Merry Kissmas!

We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We sure did. Jack calls it "Kissmas" and after awhile I got it--he kept kissing me whenever we talked about it. I thought that he was just excited, but it turns out he thought that it was a holiday of kissing (a pretty adorable sentiment) so that's what we've been doing!

Unfortunately Captain Jack (his self-appointed alias) has been a little sick. We've been at the pediatrician's office a few times already this week, and are now the proud owners of a nebulizer. Jack loves it and (thus far) has been extremely patient with sitting through the 10-minute treatments. The medicine makes him a little wacky, so his post-neb diatribes are getting more and more hilarious. I told him today that it was now time for his nap and he asked me, hands extended, "Where do the times go?" I could only shake my head--I truly have no idea where the time goes. I still can't believe this giant is my son.

While reading his nap-time story, I tried to turn a page. "Oh no, I need to talk to this," Jack announced, turning the page back again, and listing everything that he saw on that page. He will do well in a board room. Blah, blah, blah!!!

Are you there Gob?

After successfully instilling a healthy knowledge of God (aka "Gob") in my son, he is now a hot topic of discussion. We were at Aunt Claudia's house to welcome Allison back from Chile and Jack wandered towards Gran's old room (now Uncle Richard's office).

"Oh, we can't go in there, it's Uncle Richard's office--we don't want to mess up his stuff."
"No...Gran's in there!" Jack informed me.
"Oh baby, Gran isn't in there. She is gone." I told him.
"She went to live with Gob?" He asked.
"Yes," I confirmed, "she lives with God."

How did this child get so smart? We have been prepping him for Christmas too, and he's starting to see the whole picture. Perhaps more than most people. He asked me if Santa lives with Gob too. I had to explain about the North Pole and the reindeer. I also had help from the move The Polar Express. I highly recommend that movie, especially for parents of 3 to 55-year olds...it was sooo cool.

Love, True Love

It has been raining for a few days now, and this morning Jack and I slept in (yes, this is a recurring theme) and then lay in my bed listening to thunder and watching cartoons all morning. We finally got ourselves dressed and fed and as we were leaving to go to school, Jack noticed that there were slugs all over the driveway. Baby slugs. Very slow baby slugs. He was so cute squatting in the rain, in his bright-yellow fireman raincoat, watching the slugs squirm across our driveway at the speed of molasses. I finally got him in the car and he started yelling, "Oh no! Oh NO!" and crying. Baffled, I calmed him down and got the story: He was worried that I would squish the slugs when I pulled out of the garage. I looked at his tear-stained face and explained that I would avoid them. "No Mommy, you will squish them!"

And so began my Princess Bride-esque version of motherhood...starring ME as the farmboy. I actually moved not one but three (!!) inch-long slugs from my driveway into my garden. It took me forever--they are like overcooked, cold noodles. Ugh. I made Jack wait in the car as I washed my hands, and then, finally, we got to school. I fear that I am not setting a good precedent, but I was moved by his empathy for those tiny, slow creatures. He will be a great older brother someday.

What is that smell?

Jack is in love with stories. He loves to tell them, hear them, and read them. OVER AND OVER. Usually I try to limit his bedtime story to only one, because once he convinces you to read a second you might as well settle in for the entire night. He is very persuasive. He would do well in politics.

So tonight during our story reading, he chose his 1,000,000 Tractors book. I hate this book. First of all, it wouldn't be so bad if it legitimately listed millions of tractors. But it doesn't. It covers the same material over and over. And over. Right into Yawn-ville. But Jack is a strict listener and won't let you skip a tractor, much less a page, and often (to make sure that you're paying attention) will quiz you to catch you in a repetitive lie.

For whatever reason, both of us were feeling quite punchy tonight as we read Tractormania for the n-th time. We got to the farming section and I was listing the various machines used on the farm. One of them was a manure spreader. Jack asked me, "What's manure?" I paused. I looked at his little face and I could not lie.

"It's cow poop," I told him in a serious voice.
"Oh," he said, nonplussed..."cow poop."

And then we lost it. We giggled hysterically for approximately 10 minutes straight. I have not had a laughing fit like that since the 1st grade. (Well, that is a bold-faced lie. I admittedly had to excuse myself the night after Thanskgiving after losing it in front of my in-laws for some asinine reason. I could barely see through my tears as I ran upstairs. The worst part is that they were completely unfazed...I have a reputation.) But I have not giggled THIS much over something so silly in quite a long time and it felt GREAT. We rolled in his bed laughing and laughing, and when I could I would manage to whisper "manure" and it would start all over again.

To conclude, I have to say that this kid has one amazing sense of humor. Or else mine is really lame and is on par with a 3-year old's. Either way, we are happy and laughing.

Check It Out!

Jack has started speaking in complete sentences. It happened out of the blue. Instead of slowly getting words out and stumbling over the hard ones, he now talks like an actual person. This is alternately hilarious and terrible. Now he has the capacity to tell me what he REALLY thinks, and it is not always something that I want to hear.

For instance, I was making him clean up his toys, and by "clean up" I mean shovel them out of the living room and into the toy room. He was losing steam and I was encouraging him in my sweet, motherly way to hurry up when he stood up and looked at me with his hands on his hips. He pointedly told me, "I want to go to Su-Su's house. And I want YOU to stay here." Luckily I have a fantastic sense of humor so I was able to resist calling him a taxi.

Another day we were eating dinner at my parents house and Jack was drinking milk out of a childhood mug of mine that has a small pink dog in the bottom who peeps up through the liquid when you've drank enough. Jack was slurping away and finally saw the dog. "Hey!" he said, "there is a dog in my cup. Check it out!" And he perilously tipped the cup in my direction so that I could see it. "It's PINK Mommy. Not orange, or red, or white, or blue, OK?" I could only nod in agreement. Maybe he will be an educator...or else it's just that he subscribes to the philosophy of most 3-year olds: parents are idiots.