Go Cats!

Whew this past weekend was full of fun! On Friday night I went out with Rachel and Bridget to see Dar Williams. It is so much fun to get out and about with friends... something about having a toddler at home makes you appreciate going out all the more.

We went out again on Saturday night to the homecoming football game at U of A. Patrick's firm has a sky box so it was football deluxe. (See anyone familiar on that mural?) Evie got all dressed up for the game and we even got her to cheer "Go Cats" by the time the whole thing was through. This of course means she is totally prepared to hang out and watch the UofA vs ASU game in another month or so... The night was, however, a pretty long for her (past 11 pm by the time we got home) and she passed out in the ergo around 9 pm and slept the rest of the game and the whole walk home. One of the security guards thought it was so cute he insisted on taking a picture....

Potty

(In case she ever wants to run for public office I have censored the private parts...)


How does a parent know when their toddler is ready to take the leap toward modern plumbing? I originally thought that this, like ohh so many other stages in Genevieve’s life would be self explanatory. I have come to realize over the last week or so that it is not as easy as one who already knows how to use the facilities would think it is.

It would seem that Evie is ready for the world of panties; yet she can’t quite put it all together right. One of her favorite activities in the past week or so has been to strip down naked and go sit on the little baby toilet that Gerard and Monique gave us many, many moons (haha) ago. Now she will sit on that seat for upwards of twenty minutes but naught will come of it, except of course for her saying over and over and over again… Go pee pee? In fact, last Friday I hung out with her for about a half an hour while she sat on the baby toilet and even drank water to no avail (Except of course unless you count her spilling water into the toilet and saying “Look mommy pee pee”)

I am usually a low-tech mom but I am seriously considering this new fangled device that my Mom was recently telling us about. Apparently the wonders of microchips have come to a diaper near you… in the form of a wetness sensor. The idea is that as soon as the kid starts to pee you hear a tinkle and know that she (or he) needs to get to the pot ASAP. According to some study this is one of the most surefire ways to get the babe out of the diapers and into the world of underpants. Given that this seems to be the critical connection that Evie is missing I think we may just have to give it a whirl… I’ll let you know how it works out…. In the meantime Evie is requesting any back issues of baby-life or wild animal baby that you may have laying around because she is running out of good mags to read while indisposed.

Greetings

Coming into our house these days is a little like entering a foreign land. With Genevieve around we have adopted all sorts of strange customs: hermetically sealed toilet seats, cabinets with nothing in them and chairs inexplicably on their sides or facing walls. Though strange, these customs are not nearly so daunting as the language of our land… Evienglish. Now Evienglish resembles your standard English in many respects, it is just pronounced a little odd in patches and has a tendency to take phrases and turn them into one gargantuan word. Although quite well versed in Evienglish even her fellow citizens (i.e., Mom and Dad) sometimes have a bit of a communication gap.

For example, earlier this week as I was putting Genevieve to sleep she stopped me from reading her story, gave me a very serious look and then grabbed my hand and said “gaicetoeatyou mommy” I gave her a puzzled look and then she emphatically did this again, shaking my hand and saying “gaicetoeatyou mommy”. Then, frustrated with me, Evie walked to the door and said “gaicetoeatyou daddy?” so I let her out the door to see her dad. Who, being a better Evienglish interpreter than I, shook her hand and said “Nice to meet you too, Evie.” Ohh of course! Silly mommy, the handshake should have been a dead give away!


Now the key to Evienglish acquisition is repeat, repeat and repeat. So, like any new phrase Genevieve is not happy just to “meet you” once. Oh no, she meets just about all of us about three or four times a day now. And let me tell ya, meeting people is pretty exciting. So exciting that she will even jump up and down as she shakes your hand (thus the blurry photos). But really why just meet people? Shouldn’t dogs and cats be met as well? Genevieve, being an equal opportunity meeter, also frequently goes up to Kita and Whiskers to shake their paws and say “Nice to meet you Kita”. Whiskers, being the more tolerant of the two, bears the brunt of the pleasantries…. Occasionally getting not just his front paws but back paws shook too.

So there you have it, your Evienglish lesson, not to mention a bit of insight into one of our customs, for the week.

At the zoo...

Last weekend Genevieve and I went up to Scottsdale while Patrick attended a conference there. We were going to spend time at the swanky hotel with him but ended up chillin' with my folks at their own swanky house... just as nice as any Scottsdale hotel. The highlight was taking Evie to the Phoenix Zoo. We only saw a small part of it, but what we saw was pretty darn cool... it certainly made our little Reid Park Zoo look provincial. My personal favorite was the wallabies. Evie's personal favorite was the wild and wet cave play area.

Genevieve M. Lacroix

Genevieve Marie Lacroix - age 18 months
Home - Tucson, AZ
Height - 33 inches
Weight - 23 lbs 1 oz
Teeth - 11
Bedtime - between 7:30 and 8:00
Naps - One a day, about 3 hours
Favorite place - outside
Favorite phrase(s) - I don't know and Get up Mommy (or Daddy)
Favorite color - green (or at least I assume so because every time I ask her what color something is she says green)
Favorite song - tie between the Barney song and Row, Row, Row your boat
Favorite object - tie between her green and white blankie and her stuffed "buddy"
Favorite activities - feeding chickens, drawing and going to the playground
Favorite foods - bananas (must have one every morning), eggplant (good to gnaw on raw), cheese and pita bread
Favorite snack - "scooby snacks" (no we aren't giving her pot brownies... Riley has gummy snacks called scooby snacks and as a result Evie calls breakfast bars, ice cream and fruit leathers scooby snacks.)
Favorite animal - tie between the kitty (meow, meow) and the horsey (neigh, neigh)
Favorite reptile - gecko (particularly the ones that inhabit our screens every night)
Favorite way to get around - running or (if she must be helped) her big stroller
Favorite shoes - blue crocs (she even calls them by name)
Favorite pet - Whiskey (meow, meow)
Favorite friend - Riley
Least favorite number - 5 (she can count to eight but always skips the number five... I think it must be hard to say)
Least favorite activity - brushing teeth
Least favorite food - green peppers
Least favorite word - "No" but only when that no comes from someone other than her.
Activity most recently outgrown - Bedtime songs... she now just asks for bed "Get in bed?" after her last story each night.

New chickens!

So this is our week to take care of the alleyway chickens... because we are a new addition to the bunch there was a need to get a few new hens so that everyone has enough eggs. We tried to hatch some under a broody hen but that didn't work out so well, so on Tuesday when I was at the feed store picking up chicken food I also picked up two new chicks... it was a lot of fun! Probably the most amusing part for me was that I was driving the S2000, so I felt just a little silly parking the yellow sports car between the big trucks in the feed store parking lot and then driving home (with the top down of course) with two squeaking little chicks in the car... I kept singing in my head "one of these kids is doing her own thing..." Anyway here are some picture of the whole chicken crew and the newest additions... an Aracuana and a Red Sussex . I must admit I picked the hens based on the fact that they both had furry (or tufted if you want to get technical... I think) legs. I tell you one thing for sure though; Genevieve loves her chickens, or as I call them, her "girls".