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.

Thanksgiving

With the impending holiday, I've been talking to Jack about what Thanksgiving means (and what it does NOT mean: presents). I don't know how effectively you can impart the importance of this day to an almost-3-year old, but I'm trying. I explained about the pilgrims and the Indians, and how important food is. This of course sparked a tangent conversation about what we were having for dinner. I tried to steer him back to the topic at hand, and I told him (hoping to hit a nerve) that some people don't have food for dinner. They have no choices because they have nothing. Jack was flabbergasted...I had stunned him into silence. (For those of you who don't know Jack, this is a near-impossible feat and the appropriate response is disbelief and awe.)

After considering this, Jack asked, "We give them food?" I was reduced to tender tears at the thought of my boy thinking about someone besides himself, and I told him that we CAN give them food. He said, "We go to the store? We get them food?" So we decided that Jack would do some chores and I would give him "monies." He picked up all of his books and put them away, swept (ish) the kitchen floor, and made his bed.

We went to the Teeter to pick out some canned goods--Jack chose green beans, pinto beans, okra and corn. Considering his usual smells, these choices are not surprising. I added some tuna and a box of mac and cheese to our pile. We went to check out and Jack proudly presented his $3 to the cashier, and then insisted that I keep his change. "I don't have pockets!" he exclaimed.

Tomorrow we will take the food to his school, where they have a donation box for the local food bank. I am excited to see him leave his very own purchases there in what will probably be his first truly selfless act. I can only hope that there are many more to come.

Hear me Roar!

Jack was climbing all over me the other day, slightly sick and therefore extremely clingy. As he clambered up the front of me, I complained, "You are such a Spider Monkey!" He paused, looked at me and said, "Nooo, I am a little boy. I am a MAN!"

Read My Mind...

On the way to my Mom's house for our weekly dinner, Jack was riding in the back seat barraging me with questions about everything that we passed. "Mommy, why are the leaves orange?" "Why does that cow have horns?" "Why are there clouds in the sky?" "Why do we have birthdays?"

While catching my breath between his interrogations, I marveled at how much he wondered. I can vaguely remember rides in the car with my Mom, watching the world go by out the window, and wondering everything. What exactly happens to us as we get older that takes away our ability to marvel and wonder about every little thing in the world? I think that I've got it--worries. As a child you have no worries...maybe about what Mom's cooking for dinner or if you did your homework, but other than that your uncluttered mind is free to wander, and wonder. I try to do it myself; to push away the worries, the nagging responsibilities, to unfetter my ability to wonder, dust it off and set it free. It is an important question--"WHY?"--and I fear that as adults our whys turn complicated: "Why is this happening to me?" "Why is there so much hate in the world?" instead of the little tiny whys that are so important, so vital to happiness.

Inspired by Jack (and practically hoarse from my explanatory lectures), I vowed to come to his level: to ask my own whys and wonder at the little things. After all, if we can't go back to being a child, we can at least learn from them, and learn to mimic their innocent wonder and unsullied contentment to be in a world where not everything can be explained, but everything is wonderful.

Halloweenie

We had a very fun Halloween here, Jack was dressed as a robot and even stood still long enough for me to get some silvery face paint on him. It was adorable. Unfortunately they had a big party at school that included a lot of junk food and NOT a lot of napping, so he was not as enthusiastic about walking all over the neighborhood. He did a lot of riding on shoulders.

We had a TON of trick-or-treaters come our way, and no one was more excited about that than Stanley. He would have answered the door himself if he could have. He barged out onto the porch before I could even get the door open (every time!) and inspected all of the children and their bags. Then Jack would finally get to the door and insisted on doling out the candy himself. The problem was that I had included in our candy bowl a few bags of Hershey kisses and tiny Reese's cups, so being the anal child that he is, Jack was issuing single pieces of candy to each trick-or-treater. One at a time. I had to follow up with handfuls when he wasn't looking. Add to the mix the whippet with his head in everyone's bag and Dinah darting all over the place (kids make her nervous) it was almost complete chaos.

We got rave reviews of the black lights in our dining room, blinking scary eyes in the windows and seriously ghoulish witch on the front door--all designed by Jack. It was too cute---some of the kids didn't want to scare him with their costumes, so I had to assure them that Jack was unscare-able. The gorier and creepier the better. He LOVES to be scared...I always sneak up on him with the "BOO!" and he laughs and laughs. Dan, not so much, hehe.