Evie Update

1st day of school, 2016

/ Shane / Leave a comment

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Portrait of a 3rd grader and a 1st grader

Yesterday was the first day of school, and the kids were pretty excited. For Ollie, it was not just starting 1st grade, but having a new teacher and new classmates (he’s been in a looping class for the last 3 years). For Evelyn it was moving to an entirely new set of buildings, and adding new kinds of classes (particularly French).

Neither kid has ever had any particular issues with separation anxiety (now THAT’S an understatement!) so there weren’t any first day jitters. In fact, all Evelyn wanted to know is when she could start walking to school by herself, now that she’s in a different building.

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Just to make sure the day wasn’t entirely pedestrian, Oliver went ahead and lost his FIRST tooth on the FIRST day of FIRST grade!

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By the time they got home today, everything was old hat and they hardly had anything to say about the day. In other words, after a long summer, things are back to normal.

Happy Birthday Evelyn!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

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(Photo credit Lauryn Marinho)

You know, it is getting pretty difficult to live up to Mrs. Evelyn’s birthday plans. As readers of this blog well know, she has always been a “big idea” kind of gal, and as you can imagine her birthday is no exception. Luckily for us, she finds ways to spread it out as much as possible. (“We can do that on my actual birthday, and then for my party we can do X, and then we’ll have my birthday with the family…”)

Oliver certainly did his part, working on present after present for her in his room for weeks. His gifts ranged from meticulously copied chapters from Harry Potter into custom made “books”, to all of his legos, to a caterpillar made out of pipe cleaners and an egg carton, to stuffed animals he rescued from the “give away” pile, all buried under a metric ton of tissue paper.

So far today I have only gotten one, “It’s my birthday, you have to do what I say!” which, to be honest, seems kind of low.

It’s so easy to jump on kids when they’re bad, but ignore them when they’re good. Evelyn is so good so often, and I don’t say it enough. She is:

  • So responsible. You almost never need to tell her something twice; when you tell her to do something, she does it.
  • So helpful. She’s always willing to jump up and help you (maybe not in the way you wanted, but help you nonetheless!)
  • So empathic. She absolutely cannot stand for Alex to cry. It physically pains her.
  • So independent. She has strong opinions (especially when it comes to clothing). She makes her own lunches. She practices the piano every day. She keeps track of her brothers. She’s basically like a little adult.

In the past year Evelyn has learned 1) she really enjoys baking, especially inventing her own recipes (she can make her own scrambled eggs!), 2) she never wants to be caught ANYWHERE without a book to read, and 3) she does not want a rabbit. I know she is looking forward to 3rd grade and going to the “old” school BY HERSELF.

My favorite things to with Evelyn are read her a story at night and listen to her play piano. I love how excited she gets about theater, both as an actress and just watching other people perform.

I can’t wait to see how she grows in the next year!

The bunny has crash landed

/ Shane / 1 Comment

So pretty much no sooner had the bunny entered our house, but it started causing trouble.

We’d only had Chocolate Cuddlewuddles for a day or two when he went on some kind of rabbit rampage in Evelyn’s room. He was out in her room unsupervised, and he tore up two pretty significant parts of the carpet, and also ate a hole in Evelyn’s comforter.

Evelyn was already a bit disillusioned about the responsibility of the bunny, but this really put her over the top. I was a little confused why she was so upset of some carpet of all things, but she really seemed to take it as a personal attack.

Whereas she was a little bit nervous about the bunny before, she is now in full out panic mode. Every time he does ANYTHING, she is sure he is ruining something of hers (he also pulled some papers out from under the door in her closet and ate those, but she was really mostly upset about the carpet).

She is so over this rabbit. How quickly things change: even bringing up the subject of the rabbit is enough to get you a death glare. Unfortunately for her, we have him for another 3 weeks. Our pep talks have turned from “well, lets just see how this goes before we order our own cage” to “we agreed to care for this rabbit, so it’s our responsibility whether we like it or not”. We have to force her to let CCW out of his cage (as far as she’s concerned he can rot in jail for his crimes), and then we can just hear her yelling, “No! No! Bad bunny!” the whole time.

In other words, our plan has worked perfectly. No rabbits in our future, you can believe that. Having a room’s worth of carpet destroyed was perhaps a *little* steeper than we were intending to pay to teach this lesson, but mission accomplished in any case.

“Daddy, can I get a fish?”

::facepalm::

Father’s Day #1

/ Shane / 2 Comments

This year for father’s day, Evelyn and Oliver have each planned a special day for just the two of us. Evelyn’s day was up first. She decided to treat me to a day at the theater (no surprise there!) and to a restaurant I have been wanting to go to.

The two of us got all fancied up, then went to see “The Flying Housewife, A True Story“. This was the true story of Jerrie Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the world. I had never even heard of Jerrie Mock, so it was very interesting. The play was written and directed by Jerrie’s granddaughter (Jerry only just passed away a few years ago).

Evelyn was completely enraptured by the play, needing me to put my arm around her during the scary parts, and bouncing in her seat otherwise. Afterwards, she informed me that she would be doing her next biography project on Jerrie Mock, which is high praise indeed.

The lead actress, Suzy Brack, had previously been in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever with Evelyn, and she really did just an amazing job as Jerrie Mock. I would say she stole the show, but she was the lead actress, so it’s not really stealing, right?

Afterwards, we went to Chicago’s first cider bar, The Northman. It should come as no surprise to readers of this blog that I love apples, and after all those years of making applesauce, it turns out I have pretty strong opinions about apples. Who knew? (Don’t get me started on Red Delicious…)

I tried both the house cider, which was excellent, and a German “rough” cider, which was made from Braeburn and Jonagold apples (two varieties I am very familiar with!), and was even better. I think I’m going to say it was the best cider I have ever had.

Evelyn and I even split some maple glazed cider donuts, with brown butter ice cream and pecan crumble. It was that kind of day.

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Overall I think that Evelyn felt very grown up and fancy to be all dressed up and sitting at a grown up restaurant (i.e. bar) with her daddy, and she really had the best time ever. When we got home we couldn’t get her into bed; she was just talking a mile a minute. And really, what could be a better father’s day present than that?

Everyone agrees that Oliver’s day is EVEN BETTER, so now I am very curious as to what he has planned for me…

Looks like we got a trouble maker on our hands

/ Shane / Leave a comment

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(Photo credit: Lauryn Marinho)