Told to Me

I don't actually see all of Jack's best moments. Sometimes I just hear about them....

1. Aunt Cathy has had a major cleaning project going on in her finished basement, with the result being that Jack can't go down and play with all their toys when he's over there -- there's just too much chaos. Last weekend Jack went over there with Emily. When he saw Aunt Cathy, he said, "Are the toys clean yet?"

2. Today he was playing with blocks, while Emily was working at her laptop. "Look at my trees, Mommy." She was kind of mmhhmm, mmhmm. He persisted, so she went down to look. He'd made two beautiful little trees by stacking blocks. And was very proud of them.

3. Yesterday at daycare Emily was getting his stuff after picking him up. She heard Lila's Mom say, "Jack, no, wait for your Mommy." He'd started to leave with a girl in the class and her Mom.

4. This one I was there for. We went out to dinner with Cathy and Grandma and the girls. Afterward I sat out front with Jack (he was antsy in his seat) and then the twins came out with us. The three of them suddenly broke into first, Twinkle Twinkle little star, and then, Now I know my ABCs. Sweet.

5. According to Grampa, whenever they go out Jack wants to walk. A lot. Everywhere. Unless he's really tired.

Repeats

Jack often repeats things we say, and what's funny is that even if it's words that he has no idea what they are, he blusters along anyway. So today we were making a big train out of blocks, and as I added the last one I said, Ah, the creme de la creme! And Jack laughed and nodded, saying, "...the creme da la googly...the creme da la dideee..." Basically just cracking himself up with the words, repeating them just to hear them roll off his tongue.

We were lining up his trains on top of their little information cards, and he came to two trains that didn't have any cards. "Where do these trains go?" he asked. Er, they're, um, supervising, I said, standing them near the other ones. Jack started lining up other random trains and things. "They're supervising, too," he said.

Putting Jack to Bed

Putting Jack to bed is interesting these days, because things kind of follow a routine, albeit a protracted one.

We go up the stairs, and I start the bath while Jack runs around the upstairs rooms. Sometimes he plays with toys in his room, or reads the big Snoopy book in the office, or turns on his music. Usually it's 5 minutes of me running the bath while Jack burns off energy.

Then comes tracking him down to get him into the bath, which occasionally is laborious. "I'm just going to play a little." "I'm just putting these guys away." "I need to put these books back."

Finally, I get him in the tub. For all his delaying and protests before the bath, once in he has little or no desire to get out. "I want ALL the toys." "I need to wash my seagull." "He wants to drive the boat." I give him his shampoo, and he wants a clean washcloth to dry his eyes. I scrub him, and he asks what I'm doing, resists, etc. I explain, Jack, this is what baths are FOR.

I hoist him out and he stands on the rug. If I'm not careful, he'll dash out into the hallway, naked as a jaybird. (Old expression, I really have no idea what a jaybird is. Blue Jay?) Sometimes I pick him up wrapped in the towel. "Hold me like a baby," he says, big smile. He's huge now, but I do it anyway, his gangly legs and arms everywhere, us trying to squeeze through the door. He laughs, water drips from his hair and feet onto the floor.

I bring him into his room and put on his diaper. Then come pajamas, but there's often an interlude where he runs around in just his diaper. Then pajamas, which sometimes he puts on. Some of those times he even puts them on forward rather than backward. He runs around again. I comb his hair, frequently while he's playing with some toy.

Brushing teeth. He does this grudgingly. But, he does it.

Then it's finally story time. We sit on his bed reading 2 or 3 books he's picked out. Recent favorites are "The Very Busy Spider," which I also like, and "I'm a Big Brother Now." We read both of these twice, sometimes.

Then I tell him it's time for songs. Jack gets up and gets water. "I need a sip of water." I don't know if he actually needs a sip of water. It's like a Pavlovian dog thing. I say it's time for songs, he needs water.

We lie down together and sing songs. Swing on a Star, Edelweiss, Working on the Railroad, The Tigger Song. Others, sometimes, but that's most of my repertoire right there. For a while I did "On top of spaghetti," but he's not into that right now.

Then it's time to lie down to sleep. Jack: "Sleep with me a couple minutes." I do. We lie down together, and sometimes he touches my cheek, my upper lip. "Do you have stubble?" he asks. Usually, the answer is yes.

Tonight, Jack looked at me and said seriously, "I'm going to get a sip of water. And then I'll come back." And he did.

Big Monkey

As I was putting Jack to bed tonight, he said he wanted more soft toys (the soft toys are the ones he can have in his bed). I said, well, you've got your Backyardigans, and then I guess you've got the little monkeys over there (I pointed out his monkey chair in the far corner of his room, with two smaller stuffed monkeys in its arms. The chair is bigger than Jack). He said, okay...

I just checked in on him. He was asleep, and the little monkeys were in bed with him.

And the giant monkey chair, which he had dragged across his room, was sitting right next to his bed, head down, evidently sleeping too.

According to Jack

- Ronald McDonald is bad, Old McDonald is good. I don't think he minds McDonald's food as much as it being a case of, he saw a commercial with the Ronald clown jumping around and waving his arms and didn't like it very well. He also likes Wendy's, I think mostly because of the little girl on the bag.

- Dancing is essentially stomping feet up and down and pumping arms when music is on the radio; running out of the room saying "My song, my song!" when it's on a CD he's playing; or running circles around the room while Daddy is singing his goodnight songs, particularly the catchier ones like "Personal Penguin." Tonight we ran circles around the room to music, Jack saying "I'm going to catch you!" and me saying "I'm going to catch YOU" and so forth.

- Any reference to "Jack" of any kind, means him. (And I don't blame him for this.) So, there's a show on Nickelodeon called Jack's Big Music Show. At some point he saw something he didn't like, probably the way the puppets make loud noises or jump around sometimes, I don't know. Once we had the channel on and it showed a commercial for it. I said, Oh, it's Jack's Big Music Show. Jack: (near tears) "Don't like my big music show....!" Then tonight, it being my birthday, I had bought some Jack Daniels and was going to make myself a Jack and Coke, which I mentioned to Emily. Jack overheard, and said: "Don't put me in Coke!"