Evey Jones: Ninja

We took the family out to Johnny's on Monday night.

Evey was sitting across from me. While Adro was in the restroom, Evey asked me to read the menu to her. She had settled somewhat reluctantly on "cheeseburger."

Then Adro sat down and asked her, "Do you want a piece of pizza?" Evey's eyes lit up. Pizza isn't on the kid's menu, it didn't occur to me to mention that, yeah, she could have a piece of pizza, too.

So now Evey decides to hell with the cheeseburger, she's getting a slice of cheese pizza! And she's excited about it! And you know what? I'm excited about it too! So I offer her a high-five!

The high-five was appropriately awesome for a 33-year-old and a 4-year-old. Good connection. Nice tone.

Then, Evey took it to the next level and accidentally revealed to us that she may indeed be a ninja.

She took her rolled up silverware (in the opposite hand as the high-five) and made the same motion toward me with it. In a blur, the butter knife shoots out of the roll... and stabs directly into my full pint of beer! Beer explodes everywhere! Foam is shooting all over the table! A huge "crash!" noise happens!

I look down, and my first instinct is "DRINK THAT BEER BEFORE IT'S WASTED!" But I hesitated because it was all foam. And then I looked a little harder, and was glad I hesitated: the knife shattered the side out of the glass!

Evey was embarrassed, but I was impressed. A bartender swooped in to help clean up the mess. I announced to all the gawkers, trying to figure out what had just happened at our table, that "MY DAUGHTER IS A NINJA!!!" I looked at the table behind Evey and that dad looked at his two daughters with a disappointed look. I could see the look in his eyes. It was, "I wish MY girls were ninjas."

Evey pics

Evey has been taking some photos with my camera lately. She's doing a good job.

There are crap photos of the TV and the bookcase, but every once in a while she takes an interesting photo. I thought the first photo, with the heavy blacks, was an interesting photo. And I'm happy to have her take my photo, because let's face it, most of the time it's Dad taking the pictures, and that means I don't get in many pictures myself.



We've also been doing a new game called "Interview." I'll post some of the results from those soon...

SLED BREAK!

On Thursday, Evey stayed home. I watched her in the morning, then Judy came over to help me out for the afternoon.

I discovered Reason # 5,204 why it's awesome to work from your home... a new thing called SLED BREAK! It's like a smoke break, but it doesn't kill you.

A sled break is when you just complete a project and then you grab your 4-year-old daughter, home from school that day because of the snow, and you take her sledding on the big hill in the field across the street.

We only sledded for maybe 30 minutes. But Evey proclaimed it "the best day ever."

It was a lot of work for me... I drank a lot of water that evening trying to rehydrate from that workout. But we had an awesome time out there sledding last Thursday.

We have our 10,000th hit!

We have a winner!!!

Travis Sweeten checked in late last night after an OSU overtime home win (Go Pokes!) and his luck continued as the counter struck 10,000 with his view!

I posted that on Jan. 4th... had I been smart, I would have listed how many hits I was at in that post... but I think I was at something like 9,400? Those 600 hits came FAST. Thanks to everyone who checks in on this blog regularly to get us to 10,000 hits so fast.

For Travis' prize... he wins a $40 Target gift card as well as a VG copy of the below issue of Amazing Spider-Man # 68, written by Stan "The Man" Lee and drawn by "Jazzy" John Romita! Congrats, Trav!

Rub the lotion on the skin

Kept Evey home from preschool today. She has a rash. Figured that'd be frowned upon at school.

It hasn't been getting any better, so I took her to the doctor today to get it looked at.

The verdict? A condition known as "dry skin."

I went to the doctor's office, sat there for an hour, to have the doctor tell me to put lotion on my kid.

Sheesh!

Some weird dance

Adro and Evey are in line at a store, maybe TJ Max. It's pre-Christmas, so there's a long line, the place is packed. Evey starts doing some weird dance. It's kind of cute, if awkward.

Adrianne looks down at Evey and asks, "Evey, WHAT are you doing?"

Evey looks back and proclaims for everyone to hear, "Momma... my BUTT ITCHES!"

Apparently Adro turns three shades of red. A guy in line says to her, "You might be embarassed, but that just made my day."

Comets game

Another Dad story, since I'm sharing. (I actually wrote this immediately after last night's post, but decided to make it its own post as to not muck up the "stairway to heaven" post.)

Lervik was in town this last week. On Friday, he humored me and accompanied me to the Missouri Comets indoor soccer game in Independence.

For once, I was on time to something. I was there for the player introductions as well as the Star Spangled Banner.

Who knew? The national anthem at an indoor soccer game would take me back to 1986 and in my mind I was standing next to my Mom and Dad again?

It took to "the rocket's red glare" to snap me out of it. I'm glad I had my back to Lervik, because dammit, both eyeballs were floating. I love America as much as the next guy, but that would have been rough to explain.

Because "stairway to heaven" didn't occur to me

Evey's been asking about my Dad a lot lately. That's sweet, and it makes me happy that she hasn't forgotten him, and that she still misses him. It's tough, too, because it really makes me miss him and sad, at the same time.

Last night Evey was dinking around my new home office right next to me. I was working late, so I was doing my best not to ignore her. And then, out of nowhere, she asked me, "Daddy, how did Papa walk to heaven?"

I was stunned. I just sort of looked at her and asked her to clarify. But she said what she meant.

"Papa. How did he walk to heaven? How did he know how to get there?"

I turned to her, thought about it. I told her that Papa went to sleep and then woke up in heaven. That it's kind of like a dream. And that's how he got there.

"I hope I sleep and dream about Papa because I really miss him. I wish he'd come out of heaven to come see me."

GULP.

"Me too, Evey."

What the hell happened?

Judy has told us this story like 100 times... about how the day your kids go off to school, you lose them, because Mom and Dad aren't the center of their universe anymore... and there are new people making impressions (good and bad) on your kid every day.

We shrugged that story off, but now, I'm starting to wonder.

Evey has had some nasty moments since she started going to school. At first I thought it was just because she was really tired (and grumpy) when she got home from school, but today Evey was totally mean to Adro at Target. I wasn't there, but it sounds like one of those moments you're embarrassed to be a parent because your kid is being a total jerk.

So when they got home and Dad found out, things got bad. She got a spanking, an hour of time out, uncontrollable sobbing, etc.

It was ROUGH. I hated it. She's crying before I even get her over my knee, "PLEASE DON'T SPANK ME DAD!!!" And it just breaks your heart, because you really don't want to spank her. You just want to hold her and rationalize with her, but...

Evey was good the rest of the day (her hour of time out turned into a three-hour nap), but DAMN... where is this coming from?

We've had some serious talks to Evey about it. She LOVES her pre-school and can't wait to go every day. But I don't want her to be a jerk.

Check out the new day job

Want to do me a favor?

Click over here every once in a while: http://golfdom.blogspot.com/

It's part of my new job I told you about a few weeks ago. We have a blog, and we're trying to get it "going" again. The blog is a little bit of everything, with a basis on the golf industry. But if you know me, you might enjoy it, if you like my writing in general.

But there really are stories for everyone, like this story about an assistant superintendent who saved a woman's life when he discovered her sitting in her half-submerged SUV in a pond on his golf course.

Or you might get a kick out of Matt Hendren's first post on our blog, his new weekly column about golf with an emphasis on the PGA Tour and fantasy golf.

You know... it's your pal Jonesy trying to do good things for his new employer. So check me out over there every once in a while. There are worse places to visit on the Web!

Thought blasts

Real quick:

• Got my new business cards in the mail today. Yeah, I shouted out loud.
• $13 for KU tickets? Yes please, even if we're playing UMKC.
• Beers with Bart and Lerv. Bart wasn't drinking (?) and Lervy cut us off so I'm amazingly fine.
• Evey loves preschool, but she comes home Level 10 tired everyday.
• The move "The Other Guys" isn't that funny.
• I like pie.
  

10,000

10,000

As you can see by the counter,
Evey's blog is fantastically nearing 10,000 hits.
If you are the lucky person to visit Evey's blog when the clock strikes
10,000
I will award you a special prize. Something cool. Something you'll actually want.
No cheating! It must be legit! I'll need photographic (non-photoshopped) proof via email.
Let the clicking begin. How many days will it take to get to
10,000?
And who will win the prize?

10,000!

Evey's first day at preschool

What a big day for the Jones family... Evey's first day at preschool!

Evey was so excited to go there this morning. We got up extra early. Usually she'll fight us on waking up, this morning she told me, "Hurry Dad, we can't be late for school! Hurry hurry hurry!!!"

I was taking photos all morning, and in the one photo I took of her in front of her new school, she was officially annoyed. "No more photos, Dad!" she told me.

We drove two cars to preschool. Evelyn rode with Adrianne and told her en route, "Mom, this is the best day ever!"

We got there PLENTY early... in fact, Evey was the first kid to arrive when she got there at 7:30. Her teacher was there, so they had some one-on-one time before everyone else got there. She set Evey up to paint, and Evey LOVES to paint, so that worked out nicely.



A few more kids showed up, so me and Adro made our way for the door. One funny moment as we left (to me, at least): Evey's painting was a series of multicolored lines. She asked the teacher if she knew what she had painted. "No, what is it?" Evey declared, "They're CONTRAILS!" to which the teacher responded, "Those are nice... trails."

So, then we left our little angel with total strangers. Me and Adrianne chatted in the freezing cold parking lot about how we thought she'd do. We both were a little jittery.

How did it go?

She had a great time, mostly.



She did cry twice. Once was when they asked her to take a nap, and she said she would, even though she apparently didn't want to. So she laid there and cried. The other time she cried was when it was 3:30, and it was time to condense her classroom into a smaller classroom. Evey didn't want to leave her room and cried.

According to Evey, she was the only kid who cried. (There were five other new kids starting today.)

But she said she still had a great time. She didn't tell us much about her day, other then a few names she learned. And she showed us that she now knew how to raise her hand and ask a question. I asked her, "Can you believe you get to go back tomorrow?" And she ran and jumped into my arms and just smiled, then fell backwards, as if in disbelief.

Hopefully this feeling continues. It'll make me and Adro feel good if Evey genuinely enjoys her preschool. And then we'd be three-for-three -- mom and dad both love their jobs, and Evey'd love her preschool.

That sounds like a beautiful life doesn't it? Friends, it is.

Accident-prone weekend

We had a rough weekend, an accident-prone weekend.

(Evey is demonstrating the rough weekend by doing her impression of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" above.)

On Saturday Evey wanted to play with a new toy the Neutebooms were nice enough to get her. It looks like a ray gun and shoot bubbles when you push the button. I told Evey we needed to get in the tub to play with it so we wouldn't make a mess elsewhere in the house.

So Evey tips over the little tray of bubble juice, then steps in it, then tries to stand up. SPLAT!

No big deal, she was fine, but she cried a little bit.

Then, a few hours later, I told Evey to go downstairs and ask Lervik if he wanted to eat lunch. Me and Adrianne are in the kitchen as Evey starts telling us, "Daddy, J.J. said he--" we both look at her and she just misses a step, falls backwards, and does a complete backwards flip down the stairs before landing on her head at the front door. THUD!

That got some well deserved crying, right there.

She was fine. That was the first good spill she's had on our stairs at the new house.

Oh, then I was taking a nap with Evey in her room when the doorbell rang. I was disoriented, and it took me a minute to sneak out of the bed without waking up Evey. I didn't grab my glasses, just ran for the door, then ran down the stairs. I thought I was on the last stair, turns out I was on the next-to-last stair. So I landed hard on my foot and flew into the door.

It was a nice, relaxing New Year's weekend. Watched a few movies, read a few magazines, drank a few beers. We just picked up a few bruises along the way.

***

UPDATE: About two hours after I posted this, Evey dropped one of her Christmas presents on her toe. The toy was this little laptop for kids with different games on it... a nice toy! Yup, it doesn't work anymore. To quote Evey, "Aw, man!"