Evie Update

The restaurants of break

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Over the break (the two weeks over the holidays during which I didn’t blog), we were out and about a little more than usual, which led to us hitting up more restaurants than usual. So I wanted to mention a few of the highlights:

The best of the lot was Electric Cheetah in Grand Rapids. Evie was pretty excited to go here, since she considers us the “Cheetah family” (on account of how fast she and I run at soccer practice). She must have been hungry too, because she insisted she was going to order “everything” from the waitress. The waitress must have been taken with her, since she spent a few minutes showing her pictures of her kids. I had one of the best sandwiches I can recall, the “Sloppy Jalopy” which was:

House-smoked corned beef brisket and black forest ham, caramelized red onion, tomato, thousand island, Dijon, and Swiss on grilled rye.

They also had a root beer list the way a brewery has a beer list, which was also enjoyable to read (but the one Sara ultimately chose did have high fructose corn syrup in it). They also had good fries with *awesome* dipping sauces for them. I don’t remember what they all were, but there were like 10 different kinds and they were all delicious. My favorite was the dill. Also, Sara had some saffron-tomato soup which she enjoyed. All in all, a very awesome “hipster” lunch spot (it even said hipster on the menu, so I know it’s true).

Obviously that was a little more interesting than the Pizza Hut lunch buffet, but that doesn’t mean Evie didn’t enjoy it more. Evie ate more than Sara! She had 3 pieces of pizza, garlic toast, a dessert breadstick, 3 slices of peaches (she didn’t beat her old man though).

Next up was a restaurant a little closer to home (and one we go to now and again), Chant. At this one, Evie was excited about getting to try “sushi” (except it didn’t have fish). She had wanted to try some at Sara’s work Christmas party, and then she got a set of play sushi from Rachael, which she loves to play with. So I ordered some so that she could try it. I don’t think she really liked it, but then again it was non-traditional sushi, so she might go for it again some time.

The last and least exciting restaurant was Quiznos, the name of which Evie found hilarious. “Quiz-nose? The restaurant is Quiz-nose?” Now, it’s just funny to have “nose” in the name, but this was especially funny to Evie, because she has special names for all of us in the family. Evie is Spoon-nose, I am Fork-nose, and Sara is Kitchen-nose. This all happened one day when Evie and I were being silly, and I was wearing a spoon on my nose, but in true Evie-fashion, she never forgets a thing. So these names have been around for a long time and she never forgets them. So this sort of added to the humor of Quiz-nose.

There were a few more restaurants, but those were the ones that stood out.

50 States

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Here we have Evie singing the 50 states in alphabetical order. We pulled out this old party trick over break a few times, and it went over well, so I thought I should get a video of it. She does pretty good with minimal prompting, though some of the state names are a little garbled (sorry Hawaii!) Girl has a memory on her, that’s for sure.

Maybe you’ll see her on the today show someday, like one of those kids that knows the names of all the presidents or whatever.

You can see some of her previous songs here.

Bigirl Bed

/ Shane / 7 Comments

So Christmas came and went, and Evie got piles and piles of wonderful presents to play with. But the marquee present, the gift to end all gifts, was the big girl bed. If you asked her what she wanted for Christmas, or what she asked Santa for, there was only one answer (pronounced as one word in Evie-speak: “bigirl bed”).

We were away from the house for Christmas Eve, but Santa left a note saying there was “something big” waiting at the house in Chicago. Sure enough, when we got home, there was the brand new “office bedroom”, resplendent with a new bed, dresser and book shelves. “Everything turned brown!” she exclaimed, since her old furniture was white. It was everything Evie had hoped for and more. We took a video of it, but if you don’t spend a lot of time around her, you would probably think she wasn’t very excited about it. She’s a pretty low-key girl, so you have to know her to really see the things she’s doing that show she is excited. So you’ll have to take my word on it when I tell you that it was that quintessential childhood moment when you get everything you’ve always wanted.

Now, for our part, there were two big concerns going into this: 1) would we lose our hard won gains with sleeping, and 2) would it be okay with her on a different floor of the house.

It turns out, there was no need to worry at all!

From the very first night, she slept perfectly and peacefully, waiting to get out of bed in the morning until we come down and get her out. She doesn’t set a toe outside of her bed until morning. In retrospect, this kind of makes some sense, since she already had the ability to climb out of her crib, but she doesn’t. Also, she doesn’t like to go downstairs by herself due to “scary monsters”, but she has no qualms whatsoever once she is actually in her room. What a relief (especially after hearing some other parents’ horror stories)!

Because we were worried about her downstairs by herself, and in particular worried that we wouldn’t hear her, we finally broke down and bought a baby monitor. It’s kind of funny to buy one at this point, since she’s quite old. We didn’t tell her about it, and she hasn’t noticed it, so we’d like to keep it that way to avoid the dreaded “toddler-monitor-summons”.

Now, I thought I mentioned this on the blog, but I couldn’t find it. When we went to Seattle, we were sleeping in the same room as her. Since we couldn’t really go anywhere while she was sleeping, and we couldn’t have any lights on in the room or anything, we mostly just ended up going to bed when she did. This is where we learned that for the first 20 minutes or so, when we always thought she went right to sleep, she really whispers to her stuffed-animal friends. I don’t know what she tells them, but she’s sure telling them something. The monitor confirms that she seems to do this pretty much every night. I still can’t hear more than the occasional word, but it sounds very interesting!

One last thing, on a lighter note. Evie got some lotion for Christmas, (“Just like mommy and daddy!”) but she wasn’t sure what to make of it at first. Sara asked her what she thought it was.

Evie took a long look at the package and exclaimed, “It keeps away bees!” If that’s what she thought it was, she sure was excited about receiving bee repellent.

Santa, year 3

/ Shane / 3 Comments

We took Evie to see Santa last night at the zoo, and I have to say, everything went better than I could have expected.

The big question of course, was what she would do when it came time to see Santa. She had been excited in theory, but when we got to the line, she seemed a little quiet. I was worried that would translate into not wanting to talk to Santa, but I was way off on that one. She had no issues whatsoever, and after I told her to speak up so Santa could hear her, she shouted the rest of her answers to him. In fact, if anything, Santa was more afraid of her than she was of him. She expected to climb right up on his lap, but he was talking to her a little bit first, probably feeling her out to see if she was going to cry or something, and she was a little miffed that she didn’t get to sit right away.

She seemed a little dazed by the whole experience, but happy to chomp away at the green candy cane Santa gave her. All and all it was a pretty pleasant experience, with a really small line and no professional photographers. We much prefer to to take our own pictures, and sometimes they don’t let you do that if they want you to pay for a picture (see last year).

After that we wandered around the zoo for awhile to look at the Christmas lights. They have a couple of displays set to music, and Evie really dug that. Especially since she got to hear her two favorites, Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. We’ve been listening to the Christmas radio station in the car, but they never, ever play Jingle Bells. So Evie usually spends the whole time demanding I play Jingle Bells on the radio. Therefore, I was extremely relieved to hear it (4 times) at the zoo. We also got to see a few animals (really just a jaguar and some monkies) and drank some hot cider in the member’s lounge, because that’s how we roll (zoo membership paying off!)

As a side note, remember how you used to see groups of smokers huddled around an ashtray in the cold? Texters are the new smokers. I don’t know what kind of herd instinct makes them huddle together to text (maybe for warmth?) but at every exhibit there were a little group of people off to the side silently texting. It was really kind of creepy.

This morning when Evie woke up she was in a super mood, jumping up and down and making up Christmas songs in her crib. I felt really bad when she revealed this was because she thought that Santa had brought her presents last night. I could see how that would be a little confusing, so I felt really bad for her. She took it in stride though, and didn’t get too upset when we told her she had a few more days to wait.

One last story. We were looking at the monkeys and some random lady started talking to Evie, but in a really condescending way, as if Evie were like 6 months old. “Do you see the monKEY? The baby monKEY? Oh, she’s just loving this!” Evie responded with something like, “Actually my dear woman, I daresay you are mistaken! Note the concentric rings of color on its tail, which denote that this is in fact an adolescent of the species, not a baby at all. Not to mention that this is not technically a monkey as denoted by the genus…” Well, I don’t remember the quote exactly, but something to that effect. Somehow the lady fixated on one word, ignoring all the rest and started gushing, “Baby! Yes! It’s a BABY monkey!” At this point Evie pretty much just ignored her. I was pretty annoyed, but then I heard the lady turn to her maybe 10 year old and say, “The monkey is drinking his wa-wa!” and I realized that talking down to kids just must be her thing. Lady, if your kid doesn’t say “water” instead of “wa-wa” by the time he’s 10, god help him.

Hide and Seek Champion

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I was looking through some pictures from a month or so ago, and I saw something I had missed the first time! Sara was taking some fall pictures of Evie while Evie and I were playing in the leaves outside. In these particular pictures, Evie and I were playing hide and seek. What I didn’t realize the first time I looked at the pictures, is that I am in them!

The first time through I was focused on Evie and I didn’t really notice the background. Either that, or I am such a master hider, that I even fooled myself!