all types of things at stores, practicing into the wee hours of the morning. I wouldn’t say I ever got good at them, and certainly never really had the patience to truly master sleight of hand, but it was a hobby I enjoyed. Mostly I performed for my family. “Magic shows” were pretty common in our house, usually with me as the head magician, and either my brother or sister (or both) as my helpers.

For some reason I remembered all of this the other day, and managed to find all of my dime store props. It’s been probably 20 years since I looked at that stuff, but I really did goof around with it quite a bit back then, so I manged to get about 5 tricks I could perform without any practice, and I did a show for Evie and Oliver.

Well, right off the bat I learned that it is very easy to trick a 4 year old. Misdirection, the heart of any good trick, is comically simple. None of these tricks would have fooled an adult for even a second, especially with me performing them (so I thought, until I later performed the tricks for Sara and Uncle Ben, several times!). But with Evie? I was a genius. Tell a little story, a couple of flourishes with the wand, and shout “Magic Daddy!” Indeed, magic was performed.

After I finished blowing Evie’s mind, she insisted on doing all the tricks herself. She claimed that she had watched very carefully and knew how to do them all.

That’s when the fun started.

The first trick she really did get (it was that obvious), and the second one was fool proof, so that one worked as well, even though she didn’t understand how or why. The “mind reading” trick she happened to guess right twice in a row, completely convincing her that she had followed all of the steps correctly, and activated the magic. It was actually kind of heart breaking when she grinned at me and proudly proclaimed, “I have daddy’s magic too!”

Unfortunately, the next two tricks were not quite as simple. She couldn’t figure out how to master the shrinking card and the bank that makes coins appear in your pocket. She was so sure that it wasn’t working because she wasn’t saying the right magic word, or she was hitting the magic wand too many times. As if it was scientific somehow. She hit that bank so many times, she practically beat a hole in it, checking her pockets every few seconds to see if the coin had traveled there yet.

It was absolutely hilarious. I literally fell out of my seat I was laughing so hard. I convinced her that I wasn’t laughing at her, but she just couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. She saw what I did, and she did that too, so why didn’t the coin magically appear in her pocket?

Then I would get the coin out and say something like, “Oh, no wonder it’s not working, you didn’t look behind your ear!” She said, “OOOOoooohh!” and after that she kept checking her ears as well as her pockets. Then I would trigger the shrinking card when she wasn’t looking and say, “Why don’t you try it one more time?” Oh man. If her magic show would have went on for all eternity, I never would have gotten bored.

Even though the last two tricks weren’t successful, she came away from the whole thing absolutely convinced that she has magic, if for no other reason than because when she was attempting the “nails through the coin” trick, the coin shifted and one of the nails shot back out. “You see? I actually have MORE magic than you, daddy, because I made the nail go flying!” She told me this repeatedly, probably 3 or 4 times.

I kept telling her it was tricks, not really magic, but she definitely didn’t believe me. Maybe she started to by the end, especially after she cried and forced me to reveal that the coin hadn’t really been behind her ear. On one hand, there’s no reason to ruin her sense of wonder about magic. On the other hand, she was really bummed that I could do magic and she couldn’t. I think she looks up to me plenty; I don’t need her to think I have magic powers as well.

All in all though, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a good time with Evie. (Oliver could care less about the whole thing, and pretty soon was just playing with the doll house.) It was an absolute blast. It’s hard not to enjoy doing magic tricks with such an easy, adoring audience. Thank you paper route money spent 20 years ago!

We’re off to see the turkey

/ Shane / Leave a comment

This year for Halloween, the entire family went as Wizard of Oz characters (making good use of that birthday present). Evie and Oliver were Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion, respectively:

Sara was the Scarecrow:

And I was the Tin Woodsman (by process of elimination):

Okay, so my costume was a little uninspired.

Oliver was as excited as we’ve ever seen him, running around the house like a crazy man. But I’m not sure why, since he had no idea what Halloween or Trick or Treating was. We had practiced a little bit with him, but he only really liked the part where he said, “Knock knock!”. I guess maybe he just caught the mood from his big sister.

Oliver caught on pretty quickly, wandering from house to house and yelling, “More candy! More candy!” But then again, he didn’t actually *eat* any candy; he preferred to sit in the stroller and eat cheese and apples. We tried to skip some of the houses with him, but he was not having it. If Evie went to a house, he had to go to the house too.

Unlike Evie when she was little, Oliver was not afraid of anything. People in scary costumes, skeletons hanging from trees, moving blow-up cats, spiders dropping on people, nothing. He wasn’t even afraid of the giant turkey.

Yes, I said giant turkey.

You see, the street we go to for trick-or-treating is a little crazy around Halloween time. They usually have some sort of giant, scary structure in the middle of the road, and this year happened to be a giant turkey. This thing flaps it’s wings, moves its feet and mouth, and has some sort of speaker system that plays music and occasionally squawks. When I say giant, I mean giant: there is maybe a haunted house inside or something? We’re talking like 20 feet tall. Oliver thought it was fascinating.

There was one incident that I really regretted. There was a person kneeling by the sidewalk, unmoving, acting like a decoration and waiting to jump out and scare someone. I wasn’t 100% sure it was really a person, but I suspected, so I told Evie to go over and look under the hood. Well, Evie did NOT suspect it was a real person, and it didn’t occur to me to tell her, so you can imagine her surprise. Luckily they knew better than to really jump at her, but all they did was move their hand when Evie got close, and Evie lost her mind. She was so terrified that she couldn’t even run or scream, just sort of convulse in place like she had twenty thousand volts running through her. I grabbed her up immediately, but the damage had been done. She was absolutely terrified, and it took awhile for her to calm down. Why did I ask her to look under the hood? How could I not have foreseen that outcome?? Poor girl. The incident was quickly forgotten in all the excitement and didn’t ruin the night, but I felt pretty bad.

Everyone loved us being dressed up as a set. As we were walking around, so many people would say, “Oh look, there’d Dorothy. Oh, and the Lion. Oh, and here’s the Scarecrow! And the Tin Woodsman!” And yet, a surprising number of people got it wrong (“Is she the little girl from Little House on the Prairie?”). I kind of liked having a family theme though, so maybe we’ll have to remember that for future years.

Evie did not wear her Dorothy outfit to school. She went as a doctor: not a surgeon, but a “a doctor in the emergency room”. We were told that “characters” were not allowed at school, so we decided to play it safe and keep Dorothy out of it. But then, of course, there were two other Dorothy’s at school!

Evie: “I thought you couldn’t be a character?”
Teacher: “Well…we don’t want characters from t.v., but there’s a book for the Wizard of Oz, so that’s okay.”

Thanks a lot, mommy and daddy.

As we walked through our neighborhood on the way home, there were a few houses with their porch lights on. This is very unusual for our neighborhood. We have never seen anybody trick-or-treat (ever!) around there. So we decided to hit up those houses on the way home, to encourage the trend to continue.

At the first house, the porch light was on, but nobody was home. At the second house, someone came to the door, but it was clear that they didn’t expect anybody, and just happened to have some suckers since they had a little kid. The third house was for sale, but they had their porch light on and the gate was open, so it looked pretty inviting. Well, the only person that was there was someone working on the house, so he came to the door in his grubby clothes covered in paint and drywall dust. He insisted on busting out his wallet and giving a dollar to each of the kids, despite our objections.

Evie: “Why did that man give us a dollar, even though you both were saying, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no”?”

After that, we decided not to bother with any more houses on the street. But it wasn’t a total waste, since Evie later said that her favorite part of the evening was, “when I got the dollar.”

I’d say things are going well

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Evie has been going to her new school for awhile now. Although she still misses some of her old friends, she seems to be fitting right in at the new place.

After awhile, Sara and I started noticing that whenever we introduced ourselves to parents at school, we would always get the same reaction: “Oh, Evie? Everybody knows Evie!” Not to say that I’m surprised that everybody knows her (can anybody say they’d be surprised about that?), but it seemed to be a curious reaction, especially since there are three classrooms of kids and she hasn’t been there that long.

I don’t run into the parents that often, since Evie only goes twice a week and she goes to aftercare both days. So I am not around during the standard pickup time, only for drop-off. So I don’t really get to see her interact with the parents very much. I asked her about this reaction we kept getting, since all of the parents kept saying that they knew her.

Apparently, when the parents start arriving, she stands at the gate and waits for them. As they come in, she talks to each parent and directs them to where they should go, shepherding them to their kids. She even has some favorites, referring to some of the parents as her “special buddies” that she spends a little extra time talking to.

Me: “But you don’t talk to *all* the parents, right? I mean, if there’s a lot of them, you probably miss some of them.”
Evie: “The gate is only two mommies wide.”

So apparently Evie has designated herself as the school greeter. I have this vision of all of the parents lined up at the gate, waiting to be let in by the hostess two by two and presented to their children. It certainly would explain why everybody knows Evie.

Nu-nu-nu-nu

/ Shane / 4 Comments

There is a new nightly ritual in our house, which I am having trouble putting a name to. I’m not sure how this started exactly, but every night immediately following dinner, Evie and Ollie strip down to the buff and run around the house giggling and singing, “Nu-nu-nu-nu! Nu-nu-nu-nu!”

I’ll spare you the video. (There is video, but I’m reserving that for future blackmail opportunities. Besides, it’s not really suitable for web-sharing.)

The funny thing about it is how serious Oliver takes this activity. If Evie starts stripping down before he’s out of his chair, he really starts to panic. He starts waving his hands, pulling at his straps and shouting, “Nu-nu-nu! Nu-nu-nu!” God forbid he misses out on a single minute. And even in the middle of the day, if you say, “Nu-nu-nu-nu,” he will start running around and/or removing his clothes.

Not that Evie is much better. She’s certainly the instigator of this little ritual, cajoling him to join in in the first place. Also, she’s something of a parade leader, since Oliver usually runs in her wake, or at least in the same general direction that she’s running.

Why is this fun? They are both laughing hysterically the whole time. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say they look forward to it for hours before hand. But, other than the naked part, it’s really just running around, which they could do at any time. And why that song specifically? Why any song at all?

We may never know. All we can say is, don’t peek in our kitchen windows after supper. You may be scandalized.