Breakfast table

Jack's been waking up too early a lot of morning. Sometimes I think Kate wakes him up, sometimes it's cold (he kicks the covers off), whatever. This morning he woke up around 5, we put him back in bed, he got up 20 minutes later, etc. Finally I got up with him, went downstairs, made coffee, watched Red Sox highlights (Sox win). Later there was some kind of meltdown -- I think he wanted more raspberries, or he didn't want milk, or some other kind of thing that only would upset him if he, you know, woke up around 5. He wailed a lot.

Anyway, so he and I are eating breakfast, which is to say, I'm guzzling coffee and he's eating raspberries and cheerios. Emily comes downstairs, and she looks at Jack, says Hi, and then: "Jack....what was the matter this morning? What was the problem?"

Jack looks at her, still shoveling in raspberries. He pauses, then raises a fist in the air.

Jack: "Red Sox win!"

Excitement

Jack burst into the door this afternoon. "Daddy, LOOK!" He was waving a piece of black construction paper that had little jack-0-lanterns and other Halloween stuff glued onto it. "Look at THIS. It's a pumpkin....and a pumpkin....and a ghost. And a pumpkin!" I said, Wow, Jack, did you make this? "YEAH!" Well, it's great, I said.

Later, I asked him if he wanted to put it on the fridge. Silence. Fridgerator? "Oh! YEAH!" He grabbed it and ran off to the kitchen. We put it on, and he took the magnets off of everything else on the fridge to use all 20 or so of them to hold it up. He's thorough.

The Cherry Man

I'm too tired to remember all of the funny things involving Jack in the last few weeks. What's great is that he actually makes jokes -- says and does things that he knows are funny. And he merges different things and comments and so that he'll be telling a story that gets funnier because he's mixing something we talked about earlier with something we read in a book with a Backyardigans episode.

So the one I'll remember for now is just that there was this big construction site truck with a crane on top of it and a basket at the end of the crane for a guy to stand in. And I would have had no idea what to call the thing, obviously, except Jack has a book with a picture of a construction site, and they call that truck a "Cherry Picker." So I told Jack that, and he repeats it. "Cherry picker."

The next day we're at his school, day care, and I'm dropping him off. Out the windows, across the street, there's all this construction going on. And what do we see? Of course: a cherry picker. Jack runs to the window, as does this other kid, Teddy, and they stand on little chairs to look out. And Jack says, "What is the cherry man doing?" And the crane start going up higher into the sky. And Jack's all, "Oh! Look!" (He kind of says "yook," which is very cute.) "The cherry man is going up into the sky!" And then: "Yeah! He's going WAYYYYYYYY up there." Finally I left, while they were still marveling at the cherry picker.

I guess I've got one more story, which is that I picked him up the next afternoon, and it was a gray day, so they were inside (normally they're in the playground if it's nice). I walk into the room and I see him over at this little low table, kind of leaning over it, talking to other kids. Funny; it was like he was in high school or something. Anyway, he sees me out of the corner of his eye or something, and runs over -- he has a little, it looks like part of a book in his hand. There are pictures on it of various insects, spiders, frogs, that kind of thing. "Daddy, look!" he says. "A spider! And a, a....what's this thing?" I say, that's a beetle, Jack. And he says, "Oh! A beetle!" And then he points at another one: "And what's that?" That's a bee, I say. And he says, "Oh! A BEE! And he will STING me! Don't sting me, bee!"

Just something about Jack easily transitioning from talking to other kids to talking with me to talking with a picture of a bee. It's good stuff.

Halloween Song

Jack has a new song about the upcoming holiday, one that he made up himself and sang several times today. It features his basic understanding of the holiday, as well as impressions from the decorations on our neighbor's lawn. It varies with each telling, but goes something like this:

Halloween
Halloween
And I go trick or treating and get candy
and the Pumpkin snowman
and the goats* in the truck
and I get Murdoch (a Thomas train he's been on about lately) and go trick or treating
Halloween
With Mommy Daddy and Jack and Kate
And the Tigger and Santa and pumpkin snowman on the lawn
and the very big spider spinning her web
Halloween

* (He means "ghosts.")

Something like that, anyway.

New Kid in Town

Haven't blogged in a while, largely because I'm exhausted, or don't have the time, or am too tired to find the time, one of those. But a lot's been happening and I'll try to recap....

We have a new baby, a girl named Kate, who's exactly three weeks old as I write this. Pretty cool, and I'm going to have to write about her at some point being as I've been changing some of her diapers, too. For the most part, though, she's been attached to her Mommy by, as an old codger in Fletch might say, one of those two protuberances about grab height. Anyway.

We kind of expected this to be a little tough on Jack, and it is. Mostly in subtle ways. He hasn't thrown tantrums about her, or been angry or jealous of her, at least not outwardly. He likes her, actually, wanting to hold her -- he looks so proud when he's sitting on the couch with his arms out and hands upturned and we place her in his arms. He's awkward about it, but also kind of beaming. When she cries or wails, he's all "What's the matter, baby?" And, "It's okay baby! Don't cry. What's the matter, baby?" So sweet. And he's already taken to including her when he goes around naming us all and pointing: "Mommy....Daddy....Kate...and JACK!" with a big point to himself.

It's the little things. Him getting more upset over minor stuff, partly because I think he's tense, partly because he's not getting as much sleep (which might have something to do with Kate -- as I write this, he's only napped at home ONCE since Kate came home), partly because of this new kid in town...a combination I'd guess. He wants Mommy to come kiss him goodnight, for the second or third time, and Mommy can't, because she's feeding Kate. Or he keeps getting out of his bed, wanting more stories, or whatever, but it's late and Daddy is starting to get upset, because jeez, Jack, you've got to sleep, and you'll just be even crankier tomorrow. And of course it gets worse, not better, because we all get less sleep and then he doesn't want to eat as much ("I'm tired....I'm sleepy, Daddy"), some of which is because he actually is tired and some of which is just an excuse to avoid doing something he doesn't want to do. And the result is we're more frustrated and more tired and he's more upset and.....yeah.

There was a stretch of bad days, and then a good one, and I think today was okay. Tuesday, Emily's birthday, was a little of both. He was whiny in the morning, and didn't want to go to school, and woke up early, and all that. Then in the afternoon I picked him up at school, and he was playing with trains, and was happy. I went over and he gave me a train, and he said, I don't think this one has a name. And I said, well, maybe he has a name...let me see. And I checked the bottom, and I saw his name was Murdoch. So I said to Jack, see, he has a name, it's Murdoch. Jack looked down and smiled at the train. "Murdoch," he said, with a certain satisfaction. "Oh! His name is Murdoch, Daddy." That's right, Jack.

And then we went home, and the guy next door is apparently having his paved driveway extended over half of his lawn, I have no idea why. But there was a big digger truck there, and Jack was pretty excited. And then his cousins showed up for Emily's party, and Jack was happy, and said, "Look at the BIG DIGGER." And jumped up and down.

On the downside, the evening ended badly, partly because the playing doesn't always go great with the girls, a combination of him being a so-so sharer and them being older or whatever, and partly because he was so tired. But ultimately we did go upstairs, and had his bath, and read a story, and when we lay down he fell asleep fairly quickly, his arm tight around my neck. Took me 5 minutes to extricate myself and leave the room.

Basically it's just tough. Emily told me she talked to him once about his feelings during one of his little breakdowns. She said, "It's all very strange and different, isn't it?" And Jack, in tears, said, "Yahhhsss!" which was part sob and part shout. And it is, for all of us, but especially for him, because of course he didn't know this change was coming, no matter how much we tried to explain it.

But we're going to get through it, starting with getting a little more sleep. Right now.