Watching Jack

Sometimes he frustrates me more than I can even believe. Of late, there are two areas this manifests. The first is going to bed. I put him to bed, or Emily puts him to bed, and we say good night. We leave the room when he's half asleep. I go into our bedroom, or downstairs.

And 5 minutes later, there's Jack. Sometimes he says he has to pee (but doesn't really). Or he's thirsty. Or cold. Or warm. Or lonely. Or one of his stuffed animals said "no" to him, or woke him up, or some other equally unlikely scenario. Sometimes he says nothing at all, and when I stand up with my angry or exasperated face on, he turns on his heel and heads back to bed. For the next 5 minutes, anyway.

The second is with going to the bathroom, or rather his reluctance to go. At certain set times -- when he gets up in the morning, before his bath, before we go out on an errand -- he's perfectly obliging. Other times (most notably times when he obviously needs to go) he'd sooner eat all his potatoes (a side dish he inexplicably refuses to eat, I can't figure it out) than admit he has to pee. Forcing him is useless; he wails, cries, screams, insists he doesn't have to, even if we put him on his little potty seat. So, we get him up, and then some 10-15 minutes later he runs to the bathroom, doesn't quite make it, and says, "Well...I went a little bit in my underwear. And on my leg." And then we clean him up and get him into clean clothes and we say, "See, that's why you need to go as soon as you feel you might have to." And he nods solemnly and agrees and then it's the same story two days later.

Both frustrations occurred yesterday, which by the end of the day -- and the fifth or sixth time putting him back in his bed -- had me in kind of a surly mood. So much so that the evening ended in tears after I put him back in bed for the umpteenth time and didn't stick around to tuck him in. Plus I scattered his stuffed animals when I wrenched the covers down. Oh yeah, plus he walked into the door as I opened it -- strangely, though, that bothered him a lot less than the stuffed animals, although it bothered me considerably more. He finally slept, and I paced around angry and frustrated and guilty for the next hour or so.

So this morning I was sort of anxious to see him, to make sure things were OK with us and stuff. I was downstairs making coffee when I heard his footsteps upstairs, so I headed up. I was just at the top of the stairs, expecting to see him heading into our room, as usual, when I paused. He instead was headed for the bathroom. I stopped and watched, out of sight, as he ran into the bathroom and fumbled to pull down his little pajama bottoms and Pull-Ups. He did a little careful, tip-toeing dance, got them down, and sat down on his little potty seat. A big sigh (for such a little person) of relief from him, then I could hear him peeing. It's possible he started singing softly, some little tune; he does that sometimes.

I waited until he was done before going in to wish him a good morning.