Evie and Emme

Yesterday was Evie’s birthday. Oh yeah, I forgot, you don’t know about Evie. Evie is Emerson’s best-friend and she is, to the rest of us, quite invisible. I say "best-friend", because she is just one of several of Emerson’s imaginary friends, the most prominent being Evie, Kyle (her brother) and Ennis, Emerson’s on-again and off-again boyfriend.

Yesterday, on the way to daycare, Emerson announced, “Guess what, today is Evie’s birthday!!” She then went on to detail all the wonderful plans she had for her party, the decorations we would be needing, and of course, the delicious cake I was going to make for her. Well, an imaginary girl doesn’t turn 3 everyday, so we did in fact have a birthday party for her last night. I didn’t have any decorations, but I did make her a cake with sprinkles and all of the imaginaries were there. We sang happy birthday and then ate my delicious cake.

I often wonder how far I should let this imaginary thing go because it tends to infringe on our daily lives. If Evie is at our house at dinnertime, then Emerson insists that we all sit at the dining room table because the bar only seats four and there's simply no place for Evie to sit. So upon announcement that Evie is staying for dinner, up we go over to the next room so that Evie will have a proper seat to sit in. If Emerson and Carson get juice, then I have to pour a small glass for Evie because juice is her favorite. If Evie is in the car, then Emme will roll down her window because Evie likes a little breeze. The list goes on and on.

Sometimes, Evie comes over with her brother, Kyle and on occasion, her parents come too. When the parents come over it is usually because they have befallen some catastrophic tragedy at home. The last time Emerson explained that there was a terr-wible fire at their house and it all got burnt up and they had to stay with us until their house was ready.

Fire is a bit of a theme with her. A few weeks ago, Ennis stopped coming around and when someone asked her about it (oh yes, the extended family is in on this as well) she didn’t bat an eyelash when she woefully explained that Ennis’s house blew up in a giant es-plosion. It was quite a tale. I would almost feel sorry for poor ole Ennis if he wasn’t such a thorn in Dobie side.

See, Ennis is a boy, and Dobie doesn’t approve of her having a boyfriend, imaginary or not. And he particularly doesn’t like Ennis because his name rhymes with, well, you know, and those things should not be associated with Daddy's little girl. However, what really gets him going is the fact that she is adamant that when she grows up she is going to “slobba kiss Ennis at the moo-vies”. Where in the world she figured out that people “slobber kiss” at the movies, I will never know. I definitely need to tighten up the security on her Cartoon Network viewership.

In any event, we haven’t heard from Ennis in a while. I think they may have broken up. I heard her talking to him on her sparkly blue princess phone and she said, “Sar-wee Ennis, I can’t mar-wee you. My daddy says I’m just a little child.” So, from this I gather that he may be out of the picture for a while.

So, we’re basically down to Evie and Kyle. Kyle doesn’t hang around much at night because he can’t sleep in her bed or take a bath with her because, according to Emme, Kyle is boy and he can’t see her privates. Well, I guess Dobie can let out a big ole’ sigh of relief on that one. That's one less boy he has to deal with. That is until she dreams up another one.........