Snapshots

At some point, I don't know when, I took Jack's hand and told him to be brave. Maybe we were entering his room in the dark, or walking across ice or something. Anyway, he has adopted that as a saying of his own, if we're going out in the yard or downstairs or sometimes even in the living room to play with his toys. He takes my hand and says "Try to be brave." OK, Jack, I will.

The other night Jack woke up wailing in the middle of the night. We have to gauge these things -- ignore it and let him go back to sleep, go in and give him a soothing pat, etc. In this instance I went in to check on him, and he asked for a story or a song or somesuch -- it's 3 a.m., or so. So I say, no, it's the middle of the night, everything is fine, go back to sleep. I left the room and his wails grew even louder. And now they were specific:

"I HAVE A BOOGERRRRRRR!!!!!"

I went in, wiped his nose, and he dropped back down on his stomach and went to sleep.

Not sure how much I've written about the potty thing, perhaps nothing. We've started with the potty training and having him sit on the potty each night. And he's gotten into it, and has gone potty several times, always to much praise, at which he beams with pride. It's great, really. Of course, frequently he'll spend 10 minutes sitting on it like it's all a big game, doing nothing, but saying "I need toilet paper," and "It's coming out!" (It's typically not.) "The poop is coming OUUUUTT!" (No, it's not. Still nothing in that area.) But I admit his little voice piping up, "It's coming ouuuutt!" is very entertaining.

He likes to sit Mr. Potato Head on his sink step stool when he's on the potty, so he can watch him, and then he likes to put him on the sink when he brushes his teeth. He likes Mr. Potato Head.

His favorite song these days is one his grandma sings, "California, Here I Come." Jack sings it too: "Open ... up that ... gol ... den GATE ....Cal if ornia here I come."

He has a dinosaur book which I go through with him naming the dinosaurs. One page had sea creatures. "Is that a whale?" He asked about one. "No," I said, "that's an icthysaur." It's now his FAVORITE animal. For a couple of days he'd say to me, "Do you want to see the ikkysaur? Let's go see him. Do you want to see the ikkysaur?" Sometimes he even says, "ikkythasaur," which is pretty close, all things considered.

He's really into his thick, colorful fleece blanket these days. He's had it since he was a baby, and never really cared that much about it -- until now. Now he frequently likes to have it downstairs with him, and when I go in at night, sometimes he's hugging it tightly to him. I think he has a song about it too. I'm not sure of the exact words, but it's something to the effect of, "My bankey....my bankey...."

He rode a horse outside a store today, one of those things where you put in 50 cents and it shakes a bit. He loved it; I of course didn't have any more quarters. Anyway, later we saw Aunt Cathy, who mentioned they went to the library -- where we'd gone after the horse. Things had evidently run together in Jack's mind. He asked her pointedly, "Did you ride the horsie? Did you go on the horsie?"

Kind of funny, at the end of the day I mentioned the horse to Emily, and she said to Jack, "You rode horsies today?"

Jack said, "No. Just one."