Happy Fourth!

This morning, I heard Evie playing happily in her room.  I considered getting up and starting our day, but we had nowhere to be and I was enjoying luxuriating in bed.  Suddenly, I hear running, then falling, then screaming.  I know Evie has moments when she plays up her injuries, and I can tell pretty easily when she is faking and when she is seriously hurt.  And this one was SERIOUSLY hurt.  I jumped out of bed and ran into her room.  At first I thought she had knocked one of her teeth loose because she was holding her hand to her teeth.  Then she told me it was her tongue that hurt and she did certainly have blood on it.  But after giving her a hug and seeing the blood that remained on my shoulder, I knew it was her chin that was the worst.  She was just dripping blood from it.  I took her in the bathroom and cleaned her up, trying to decide if we were going to be starting out our holiday with a trip to the 24 hour clinic.  The cut looked really deep, but as I cleaned it up, I saw that it wasn't deep so much as very wide.  She had basically peeled back a few layers of skin from a good portion of her chin.  After cleaning it, I figured we could put some Neosporin and a band-aid on it an reassess in an hour.  I gave her some Tylenol and let her eat a popsicle while we cuddled on the couch and her tears stopped.  Upon further inspect, it seemed not as bad as I had feared and I decided she wouldn't need stitches.  I hope this proves true and she doesn't have a big scar for the rest of her life for which she can blame me indirectly.

We took it easy for the rest of the morning and then went to Becca and Fisher's apartment downtown to have dinner with my friends from grad school and walk to the downtown fireworks.  On the walk, Evie and Hannah stopped to catch a frog - one of many that were hopping along after the rain.  We sat on the road side and watched the fireworks, though Evie was honestly more interested in playing a game with Fisher involving hiding a water bottle.  I guess after the Disneyland fireworks show, seeing the ones downtown with no music and extra lights and at quite a distance doesn't really captivate the 4-year-old imagination.  At least, not at 9:30 pm.  She was ready to crash when we got home.

Ready to walk to the fireworks show

Catching frogs with Hannah

Hugs with Becca

I wrote down so many funny things this week I don't know where to begin...

One of Evie's new favorite games to play in the car is to give clues about which animal she is thinking of.  She'll say something like, "I live in the desert and I have 2 humps" and then you're supposed to guess the right animal.  Then it's your turn.  But as the game goes on, her animals get more and more specific, like "I live in the jungle, and I eat babies" and the correct answer in Sabor from Tarzan (the jaguar who eats a baby gorilla at the beginning of the movie).

When driving to school one morning, Evie said, "Look, that dog is walking that man somewhere!"

When Grandma Jeanne came to my parents' house on Tuesday for dinner, she was asked if she knew who Grandma Jeanne was.  She said, "You're Grandma Jeanne.  I know, because I met you before."

Later after dinner she told me she wanted to get her ears pierced.  I asked her if she knew how they pierced ears, and she said no, so I told her that they put something sharp up to your ear lobe push it through really hard to rip through the skin.  I wish I'd had a camera ready to catch the look on her face.  She quickly decided she did not want her ears pierced.

When I asked her what she was going to be when she grows up, she said "First a school teacher and then, when I'm done with that, I'm gonna be a doctor.  I'm gonna be two things in my life!"  Then she added a gymnastics teacher and a speech language pathologist to the list.

While walking to the car one morning, we saw a robin in the neighbor's yard.  Evie posited that it might be the robin who had laid eggs in a nest outside our bathroom window earlier this year.  I said, maybe so.  She asked where the babies were and I said, they left the nest.  She asked why and I told her that's just what kids do, one day she'll go off and leave my nest too.  She said, "Nah."  I said, "You're not gonna leave my nest?"  She said, "No, when I'm a grown up, I'll live with you."  I think that would be wonderful.

She has started doing this very adorable thing when we say goodbye in the mornings.  Whether it's at home because I am going to clinic and can't take her to school or when I drop her off at school, she will hold out her hand with her fingers together and say, "Don't worry, here's a picture so you can bemember me."  And then I'm supposed to put it on my heart and tell her I will carry her with my all day.  And she says, "And you can look at me while you're at school so you won't get sad."  And she's right - she does brighten my day when I think about her.