with the bathwater

Eric: "You were a good big brother from the beginning, Evan. I have a picture of you holding your new sister Sage on the day she was born."

Evan: "Yeah, but I was kind of tempted to throw her out the window."

Sage: "That is both offensive and funny."

egg hunt

Evan: "Who do you think will be the first woman president?"

Eric: "I don't know. Maybe Hillary Clinton."

Evan: "Do you think Bill Clinton will have a lot of power?"

Eric: "Probably not a lot of power."

Sonja: "But he'll certainly enjoy being back in the White House."

Evan: "Yeah, like, 'Here's where I hid that deviled egg at that party. Man, that was a terrible deviled egg. Hey, it's still here!'"

coddling criminals

"I'm taking out the lava pits and putting in a playground." -- Evan, redesigning his prison on the computer game Minecraft

highlight reel

Sage scored twice in this morning's b-ball game. Here she is moving well without the ball and knocking down the open jumper. (Warning: if you're not a blood relative of Sage's, this is 39 seconds of your life you'll never have back.)

fighting for peace

Evan: "Here's what a hippie-crite says: 'If you don't use non-violent methods, I'll kill you.'"

noise complaint

Evan: "Will you please make Sage stop singing not-very-good gibberish?"

the most dangerous game

Evan: "If I score a goal on a header, you're going to have a smile so big it's going to split your face."

the trouble with self-evaluations

"It's perfectly perfect." —Sage, when asked to assess the job she'd done cleaning her room.

keeping up our front

Evan: "Man, Sage left crud all over this front porch."

Eric: "She certainly did."

Evan: "You should tell her that any toys she leaves out on the porch are going to get thrown away."

Eric: "I'm not sure you should be talking. You leave stuff lying around all the time."

Evan: "Yeah, but I leave it lying around inside, not out here where all of society can see it."

i believe him

Eric: "Did you shampoo, Evan?"

Evan: "Yes, with Ocean Breeze shampoo scented with sea algae extract."

and he approved this message

Evan (overheard playing with Legos by himself): "So today, kids, we learned a valuable lesson: Always wear pants." "That's a totally worthless lesson!" "Fine. Today we learned a valuable lesson: You should never travel through other dimensions. But if you do, always make sure to improve a dimension before you leave it."

fall fashions

The ultimate nightgown: Daddy's t-shirt.

Evan in his element.

pony tales

Sage: "... And then one of the ghost investigators got slapped by an unseeable horse!"

Evan (sighing): "No he didn't. He got slapped by an unseen force."

it occurred to me

that one reason I'm posting less frequently is that the things Evan now says tend to sound like this: "Want to hear the list of things I need? At the top is an infrared illuminator. Then I need a four-pin-by-six-pin firewire cable. And then I need, probably, a good external microphone. And I'm NOT waiting until Christmas."

straight and narrow

Evan: "If cars ran on railroad tracks, high-speed police chases would be a lot less interesting."

me too

Evan: "I feel kind of sorry for balloons that people let go of."

job description

Eric: "Did Grandma Sue get you a new Lego set?"

Evan (assembling a new Lego set): "Yep. She's a grandma. And that's pretty much the classic grandma personality: love you and get you stuff."

is it too much to ask?

Evan: "Here's something else that I want from the future: underwear that puts itself on."

my horoscope

Sage: "Tomorrow you're going to get pelted with eggs."

Eric: "Oh no."

Sage: "The only problem is, that's true."

dress for success

Evan: "Would you ever go on a ghost hunt by yourself, at night, in a big old haunted building, with all the lights out and only a camera with night vision, and you were locked in?"

Sage: "Yes, if I was covered in bubble wrap."

heck of a job

Evan: "I think Waverly Hills is way scarier than Bobby Mackey's Music World. If I had to do a ghost investigation at one of them, I'd go to Bobby Mackey's in a heartbeat, even though it's the portal to heck."

for everyone who's tired of posts about how precocious my kids are

Evan: "How do you spell 'collegiate'?"

Eric: "Evan, that's the name of your school. And it's on the shirt you're wearing right now."

Evan: "I can't read my shirt. It's upside down."

twenty questions

Sage: "Is it bigger than a car?"

Eric: "No."

Sage: "Is it bigger than Roosevelt?"

Eric: "I guess it's about the same size as Roosevelt."

Sage: Is it in people's yards?"

Eric: "Sometimes."

Sage: "Can you eat it?"

Eric: "Yes."

Sage: "Do I like to eat it?"

Eric: "Yes."

Sage: "Is it a really huge tomato?"

Eric: "No."

Evan: "Sage, it's right under your nose."

Sage: "Is it a booger?"

the things she does for us

"I have made FOUR pitchers of lemonade for this family, and I am NOT MAKING A FIFTH." —Sage, who has clearly been waiting her whole life to say something like that

clowning us

A bunch of grownups were talking, without really knowing what we were talking about, about the discovery of the Higgs Boson and its implications for the universe. Evan happened by and asked, "What's the Big Bozo?"

it's 9 a.m. somewhere

Sage (with a pancake in her hand): "Can you put a little bit of butter on this?"

Eric: "Is that a pancake from breakfast? You're going to eat that? At 9 o'clock at night?"

Sage: "Well I'm not going to pick up a pancake, put butter on it, and then freeze it. Or will I?"

you'd think i would remember that

Sage: "Once I had a sneeze that was so loud that Auntie Meghan texted Mommy to say 'Gesundheit.'"

slow news month

Sorry.

Evan (telling on his sister): "Sage is drinking water like a dog!"

watching "The Black Stallion"

Eric: "The boy's all alone on that beach. How's he going to survive?"

Evan: "He could eat the horse."

ghost trackers

Evan may one day make an actual episode of a show, but for now his preferred genre is the opening credits.

the giving tree

Evan: "Man, that's the second time that tree has hurt me! It makes me want to saw off that branch and cut it up into little pieces, then turn the pieces into pulp, then turn the pulp into paper and scribble all over the paper and then crumple the paper up and throw it in the toilet and flush the toilet!"

the truth fairy

Evan: "I hope the Tooth Fairy brings me five dollars."

Eric: "Whoa. Sounds like you think there's been some serious inflation since you lost your last tooth."

(Pause.)

Evan: "Just hand over the money."

i'd had a week to prepare for this question

Evan: "Guess what I'm going to do when I wake up on the first morning of summer vacation."

Eric: "What?"

Evan: "Dance around the house. Duh."

there's a party going on right here

In the car, on the way to school...

Evan: "Are you on summer vacation now?"

Eric: "Pretty much. Yep."

Evan: "Will you do me a favor while you're at home today?"

Eric: "Sure. What is it?"

Evan: "Dance around the house."

here's the beef

Sage: "What would you like to order, sir?"

Eric: "Hmm. Do you have any specials today?"

Sage: "Just the 10-pound cheeseburger."

Eric: "Wow. Do you have something a little lighter than that?"

Sage: "The 9-pound cheeseburger."

shoot the messenger

Sage (caught in a lie): "It wasn't my fault. It was my mouth's fault."

circular reasoning

Sage: "What are you doing?"

Eric (taking a cloverleaf exit ramp from one highway to another): "I'm taking a shortcut."

Sage: "You realize you're going around in a circle."

Thai Hot

i don't

Sage: "Why can't you marry your brother?"

Evan: "Because I would refuse to marry you."

my little pwny

Evan: "What happens when the Tooth Fairy loses a tooth?"

Eric: "Good question."

Evan: "That should be the title of your next children's book."

Sage: "And then Eric Carle will get pwned!"

the dream factory

when you care enough...

Apparently Sage signed her own oversized birthday card.

nobody gonna hold me down

Evan: "A lot of people just sit around on their couches and watch movies and play video games, and they never think about who makes all of that stuff for them. I'm more the creative type. I'd rather make things for their benefit. Except that the movies I make are for my benefit, too, because I'm going to make millions."

Eric: "Well, they're for your benefit mainly because you can take satisfaction in them. And when you get to the end of your life you'll be able to look back proudly at all the movies you made."

Evan: "Yeah, and the anti-gravity machine."

speaking of not talking

Sage: "Tonight Andrea said, 'Close your mouth, lock it, take the key and hide it in your brain,' and I said, 'Build a door in your brain, open the door, let the key drift out and float over to Maggie, and let Maggie use it to unlock your mouth.'"

not an endorsement

"This Dan-o-nino is the world's smallest serving of yogurt. In the commercials they make it look bigger by using extra-small kids. I need a different spoon that will actually fit inside this cup."

is it still there?

game over

Evan: "Now everybody's playing a game called 'Dare to Dare' at recess, and it's a really stupid game. You're supposed to jump off this big caterpillar toy and shout 'I LOVE BUTTS!' That's when I stopped playing."

spring catalogue

Here's my annual photo of the kids in front of the azalea at 401 Woodlawn, where their great-great-great-grandmother once lived.

That'll teach Sage to wear a field of flowers.

An adult female Polyphemus moth.

good eggs

This photo was snapped between the "G" and the "o" in "Go!"



Sage and Maggie

room for interpretation

Evan: "My room is nice. It's dirty, but nice. It's the good kind of dirty. Not the junk-everywhere kind of dirty. Actually, there's junk everywhere. But it's nice."

21 Jump Street

Evan having fun with iMovie.

soap opera

hoop dreams

Sage: "I had a dream where I met a big KU basketball player, and then we were friends, and then I showed him to you, and you started going kind of crazy and saying all these cuss words, and then we had a picnic, and then my dream was over."

dustup

Evan: "Has Pigpen ever been kicked out of school for hygiene issues?"

well, yes

Eric: "Here's a riddle: 'Brothers and sisters, I have none, / but this man's father is my father's son.' Who is this man?"

(Long pause.)

Evan: "HIM!"

dancing in her head

This morning when Sage woke up she told me she'd had the most wonderful dream about sugar-free gum.

what's on Evan's mind

you hear what you want to hear

Listening to the Gin Blossoms:

Sage: "Did he just sing 'When I was Cinderella'?"

Eric: "No, he sang 'On Allison Road.'"

Sage: "Oh. It really sounded like 'When I was Cinderella.'"

by the way, Evan is interested in cameras

I spent most of a recent parent-teacher conference discussing cameras and what to do about them. Evan's teacher finds them in the margins of spelling tests and math homework. Here's one in the hand of a simile skydiver:


And here's Evan in the shower this evening:

grounded

Evan: "Do you ever wish you were invisible? And could fly?"

Eric: "I sure do. I think invisibility and flight would be two of the coolest super-powers to have."

Evan: "Yeah, except then you'd feel obligated to go after bad guys all the time. If I were invisible and could fly, I'd be like, 'Hey, I'm only in third grade. Let the cops handle it.'"

the ultimate prank

I can say without risk of hyperbole that this is 10,000 times better than any other movie.

descent of man

Evan: "Yeah, my State Travel Convention poster board is in pretty bad shape. Probably because Ethan and Skylar and I rode it down the stairs like a toboggan."

Eric: "Okay, that's going on the blog."

Evan: "I have footage if you need it."

top banana

Evan: "Why don't you believe in ghosts?"

Eric: "Same reason I don't believe in flying bananas."

Evan: "Really? Do you realize that monkeys can throw them? You could put a jet pack on a banana, or strap it to a firework. What if you took one into space and then let go of it. Astronomers would look through their telescopes and say, 'There's the Big Dipper. There's Orion's Belt. And there's Evan's Banana.'"

auto-focus

Tonight I offered Evan $2 if he could go half an hour without talking about cameras. He spent fifteen minutes talking about them indirectly by asking if he could talk about boom mics or shotgun mics or movie-making or other things related to cameras. Then he spent about five minutes pounding his fist on the table and stuffing his cloth napkin in his mouth and looking like he was going to go crazy and asking how much time was left. Then he accidentally mentioned a camera.

a room of one's own

Evan: "That'd be cool if Grandma Sue had guest rooms that were decorated specifically for Sage and me. Sage's would be all princess-y and mine would be all camera-y."

Sage: "No, mine would have ninjas. But they wouldn't be all black and white. They'd be pink ninjas. With lots of flowers and peace signs."

one vision

Evan, bless him, is the most monomaniacal person I've ever met, and in the last 6 months or so his enthusiasm has shifted almost completely from Legos to cameras. He thinks about them all day, talks about them whenever he talks, and, apparently, dreams about them every night (if his morning dream-report is to be believed). Here's a small snippet from a typical monologue:

"That'd be cool if someone created a really awesome ghost-hunting TV show that drove all the other ghost-hunting shows out of business, and so they gave me all of their equipment. And then the awesome ghost-hunting show got driven out of business by a cooking show, and so I got all of their equipment too. I'd have, like, 70 static night-vision cameras and 50 tripods."

so obvious

Evan: "I've figured out the secret to making cats happy: Talk to them in the voice of Mike Tyson."

resting her case

Sage: "Evan is forcing me to watch a show I don't want to watch."

Sonja: "What show?"

Sage: "MythBusters."

Eric: "Sage, after you've had breakfast, you can watch a show that you want to watch."

Sage: "Hannah Montana?"

Eric: "Except Hannah Montana."

Sage: "Why can't I watch Hannah Montana?"

Eric: "Because I said so."

Sage: "You used to let me watch Hannah Montana all the time!"

Eric: "I know, and you started turning into a sassy teenager."

Sage: "No I DIDN'T!"

Eric: "Yes you did."

Sage (flopping melodramatically on the bed): "Does THIS sound SASSY TO YOU???!!!"

Eric: "No, that sounds more whiny."

Sage: "SEE!"

you call this archaeology?

Evan's idea for a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" prequel: "Teenage Indiana Jones and the Pimple of Doom"

Evan answers a question

Eric (looking for the cat before backing the car out): "Where's Roosevelt?"

Evan: "I see him. He's over there. I have excellent night-vision. Grandma Sue says I have cat's eyes. I eat lots of carrots. I wonder if you could make your camera higher-quality by feeding it carrots. My camera would be fat from carrots. Maybe I could make a standard-definition camera into an HD camera by rubbing carrot juice on the lens."

get down/makeup

Today I took Evan and some friends shopping for makeup, costumes, and props for their next movie. At Walgreens, they got eyeliner and eye shadow and a mascara brush and a lip pencil; Evan asked me not to stand near them when they went to pay for it, "because I want to get weird looks from the clerks." Later, at the thrift store, where old disco hits were playing over the speakers, he said, "Wow. They even have thrifty music."

my psychic friends network

Evan: "I think I'm kind of a psychic. Because you know in the gym where there are those marks on the floor, the marks left by people's shoes? Well when I stand on those marks, for some reason I can throw the tennis ball kind of high."

Eric: "How does that make you a psychic?"

Evan: "I don't know, but it's weird."

Sage: "Wanna know how I'm a sidekick?"

who you gonna call?

Evan and Sage were discussing various people's roles on Evan's ghost-hunting team:

Sage: "What am I?"

Evan: "You and McCall are assistants. And also bait."

Sage: "Oh."

Evan: "It's a good job. If you get attacked by a ghost, we'll pay your medical bills. And if it's a demonic ghost, we'll pay for the exorcism."

another comedy of manners