Evie picked up pretty quickly the idea that adding “ing” on the end of a word makes it a verb. For example, if you go for a walk, you are walking. She then started extrapolating the concept to every noun in her life, often with interesting results.
For example, one of her favorite things to do is make a mess. That’s right, she’s the one, the toddler who likes to make a mess. Anyway, she will take her food at dinner and smear it all over the table everywhere. If you ask her what she’s doing, she will matter-of-factly say, “Messing.”
Two of my favorite ones that came up recently:
When you are playing with blocks, you are “blocks-ing”
When you are turning off the lights, or playing in the dark, you are “dark-ing”
I guess I need to start putting together an Evie dictionary.
It seems like I just collect up all the cute or funny things she says until I have enough for a post.
So last Friday we were playing Hide and Seek and it was Evie’s turn to count. As I crouched behind the chair I listened in amazement as she counted straight through to 20! I had never heard her count past 13. I usually only count to 5 because 5 is about how long she can stay hidden for, so I’m not sure how she learned the rest. Probably from time-out.
She is saying a lot more phrases now, like when I asked her a question and she told me “Don’t count on it” or when we were looking for some hotdogs for lunch in the fridge and I couldn’t find them and she told me, “Don’t worry!” Instead of yes and no, she now says “Sure” and “Nope!” Like, “Evie, are you going to lay down and take a nap now?” “Nope!”
Some things I don’t know where she picked up the phrase from, like when she was looking at an old picture in which Sara had on makeup and Evie declared she was “foxy” or saying Nala looked “fancy” after I brushed her hair. Some things I know where she got it from, like Sara teaching her to say her scarf was “chic”.
Probably the funniest thing she has been doing lately is saying “Ooooh!” after you finally understand what she said. Like, she’ll be saying some word and you’re saying, “What? What?” and then you finally realize what she is saying and when you say it, she says, “Oooooh!” as if SHE just figured out what YOU were trying to say. She turns it around on you.
She tries to answer a question as fast as possible and then say, “No…” to buy her self time. Like you’ll say, “Evie, what color is this?” and she’ll say, “Blue! No….Red!” I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it is hilarious. It seems like a skill you shouldn’t develop until you’re older.
She decided that the moles on my head were polka dots (well, “toka dots” actually) and was a little disappointed when she didn’t have any. And speaking of my head, the other night she refused to comb my hair (something she usually does every night after I comb her hair) because she insisted there was a grasshopper on my head. She insisted with such fervor that I swept my head a few times to make sure there wasn’t some bug in there or something.
Part of the reason I have this blog is to write things down that I would otherwise forget. Pursuant to that, I find myself wanting to capture just how adorable Evie is so that in 30 years, when she is grown, (or in 15 years when I forget she was EVER a little girl) we can look back and remember. However, it is very difficult to capture in words the essence of who she is. Video would probably suffice, but she gets shy around the camera and won’t do the cute things I’m trying to capture.
It’s the way she uses a word correctly when you didn’t even know she knew that word. Like when she looked out the window at the doctor’s office and saw the mosque across the street and said, “Castle!” Or when she got off the phone with grandpa and grandma and everybody said “See you later!” and when the phone was closed she added, “alligator.”
It’s the way you can tell what she is singing by rhythm and inflection, even though she’s not saying real words, and the way she says, “Good job Evie!” to herself when she does something she’s proud of and you didn’t say it, or to let you know she’s done with something.
It’s the way she loves to play hide and seek and giggles hysterically even though she has you help her hide and then she comes out before you’re done counting. And the way she then has to grab your finger and show you where she was hiding.
It’s the way she tells me stories about her day and what she did, like recounting to Sara our hide and seek adventures: “Under the bed? Noooooo! Closet!”
It’s watching her figure things out for herself, like the way she figured out she could get things on the kitchen table that she can’t reach by ramming her place mat under them and then pulling them in. And the way she wants to do things herself, like this morning when she was having a crying / stomping fit because she couldn’t unzip her pajamas, but then running away from me when I tried to help her.
And it is the way she says “Whole wide world mommy!” before she goes to bed which is her shortened version of “I love you more than the whole wide world.”
Sara and her mom were making necklaces for Evie at the kitchen table with all the different bags of beads sitting around. Shortly after, Evie was eating a snack and she saw Anna eat some conversation hearts. The next day when she saw the bag of conversation hearts sitting on the table she yelled accusingly, “Anna eating necklaces!”
Later that day she was combing my hair. She was combing the back and she started going lower and lower until she slipped the comb under my shirt and said, “Daddy back hair!”
Shane Halbach 