From the Mouths of Babes

Quote Monday

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “Boo Bears! Boo Bears!”
Me: “Alright! Boo Bears! Thumbs down!”
Evie: “Yay…Lions!”
Me: “Nooooooo! Who taught you that? Was it Grandpa S?”
Evie: “I just said that because some people like the Lions.”
Sara: “Very sad people.”
…
Evie: “Who is going to say, ‘Yay Vikings’?”
Me: “Nobody in this house.”
Evie: “Nala says ‘Yay Vikings’ with her meows.”

She probably does; she’s that kind of cat.

Me: “No, we do not take off our underwear. Daddy is wearing his underwear!”
Evie: “Daddy is a lucky boy…I’m…not a lucky girl.”

Normally, Evie is completely silent all night. However, the other night, Evie was sick, so she wasn’t sleeping very well. For a period of about 30 minutes, she kept waking up, shouting nonsense, and then drifting back to sleep. This mostly consisted of her repeating, “I, I, I, I…” or “My, my, my, my…” so obviously she was feeling very possessive. One time she yelled, “I want my turn! My turn, my turn, my turn…” Another time she shouted, “I see what you’re talking about!” The next night she was still sick, and that brought us more of the same, including exclamations of, “I don’t know!”, “What did you say again?!” and, “Don’t tickle me!!”

Writing Her Name

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I did that!

And I’ve never even seen her write a single letter before, much less a word!

We’ve already found an excuse to make a trip back to Joy Yee. This time, as promised, we were a lot more adventurous. Almost too adventurous. First off we had some duck egg rolls, which were pretty good (Although really, it was mostly due to the awesome sweet and sour sauce they have). Not too crazy. Then I ordered a red bean freeze. If you’ve never had red bean ice cream, it’s really good. It’s pretty much like cherry. This, however, had real red beans that I had to eat with a spoon (except for the ones I was able to suck up with the straw). It was weird, but good. Like sweet pinto beans. Finally, was my super good, suuuuuper spicy Korean soup. I know that Korean food has a reputation for being spicy, but yowza. And that wasn’t even the worst part of it. I’d say the worst part were the enormous squids floating around in there. I like calamari now and again, but something about the way that the two long grasping tentacles hang down longer than the other ones. And 6 inches is just a little over the line for me, size wise. I ate a smaller one, but that’s all I could manage. Still, despite all of that, it was super delicious, and I was extremely happy with the meal as a whole, which I didn’t even come close to finishing.

Maybe my valiant effort is what prompted this:

::Evie sticking out her belly::
Sara: “Who’s belly is bigger, Evie’s or Mommy’s?”
Evie: “Daddy’s!”

Monday Catch Up Post (and quotes!)

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Evie: “Rabbits eat vegetables, like grass, carrots, raisins…”
Me: “I didn’t know you knew so much about rabbits!”
Evie: “I kept it to myself.”

Evie: “Does an ant have 8 legs, like a spider?”

I’m very proud of my smart girl!

Evie, trying some food at a restaurant: “Mommies and Daddies say it’s yummy, but big girls say it’s yucky.”

Last week, Evie took another stab at high theater, when Sara took her to see a play of her current favorite story, Pinocchio. It was a disaster. Complete 180 from the first play. She started freaking out as soon as the lights went down and refused to go back into the theater. Her main complaint was that Pinocchio was “big, not little”, i.e. played by an adult, not a child. I think it will be a while before we give plays another try.

On Sunday, we took the train in to the Art Institute of Chicago, for “Free February”. Sara and I wanted to check out the new Modern Wing that opened up last May. I was a little nervous about how Evie was going to do at a museum that was not hands-on, but she did pretty good. Obviously, when you’re going with a kid, you have to sort of present things in a certain way. Like, “Ohh, look, horses!” Or like, find the things that she would be into. She seemed to really dig the modern art! She liked the idea that we could look at it and decide what we thought it looked like. She even sat on the floor and examined a few for a while. Afterwards, we found some children’s art activities in the basement, and Evie enjoyed them so well, that she didn’t want to leave.

Naturally, we managed to get in a trip to Yolk while we were in that neck of the woods.

We also managed to hit up a new (for us) restaurant in Chinatown, but I think I’ll save that for a separate post tomorrow

Me: ::Throwing a long, beautiful, arching snowball and nailing Evie in the legs::
Evie, excitedly: “Good job daddy!!”

What can I say, it was a beautiful throw?

Playing Pretend

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Evie loves to play pretend. So much so, that the line between reality and pretend starts to blur a little bit.

At any given moment, Evie has assigned all of us characters to play. And I mean all of us, not just Sara, Evie, and me, but also Nala, stuffed animals, even inanimate objects (er, other inanimate objects besides the stuffed animals) in some cases.

It began with Alice in Wonderland. When she was going through her Alice phase, specifically after seeing the play, she assigned each of us a character. She was the White Rabbit, Sara was Alice, and I was (unfortunately) the Queen of Hearts. Not only did we have to answer to and address each other by these names, when called upon, we each had a catch phrase to say. Evie’s was, “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” Sara’s was, “Curiouser and curiouser,” and mine was, “Off to the dungeon!” (In the play, they were hesitant to say, “Off with her head!” so the queen was reduced to “off to the dungeon!”

As I commented on a similar post over at Stay at Home Blogger:

It leads to such ridiculous statements by Evie as, “Alice and the White Rabbit are watching the Queen of Hearts put salsa on his burrito.”

It kind of takes you out of the moment when you are trying to be stern with her and she says, “No, I’m not Evie, I’m Smevelyn!” (My fault on that one, it was a name I used for a little girl in a story I told her…not very creative)

The problem is, that our identities change by the minute. I could be Geppetto from Pinocchio, The Man with the Yellow Hat from Curious George, or Mufasa from the Lion King, all within a span of an hour. In fact, even Evie has trouble keeping track of who is supposed to be who. The other day I overheard her having a conversation with herself that went:

“Evie, do you have a bumblebee?
No, I’m not Evie, I’m George.
Oh, excuse me!”

Although it gets old at times, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think an imagination extremely underrated as an important life skill. I think being able to think in that way will help you be successful, no matter what you end up doing in life. And I love that she will be able to entertain herself in this way. So in the meantime, I’ll put up with answering to Geppetto and telling her 50 times in a row that I’m glad she saved me from that whale.

I’m just telling you this, so that you can expect to have a new name assigned to you, should you ever come over to visit.

Rock Lobster

/ Shane / 4 Comments

For those B-52 fans out there…

(excuse the poor editing: quick and dirty at midnight!)

So, let me explain about that one. I was hiding under a blanket and she found me. I said, “No, no, this isn’t Daddy! I’m just a rock!” So the next time she found me she said, “Oh, I just found a rock.” Logically, I responded, “But it wasn’t a rock…it was a Rock Lobst-ah!” Now, anytime someone is hiding under a blanket, they are “being a rock lobster”.

She also has another version, in which someone goes under a dock and there they find a rock, however, it’s just “a plain old rock”, and not, in fact, a rock lobster.

Rock Lobster! Come on, it’s not as bad as the time she asked her Grandpa, “Have you heard about the bird? Everybody’s heard about the bird!”