Evie Update

New words

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Yesterday Evie learned a very important word: Pirate!  So, maybe it comes out like “Pie-rop”, but she can still say it when she points to a pirate (thanks Uncle Nate for the bath toys!)  Too bad she didn’t get it out in time for Talk Like a Pirate Day.

You can also see the video of her saying “exercise” which I think is an impressive word for a not quite 14 month old.

There is also another video of her in her favorite new shirt.  This was the first time she’s worn it, but every time we open her closet she says, “Cat! Cat!” and points to it.  She was very proud to wear it all day and kept showing it off to everybody.

New Videos

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I’ve added some new videos to MySpace.  Unfortunately, WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to embed MySpace videos, so you’ll have to click on the links.  Maybe someday I’ll upload them to youtube or something.

The first video is an older video showing some of Evie’s first steps.

The second video is a newer video of Evie after she had been walking for a while.  We got her some new shoes and they were a little stiffer than the shoes she had when she was learning to walk.  She did not like them!

The third video is brand spanking new video of Evie being a genius.  She has had an explosion of words lately.  It seems like she is learning a few new words every day.  We’ve lost track of how many words she knows now, but our rough guess is about 25.  Anything from “tree”, to “house”, to “key”, to her personal favorite words “fishy” and “cheese” (well, actually, she is still very fond of “no”).

I can’t wait to see what month 14 brings!

Update Post

/ Shane / 3 Comments

So I haven’t been posting much for the past week or so, but we’ve been really busy what with the holiday weekend and all.

So last week we had some friends from Philly (well Jersey really) visiting and staying at our place the whole week.  (Although I did mention our trip to Maggianos)  They have a daughter about Evie’s age, so it was nice for Evie to have someone to play with, or at least follow around and imitate.  It worked out pretty well for them to use our house as a base of operations and strike out from there all around Chicago.  We didn’t get to do all that much with them since we were working and all, but we did manage to go to the zoo with them.  Their daughter is really cute (maybe even a match for Evie, although exactly the opposite…dark hair and dark eyes) and smart as a whip.  Ever since they left all I can think about is, “Will Evie really be able to do all of that in 10 months??”

Then, last weekend we went on our semi-annual camping trip in Michigan.  It was the usual camping trip with Evie, which is to say, exhausting!  It is a lot of work running around after her in general, but it is like 10 times as much work when you are camping.  Especially this time because she wanted to be walking around (and into everyone’s campsite) from sun up to sun down and anything you wanted to do to get in the way of that was not appreciated!  So I didn’t have time to play any cards or any sort of games or anything.

We went on a hike and we saw two sets of deer bounding out of the woods onto the path in front of us.  It was really quite amazing considering we were singing childrens’ songs at the tops of our voices to keep Evie happy!  As a side note, I did have some outside confirmation that my family has a preternatural ability to spot deer at any time.  I always thought I had a knack for it, but compared to my dad, I’m pathetic.  Anyway, we also managed to make it to the beach one day.  You know, it’s funny, every time you go in Lake Michigan, or even swimming in general, you say, “Once you’re in the water it’s not so cold!”  But then the next time you’re like, “Oh yeah, well not this time because it is COOOOLD!”  And then you get in and say, “Once you’re in the water it’s not so cold!”  Plus everybody around you is repeating the same thing.  How many times does that have to happen before it really takes?  So we went to the lake and the water was super super cold but then we got in and were surprised to discover it wasn’t that bad.

Only tangentially related but, when I was little we always had 2% milk.  When I would go to someone else’s house and they had skim milk I just couldn’t stand it.  It just seemed like colored water to me.  (Of course now all we have is skim milk, but that’s not my fault).  Well, when we were camping, Chris (who was the main skim milk house that I went to when I was growing up) said that sometimes he just puts water in his cereal and it tastes exactly like skim milk.  Aside from sounding completely disgusting, I think this upholds my theory that skim milk really is just colored water.

In terms of an Evie Update, she has really been surprising me lately.  I think she is entering into a stage where she is just learning everything so fast and picking up things you don’t realize she is picking up.  This might be fatherly doting, so if you don’t want to hear it skip a bit, brother.

Three times today when we were going through a book she pointed at something I didn’t know she knew and said the word for it aloud:  house, apple and flower.  Sara told her to knock on the door and she went over and knocked on it just the way you would.  When has she ever knocked on a door?  Today she took Sara’s keys and went over to the door and tried to reach up to where the keys go.  Probably the funniest thing was I had her little horse and I was pretending that he was telling me secrets.  I would just put the horse up to my ear and whisper, “spsh spsh spsh” and she would laugh hysterically.  So I just kept doing it because she thought it was pretty funny.  Later I gave her the horse and she put it up to my ear and sort of “spsh spsh spsh”ed.  That really cracked me up, that she copied that part!  I didn’t even really realize I was doing that.  Now in retrospect I think she wasn’t laughing at the idea that a horse was telling me secrets like I originally thought; she apparently understood much better than I knew.  She was laughing at what an idiot I was making of myself sticking a horse in my ear and making funny noises!

Evie also has two new tricks.  The first is making herself so mad that she pukes.  That is a fun one, let me tell you.  The other one is farting in the bathtub, which she is not too young to think is funny.  She gets a little devilish grin on her face and heeeeaves up her stomach and really cuts one.  Then she looks at me and laughs.  She gets good resonance out of the tub.  Sometimes she tries to lift up her legs to see the bubbles.  This is now a multi-night occurrence.

And finally, football season is finally upon us!  I’m only in one Fantasy league this year for the first time in a long time.  I think that will work out nicely though since I have less time then I’ve had in a long time.  I really get giddy with excitement when I think about the Packers on MNF!

Genius: Certified

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Evie had her 1 year check up at the doctor, and the doctor proclaimed her a “genius”.  That’s in quotes because it is a direct quote; her word, not mine.  Then the doctor sat Sara down and gave her a talk on how to handle genius children.  She said they can be tough because they get into stuff a lot more and get bored easily and because of that can get hurt more.  I asked Sara if she explained to the doctor that she was rather bright herself and could probably figure it out and Sara replied that we would just have to ask our parents what it was like to raise genius children.

The reason she thought Evie was so bright was that she can say about 8 words.  Apparently at 1 year, you are only supposed to be able to say 1 or 2words and 6 at 15 months (not counting “ma ma” and “da da”).  Currently Evie says, Nala, uh-oh, meow, no, banana, diaper (kind of…more like di do), hat and shoe.  And oh boy does she say “No!” She has a lot of words that she has said, but doesn’t say reliably like kitty, sock, fish, light.

She has learned a couple of more signs recently as well.  She now does book more reliably and night night reliably and has added eat and train.  Well she doesn’t form train exactly right, but she sort of approximates.  That brings her total to 7 I think.  We are working on water and on blowing kisses.

She gives kisses now, but only when she is in the mood.  She can point to more things as well, for example eyes.

Over the weekend we went to my dad’s house.  In addition to more swimming, she was introduced to a dog for the first time.  A big, slobbery, enthusiastic lab.  She was very afraid at first even though the dog was only licking her toes.  At the end of the weekend she had warmed up quite a bit and even got close enough to touch the dog of her own accord a few times.  If we had a few more days they would probably be best buds!

The man behind the curtain has been revealed

/ Shane / 2 Comments

And the curtain I’m referring to is this one:

We recently had some professional pictures taken of Evie.  I personally think that the pictures we take at home are as good (or better since we can take so many and pick the best) but Sara had always regretted not getting any when Evie was born.  So I set up an appointment and got her a gift certificate for mother’s day.  It was more difficult than I expected!  I wanted to go to a real studio but it was tough to find one in a convenient location that wasn’t crappy and wasn’t open weird hours only.  That narrowed it down quite a bit.  Then I found out that a lot of studios only do graduation pictures, or at least when they’re doing graduation pictures they aren’t open for regular business.  So I finally settled on JC Penney.

Now let me start out by saying that the photographer was actually pretty good.  The setup was pretty good and they even had some props and stuff that were pretty good.  However, at the end of the day, JC Penney rips you off with pictures.

The problem for them is that in the old days nobody knew exactly how pictures worked, so they could pretend like it was a very complicated and difficult process that they needed to charge you a lot of money for.  However, we all have digital cameras now.  The secret is out!  The man in the iron mask is revealed, and it is trivially easy.  But I guess they (like a lot of businesses I suppose) want to pretend it is still the good ole days and everything remains unchanged.

So we took the pictures and waited around for about 15 minutes and then they brought the pictures up on a monitor for us to see.  They had all of the poses plus someone had spent the 15 minutes making a couple of generic photoshop edits; black and white, sepia, a couple of cheap looking borders and captions.  Now we knew the pictures would be ridiculously overpriced, that was part of the game.  But right off the bat they want to charge you almost double for anything with a border or anything like that.  But the curtain is gone!  I know for a fact that after the picture is taken they just open some computer program and type in a caption and voila!  By the time we are looking at it, all the work is done except for the printing.  There is no way that should cost anything extra, much less $30!  I could do better in less time at home.  Furthermore, I expected them to print our selections on the spot.  Instead they told us they would be ready in about 2 weeks.  There is absolutely no reason for that.  They are trying to pretend they need a fancy technician in a fancy darkroom somewhere or something, but I know they are just coming off a photo-printer and could be ready in under a minute.

Now all of that was annoying, but no big deal.  What finally put me over the edge is when I went to pick them up.  When I got there the salesperson pulled out a couple of extra sheets with some cute poses.  Someone had taken another 15 minutes or so and arranged a few more shots, had even performed a ::gasp:: crop on one of the pictures.  I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s nice, they’re including a couple of extras!”  In retrospect, of course that was stupidly naive, but I know that it cost them pennies (no pun intended) to create and print those sheets and I thought, “Well, it’s kind of smart.  We’re happy because we got a couple of free ones and maybe even someone sees them and likes them and we go back and order a few more or something.”  But of course that’s not what happened, I was informed that the “lab” printed up a few extra which I could purchase for an additional $20 a sheet.  When I said no thanks, we’re good (and it was hard even at those prices because they were really cute) the pictures WENT IN THE TRASH.

I repeat, pictures of my adorable daughter, really cute ones with a wash cloth on her head got thrown IN THE TRASH right in front of my face.  Well, to be fair it wasn’t in front of my face, I saw it out of the corner of my eye as I was turning away.  So they already made them and had them printed and everything, any expense on their part was already paid, and they chose to throw them away rather than give them for me.  And they were going to charge me $20 for something they valued so little that they just trashed.

BOOOOOOOOO to you JC Penney!  For shame!