Are you sick?

We've been sick a lot this year. One of us gets something and the rest soon follow. We had a great, healthy Memorial Day weekend, somebody Jack played with had a high fever the next day, and naturally, Jack got it too. I picked him up at daycare a little early on Tuesday and he was home all day today.

It was funny putting him to bed last night, which is when he was really starting to feel bad. He lay down for reading stories. Was cold getting out of the bath. Went to sleep early, before 7 I think.

Today, I was also feeling crummy, although with me it might be allergies. But Jack was here, and had a fever of 101, so I was trying to get him to drink liquids, and rest -- he napped on me at one point.

At one point I either looked or sounded or said I was tired. Jack: "Are you sick?" Me: "Oh, maybe a little." "Do you need a glass of water?" "Er, well..." "I go get you some water."

He disappeared, went downstairs, and came back a minute or two later with a glass of water -- his plastic Spider-man glass, perhaps with the water that was already in it, or maybe from the bathroom sink, which I think he can almost reach. Gave it to me: "Here's water for you, Daddy."

Good stuff.

Big Kids

Jack and I set up his tee-ball set out in the backyard. We'd bought it in Denver, at a point when I think he was too small to really use it. Anyway, he took to it immediately, perhaps in part because he's gone to see his cousins Lyndsay and Stacey play tee-ball at the park on several previous Saturdays. That's a riot in and of itself, as the kids stand there in baseball stance while the ball rolls by them about a foot away, or alternately, the entire team swarms to the ball like bees.


Anyway, I'd place the ball on the tee and he'd really sock the thing, with a big, full-around swing. Pretty impressive. At one point, a couple of older boys -- 8 and 7, I believe, or so -- came over from the house next door, where our backyards connect. "Can we hit some, too?" "Sure," I said.

Well, it was pretty great. They'd haul off and sock it, but once they'd had their turn, they set it up for Jack, and gave him coaching tips ("Don't stand too close," "Hit the ball, not the red part," etc.). This went on for about 15-20 minutes, with them running around, and Jack either hitting, running to get the ball, or just watching the bigger boys in awe.

The best was the next morning, when Jack and I went out there again. Jack: "Are the big kids coming out?" "I don't know, Jack, I don't see them. They must be in their house."

Jack ran across the backyard, to the edge of theirs. Stopped, and shouted:

"Big kids! Big kids! I'm in my YAAA-RRRRD!!!!!!!!"

More sleep

- Sleep has been bad lately, because Jack has been going through a period of getting out of bed early in the morning, getting up after we put him to bed for up to an hour or more, getting up sometimes in the middle of the night. There's nothing quite like waking up and seeing a little person standing next to your bed. We started putting a gate up, and that helps a little. At first he really didn't like it, but then he was okay with it. "It's to keep you in your room, so you'll get more sleep," I explained. Now when I'm going to leave the room, he says "Put the gate up. Put the gate up, Daddy."

It's all been very frustrating, seeing as how none of us are getting enough sleep, but we'll figure it out. On the bright side, every once in a while there are moments like today, where he was so tired that I was able to sing him to sleep at naptime. I sat on the edge of his bed and sang "Swing on a Star," and he curled up on his side and went to sleep. His eyes slowly grew heavy, fluttered a bit, and then he slept.

- Ian's parents, "Nanny and Pop," have this shopping cart toy that Jack likes, he played with it when we were there last. This morning we were playing with his little dragon toy, and also the smaller dragon that goes in a game Aunt Robin brought. The larger one is the Daddy, according to Jack. Anyway, Jack wanted to give them a ride in the shopping cart, and he's going to the door and saying, Bye, I'm going to Nanny and Pops, bye. So we dug out this "Hungry Hippo," that Emily got when he was like 6 months old, and he pushed that around, with a collection of toys riding in it, as if they were in a cart. That seemed to work.

- The other night, Jack woke up crying for us. Emily went in, coming back some 5 minutes later. "He was cold," she said, "And had taken off his pajama shorts (it was warm when he went to bed) and pulled a pair of long pajama pants out of his top drawer. 'I picked these out myself,' he said. 'You put these on me.'" Kind of cute.

I could write much more, but I'm pretty tired.

Sleep and Potatoes

1. Sleep.

Jack's been falling asleep too late (preceded by an hour or so of singing) and waking up too early. The latter part usually involves him coming into our room -- 3:30 one time, 4:30 another, and then pretty much every 10-15 minutes from 5 to 6 a.m. It's been getting lighter earlier, maybe that's it. In any case, it's been rough on us -- and him.

Yesterday, after about 3 days of this, it probably came to a head while dining out. We needed to get out of the house, and met his cousins and family for wings at a place that had "kids eat for 99 cents night." Seemed like a good idea, aside from Jack getting progressively more restless and cranky as the meal wore on, and it ending with us hightailing it out of there with Jack wailing about his buttons (I still have NO IDEA what he meant), which lasted all the way home. Then came a relatively quick bath where he still dissolved into wails every once in a while, followed by getting ready for bed that included him actually walking into the wall at one point (that was nice), and finally, finally, sleep. For Jack, it ended up being nearly 11 hours, interrupted just once. For us, we probably got almost 8 hours! For all, it was bliss.

So yeah, sleep, very important for everyone.

2. Potatoes.

Jack enjoys his Mr. Potato Head toy, at times wanting it near him at night ("I want him to watch me brush my teeth") and when he's sleeping. Yesterday's mail brought a new toy from his grandparents, a Red Sox Mr. Potato Head -- he's a slightly smaller version, that can be dressed up in a little Sox jersey, helmet, face (blowing bubble gum!), and shoes.

Jack immediately started dressing up his little potato head. "He's getting ready to go to school," he explained. And again, as he put the little hat on him: "He's getting ready for school." And then he started taking all of his features off again, so he was just a little potato, and put him next to Mr. Potato Head. "He's not getting ready for school. He's going to stay home with his Daddy."

Railroad

I just put Jack to bed.

He's singing "I've been working on the railroad" at the top of his lungs.

"I've! Been Working! On! the! Rail! Road!
All
the livelong
Day!"

Yesterday his Mommy put him to bed, and he was singing "Take me out to the Ballgame." At one point she walked in to tell him to go to sleep, but as she walked in, she saw he was lying facedown, forehead on his arms a bit, singing with pauses:

"Take ... me ... out to the ball ... game...
Take
me out to the
crowd ...."

Thump. Head goes all the way down. Singing stops. Jack sleeps.

As just happened again.

Good night, Jack.

Daffy Duck

So one of the things that Jack and I do on occasion is walk down to this nearby office park that has a duck pond in the middle. And we throw the ducks bread and say Hi and Bye to the ducks and all that.

Tonight I was sitting with Jack and drawing pictures on his Magna Doodle (it's sort of like an Etch a Sketch with a pen, just in case you're not up on the lingo, I probably wasn't 2 years ago). And I'm drawing ducks all over it. So Jack says, "Draw his necklace." And I'm like, Huh? And he says, "You have to draw the duck's necklace." And so I draw one, and he's like, "And that one, too. And his necklace, Daddy."

So I'm sitting here drawing necklaces on ducks, thinking, What the hell? And then I realized: In our car I've still got the Daffy Duck my sister gave me, way back before my cross-country trip with Lucky (a year or so after college) -- I've moved him about from car to car since then. And that Daffy Duck is still wearing the necklaces that we got at Mardi Gras and put on Daffy, way back when.

So thanks to that trip, my son believes that ducks are supposed to have necklaces.

Talking to, and about, everything

I really need to write in this thing more often. In theory, a blog gets updated, you know, every day or at least every few days. Not once a week at most. Sorry.

Anyway. Lots to talk about with Jack these days....

When he's happy, Jack likes to talk a lot. And jump like a frog. And dance. And talk about what he's doing. "I'm jumping!" "I'm a baseball player!" (Complete with baseball hat.) "Nice job, Daddy!" (When he gives me the hat, making me a baseball player, and I hit the ball.) He talks to his trains: "Lie down, Salty!" And, "Hello, Thomas!"

He announces what we're going to be doing. For example, he goes around turning off the lights, and says "It's sleepy time now." If I reach for a toy, he explains, no, it's not playing time, it's sleeping time. We lie down together on the rug for a couple of minutes. "You lie there," he explains. And, "Mommy lies over there," he adds. And of course, old favorites: "Do you want to play with my toys?" Or "Play with me?" And "Play with me, Daddy."

Sometimes, and I know this is bad, but it's also very funny, he tells us what not to do. "Don't touch my toys." And, "Don't touch my trains." Not an order so much as a request. "Daddy, don't move my trains." He's on his way upstairs, but wants to make sure we don't play with his toys without him. Funny.

He can also be sweet, like when we were playing in the driveway the other day with the 2-year-old boy next door. Jack had his basketball and Max had a little ball, which of course Jack was fascinated with, and didn't want his own ball anymore. So for a while they traded, and both were very happy, but then the time to go in came and I said, Jack, give Max back his ball. And he walked over and handed it to him and Max handed his back and it was really quite touching. It was funny, too, to watch them playing, putting the balls through the hoop and jumping up and down with happiness.

Jack likes to turn the radio on in my room, the little clock radio, and gradually we find music -- which is to say, Jack turns the dial and the volume around randomly and ultimately I'm able to lock it in on an actual station, with music, and then Jack starts clapping and jumping around.

I ultimately got whatever eye problem Jack had, pink eye or more likely allergies, and had to have eye drops. Jack watched as Mommy gave me the eye drops -- I was incapable of doing it myself. When Mommy was done, Jack said, "Do you need jelly beans, Daddy?" Since that, of course, was how we got him to accept the eye drops.

Jack sings himself to sleep and sings in the mornings, too. He sings Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and Twinkle Twinkle, and Can't Stop the Cops (from Backyardigans). We went to the library for reading group one day and the teacher sang "Where is thumbkins, where is thumbkins, etc." So the next morning, when we woke up, we could hear Jack singing:

"Where is my daddy,
Where is my daddy,
where he is,
where he is....

Where is my mommy,
where is my...."

So, he's fun.