Featuring Evangeline

Evangeline had her 3 year check-up yesterday. She weighs 31 lbs and is 39" tall. that's 52nd percentile for weight and 80th for height!! I have suspected a growth spurt lately. I need my baby to stay a baby please. (And she is about to start preschool next month, where have last 3 years gone?) All was well at the doctor. She did get her finger pricked for the first time, (a traumatizing memory from my childhood) and for the most part she was totally fine through it. Once the nurse told her that it was blood, she started to freak out a bit. I tried to be strong for her but I came near passing out. Thankfully there was some time in between the nurse leaving and the doctor coming in that I could lay on the table with her and regain my strength....pathetic I know.

Now let's explore Evangeline's world as of late. Her imagination is fantastic and she role-plays almost to the point of being annoying. There are days when she is "Strawberry" and I am whoever else. If I go out of character and call her Evangeline, I am quickly rebuked, "Call me Strawberry Mom!"

We were driving home the other day and she said, "Mom, I wished I could be a fairy". So I said, "That sounds fun, what would you do?" Her: "ummmm I would lay dragon eggs."

She is also into 'The Incredibles' movie right now so she asked me "Mom, where are the Incredibles? I wanna see them." Me: "We could watch it today, do you want to?" Evangeline: "No, I don't want to watch it, I just want to see them in our world."

I am picking up on a lot of her sensitivities now. And most of them come straight from me. She is hesitant to watch "Tangled" because she doesn't like the bad guys in it. She is also incredibly sensitive to the tone of of music, something I didn't really think could be passed down but somehow it is! I mostly prefer 'happy music'. As much as I can find so much beauty in more melancholy music it is just harder for me to listen to because it grips my emotions and makes me think too deeply. Well my little one seems to be the same. I put on a CD of lullabies that I had made for her when she was a baby while she was in room time the other day. I heard her crying so I went up and she was just sitting there on the end of her bed, tears rolling down her cheeks. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "this music is making me sad". Trust me, I know the difference between her 'I'm faking because I want to get out of room time' tears and her genuine ones. They were genuine. In fact, as I tried to engage her in further conversation about what she was feeling as she began to talk her words broke up and more tears fell. She can't take it, and I understand.

She is also sensitive to bad attitudes, for which I am very grateful. Trust me she has enough of her own at times but I have not allowed her to watch "Ni Hao Kai Lan" because of a change in her attitude after watching and because I don't particularly like the process in which they walk through the issues and attitudes that the characters have. I explained to her that the reason she is not allowed to watch is because of their attitudes and gave examples. Well lately she has decided for herself things that she doesn't want to watch anymore because of that. Strawberry Shortcake was her favorite thing to watch for months and now all of a sudden she is not interested because of an episode where Strawberry needed help and no one would help her. She said they were mean. This was a conversation between she and Jayme: Jayme: "Do you want to watch Strawberry Shortcake?" Bean: "No, they have bad attitudes". Jayme: "How about Charlie and Lola?" Bean: "No, they have bad attitudes too". "Jayme: "Blue's Clues?" Bean: "They don't have bad attitudes, OK I'll watch that!"

And she is definitely a quality-time kid. Most of her acting out comes only when we are busy and have not had any playtime with her. that's when testing, accidents, attitudes emerge.

Some of her favorite music right now is a CD called "Slugs, Bugs, and Lullabies". Favorite song off of there at the moment is "God Made Me." It is adorable to listen to her sing along and she even harmonizes without knowing it. She also listens to her Olivia books on CD almost every time she has room time and she loves that.

She says "let's beat 'em up" instead of "let's beat 'em" and "borrowed" instead of "bought". "but you can't have that, my mommy just borrowed it."

She loves to play Mommy as well. She will be an amazing mommy one day.

We were playing and pretending that Cecily was "our baby". I asked Bean where we got her from and she said, "other people". I said, "oh no we can't just take a baby from someone" and she said, "yes we can, she's adopted."

"Mommy, I want another sister. Can you grow one in your belly tomorrow?"

This is something she said to Michelle when she was babysitting. "Mauntie, Cecily is a little rat." Mauntie: "Bean, that's not nice to say" Bean: "I'm just sayin' it." (I blame Grampy because little rat is what he calls their Chorkie dog)

Trying to get Jayme to sing, "what's gonna work? Teamwork!" but he kept making up his own lyrics so finally with a frustrated sigh, she said, "Papa, you're breaking my song."

Getting into her car seat Evangeline asked what the track was that the van door slides into. I told her that's how the door opens and closes, and she said "hmmm, plentilous". ???

On the way to church..."I don't want to go to my class. There's too many people. And they scream."

I took Evangeline to the potty before bed, suspecting that it was just an attempt to stall before getting into bed, so a few seconds go by with no no pee, then a few trickles, and then she says, "I'm gonna save the others for later."

"I don't like it when Papa goes to the airport all by himself. If you were a Papa, you would work."

Driving in the car, all is quiet. Bean: "Mom, say something different to me." Me: "what would that be?" Her: "Ribbit or something."

"My tummy hurts." Me: "Do you need to poop?" Bean: "No, I think books will feel it better." <3 <3

"Ouch I bumped my head." Me: "Why did you bump your head, was it because you were disobeying?" Bean: "Yeah, proballlly"

Wakes up crying so I go to check on her and ask "Did you have a bad dream?" Her, with tears welling up again, "yeah". Me: "What was it?" Bean: "I wanted to lick the spoon (starts crying again), and you said no."