Zoo, Eating, and Giggles

This weekend, we went to the zoo.  We went on a Sunday, about 2 hours before closing, and there were surprisingly few people there.  The Nashville Zoo has much to be desired after being spoiled by the wonderful Memphis Zoo, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.  For the first time in her life, Evie saw real live elephants:

Evie surprised me this week with her signs.  She has been reliably signing "all done" when she is ready to be through with a meal and will often sign "more", but seemingly out of no where this week, we started signing "milk".  She made an attempt at signing "please" too, but I only caught "milk" on camera:

She also got a fit of the giggles during this meal:

One night this week we had spaghetti and it was the first meal she's eaten and really enjoyed in a while.  She's been breaking in another canine this week (just one more to go!) and I think that decreases her interest in eating, plus we confirmed through a doctor's visit on Saturday that she has another double ear infection so I think that's been contributing to her lack of appetite.  But, man, she loved that spaghetti!  And she wanted to feed it to herself, so of course she needed a bath immediately after dinner, which she seemed to enjoy.

Previously that day, Evie had her hair braided for the first time.  Another silly first that might as well be documented:

This weekend we also went to the library in Mt Juliet which, while not impressive, has a nice little selection of board books and comfy toddler sized rocking chairs.

 

Now, I almost hate to say anything negative about Evie here for fear that she won't appreciate it later down the line, but I also don't want you all to think that she's just a perfect angel, and, if we do have a second child, it'd be nice to be reassured that it wasn't all sweet moments and no strife but that we made it through anyway.  Evie apparently has a problem with biting other children at school.  According to daycare she tries to bite at least ten times a day.  Now, I find this very questionable because I think what they're seeing many times is her attempting to give kisses, since, as I described previously, her kisses kind of look like a bite waiting to happen, and according to the teachers it seems to come out of no where - she's not upset or fussy, just leans over and "tries to bite" (or kiss, I suspect).  And of course the teachers intervene before they can find out whether she intended to bite or to give a kiss.  But I do believe that she probably does intend to bite some of the time, considering that she bites me and Seth.   I'm not really sure how to combat this since I'm not there to stop her and I obviously can't simply talk to her about it on our way home from school.  When she does it to us, I'm discovering the most effective method of correction is to put her down and walk away since she seems to think that any face or words I say are more hilarious than chastising.  I've had a couple of board books about biting recommended to me, and I guess we'll try that.

But I maintain that if a small kissing/biting problem and a couple of ear infections is the worst of our worries right now, we have it pretty good.