My Sweet Little Niece, Eva

One of the things I love the most in life is spending time with my beautiful nieces.  I don’t have any children so they are the daughters I do not yet have.  I had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time with my first niece, while she was a young.  She is now twenty and attending college in Arizona.  My other sweet little niece brings me hours of fun and laughter.  This little combination firecracker-sweetheart, all rolled into one, stands less than four feet tall, with long flowy, silky black hair, piercing dark brown eyes, and pale white skin.   Her name is Eva.  Her Samoan name is Lanuola which translated means the color that never fades.   She is the ripe old age of four with a wise-cracking, witty, fiery personality---a mind all her own!  My sweet four-year-old niece allowed me the opportunity to chat with her for a few minutes and here’s what she had to say.

I began our conversation sitting at the dining room table one evening as Eva intently worked on her homework assignment, coloring figures representative of numbers on her pre-school math assignment.  Her mother and her 3-month old baby brother also sat nearby as we chatted.  “Eva, I need your help today for a school assignment.  Is it okay if I ask you some questions?”  My niece emphatically stated, “Sure!”  I responded, “Eva, how old are you?”  My niece indicated “Four!  You’ve been to my birthday!  I love unicorns!”  I replied, “You love unicorns?  Why?”  She smiled and indicated “Because they’re pretty.”  I asked again, “What else do you like to do?”  She sweetly replied, “I like to play with Barbie’s and I like to color.  Uhm, don’t write that because I didn’t mean to say that.”  I chuckled and stated, “What do you want me to write?”  My sweet Eva, stated “Love Eva.”
            

 I asked her, “What else do you like besides Barbies and coloring?”  She indicated with a beaming smile, “I like to uhm, to uhm, I like to eat pizza!”  I smiled and stated, “I do too!  What else do you like to do?”  She continued coloring and stated, “I like to play with my toys.”  I continued the interview, “What’s your favorite movie?”  She smiled excitedly and said with a glow, “Treasure Buddies.”  I indicated in a peculiar tone, “What’s Treasure Buddies?”  She explained with excitement, “There is a little boy that went to Egypt with his grandpa and his pups followed him.  The pups and the little boy with his grandpa go into the pyramid and I forgot the rest.  We’ll have to talk about something else.  There was two monkeys and one was uh, uncle, monkey, and, and, uh, there was a grandson monkey and an uncle monkey and the grandson monkey listened to the story.  They had a fight with bananas.  Two monkeys had a fight, and uhm, they had a banana fight and uh, and uh, the uncle said: ‘Hold on to your bananas!’”   The conversation continued into the evening:

I asked:                      What are your most favorite things to do?
Eva responded:        “I like to go to school.”

I asked:                      You like to go to school?

Eva responded:        “Uh, huh, because it’s fun!  And I can do gymnastics!  And I can do homework!  Write ‘D---dd----dd—dd—dd—dd!’”

I asked:                      What does that mean?

Eva responded:        “It means snow man!”

I asked:                      In what language?

Eva responded:        “In D---dd----dd—dd—dd—dd!”

I asked:                      Do you have a best friend?

Eva responded:        “Caroline  and horses!”

I asked:                      Your best friends are horses?

Eva responded:        “I have dogs, but the horses are imaginary.  The cows are in my super-mind and they are my age.” 

I asked:                      What do they look like?

Eva responded:        “One has purple hair and one has pink hair and one has blue hair and one has black hair and one has brown hair and one has 7 pieces of hair and one has jelly, octopus for hair!”

I asked:                      What is your favorite subject at school? 

Eva responded:        “Playing?”

I asked:                      Playing is not a subject.  Do you like math, like numbers?

Eva responded:        “I like when they repeat.”

I asked:                      When you grow up, what do you want to be?

Eva responded:        “A vegetariest!”

I asked:                      What do ‘vegetariests’ do?

Eva responded:        “Doing the stuff that is right and fixing people’s bodies.”

I asked:                      Oh, like a doctor?

Eva responded:        “And give people ‘vegetariest brains.’  Cut up their brain and then put some meat in it and take out the vegetariest.  Take out their teeth and put more in.”

I asked:                      Do you like babies, like your little brother?

Eva responded:        “Yes, yes, yes!”                                

I asked:                      What do you like about babies?

Eva responded:        “That they scream!”  (She proceeded to demonstrate how babies scream).

I asked:                      Do you like to dance?  What do you like about dancing?

Eva responded:        “I like dancing with Santa Claus.”

I asked:                      When did you dance with Santa Claus?

Eva responded:        “Last night.”

I asked:                      If you had $500.00, what would you buy?

Eva responded:        “Pet octopus.”

I asked:                      I’m sure you can get much more than that with your $500.00.   What else would you buy with the rest of your money?

Eva responded:        “Pet turtle, flowers, a bushel of flowers, a bushel of cows.”

I asked:                      What is your favorite animal?

Eva responded:        “A parrot; parrots are good friends.”

I asked:                      Where did you see a parrot?

Eva responded:        “On TV!”

I asked:                      Do you have a favorite song?

Eva responded:        “Twinkle, twinkle little star.”

I asked:                      Who is the President of the United States?

Eva responded:        “George Ham…President S. Monson.”

I responded, then asked:    That’s the President of our Church, President Thomas S. Monson.  What is your favorite church song?

Eva responded:        “I am a child of God.”  (She sweetly sang the whole song). 

I asked:                      What’s your favorite flower?

Eva responded:        “My favorite flowers are petunias, purple and pink--and alien flowers.”

I asked:                      What do alien flowers look like?

Eva responded:        “They have scary dots.  Only on cartoons like Scooby-doo, they can smell the alien flowers, but they’re stinky.”

I asked:                      What is your favorite song on the radio?

Eva responded:        “Oooh baby, I was born this way!  I was born this way, I was born this way!  Oooh, baby, I was born this way!  I was born this way!  I’m on the right track baby, I was born this way.”  (Lady Gaga)