My Dinner with Jack

Emily was having a farewell happy hour with her co-workers tonight, and there was a showing at our house at 6:15. Thus, Jack and I had to eat out, and although we could have done McDonalds or something, we'd had good success at a Mexican place, Benny's, early in the week, with the three of us, so I decided to take Jack there. They bring chips quickly, which is always key.

I had hoped to sit next to Jack in a booth, but unfortunately it's a bit more crowded on Friday at 6 than Monday at 5:15. So we ended up at a small table in the corner, outside on the patio, facing each other - me in my chair, Jack on a little booster seat. Other patrons about 4 feet away at our elbows.

And Jack was great. The guy brought chips, and Jack shoveled them in, dipping them in salsa, which was hot, but he only minded when he got a really spicy bit, which he would react to with a brief yell of discomfort -- then go right back to shoveling them in. Every once in a while he'd pause to glance at the couple next to us...okay, he'd stare openly at them...and then go back to his food. He ate chips, ate a taco, let me eat my enchiladas and drink my margarita. The whole time I was worried he'd fall off the booster seat or something, but in fact he didn't move -- just sat still and ate. He even started to figure out the straw toward the end of the meal; that when you're drinking milk with a straw you don't need to raise the entire cup above your head.

The only problem with having a meal alone with Jack like that is that, well, he doesn't talk a lot. He just sits there and eats, making noises every once in a while and so forth, laughs at times, but you can't really have a conversation. I thought about having both sides of the conversation, but that would have been a little odd too. So we both just ate, and then at one point music came on, and we both bounced and smiled, and he danced a little in his chair. And then the meal was over and I scooped him up and we went home.

Life moves pretty fast

That's what Ferris Bueller said, and probably somebody else, and it's true. It's been an insane couple of weeks since the last time I wrote...

1. We gave up our dog, Charlie. We could not get him past his aggression toward other dogs and it was starting to worry us, and cause us daily stress. It just became too much. It's a tough thing to do and we went back and forth on it a lot, but it just wasn't working. I miss him, I think we all do -- although Jack, strangely enough, hasn't seemed to notice -- but I have to believe he will find a better life in a home where there aren't so many dogs around him, and maybe he can run and play in larger areas than our smallish yard in a crowded Denver neighborhood. I have to because I can't bear to think he won't. He's a beautiful dog and in many ways a good dog, just must have had a bad experience before us, and hopefully he'll get into a home that doesn't have many dogs around.

2. Emily got a job offer in Connecticut, so we're moving back to the East Coast. Last week we got our house painted, this week it went on the market. The past few days we've walked about our house like it's a museum, afraid to touch anything, since it's all "staged" for potential buyers, which is to say really, really clean. No dishes on counters, no newspapers and magazines lying around -- it looks like the homes at Roanoke, I guess, where everything looks normal, and the people are just gone.

3. Jack is busier than ever. Running around the house clutching toys he cared nothing about 6 months ago, putting together his puzzles, bringing us books from the shelves (a Curious George book I just bought, about which he says "Monkey! Monkey!" until I read it to him), asking for cereal ("Cereal! Cereal!"), smiling a lot, laughing, eating -- pretty much oblivious to the fact, naturally, that next week will probably be his last week at his day care, and that we're all moving back East.

And that's kind of the big one, because it is mostly about Jack, both lately and in general. We want the best for him, and that's part of why we're doing what we're doing, and part of what we do every day, every week, every month.

It's scary to sell one's house, to start a new job, to move across the country, to say goodbye to a lot of people and hello to a lot of others. It's all scary.

But I look at Jack, and he's all excited about having his monkey shaped pancake for breakfast, and can't wait to read a book with me or go outside and play with a basketball or help Mommy pick up leaves from that strange tree in our backyard that used to drop leaves and now drops banana shaped pods or something, and I say, well, it will be okay. We'll make it work. Because there's Jack, and he's a happy guy, and we'll do whatever we can to make sure he stays that way.

Happy Daddy!

Pretty tired tonight, but I want to write down a few random things before I forget them...

- My birthday was a couple of days ago. Emily tried to teach Jack to say "Happy Birthday Daddy!" Jack said "Happy Daddy!" and then went around saying it, with a big smile, for a lot of the day. "Happy Daddy! Happy... Daddy! Hap-py....Dad-dy!" Best birthday present ever.

- When Jack hears a dog bark outside, he says "Woof!" He's in the bath, playing with his toys, and hears a dog bark. Stops what he's doing for a moment. "Woof!" Then goes back to playing.

- He has a large, lap edition of "Goodnight Moon" as well as a small board book of it. This morning he came out of his room with both of them, as he often does. I was in the kitchen, and I heard him saying "Sit. Sit." I look out, and he's sitting on the rug with the lap version in his lap, and the small version a few feet in front of him. He's pointing at it and looking at me. "Sit."

- A little bit later, I'm at the computer, and Charlie is lying near the wall in the back of the room about 10 feet away, as he normally does. Jack comes up with the two books and puts the small one between Charlie's paws, then sits down next to him with his big lap edition. So Charlie could read along with him, I guess. Classic.

- Aunt Robin gave Jack a boat, sea captain, and seagull bath toy. Pretty cool. Jack loves the seagull. "Seagull!" he says. A bath isn't happy until I bring in the seagull and throw him in the water; these days, the seagull makes a bath a bath.

- Jack's favorite food these days is cereal. He likes these wheat pillow like things. The other day he was asking for them, and we'd give them to him, and he'd wander off, then come back for more. We found out he was collecting a tiny little bowl of them, with the bowl being one of the little cups from the egg poacher. I picked it up on one of his treks back for more cereal, because Charlie would likely have eaten it eventually, and he came back with a fistful of cereal, saw his little cup missing, and did a double-take, literally. Mystified. I showed it to him on the edge of the desk. He was happy.

- He likes drawing and coloring with markers. He mostly likes me drawing with markers. I draw him airplanes and sharks over and over again. "Airplane!" "Shark!" I try drawing other things, like a whale, but he says "shark"!

- I'm a huge dinosaur fan. We got him a book called "Dinosaur, Dinosaur." Good book, he likes it. He says "Nanosaur!" Funny to see, and to hear. "Nanosaur!"

So yeah, Jack's doing great.



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