Thursday, July 12, 2012

I am Evie. Hear me scream!

My beautiful, sweet little Evie is the subject of this post. She's a firecracker that one. If she's not laughing hysterically at you she's waking the neighbors with that scream of hers. Watch out world. She means to be heard.

Let's be honest. I do not have quiet children. I'm ok with this. They express themselves whole heartedly.

Evie's horror movie scream is a little different. It simply is who she is. Her scream, even as a newborn, has made my ear drums hurt at their core. When she really gets going I will admit I sometimes close my eyes. For some reason that helps.

I'd like to think I've gotten used to it. And maybe at home I have. However, recently being in public with Evie and her scream has been interesting.

Situation number 1:
THE LIBRARY
I try to take the girls to the library once a week or once every other week. For a very long time I would take Evie in on my back in the Ergo. She was content with that. Lila would return/pick out books and we would be on our way. If Evie got restless I would hand her a book and she would look at it in the Ergo and be thrilled. Recently, as with everything else, she wants to do more and more of what Lila is doing. When I say she wants to do these things I mean she wants to do them EXACTLY like Lila. When it comes to teeth brushing this is beyond helpful. When it comes to pulling every. single. book. off the shelf not so much. But, this is still manageable and can be really fun. Evie loves books just as much as Lila. She will sit at the little tables and flip through books I bring her as long as I keep them coming.

The interesting part is that Evie's scream has become a happy one too. It hasn't happened often, but when it does I am totally at a loss. Usually when the scream occurs I brace myself to soothe her and hope for the best. She can be very hard to soothe. But when it's a blood curdling happy scream in the library WHAT DO YOU DO? She's one for God's sake. I can't discuss it with her. I don't want to pacify her happiness away. So I just smiled and ignored the stares from the moms trying to read to their kids. Why did she scream? Because they have enormous stuffed animals (tigers, lions, bears, oh my!). I have already shared her love affair with Albie (our abnormally large bear). You can imagine her little mind as she saw there were MORE huge stuffed animals. At first I just laughed and some others did too. But she just kept letting out a scream that I'm sure the adult section of the library could not place to save their lives.

Situation number 2:
THE GROCERY STORE
I made a MASSIVE mommy mistake with Evie. This is a big one. I beg of you. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. Evie has never enjoyed shopping of any kind. The minute she was even thinking about being mobile she wanted nothing to do with shopping carts. Before most of my groceries were delivered to me I would give Evie a snack while grocery shopping. I would typically go when Lila was at school and it was the only way I could get Evie to cooperate for an entire shopping trip. Now, she expects it every time. This isn't that awful except for when I forget a snack. Still not awful being that we are at the grocery store.

So the other day I gave them both a snack before we went and then forgot to pack one. We got to the store and Evie was about to climb into my purse to find it. I grabbed a thing of puffs and asked Lila to hold it so they could eat some while we shopped. I really only needed five things. I was just having a hard time finding those five things. By the time we got to the check out line Evie was halfway through the container of puffs and I was frantic to get us out of the door and actually get dinner made. Nevermind that she actually ate HALF A CONTAINER OF PUFFS. I hastily took hold of the puffs so I could actually pay for them and you can imagine how that went over. I'm pretty sure every single check out line stopped and stared at us. Evie got so bent out of shape and so loud that I took her out of the cart immediately. This was a gut reaction, but then she got more mad. This is another thing about Evie. When she's mad she does not want you to coddle her. She just wants to be really, really mad. I paid as quickly as I could and bolted!

Seth's mom tells me that he screamed about everything (happy or sad) as a little kid too. I think from here on when one of them gets going in public I'm just going to call him and yell into the phone that he needs to come get his children :-)

1 comment:

  1. I have a screamer, too. She's 2. Thank you for writing this...you start to feel "alone"....!

    ReplyDelete

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