5:58....5:59....6:00. Previously on....

24 is one of my two favorite TV shows these last couple of years, so this blog entry will be an homage to it. Plus, it gives me a chance to take you all through Jack Parker's evening in real time....

Previously in Jack Parker's life: He was born, he cried, he slept, he got bigger, he ate, he sat up, he started crawling, he made some little friends, he endlessly entertained his parents and their families, he made a lot of poopy diapers.

6:00 p.m. At the dinner table, Andy and Emily alternately eat their food and prompt Jack to eat. Emily pleads with Jack to eat a pea for Mommy. He finally complies.

6:01. Jack says "Hi!" for about 10 seconds straight, smiling all the while.

6:02. Jack has, on his insistence, been handed the entire plastic bottle of Heinz ketchup. He beams as he attempts to hold it upright on his tray. It's about half as tall as he is.

6:04. Charlie gallantly eats some peas off the floor that Jack has rejected.

6:05. Jack eats some more peas. Emily claps. Jack claps back. Andy continues to eat his french fries and take notes.

6:06. Jack, with a fistful of french fry, says, "E Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya!"

6:07. Jack's attempt to eat directly from the big bottle of ketchup goes poorly. Emily retrieves it and puts it away. Jack looks after it for a moment, then goes back to shoving fish fillets into his mouth.

6:11. While Emily gets more milk, Jack eats a huge spoonful of peas from his Daddy. Oh yeah.

6:12. Jack drinks milk. He typically raises the cup (with a spout top) up with both hands, tips his head back, and guzzles it down. Then he slams it down with a slight gasp. Good milk! The burp will come shortly.

6:13. Jack and Emily say "Car" back and forth for about two minutes. A few days ago it was "Ca," so his vocabulary is improving.

6:15. Jack waves his arms happily. His spoon remains clenched in his grip, at least for the moment.

6:17. Jack has drifted into the stage where he either looks like he's considering throwing food on the floor or skipping right past the consideration stage to simply doing it. That's Emily's cue to go start his bath, while I begin the process of wheeling him from the dining room back into the kitchen, in hopes that more of the food ends up on the floor than on the dining room rug (which we're planning to throw out into the alley this week anyway; it's lived a good and colorful life).

6:18. I remove Jack's shoes and socks while he's still in the high chair, followed by his shirt, which I shake out over the sink. A few peas and french fry parts tumble out. Sometimes I'll shake Jack himself out over the sink, but he's getting a bath anyway so may as well get those clothes off.

6:20. Removing his pants and onesie for the bath, I immediately perceive he has a poopy diaper. Since I'm giving the bath, Emily gets to run Jack to the changing table to clean him up a bit, and since he loves his bath, he wails at the prospect of being denied it. Just a delay, buddy, just a delay.

6:21. Emily brings Jack back to me and I plunk him into the bath. Charlie barges in, and suddenly the four of us are crushed together in the roughly 25 square feet of our bathroom (not counting the tub, but aside from Charlie, neither of us really wants to get in there with Jack). If there's a way to train a dog to understand "GET OUT," we haven't found it yet.

6:22. Emily and Charlie are gone, and even though 90 percent of Jack's bath toys are in the tub with him, it's that last 10 percent that he really cares about. He points determinedly until I've retrieved his rubber ducky - one of three - and this canvas ducky that comes with a surfboard. He never seems overly interested in these toys when they're in the tub, preferring to play with the faucet, the stopper, the washcloth, and the container I use to give him his shampoo, but whatever. I dearly want to open a side business designing bath toys, because most of them we've found seem pretty lousy to me. All of them are ducks and numbers and plastic fishies and stuff, but where are the tug boats? Where are the deep sea divers? What about the Plesiosaurs? I tell you, somewhere these toys must exist, and if they don't, I'd like to help design them. Get those things into production, stat - Jack and I need them for our tub time.

6:25. The shampoo has been managed without incident - I can't get over how, totally drenched and with his hair in his eyes and his little lip slightly pouty, he reminds me of my niece, Laura, as a baby. The rest of the bath is generally watching or helping him play and washing spare limbs when there's the opportunity. It usually goes pretty well.

6:35. Time to get out, but Jack, who wailed his way through his first-ever bath, now wails if made to leave. Since this will happen if the bath is 15 minutes or 15 hours, I tell Jack to pull out the stopper, which he complies with until he sees where this is going and tries to put it back in. But it's too late, and in the face of his disappointment, I lift him out, wrap him in the towel - naturally getting soaked myself, I have no idea how to avoid it - and then entertain him by making faces at him in the mirror.

6:37. Dried and diapered, Jack isn't unhappy anymore - he's ready for playing. I manage to get him lotioned up - it's dry here in Colorado, tough on his little skin - and into his navy blue pajama bottoms, which remind me of Spider-Man's costume. As he plays with the nose suction thing we'll be using later, I pull the top over his head and then turn him loose on the floor.

6:39. Jack crawls through all of his various toys, bumping them, hitting them, making them play music. He hits the mini-piano keys while the school bus, farm, and Pooh toy make noise in the background. Now I need a nice bath.

6:40. Emily comes in and we suction his nose. This experience is somewhat similar, I imagine, to shoeing a horse or branding a calf. He wrestles about while I try to simultaneously keep his arms immobilized, his head steady, and his neck slightly tipped back. On a good night, we get this done without making him cry too much or accidentally giving him a nose bleed with the suction. It happens on occasion. But there's not as much going on up there as there was the past few nights, so we think he's getting better.

6:44. Jack pushes repeatedly on the farm's work bench, which plays the sound of a hammer hammering and ends with Old MacDonald, presumably, yelping in pain. Jack used to laugh when we yelped; now he does it right along with Old MacDonald. Pretty funny.

6:47. I brush Jack's teeth. He's agreeable, except on the occasions he doesn't want to give up the toothbrush. But, success. I think of the videos I saw as a kid of the thick, ribbon-like floss SCRAPING back and forth between the tooth and gum, while a tooth-shaped animated character smiles wisely. That thing always freaked me out.

6:49. We watch Emily and Charlie go out the door for a brief evening walk. Jack waves bye-bye, as do I.

6:51. We've finally reached book time, which usually means Jack pulling books off the shelf and dumping them in my lap, one by one. Barnyard Dance. Dinosaur's Binkit. Big Little Book for Moms (I don't read him this one, but he gives it to me). Big Little Book for Dads. Big Red Barn. I Am a Bunny. (This is the sweetest book ever.) Good Night Moon. Harold and the Purple Crayon. (Two of my favorites.) Recently Jack's favorite was "But Not the Hippopotamus"; now it appears to be Dinosaur's Binkit, the touching tale of a huge dinosaur who doesn't want to go to bed without his binkit, finally getting it back when a little kid offers it to him as a handkerchief. For the kid's sake I hope he didn't utilize it that way first, as the dinosaur is pretty attached to it. There are pop-up pages including one where the dinosaur's mouth go's ARRR, ARRR, ARRR, and I let it bite my finger while yelping in pain, which Jack takes great amusement in.

6:53. Jack crawls out of the room. On most nights he's headed for the back stairs, or his toys in the living room, or maybe hoping to get back in the bathtub.

6:54. I retrieve him. I give him some water, which he gulps down. And burps. And smiles.

6:55. The night really isn't complete until you've read Dinosaur's Binkit a third time.

6:57. Jamberry. Good Night Moon again. I Am a Bunny. "I chase the butterflies, and the butterflies chase me."

7:05. 24 is running over a bit tonight. Jack needs more stories, so I oblige him with the touch and feel dinosaur book, the touch and feel wild animals book, and Good Night Gorilla.

7:10. He's starting to put his head on my shoulder, so I turn out the light and start singing the book whose words I know full well from its previous history as one of his favorites.

Ten little ladybugs sitting on a vine
Along came a grasshopper and then there were nine
Nine little ladybugs skipping on a gate
Along came a frog and then there were eight

The first time I read it I thought, gee, this is a little morbid. Except I got to the end and suddenly they were all there, all 10, riding on the backs of their friends the grasshopper and the frog and the bird and so on and so forth. Whew!

7:15. Jack’s almost asleep now. Still singing – sometimes I switch to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” as I heard Emily singing once, if I run out of Ladybugs -- I lower him into his crib and slip out of the room.

One little ladybug sitting all alone. A breeze came up and then – with all of her friends and family right there with here, no worries – she was home. G’night.