Restaurant

Saturday while my parents were visiting the Texas crew, Evie, Seth and I went to their house to watch the Tigers game.  The game was delayed getting on TV because the Michigan/Indiana State game was on and in over time, but that didn't stop Evie from yelling "Go Tigers!" when Michigan got a touchdown.

Sunday, my aunt Kathy acted in place of Granna who usually gets Evie from Sunday School and sits with her in worship until Children's Time because I am in the choir loft.  I'm glad that Evie is so comfortable with everyone in my family that things like that don't faze her.

One night this week, the three of us went to dinner at Gus's Fried Chicken, which is one of our new favorite places, and Evie was having such a good time.  She goes right over to where they keep the booster seats and helps herself to one, sets it up in her chair and climbs on up.  Then when the meal is over she goes and puts it back.  Seth and Evie usually split a fried pie with ice cream, but this time they were out of ice cream, so we went to TCBY afterwards.  I've always enjoyed frozen yogurt more than ice cream, and Seth prefers ice cream to froyo, but Evie loves it all equally.  She can tell you which type of place is for Mama and which type is for Daddy and she'll ask to go to the one she wants.  She'll say, "Let's go to Daddy's ice cream," which means Ben and Jerry's, or "Let's go to Mama's ice cream", which means TCBY.  She once said she wanted to go to HER ice cream place, but I wasn't really sure where that was.

Lemonade at Gus's

Ice cream at TCBY

My favorite thing that happened this week was when we had dinner on Tuesday with Granna and Grannadaddy.  After we'd eaten and she'd played for a bit, she came around from behind the couch with three children's hats and said, "One for you" to Granna, "One for you" to Daddy, and "One for you" to me, and then proclaimed, "Let's go to the restaurant!"  So the three of us followed her down the hall to Granna and Grannadaddy's dark bedroom.  She said, "Oh no, there's monsters in there!"  Seth said, "Oh, well I don't want to go to the monster restaurant."  She led us back up the hall, through the living room and dining room and back down the hall to the bedroom again and said, "Are there monsters in there?"  Seth said, "I don't know, it's too dark to see any monsters" and again she led us up the hall, this time to the dining room and said, "Here's the restaurant."  She told us each where to sit and then proceeded to take our orders.  "Watchu want, Mama?"  I said, "I'll have milk."  "Oh, we don't have milk.  We have chocolate milk."  "Oh, okay, I'll take chocolate milk then"  "And Whatchu want, Granna?"  Granna ordered chocolate milk too.  "And whatchu want to eat?"  She continued to get the rest of all our orders and then went to this little shelf/display case in the kitchen and pretended to cook everything.  She brought us our meals and drinks, cleared the dishes, and then asked what we wanted for dessert, brought that to us and took our dishes away.  It was a really great imaginary construct, showing understanding of sequencing, routines, and pragmatics.  I was proud of her from a speech-language pathologist stance, but even more proud and a little teary as a mom.  My little girl is growing up, playing pretend on a mature level, and being so very sweet.  I just love her to pieces.