From the Mouths of Babes

Literary Critic

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Evie does not like the title of the following book:

She really can’t see why they named it that. She says that a better title would have been, “One Fish, Two Fish, One Fish, One Fish”. I have to admit, I can kind of see her point there.

“Mommy, you’re a good girl. Daddy’s a mean old daddy!” I don’t even remember what I did to deserve this anymore, but she repeated it several times throughout the day. In fact, at one point she took it back and said, “You’re not a mean old daddy anymore.” but then later I earned it back somehow.

We were driving and she kept saying “I see the Eiffel Tower!” I had no idea what she was talking about (how does she even know what the Eiffel Tower is?) but eventually Sara figured out that she was saying that when she saw a water tower. She’s obviously easy to impress, I’m thinking about taking her around and showing her all the “wonders of the world”, without ever leaving our neighborhood!

It reminds me of when I was younger and we were driving through Chicago. I saw a multi-level department store with a little spire sticking up with a sign that said, “Sears”. Logically, I asked my mom if that was the Sears Tower. She laughed at me and said no, the Sears Tower was really tall. I pointed out that we were on an elevated highway and this Sears Tower was even taller than we were, so it probably just looks taller from the ground. So the moral of the story is, don’t laugh at your kids or it will scar them for life and then they will grow up and expose you on their blog. And also, kids are easily fooled.

This seems like a Monday post

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Evie: “Mommy, which season is your favorite?”
Sara (with a confused look): “…Season 2?”
Shane: ::laughing::
Sara: “Ooooh, spring! I couldn’t figure out what she meant, the only other answer I could think of was ‘pepper’!”

In a bit of shameless self-promotion, you can go over and check out Alexis’ post about their recent visit. Her post is much nicer than mine, including nice pictures. Okay, it’s sort of narcissistic, but I make this promise to you: I will link to any blogger’s post that says nice things about me or shows nice pictures of my daughter (as long as they don’t also say horrible, unrelated things in the post). That’s just how I roll.

I mentioned before about Evie’s interesting take on telling time. Every morning, before we can eat breakfast, Evie makes me put on her “watch” so she can look at it, see it is time for breakfast, and then take it off. I think she has her units messed up, because lately she’s been telling the time as, “Quarter past pounds”.

I thought I said before (but I couldn’t find it to link to it) that when you ask Evie how she slept, (not how long) she says, “30 hours”. I think she has gotten the idea somehow that “30 hours” is a phrase that is synonymous with a lot, because she told Sara, “I love you 30 hours. That’s how much I love you mommy.”

She has been telling Sara in the morning that, “I was in a tent and I zipped it up and then I slept and then I came back here.” So if you see a tiny form sneaking out the bedroom window, she’s probably just off to her nightly camping trip.

I was trying to get Evie to give me Echo, for no better reason than she didn’t want to give it to me. I kept demanding and she kept saying no, until finally she said, “I am not giving up daddy! That’s the truth!”

Sara: “What did you and daddy have for supper?”
Evie: “Bacon.”
Sara: “What else did you have besides bacon?”
Evie: “Bacon. And more bacon. And more bacon…”

Evie Quotes

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Evie, checking her imaginary watch, “It’s quarter past half.”

“Are you the smartest little girl in the world?”
“Yes I are!”

“Mooommmmy! I want more candy! More and more and more and more!!!!”
“Jeeze, she’s addicted after just one piece!”

It was a little Twix, for the record.

Sara: “Are you disturbed at how much our daughter enjoys seeing people cry?”

Well, I better explain that one.

Evie loves to see people cry. Any book that has a picture of someone crying, is an instant favorite. You can not look at that picture without Evie pointing out the tears. She asks to read books where people are crying and will talk about books with people crying long after they’re returned to the library. Even if there is just a smudge on the page by someone’s eye, she’ll point it out. “She’s crying? Daddy, she’s crying?” I have actually seen her applaud at the prospect of reading a book about crying.

In other words, the plans to turn her into an evil genius proceed apace.

Evie Sayings

/ Shane / 4 Comments

“See you soon, you crocodile!”

Evie said, “I’m a radio.” “Who said that?” asked Sara. “Cee Cee,” Evie replied glumly. “Again.” For the record, she is a radio; she breaks into song constantly.

“I watch Super Readers. Mommy and Daddy watch Google readers.” She’s right again; I do spend a lot of time looking at Google reader.

“…then they spelled rabbit.”
“Do you know how to spell rabbit?”
“I think so…”
“How do you spell it?”
“With letters.”

“We did many fun things, for example, we went to the park!” Sara and I were rolling about this one, the “for example” was just too much.

Evie loves to talk. Talk and talk and talk. There’s really no question where she gets it from, since I’m the same way, so it doesn’t really bother me. But as Sara said, “I was home with her the other day and I think she did 80% of the talking.”

She loves to make up stories. She will go on for hours about the pink dragon with yellow and blue polka dots that lives in the basement and eats broccoli, or what Evie did on the day she visited her imaginary friend Shu Shi‘s house (yes, the name has evolved a little bit) including what they ate for dinner, what Shu Shi’s house looks like, where they went, who said what, what they did, etc.

I could just sit and listen to her talk forever, it never gets old to me. She’s just so creative and imaginative and she always surprises you with an adult turn of phrase. There are probably 10 things a day I wish I could remember. I would have a lot more of these posts if I just followed her around with a pen and paper.

Someone is corrupting her

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Okay, I don’t know which one of you jokers put her up to it, but Evie said to me, “You go to the doctor and get hairs, then come back.” So ha ha, have your laugh. Once we get to the bottom of this one, we’ll figure out who taught her “Daddy, you have hair in your nostrils.”

This month we learned that when we’re in the garden, “Mommy, it’s watering time!” equals pee pee. And since we’re in the crude vein, the other day we were driving in the car and Evie was picking her nose and handing her boogies to Sara for disposal. Then she said, “Do you have my boogies, mama?” and Sara said “Yes.” She asked, “Can I see them?”.

When we were swimming, we were trying to convince Evie to put her head under water. She was kind of going along with it too, until she declared, “I’m tired of this game.”

Along those same lines, Evie was examining the depth numbers painted on the side of the pool and Aunt Cecilia was explaining that ” meant inches and ‘ meant feet, as in 5’0″. Later Cecilia asked her what the marks meant and Evie said, “Inches and toes.”

Finally, Evie was riding in the shopping cart when she noticed the roll of wrapping paper next to her. “A didgeridoo!” she exclaimed.