The tooth, the hole tooth, and nothing but the tooth

On Friday, Evan celebrated Gami's birthday, and having a sick day at home, by losing his third tooth!

Last night, the tooth fairy traded Evan's tooth for a shiny gold dollar coin. Ironically, we had watched the movie "Tooth" on HBO Thursday night. Although Evan seemed to enjoy the Willy Wonka-ish story of a young, feisty tooth fairy, two children, and some jaded holiday characters (Easter Bunny, Mrs. Claus), Mom and Dad agree withthe IMDB rating:

3.4 out of 10 stars. Nuff said.

Bon mots

Some amusements from the mouth of Evan:

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Evan: "Mom, do you wanna help me build a robot?"

Mom: "Well, I think you have to be a scientist to build a robot."

Evan: "We can look in that book about Albert Einstein that Grandpa Rog gave me, and find out how to do it!"
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From a future advertising writer:

Evan: "I sure like Arby's, because you feel like you're at home when you eat there."

(Mom's disclaimer -- I haven't spotted any talking oven mitts at our house, haven't made roast beef in a year, and I swear that our decor doesn't include a single orange plastic booth.)

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Congratulations, Jeanine and Kelly

This week, we received the most excellent news that Evan's Aunt Neenee is engaged to (soon to be Uncle) Kelly!

Hurray! We are so happy for the two of you and are looking forward to the wedding. Evan wants to know, do you need a ring bearer?

Happy birthday, Gami!

It's Gami's 70th birthday! We're always sorry to be so far away on these occasions, but we let Gami know we're thinking of her by singing "Happy Birthday" over the speaker phone.

Evan's lucky to have such a cool grandmother. She can hold her own in a game of "Donkey Kong." And she makes awesome waffles.

Have a happy birthday and enjoy your birthday trip to San Francisco next weekend! We love you, Gami!

Groucho Marx

Evan's dad makes a mean smoothie.

Honey, I (nearly) killed the dog

Speaking of barfing . . .

Last weekend, Evan's mom nearly murdered our dog, Karma. While Evan and his mom were at the children's zoo, Evan's dad called. He had just returned from a long bike ride and found that Karma had consumed a large bowl of Hershey's Kisses that had been left on the coffee table. Didn't leave a single one. Mom had been dusting earlier that morning and forgot to return the bowl to the high shelf where it had been located.

Well, chocolate can be toxic to dogs. And not only did the bowl contain the standard milk chocolate variety, but the Easter bunny had also brought the more deadly dark chocolate type. Dad called the vet and was told to expect vomiting and diarrhea, but watch for real signs of distress. I'm happy to report that Karma survived. She was sicker than a dog (ahem), but seemed to be her usual self by that evening.

That evening, we celebrated Karma's survival with a lovely barbeque on the patio, accompanied by occasional dashes to the garden hose to wash away colorful Easter foil and partially digested Kisses.

Interested to learn how many Hershey Kisses you'd have to injest to commit candy/coffee/caffeine suicide? Check out Energy Fiend's handy calculator.

Weee'rrreee back!

Evan on Earth has been on hiatus for a couple of weeks as the site administrator (a.k.a. Mom) has been busy wrapping up the current semester of grad school. But now we're back and there's plenty to report since the last post.

Today's breaking news: Evan has a bug, but not the entomological kind. After an evening of barf, we're watching cartoons while it's rainy outside, and starting with jello and popsicles as sustanance.

tale of the Triops

Evan's ever-thoughful aunt, recently gave him a gift of Triops eggs (too early for Easter eggs). If you haven't heard of Triops, they're something like cousins to Sea Monkeys. Since their form hasn't changed since the Triassic period, they are marketed as living dinosaurs and may well be the oldest living animal species on earth.

They grow very quickly, are colorful and entertaining to watch. They look something like a cross between a tiny horseshoe crab and an aquatic silverfish. Luckily, only two of our eggs hatched and they have fairly short life spans. They are also known to be cannibals, so we may be down to one Triops before long.

Thanks, Aunt C.!

Boy reporter

Here's Evan working on the computer, into the wee hours of the night (as you can tell by the pj wardrobe). It's so hard to turn him away when I'm trying to do homework in the evening and he asks if he can work on "Evan's Story," a Word document we've saved for him.

Evan loves to use all caps, which is true when he writes by hand. I haven't yet shared with him that that sort of writing isn't appreciated by readers, that it's TOO MUCH LIKE SHOUTING. It's fun to watch him giggle with outright glee after he types each letter. He's pretty adept at using the backspace, return, and delete keys. Usually, his writing is something like this:

MOM DAD EVAN
EVAN 1234567890!!!!!!!!!!!!

Standard stuff. I don't think he's quite ready to take over the writing on this blog. One time, we printed out a page created by Evan that simply read

BOYS
MMMNNNNMMMMNNN

I don't even want to think about what that means.

More things that slither

On Sunday afternoon, Evan and his dad (or "pappy" as Evan has taken to calling him), headed out to Platte River State Park for their weekly nature exploration. While I was studying hard at the Meadowlark Coffee House, the cell phone rang. Evan excitedly told me that he had caught his first snake! A small ringneck -- they had spotted one of this last year, but weren't quick enough to catch it. This time they found two, and managed to catch both of them.

I asked Evan if he was going to bring them home. No, after being doused in snake pee (actually a foul-smelling musk), they decided to let them go. Thank goodness they practice catch-and-release. Evan was convinced that the larger of the two was the same snake they spotted last spring, now grown bigger. He named them Blackjack and Brownjack.

Besides the ringneck snakes, they also spotted a dead mouse, a turkey, and a turkey vulture. Wow, I'm sorry I missed out . . . ahem.

April showers bring . . .

WORMS!

April 1st played a big joke on us by sending all of the neighborhood earthworms and nightcrawlers above ground. After our spring snow and some good rain showers this week, the ground must be saturated. Evan's dad noticed a lot of the critters on the road during his morning run, so he and Evan went out worm hunting. Sure, this species is known to be sorta stealthy, but the boys came home with a bucket o' invertebrates. I suspect there are some really angry robins who missed a feast.

Worm Hunter