Pumpkins and Ghosts

Well, 'tis the season to talk about all things Halloween.  First off, let me say I'm not a big fan of Halloween.  I liked it when I was a kid.  I liked getting dressed up and going trick-or-treating and I liked the idea that a holiday came with a certain theme that made everyone think of particular things (which is true of any holiday).  But especially in my late adulthood and working with kids (pre-Evie I worked with the kids at First Presbyterian Church in Somerville, TN), I have become particularly loathsome of most Halloween-themed stuff.  Ghosts, spiders, skeletons, zombies, and spookiness in general is just not something I'm into - they're either repulsive things or things that go against my own spiritual beliefs.

All of that being said, it should be obvious that I have never talked to Evie about ghosts.  And neither has Seth, as far as I know.  So I was particularly creeped out on Monday when the following dialogue happened after I returned from talking to Seth about something:

Evie: Mama talk to Daddy.  Mama talk dost.  (Evie still has a /d/ for /g/ substitution, which is normal.)
Me: ...... Goats?  (trying to figure out what she said)
Evie: Dost.  Mama talk dost.
Me: ...... Ghost?
Evie: Evie dost.
Me: WHAT?!
Evie: Evie's black dost.
Me: ...............................................uhhuh.....  How about some more oatmeal?

I'm sure that she just picked the idea of ghosts up from school since they are doing lots of Fall and Halloween themed things.  They even have a display of the little babies' footprints where they are painted white on black paper so they look like ghosts.  But it creeped me out anyway.  Especially because my Uncle David had passed away last Tuesday (I'll write more about that at some point, just haven't put all of my thoughts together) and while I don't believe at all in people returning from dead in the form of ghosts, it did cross my mind.  Especially on Monday night, or rather Tuesday at 2am, just 15 hours after this episode when Evie woke up in the middle of the night and yelled, "Go away!"  I'm still not sure exactly what she was shooing.  But I'm going to assume it was one of her bazillion stuffed animals that she requires in bed with her.

Speaking of which, she has now given up the glowworm seahorse.  Since she was about 8 months old and started sleeping in her own crib, we have put her down and turned on the glowworm for her.  She would turn it on in the middle of the night and when she was still lacking some motor control, she would turn it on by biting it in the stomach, which always made me giggle.  But about Wednesday night I didn't turn it on before leaving her room because I knew the batteries had run down and I just hadn't remembered to put any back in.  She never asked for it and hasn't since that night, so I guess we no longer need the glowworm seahorse, which Evie sometimes called "Turtle".  Bye bye, Turtle.

A couple of cute stories: Friday night, Evie stayed with Granna while Grannadaddy and I went to game night at church and Seth worked on a project for one of his classes.  Granna told me that she and Evie had watched a movie and then switched the TV over to cable so that Granna could find a Seasame Street episode.  Of course, Grannadaddy had been the last one to watch the television, so you can always guess it will be on a sports channel.  Apparently this time it was golf.  I guess Evie gets plenty of exposure to sports and golf in particular when she stays with Grannadaddy on Tuesday afternoons because she told Granna, "No dolf."

This morning, Evie stayed in the nursery during church and so did my friend Cristal's baby Nathaniel.  Evie loves "Baby Nathan" and has even referred to him as "Evie's baby Nathan".  The woman who keeps the nursery told me that she was holding Nathan who was doing a little fussing and Evie came up to them, patted Nathan on his arm and said, "It's okay, Baby Nathan.  I love you."

She is such a sweet little girl.  She loves to be held and rocked and now she is the one initiating the cuddling and hugging.  Just yesterday when I was putting her in the carseat, she said, "Mama, hud!" and held out her arms for me to hug her.

In talking/learning news, my favorite mispronunciation from this week is her way of saying bicycle: bi-cy-cycle.  I love the added syllable.  I was super-impressed with her the other night when she identified the letters on her plate.  She has a plate with a red bird on it and the caption says, "You are tweet."  She pointed to the letters generally and said, "ABCDs?" which is what she says when she notices that something has writing or letters on it.  Then she pointed to the W and said, "Dub-ooo".  Then she said, "T for Thomas!" (one of the kids in her class) and then the first E, "E for Evie!" (EE-vie) then the next E "E for Evie!" (Eh-vie).  She's clearly picked up a lot from her school!

I mentioned earlier that I dislike Halloween, but I don't dislike everything to do with it.  I'm not against trick-or-treating, though Evie won't be going this year because I still think she's too young (and because there's a Tigers football game that we'll be attending instead, barring any rain).  And I'm not against pumpkin carving, provided the point isn't to make them scary or grotesque.  So, I took Evie to a pumpkin patch this weekend and let her pick out some pumpkins for us.  She loved it.  She'd been eyeing the enormous blow-up pumpkin that you can see from the street for about a month, since they first set up shop at this particular patch, so she was excited to see it up close and in person.