From the Mouths of Babes

Weekend in Review

/ Shane / Leave a comment

This weekend we had an unusual calm in the storm that is our summer weekend schedule. This means we had plenty of time on our hands, which we used to do basically nothing. Especially this weekend because it was super hot and humid, so I didn’t go outside unless I had a good reason. So I will give you the quick run down of the few events of the weekend:

We went to the Farmers’ Market and bought some of the best brats I have ever tasted. They were a tad pricey (okay, maybe more than a tad), but they were soooo delicious. They even came in old school butcher paper and they were all connected like a string of sausages. We bought a couple of ears of corn which we grilled with the brats and had a fantastic meal. I’m just saying.

While we were grilling outside, Evie made a “beauty salon”. I’m not sure where she got the idea from exactly, probably from one of her books. The beauty salon worked like this: she dragged a chair over to the porch stairs, and that was part of it, but we didn’t use the chair at all. Then she would have you sit on the stairs and she would sit on the stair above you, so she was level with your head. Then she would give you a back rub. Sometimes she would pretend to get something to put in your hair, sometimes she wouldn’t. Then she would tell you that you looked pretty and then call for someone else to come to her beauty salon. It was quite amusing!

Evie and I were practicing riding the tricycle over the weekend. She’s getting there. I was trying to teach her how to steer and I kept saying, “Point the tricycle where you want it to go!” and she would take her hand off the handle bars and point furiously, even as the handle bars pointed away from it, as if to say, “Over there tricycle! Why aren’t you going that way, can’t you see I’m pointing?”

Evie was my little helper over the weekend. We were fixing squeaky doors with WD-40 and she was my official  squeak tester. She was so excited to open and shut the door really fast and then declare, “No squeaks!” One good thing about kids is that, sometimes it is really easy to make them happy. 🙂

Vacation Part II – Birthday Party

/ Shane / 2 Comments

As mentioned, Sunday was Evie’s second birthday. Our party was a little more low key than last year, with just family attending. We planned it so that we would have presents in the morning, eat during her nap, and have cake in the afternoon, so that people could come and go and everyone would get at least part of the party.

Before her birthday, Evie had only a few requests:

Sara: “What do you want for your birthday?”
Evie: “I want a gift with a prize in it.”

She was also very specific that she wanted a “pink cake” with “sprinkles”, which was delivered to her satisfaction.

She got a lot of good presents, probably better even than she knows. Being a kid, she was more excited about things like socks and purses than things like books, even though she will probably get more enjoyment out of the latter in the long run.

One of the cutest things was practicing with Evie how to stick two fingers up to show how old she is. She would concentrate really hard, staring at her hand until she put the correct fingers down, using her other hand. Then she would slowly cover them with her thumb to hold them down and take her hand away. Then she would get a really big smile on her face, hold up the hand and proudly proclaim, “Two!”

So Evie was kind of into ages and Sara asked her how old the day care lady was:

Sara: “And how old is Florence?”
Evie: “Too much.”

Evie had a blast all day, running around like a crazy person with a big grin on her face. We couldn’t believe that she took a nap, but she was so exhausted that she stayed out until we woke her up. It was a lot more fun than last year since she actually kind of knew what was going on and was excited about it.

So thanks to everybody who came, I hope you had as good of a time as Evie did!

John Denver fan

/ Shane / 7 Comments

This one goes out to any Habitat for Humanity people from high school who read this blog and also Carl Loesch, should he ever find it:

She really kicks it in during the “I belongs”. Allow me to explain that one.

After Evie spent an entire day singing, “I will make you hurt!” I realized I needed to revise my list of songs I played on the guitar. Since I don’t have anything in my repertoire that is kid related except for maybe Tree Hugger from the Juno soundtrack, I’ve been playing some of the simpler songs I first learned on guitar, hence the John Denver. Evie’s favorites are “mountain mama”, a phrase that she finds endlessly hilarious, and “dawn is breaking, it’s early morn” a.k.a Leaving on a Jet Plane:

(I changed the word “die” to “cry” to make it a little more kid friendly)

She also enjoys “baby song” or “baby riding in the car” a.k.a. Last Kiss, as covered by Pearl Jam.

And just for bonus cuteness, here’s quick one of Evie saying a mouthful of a book title:

Shi Shi

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Evie has an imaginary friend that she talks about sometimes, named Shi Shi. Shi Shi doesn’t come up all that often, but I imagine as time goes on she will probably come up more and more.

So, the other day I was laying on the floor in Evie’s room and Evie said to me, “Shi Shi is in the closet. Open the door, she wants to come out.” I was like, “No honey, nobody’s in the closet.” She absolutely insisted that Shi Shi was in there to the point that I actually started to get a little creeped out. Eventually, I slowly cracked the door open, half expecting some alien to jump on my face and suck my brains through my nose, but of course nothing happened. I closed the closet quickly and asked Evie if Shi Shi had come out and she said, “No, she’s still in there.” So I opened the door a second time thinking maybe Shi Shi was the ghost of some murdered child who died in the closet and now lives in our house. “She came out,” said Evie and nonchalantly went back to playing with her barn.

Apparently I had a similar story when I was a kid, in which I insisted with such fervor that my imaginary friend was coming to dinner (Casper the Friendly Ghost in case you were wondering) that my mom started to think maybe someone (something?) really would show up for dinner.

Evie has been cracking us up lately by calling Sara and me “guys”. Like, she’ll say, “Guys? You’re done eating?” Definitely one of the best part of having kids is when they say these very adult things and just crack you up.

Speaking of good things about parenting, I have been very proud lately of Evie’s manners. She is very polite and I even overheard a comment from a stranger at the museum about how well mannered she was. She consistently says “thank you” and “please” (although this one takes some reminding. She mostly only uses it if it looks like you are going to say no) and she’ll say “excuse me” when she wants to get by somebody (I get a kick out of hearing her say, “Excuse me Nala” when Nala is in her way) and she says “no thank you” if you offer he something she doesn’t want. She’s also pretty good about “bless you” for sneezes.

The other day she was rocking in her chair and, thanks to her Richard Scary book, she said, “That’s piggy manners!” (as opposed to kitty manners. It doesn’t hurt that her favorite animal happens to be the one to have good manners)

In other news, we made some lemon oregano drumsticks the other day and they looked so beautiful coming off the grill I actually had to take a picture. And the smell! Oh man, it smelled like some sort of festival or something was going on on our back porch. I actually had two different neighbors comment on the smell! Let me tell you, that is putting your grill to full use, boy howdy.

More Evie-isms

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I think I passed a major milestone as a parent and I just wanted to blog it so that I didn’t forget this magical moment. Evie gave me my first “I don’t love you!” when I was trying to force her to go potty against her will. I imagine this will be the first of many, in fact, I’ve already gotten an “I don’t like you” since then.

There have been a few humorous ones as well:

“When Jen and Derek were here and Daddy catch me [by the face because I fell down the stairs because I was trying to look at Jen and Derek instead of watching where I was going]. I want to do it again!” She has made this statement many times and we’ve had many long talks about why we don’t want to fall down the stairs.

Thanks to Grandma Kathy, Evie insists that she needs to put her “deoder on” because she doesn’t want to “stink”. Sara spend quite a while convincing her she didn’t, in fact, stink.

Finally, this happened awhile ago, but Evie has a book in which a girl goes to the doctor with an injured arm. Knowing that Evie has vivid memories of her own trip to the doctor with an injured arm, Sara asked her, “Why is the girl crying?” Evie responded, “Because she has pony tails!”

In completely unrelated, horrific death news, a man died Wednesday after he fell into an 8 foot vat of molten chocolate. I had a lot of really bad jokes about death by chocolate, rogue oompa-loompas, etc. but I decided it was too soon.