Essie is O'Neal of the Week!
Essie Carrington O’Neal is the daughter of Beach and Nancy Leach O’Neal. She was born June 21, 2009, on the Summer Solstice, which also happened to be Father’s Day and National Skateboarding Day, much to her daddy’s delight. (She's named for her great-grandmother, Essie Mae Parsons O'Neal, who, by bearing eleven sons, provided many subjects for past and future O'Neals of the Week.)
Essie’s parents both work at NCCAT; Nancy as the horticultural specialist and Beach as a cook.
Essie has a lot of family – grandparents, a great-grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins – on the island, and gets to enjoy loads of attention. Recently, her nine year-old cousins from New York came to visit, and they played a lot of dress-up with her. Essie has magic wings and tiaras left over from her fairy birthday party.
Essie enjoys watching the Olympics, going to the beach, and getting smoothies from her Grammy’s coffee shop. She’s a budding entomologist, pointing out all the bugs in the garden and trying to hold still enough for a dragonfly to land on her. Her mom says that after seeing a documentary about bugs, she called upstairs, “Are ants bad?” “They are if they’re in the house,” Nancy told her. “We got some bad ants down here!” Essie replied.
Essie was happy to share her toys, show us around the garden, and demonstrate the trampoline her grandparents got for her birthday.
OC: How old are you, Essie?
Essie: Bouncy, bouncy, bounce! I’m dizzy!
OC: Are you three?
Essie, stopping the bouncing to position her fingers correctly: Uh-huh. I’m free! We’re little jumping beans!
OC: What did you have for breakfast today?
Essie: Sausage and bacon and a biscuit and bananas [at the Pony.]
OC: What’s your favorite food?
Essie: I want ice cream! I like a dragon to eat. Barbequed. I would like to eat it all up.
OC: What’s you favorite kind of ice cream?
Essie: Vanilla
OC: Who are your teachers at school?
Essie: Mer-mer (Merrian) and Crystal and Juju and Samantha in the green room.
OC: Who’s your best friend?
Essie: Arabella
OC: What’s your favorite movie?
Essie: Rapunzel
OC: What’s your favorite toy?
Essie: I don’t want to show my Barbies, I want to show my horses! I LOVE horses! This is Green Bean. I like to make oats for Green Bean and its mommy. Here’s my dragon. This is my stethoscope, like Tosha’s pink one [at the Health Center], and a hearbeat, thump, thump.
OC: Do you have any pets?
Essie: We have two kitty-cats. Scarlett and Ebb. She likes cat food and likes to get her ears rubbed. He’s a bad kitty-cat. Nothing for Ebb because he scratches and gosh, that hurts a lot!
