Vacation

Short vacations are interesting. Just about the time everyone gets adjusted and settled in, it's time to go home.

That's sort of how it was on our trip to The Cape, for four days last week. Jack didn't sleep well -- we were all in the same room, basically a disaster, but that's what we get for not making our plans sooner than we did -- and didn't nap at all on our first full day there, with the result being he was terribly cranky that evening and terribly exhausted the next day. Then he had a great nap Saturday and we all had fun that afternoon, evening, and the next morning. And had to leave.

Best way to handle this trip is a highlights/lowlights sort of post....

Highlight: Our room was ready and beautiful, with a picturesque view out over the beach and the ocean. Since we'd never been there and really didn't know what to expect, it was shocking -- we couldn't have picked a better room. A Room With a View.

Lowlight: It was one room, which we knew, but we also had these illusions of us hanging out on the balcony while Jack slept. Yuh. No lights out there, and Jack took a while to fall asleep each night (because it was all new to him, being in the same room with us), so a lot of the time we were in the room was trying to get Jack to sleep or dealing with him being unhappy because he was exhausted.

Highlight: First time we stepped onto the beach, Jack was afraid to put his feet down -- for about 2 seconds, after which he ran across it like he was Lawrence of Arabia. He didn't want to go in the water -- not many people did, actually, because it was cold and dense with seaweed near the shore -- but that was okay. (Later I asked him, Jack, what was your favorite part of the beach? Jack: "Um. Seaweed!" That might have had something to do with us buying "Harry At the Beach" before the trip, a great book about Harry the Dog getting covered in seaweed.)

Lowlight: Not many, beyond the fact that the first day there high winds drove us from the beach with sand stinging our eyes. It got better though.

Highlight: Jack loved the beach. He ran about -- faster than we expected, once we turned and he was halfway over to the playground just seconds after we'd last seen him -- and collected rocks and shells, and built sand castles with Daddy, and played with his truck. And the great thing is, since we don't live in Denver anymore, we can keep going to the beach over the next few months! Probably go Thursday, in fact.

The absolute best moment was Jack's efforts to meet a seagull. He ran toward them when he saw them, and they flew off easily. He'd stop and yell: "Hey! Big Bird! Where you going?" And: "Hello, big bird! Hello! Where you going!" And he'd run off again. I'd say, Jack, I don't think you're going to catch the bird. And Jack said, "I want him to say Hello to me." I explained, well, Jack, I don't think he's going to say hello to you... And no sooner had I got the words out than one of the birds made a cawing, squawking noise. Emily and I were kind of dumbstruck, while Jack said, "He said Hello to me! The bird said hello to me!" Yep, he did.

Lowlight: Probably meals, since the first restaurant was just mediocre (and Jack was rambunctious), the resort's lunch was weak (and dinner available until "in-season," which started, er, today), we were too tired to do anything but order pizza into the room the second night, and it was only later that I found out about a seafood place that had counter-style ordering, which would have been ideal. Oh well, next year.

Highlight: Jack's exhausted 3-hour nap on Saturday, where he was nearly falling asleep on the beach that morning and ultimately we went back to the room and I sang him to sleep with about two lines of a song. That resulted in us getting takeout lunch/dinner from a nearby seafood restaurant, with me getting a huge plate of steamers (excellent) and various sides. Can't get anything like that in Colorado.

Lowlight: I guess the not sleeping thing should be mentioned again, especially since I'm going to have to wrap this up to try to catch up.

Highlight: Two things that must be mentioned before I go to bed.

We went to a Cape Cod League baseball game, which we wanted to do and thought Jack might enjoy, since his grandpa takes him to his Uncle Ian's softball games on Sunday mornings. We walk through the gate, the game is going on, I'm holding Jack who's looking around, and the first thing he says is, "Where's the playground?" We didn't stay long.

Second: ice cream. I don't think there's much more fun than watching Jack eat ice cream. We went out the last two nights there, each more fun than the night before. As the picture at right, assuming I uploaded it properly, makes clear.

One last highlight is, of course, Jack himself. He goes off on little speeches, waving his arms expansively, about the birds, or the water, or the seaweed, or the food, or his books, or his toys, or "big kids" he saw across the beach. He peppers us with questions ("What's that girl doing? What's that man doing? Where are they going? What are those birds doing?") Hearing him go off about this or that, so invested in what he's saying or asking -- it just never fails to amuse.

Which is why vacation was great, and always is.

Going on Ay-caytion

We're going on vacation at the end of the week, kind of a mini one to the Cape, so we've been talking it up. Jack has come around, saying "We're going on Ay-caytion?" So he's into the idea.

Tonight I brought out our luggage, which we really haven't used in a while, and Jack might not even have remembered it. "These are our suitcases," I said. "The bags we'll bring on vacation." Jack nodded and proceeded to drag his turtle bag around the upstairs hallway for a few minutes.

Later, as I was trying to get Jack back into his bed for the umpteenth time, I helped sell the idea by saying, "You've got to rest up, because we're going on vacation at the end of the week."

Jack: "Ay-caytion?" That's right, I said.

Jack: "Are we going to bring our caysing bags?"

Our suitcases, Jack, that's right.

Kind to others

A couple of days ago when I was putting Jack to bed, he got up a couple of times.

First he went over to his monkey chair (this big stuffed chair as large as him), knelt in front of it, hugged it, and sang to it:

"Take me out to the ball game .... take me out... crowd ... buy me somepeanutscracKERjack..."

He came back, but got up again. He had to put a blanket over the monkey chair.

Finally he came back. Lay down. Looked up at me: "Want to snuggle."

And so we did.

Random

- Tonight before bed Jack got up, went over to his wire jungle gym type toy, and started singing, while drumming on it softly with a book. The song was Oh My Sherman, a Backyardigans take on My Darling Clementine. He did this for a good 5 minutes, singing some lyrics I could understand, and some I couldn't. Big smile on his face, singing and drumming, and as he repeated lines, it was as if they were new each time, as if he was singing one long, 5-minute song, with very little uncertainty or pausing. I was torn between stopping him, seeing as it was bed time, and just fascination with how invested in the whole thing he was.

"Daddy, come here," he said. I went over, sat down near the toy. "No, you, with the book." I started drumming as well, with another book, but since I didn't really know the lyrics, I was a little off, trying to keep off. "No, I show you," he said. And he started up again.

After I finally got him into his bed and left the room, he continued singing it for another 5-10 minutes. Finally, I think, he slept.

- Before his bath tonight, Jack was running around. Wearing only a diaper, I saw him run, full-tilt, from his room into the office. Then the office into our room. Yelling. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Pause. Then back across the hallway into his room. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

- Speaking of music. Jack knows how to use the little CD stereo, which I might add we bought for his room in the first place, when he was a baby, so I guess it's kind of his anyway. He picks out CDs by color of the jacket -- "I want the blue one!" -- which is how he ended up with Moby's 18 in the player yesterday. Moby is kind of techno pop, I guess; not exactly what you'd think of as kid's music. Anyway, the first track on the disc is called "We Are All Made of Stars," but its chorus repeats "People they (may? whichever) come together," and so Jack now says, "Want to hear the come together song!" And so we've heard that Moby song about 10 times in the last two days, not the kind of music I ever figured I'd be listening to with my son. He's also learned random lyrics in the song, which he repeats (big smile) when they come up. "Left in my mind," he grins. And: "Growing in numbers."

- I don't presume to know what Jack's favorite things are, but eating watermelon has to be up there in the top 5. Tonight we told him he got dessert, and he said, "What IS it?" And I said, it's one of your favorites, and he said, "One of my FAVORITES?" And I said, watermelon, and he was practically giddy with joy.

So he sat down at the table and I brought the watermelon over. And we sat, me drinking a beer and Emily drinking her water, watching him eat. And as he finished, or paused, I don't know, he suddenly launched on a lengthy monologue that included watermelon, potatoes, and things about "So I could get..." and "but I couldn't have it" and an old standby, "Because I had a job to do." And his explanation included hand gestures -- putting his hands out palms up, and occasionally pointing, and maybe even a little shoulder shrug. This went on for several minutes with fairly a pause for breath.

It was like he was telling us the best story he'd ever heard or experienced, and he wanted us to appreciate it as much as he did.

Funny.

Jamberry

We're slowly trying to get things ready for Baby No. 2, and one part of that entails trying to steal all the things from Jack that he's had since he was a baby so we can give them to his coming sibling. Step 1 was moving him out of his crib into a bed, and that went fairly well.

(As an aside, Step 1 was probably boxing up all of his baby toys, some of which we'll eventually give to his sibling, but we have no illusions there -- as soon as he sees them he's going to want them anyway. In fact, he and his Mommy had the first chat today about whether Jack's toys were going to be in jeopardy from the newborn, something Jack seemed pretty concerned about, so that's going to be fun.)

Anyway. Today I extricated the glider / rocking chair from his room, which we rocked him, read stories to him in, and sang songs to him from basically when he was a newborn until a few months ago. That was when we moved him to the bed, and since then he's pretty much been content to read stories there. So he's not really going to miss it, but of course, I knew he would. So I wanted to try to decorate that area dramatically enough that he wouldn't mind the missing glider.

I put up a poster from a Natural History Museum I went to in New Mexico, with pictures of dinosaurs on it, and then I drew a big picture of a dinosaur and an Ichthysaur (probably misspelled, sue me). There was still a big space, so I pulled out another big piece of paper and tried to figure out what to draw.

My eyes fell on his Jamberry book, this great book that he's loved on and off since he was very young, of a boy and a bear dancing and singing through fields of berries -- raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, etc. Great book. Using his markers, I spent the next 15 minutes or so recreating the cover of the book, the bear in brown (with his purple hat of blueberries) and the boy in his blue shirt and pants, also holding a hatful of blueberries. It was a pretty accurate likeness, if I do say so myself, all colorful and happy. So I put it up on his wall and everything seemed good. I put his big monkey chair in the spot the glider used to be.

So Jack gets home and ultimately we go upstairs to see his new room. He sees the pictures and runs over to them, standing there to marvel at my efforts. He looked pretty happy, and Emily came in too, saying, wow, it's the bear and the boy from Jamberry, isn't that great, Jack? And he's smiling and I'm thinking, yeah, that worked out pretty well. And then he turned to look at us.

Jack: "Where are the strawberries?"

The Beach

Colorado had a lot of great things, but a beach obviously wasn't one of them. I think there might have been reservoirs or somesuch, but in the 5 years we lived there, the only time we went to the beach was when we flew to Los Angeles and Mexico. The last time we took Jack; he started walking there.

Back East now, we went to the beach twice this past week -- Jack and I on Friday, Jack and Emily and I on Saturday. And although the beaches themselves were mediocre at best (broken glass was fairly prevalent on one), it was great. Jack wanted to be carried at first, didn't want to put his feet on the weird sand or in the oceah, but within minutes he'd gotten past that and was running back and forth across the sand, from towels to water and back again, over and over and over. He had a little watering can he wanted to fill, to help us make sand castles and sand bunnies and sand turtles. "Another one!" And we'd run to get more water to mix with more sand to make more.

On a couple of occasions we saw horseshoe crabs, moving along the edge of the shore. I pointed them out to him. "Can I touch it?" he said. Er, no, probably not a good idea. Once we saw a mother duck and her ducklings. Jack ran after them, not getting within 20 feet of course before they scurried away. "Bye, ducks!" he yelled.

We'll see them again next week.