“Well, it’s official! I’m going to do some jail time!”
– Shouted over the roar of construction equipment, from one construction worker to another, as Evie and I were standing outside our car at the museum.
Coach Jorge: “Can you show me your dinosaur face, Evie?”
Evie: “I’m scared.”
Coach Jorge: “Well, how about a silly monkey then instead?”
::Evie shaking her head and backing away::
Me: “Monkeys aren’t scary.”
Evie: “One monkey is.”
Well folks, you decide for yourself:
"You got that paper mache monkey ready for the kids' playground? Perfect! Exactly how I envisioned it!"
First off, our favorite neighborhood grocery store got a webpage! Before I went to Hyde Park Produce, I never felt really one way or another about a grocery store. It was just a place to buy food. However, after moving to a food desert and having some bad experiences with grocery stores, I finally found one that I really enjoy. It would be impossible not to like the place. How can you not like a family run business that has, “Welcome…to our dream!” written in giant letters across the back of the store? Everyone is so friendly, and they give Evie a cookie when we check out. True, it is really a produce store, so we have to visit other stores on occasion, but it is really a gem in the neighborhood.
Speaking of things in the neighborhood, there is a “restaurant” which we had never been to that we tried out the other day. The reason why I say “restaurant” in quotes, is because the place is Bake at Home Pizza. Basically, they make a pizza for you, and then you take that pizza home and bake it in your own oven (I guess the name is self explanatory). The pizza was actually really good, as good or better than anywhere else in the neighborhood, without a doubt. I really liked the place. However, I do object to the price a little bit. It’s not that the place is expensive, but it’s not cheaper than going to a restaurant. So if I’m expected to bake the pizza at home myself, then I expect it to be a little cheaper. If they reduced the price on the pizzas by a couple of bucks, I would probably go here all the time. As it is, however, it’s probably only going to be a once-in-a-while type place, when we have a coupon or they have a special.
Finally, the MSI, which is right on our doorstep of course, opened up a new permanent exhibit about weather. It is AWESOME! Maybe it is because we go there so often, so anything new seems cool, but I don’t think so. There are so many large installments to see, from the tornado, to the spinning avalanche thing, to the thing that shoots tennis balls across the gallery, to my personal favorite, the giant lightning machine in the ceiling. When I went, it was surprisingly not crowded, and Evie and I were able to do pretty much everything. Evie’s favorite part was the big color box you can stand in and change the colors. She’s not a fan of the Tesla coil, on account of the loud noise it makes. Overall though, a great addition to the museum!
You know how in the future we will all have little nanobots that do our bidding, like flying around in our bloodstream and repairing our body? Oh, you thought that was just science fiction stuff? Well, what would you say if I showed you a video of scientists using a computer to mind control 5,000 bacteria into building them a pyramid?
The future is now*!
*Now being like 20 or 30 years from now, when they can do more than build pyramids with their little bacterial slaves. But you have to admit, it’s a step in the right** direction!
**Assuming you think mind controlling bacteria to do your bidding is, in fact, the right direction, and not some horrible disaster movie waiting to happen.
When you are a parent, it seems like you are constantly faced with tough decisions. You are called upon to make weighty decisions that have no clear right answer, and without any good, concrete evidence on which to make your decision. That’s why I like to talk about some of these things periodically on the blog. There really is no right answer, but at least someone out there might be able to read about how and why we did certain things, and maybe that will help them come to a decision of their own. Or maybe at least help them feel a little more secure in their decision, knowing someone else out there agrees with them. Or, barring all else, learn from our mistakes!
So, one such decision we made was to keep Evie sitting facing backwards in her car seat for as long as possible. Always when people see her sitting backwards, they’re always like, “Oh. She still sits backwards?” Even people without kids sometimes. So obviously it is something that people notice, and that stands out as odd.
Really, the root of this decision comes from this horrific video that Sara made me watch, about how much safer it is during a crash for kids to face backwards in their seats.
It is quite clear when watching the video, and watching the poor little crash dummy babies, that the seats really are designed to absorb shock better when facing backwards. And the seat itself has recommendations about how much a child should weigh before you turn the seat around.
So, if it is safer to face backwards, why is there such a push to have the kids face forwards?
I think the main reason that parents tend to assume kids want what they want. So they can imagine they would want to face forward, and that the kids would also want to face forward. Well, this is true to a point; kids do enjoy being able to see forward, or at least Evie does. But at the same time, until we turned her around, she had never experienced it any other way besides backwards. So she didn’t know what she was missing.
Also, it is easier to deal with her in the car when she is facing forwards. You can hand her things a lot easier. But at the same time, if backwards is safer, is it really worth a little added convenience? And we certainly managed to hand her things when she was backwards, and it wasn’t that inconvenient.
All that being said, it is so nice now that she is facing forwards! We saved it as long as we could, and then switched her around on the trip back from Pittsburgh, on the brilliant idea that it would help a long trip pass quicker. Evie really enjoys being able to see what’s in front of her. She always asks what street we are on (I think she knows the neighborhood better than I do!) and she still has not gotten over pointing things out that are on the road in front of us.
Probably the thing I notice the most is the ability to point things out to her. Previously we would say, “Hey, there’s a dog! Wait…coming up on your left…did you see it? No? Well, it went by really fast.” But now, she can see what we can see.
So, to us, the decision firmly came down on the side of leaving her facing backwards as long as possible. However, facing forwards really was worth the wait.
Lately Evie has been fond of getting out a book and then “reading” us stories. So here’s 3 stories, as told by Evie. There was a lot more, but I couldn’t write fast enough, so what we have here are just little snippets of her stories.
“…Daddy was sosurprised that the big girl was already gone. “Big girl! Big girl!”, he cried, but she didn’t answer. But he was good and kind, and he found her. “Don’t run away from me,” he said, but she didn’t listen, she was already on the jumping things.”
“…Evie saw a snail slithering in her own, new garden. And she was suspicious! So she fell asleep in the car seat because she was a baby and kind of not acting like a big girl. But, they went to Pittsburgh and mommy said she was already a big girl. And Evie jumped right out of her car seat by accident, she was so surprised! And Daddy said, “You can’t go home because you got out of the car seat!” but Mommy said, “I’m sorry. She’s just a big girl.”
“…”I’m going to come back later”, she approached. But now it’s bath time! And everybody was so suspicious. And after bath time was supper time. Oh my goodness! And they had already had their bath, so they laughed and giggled.”
Shane Halbach 