Evie Update

The kids are alright

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Oliver is at the age where he is doing a lot of new things. However, before I get into him, I wanted to acknowledge that Evie has a few new tricks up her sleeve as well!

The biggest new one is that she can zip up her own coat. She is very proud of this, usually exclaiming, “Guess who zipped up her own coat!” She still has issues now and again, but she got it down pretty quick and doesn’t have too much trouble. The other thing is that she figured out how to open the fridge. I guess this was more just her getting big enough to be able to handle the door. Anyway, so far she’s only used this power for good, mostly putting her half-finished glass of milk in the fridge after a meal. No helping herself, at least, not yet.

As far as Oliver, he did get both teeth in. He signs “more” and does “so big!” very consistently. He also does “all done” and “bye bye” occasionally, and claps for himself practically non-stop. He says “ma ma, “da da” and “Nala”, but it’s not always clear if he means what he’s saying or not. Certainly sometimes he does, but other times he’s just saying it to make the sounds. He definitely says “ba” to mean ball, but he doesn’t say it every time you give him a ball. He also pulls himself up to stand, and he must let go sometimes, because he gets into some compromising positions. This morning he stood up next to a kitchen chair in order to get his hands into the trash can.

He loves taking baths more than anything, so he gets pretty excited when he hears the water and we’re trying to teach him the sign for bath. Sara taught him a new thing, where he puts his finger out and then you touch his finger with your finger and say, “E.T. phone home.” He thinks that’s hilarious.

Evie, touching Oliver’s finger: “E.F. Fo Fum!”

Imagination

/ Shane / 2 Comments

There is nothing Evie likes more than playing pretend.

The downside is I have to play Cinderella. The upside is, Sara (excuse me, the wicked stepmother) got Cinderella to clean up all the dried mud the stroller had left around the front door.

She was really down there on her hands and knees, really scrubbing too! This has lots of potential…

The D-word

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Dessert. Evie is straight up addicted, and it is driving us crazy!

Evie cannot stop thinking about dessert. From the moment we sit down to dinner, she starts asking about dessert. Are we going to have it? What are we going to have? It makes no difference if we say yes or no, she still asks non-stop. Can we have cookies? If she has even a hint that there is dessert (but especially if someone tells her in advance that we will have dessert) then she absolutely refuses to eat. You can practically see dessert dancing in her eyes. She’s a dessert junkie.

We don’t make Evie clean her plate. We are trying very hard not to give her food hang-ups. I myself have a plate-cleaning obsession, which is my biggest issue when trying to lose weight; even if I am eating healthy, I still have a drive to clean up food, and I end up eating things I don’t need, or even want. I’m not saying that it is because I had to clean my plate when I’m little, but food issues are so tricky, and so many of us end up with them, so we want to at least try to do what we can.

So, we don’t want to force Evie to clean her plate, and we don’t want to make dessert too much of a fuss. We try treat dessert as just another phase of the meal; it’s not a reward for eating, it’s not anything special at all, it’s just part of the meal. However, this has become increasingly difficult.

With toddlers, everything is about power. Eating usually ends up being ground-zero for these struggles, because it is one of the very few things they have control over. And the only way to win a power struggle with a 3 year old is not to play.

We’ve tried a few things, more-or-less unsuccessfully. One thing is to just not have dessert at home, since she gets dessert pretty much everywhere else she goes. However, we still get the constant dessert questions. Also, sometimes she doesn’t eat anything just in case we change our minds and decide to have dessert after all. We’ve tried making her take take two bites of everything, even if she doesn’t have to clean her plate. This just ends up making dinner a huge whining fight about everything. The only thing we’ve done that has been a little successful is to convince her that applesauce is dessert. She doesn’t buy that one completely, but there have been many nights where she at least gets one healthy thing in.

So, we have two new strategies to try:

  1. From now on, fruit only for dessert – Like I said, the only way to win is not to play. So we aren’t playing anymore. Dessert is fruit only. (Grandparents, this means you too! You can still bring delicious desserts, but they will be kept hidden until after bedtime!) If she skips dinner for dessert, then she still eats healthy. If she doesn’t want fruit, then she knows there is no possibility for anything else. The one caveat to this is that I still think it should be somewhat interesting. We have to remember to put the same amount of effort into dessert that we do into the regular meal. I think the whole thing will fail if she catches on that we are just saying, “Oh, here’s a banana.” So we’re going to try to have things that are still fruit, but maybe we’ll reserve things for “dessert fruits”. For example, putting cinnamon on sliced up pears, or having dried dragonfruit.
  2. Evie’s try-it – Evie has a chart. Every time she tries something that she’s never tried before, she gets a sticker. When she gets 10 stickers, SHE gets to plan the meal. We’ve only been doing it for a week or two and it has been exceeding my wildest expectations. Not only is she trying all sorts of stuff, but she’s already passed the 10 sticker mark. And what did she plan for her big meal? One of the new things she tried to get a sticker!

We’re still feeling our way through yet another difficult parenting decision, so we might need to tweak things a little bit, but hopefully this will bring a little relief to dinner-time!

What does she put in those desserts??

/ Shane / 1 Comment

This is Evie trying to eat the last of Grandma S’s Christmas-present desserts. Needless to say, it was delicious and addicting. She couldn’t keep her eyes open, but she couldn’t stop eating either! She’s a trooper though. Just. One. More. Bite.

Christmas Extravaganza

/ Shane / 1 Comment

We went to church on Christmas Eve, and Evie was really excited. However, we’re still struggling to find a Christmas service that both starts at a reasonable time, and is around an hour or so long. They tend to draaaaag. I understand, you want to get your big choir in, and read all the best readings, and have a Christmas play, etc., but it is very, very stressful to try to keep Evie entertained and quiet while all of this is going on. Especially when you factor in that you have to get there 30 minutes early if you want a seat.

There were still some good moments though, like Evie playing peekaboo with the president of the Cook County board, who sat right behind us. The big thing for Evie was singing Christmas music. Of course, she likes the more commercialized songs and the church ones tend toward the religious. She asked me if we were going to sing Deck the Halls and I was like, “I don’t think so honey.” She likes Hark the Herald Angel Sings, so I thought we might have a better chance with that. However, when we looked in the program, sure enough, Deck the Halls was on there! Who would have thought?

Of course, once we opened the door to Deck the Halls, as far as Evie was concerned, everything was fair game:

Evie: “Are we going to sing Santa Baby?”

Of course, Deck the Halls was at the end of the service and Evie didn’t quite make it. It was a big relief to me when she fell asleep, since I didn’t have to threaten her anymore, but I knew she would be disappointed that she missed it. The first question she asked when she woke up was, “Was it beautiful?” Then she made us all sing it when we got home in reenactment.

As far as the presents go, there were so many under the tree that the meager additions from Santa sort of went unnoticed. The presents I was most excited about were the balance bike, the sizable donations to college funds, the “my first bacon” from Uncle Nathan, and the beautiful, amazing doll house that Sara and Anna had when they were little (which Evie adores).

The bacon, in particular, has caused quite a stir. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said, “I’m bacon!” in the past few days. It was a present for Oliver, but Evie is the one who keeps playing with it.

Evie: “Mommy, shh! Bacon is sleeping!”

However, there were two presents that really take the cake.

Well, the first wasn’t technically even a present. For months now, Evie has insisted that the only thing she wanted for Christmas was a new bed upstairs where everyone else sleeps. Her bedroom is downstairs, by itself, and she’s terrified. It makes me feel pretty bad. So naturally she wants to sleep upstairs where everybody else is, and who could blame her? So, since Santa gave her a bed last year, she figured he’d be good for another one this year.

So my mom had a trundle bed she was willing to give up, so we got that to put into Oliver’s bedroom upstairs. We tried to make it very clear that it was not a Christmas present. It’s Oliver’s big boy bed in Oliver’s room, that he doesn’t mind sharing with her while he’s not using it. Her bed, and bedroom, remain downstairs.

For my part, the grand prize was my new accordion. I have really been wanting to learn how to play the accordion for some time now. I don’t know the first thing about it, but you know what they say: the first step is buying the accordion!

Something tells me you might hear a thing or two about the accordion on the blog in the future…