Midnight Musings

That Evan's favorite food is cheese? Seriously, the kid would live off of the stuff if we'd let him. Sure, he'll eats cooked greens, green beans, potatoes, chicken and ham, but the only thing he ever asks for is cheese.

That he went to sleep with a wooden duck last night? That's right, he somehow found one of the carved ducks I have in the computer room and he wouldn't let it go when it was time for bed. He went to sleep with his arms wrapped around it and when Kim went to wake him up this morning, he was petting it.

That he's already learned what half of the letters in the alphabet look like? He won't be two for another month and he can already correctly identify the vowels and several consonants like Q, R, W, B and others. Apparently, he learned this by playing with the foam letters he has with him when he takes a bath. It was a bit of a shock when Kim rolled this talent out for me a couple of weeks ago without any hint that he knew this stuff.

That Evan can count to 10? He's been doing 1, 2, 3 for a few weeks now (about the time I found out that he recognized a lot of the letters), but last night he was counting the bite-size pieces of pizza his mom gave him for supper. We've been giving him hints to get him up to 10 for the past week, but he did this on his own and unprompted. I don't think he really has the concept of one number to one item down pat, but he did point to a new piece with each number last night.

That Evan's favorite song for me to sing is "Malaika," a Swahili love song that I learned in college? If he's fighting sleep and I break into that song, he's almost guaranteed to to quiet down and start to nod off. I've sung it to him since he was born, but it doesn't work when Kim sings it. She has her own repertoire to make up for it, though.

That Evan's favorite song for him to sing is "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"? He's got most of the first verse down pat, but it gets a little mumbley in the last two lines. He also started singing "Rain, Rain, Go Away" while it stormed on Monday. He probably learned that one from Gaa, the lady who keeps him while we're at work.

That Evan was so badly traumatized by the sand gnats at the beach back in January that he claimed he had bugs in his hair for months after? "Bad bugs. Go 'way bugs!"

That Evan's two favorite games are Tent and Night-Night. With Tent, Evan pulls a blanket over his head and yells "Daddy, come on!" or "Mama, come on!" for us to join him underneath and then pops out of the tent and giggles. Not exactly the most complex of games, but it works. For Night-Night, he yells your name then "night night" and you're expected to pretend to go to sleep. When he calls your name, you're supposed to pop awake and tickle him.

That when Evan says, "Boot frog," it's time to go outside. It's been wet down here lately so we've had to put his galoshes on every time we go out in the yard. The galoshes look like little frogs. He and I go out in the afternoons to feed the chickens and collect the eggs.