Sara: “Wow, look at all the clean dishes!”
Evie: “YOU’RE WELCOME!”

She did, after all, lay on the floor while I was doing the dishes until it was time to press the buttons on the dishwasher. YOU’RE WELCOME.

::Neighbor is walking her dogs and stops to say hi::
Oliver, conversationally to Grandma: “Dogs eat children.”

Ollie: “Let’s call him ‘Uncle Stinky’, but we’ll just call him ‘Stinky’ for short.”

Oliver: “Why do we have to stop and get coffee?”
60-something stranger at the grocery store, crouching down and looking Ollie in the eye: “It’s so your mommy can smile when she sees you.”

Ollie: “Every minute, every second, too much spit gets in my mouth and I have to swallow it down. That’s how MY body works.”

Ollie: “Evie is dill.”
Me: “What?”
Ollie: “Evie is dill, so she’s too weak to stand and she’s going to die.”
Me: “Dill?”
Ollie: “Yeah. Really sick.”

::We went out in to the storage area::
Evie: “It smells good out here!”
Me: “Really??”
Evie: “I would like to eat whatever this smells like.”

I guess she would like to eat some musty, dusty antiques, because that’s what it smelled like. Or maybe not, because later:

Evie: “It smells like the rotten potatoes. But I would still like to eat it.”

Me: “…she had a lot of specific plans for her birthday. We have to keep reminding her it’s her birthday not her coronation.”
Aunt Rachael: “Ha! Every time you tell me a story about her, she reminds me more of myself.”

::Evie, pushing a friend in a stroller::
Evie, with an exasperated look: “Now I understand how hard it is to have kids!”

Truly, pushing them in the stroller is the hardest part.

Evie, addressing a room full of adults on their phones: “Hey adults! How about we talk to each other!”

And finally, Evie’s last word on her birthday weekend:

Me: “That was a pretty perfect birthday weekend.”
Evie, ambivalently: “Yeah.”
Me: “Was there something you would have changed?”
Evie: “I wish I could have been more bossy.”
Me, trying to keep a straight face: “More bossy?”
Evie: “Yup.”

Too bad she was constrained by things like the number of hours in a day.

::Ollie started petting my leg::
Ollie: “Oh, I thought that was a dog, so I just started petting it.”

Evie: “Daddy, you do NOT have bangs! HA HA HA HA HA HA!”

Yeah, yeah, daddy’s baldness is endlessly funny.

Me: “Ollie, unfortunately I think we need to cut your hair for the summer, so you’ll be cooler.”
Ollie: “Cooler?”
Me: “Yeah, cooler for the summer.”
Ollie: “Cooler to people?”
Me: “Less warm.”
Ollie: “Ooooh. Well…how can we make me cooler to people?”