Random Thoughts

Jack has woken up at 4 a.m. the last couple of mornings, and what does he do? Cry? Call for Mommy and Daddy? Go back to sleep? No, lately, he's been SINGING. This morning it was pretty much steady for most of the next two hours: "Twinkle...twinkle....lit-TLE...STAR!!!! How...I...won-DERRR...WHAT...you....ARE!!!" and "Old MacDonald," and "A B C D E F G.... H I J...." and "ROW ROW ROW your BOAT!" Needless to say, I'm tired and this blog will be a short one.

When I picked him up at daycare today he was in this toy boat that rocked, wearing a large train engineer's cap. It was down over his eyes, so he couldn't see me. But he heard my voice and arched his neck so he could sort of see me underneath the brim. Then he smiles, gets up, and runs over to me, me worrying that he's going to trip and fall since he clearly can't see anything.

We head over to his play area, morning or evening, and he leads the way, and then stops and turns. Holds out a hand and tilts his head slightly. "Do you want to play with my cars?" Or: "Do you want to play with my trains?" I may have mentioned this before, but it's still a riot.

He's finally gotten into his Mr. Potato Head. For a while he only wanted him with a nose and feet. For some reason he didn't want him to have eyes, a mouth, or other features. Now he dresses him to the nines, with arms, a hat, eyes, a mouth, glasses, and even a flower on his wrist. And he wants him to hold a bat from another toy. This weekend, in fact, we played ball with Mr. Potato Head, with Jack standing at one end of the rug and Mr. Potato Head and me at the other. Jack would throw the ball, and I would then use Mr. Potato Head's arm to throw it back. This delights Jack. "He DID it!" The game continues for a while.

Speaking of throwing a ball, the kid's got an arm. We play with a little sticky ball about the size of a golfball and a mini nerf-type football. He can throw them. What's funny, though, is he has no grasp of how to catch them. He'll hold his hands out, like we tell him, but he has no real concept of what he's supposed to do. Raise them to catch the ball? Hold them out more? He's like a statue as I gently lob the ball in a perfect arc to where his hands are, and it bounces harmlessly off them to the floor. Again, this delights Jack no end, and he'll grab it and throw it back. We'll work on the catching thing, though.

Now that it's getting warmer, we're playing out in the backyard. Thus far (aside from a mini-meltdown today when he didn't want to come back after running into the neighbor's yard, partly a result of him waking up at 4 a.m. and being extra cranky I suspect) he's pretty easy to please in this form of entertainment. He just wants to run around. He doesn't care about having a ball, or a toy, or companionship really. It's enough to run up the slight hill at the back of the yard, stop, beam at me, and then run down to the bottom. And then go back up again. And hey, that's fine. Until he does a face plant in the wet grass, which seems inevitable, it's plenty of fun for me, too.