Jack

Three Cheers for Jack!  He's four and we're loving him!

I can't believe that the last time I wrote about him I was telling you how crazy he was.  Hitting, yelling, generally being a crazy person.  He seems like a totally different kid now.  Which is yet another opportunity for me to learn not to freak out when kids are in their littles stages.  Because they always pass.

The last time I wrote about Jack was so long ago that when Matt and I went searching for the quotes we've jotted down here and there we couldn't believe what we were finding.  His speech has improved quite a bit.  And he's still as fun as ever.

Let's start with more current stuff and work our way back.

With Jane at school all day I have the privilege of getting to know Jack better than ever before.  At lunch he usually sets the topic with a random question like, "What if I was a ball.  Like a ball man.  You could bounce me but I'd have little arms and legs."  Or "What if we had back legs.  Wouldn't that be weird?"

Jack absolutely loves to tease.  He hides things and fakes things and makes jokes.  Like the time we were all at dinner and he was showing Jane the yogurt in his mouth while he was eating it.  Jane was so mad about it but Jack just kept doing it, never laughing, but with pure glee on his face.  Matt and I couldn't even help the situation as we were both too immature to do anything but hard, silent laughter with our heads down trying not to get caught by Jane.  He stuck a dried blueberry on his teeth and said, "Mom, I have a cavity!"  Today he called me in to the bathroom, "Mom!  Hurry!  I lost my wee wee!"  He had completely inverted it but when I walked in he let it out and said, "Just kidding!  There it is!" When I picked him up from a birthday party the mom said, "Jack is so funny!  He is such a teaser!"  I always thought that he'd keep that personality trait at home, but I guess not.

Jack was excited to turn four and it seemed to inspire him to start doing more things on his own.  Bathing, wiping his butt, you know, the usual.  He is still holding strong in the under 10% category in height. And he's started to notice.  While talking to his neighbor friend, he said, "You're four and I'm four but you're bigger than me.  I don't even know what happened!"  We've had lots of talks about how height is not always an indication of age.

The other day there was a cop parked outside by our house.  Jack found Matt and said, "Dad, there's a police car right by our house and I didn't even do anything wrong."

I had to run to the store to get something.  Jack wanted to come but I told him I was just going to be a minute and to stay home with Dad.  While I was gone he said to Matt, "Her's not being fast.  Her's being slow."  Matt asked, "Who?  Mom?"  Jack said, "Yeah.  Yeah, her tricked us."

Jack was playing an ipad game that helps him spell words.  After tracing the word whale he said, "Ugghh.  I spelled whale.  I hate to spell whale.  I want to spell my dad."

Matt was trying to fix our Roku that wasn't working.  He called customer support and was really frustrated with how unhelpful the guy was on the phone.  After the phone call Matt asked Jack what he should do about the guy not helping him and Jack said, "Well, we need to get him dead, right?"

Jack saw a picture of Robert Mugabe, (President of Zimbabwe) on Wikipedia and Jack asked who it was. Matt said, "He's one of the worst humans in the world."  Jack replied, "Jesus was one of the best humans in the world."  Matt said, "Yeah?"  "Yeah, cause he's the boss, right?"  "That's right, bud."  Then Jack said, "He's bigger than you, isn't he?"

After chasing an elusive booger Jack said, "Mom, sometimes boogers try to trick us."

Jack likes to hug "Pete".  Pete is what we've all been calling the unborn babe.  He hugs me, then, if I hug him back he says, "Mom, I'm not hugging you.  I'm hugging Pete."  He talks a lot about how we all started out in our moms tummies.  Sometimes it seems like he thinks I was just storing Jane and Jack and Hank and Pete in my belly all at the same time but that they just took turns coming out.  We've talked about how the baby is going to come out.  I must have described it as a tunnel because that's what he says about it all the time.  Maybe he also got the impression it's an easy process and could happen at any time.  One day out of the blue when I was just sitting there he said to me excitedly, "Mom!  Look down!  Did the baby come?"

Jane's friend Abby walked in on him going to the bathroom.  She said, "Hey, Jack."  Jack said, "Hey, I just have a wee wee on."

I said his speech has improved but he still says a lot of funny things.  He still says mask like, "smask."  Love it.  He still always says "last year" to mean anything in the past.  He doesn't bother with he and she but says, "Her's going to beat us.". And he doesn't have any desire to learn the proper names for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  He's always confusing the neighbor kid in the morning when he explains he has to eat dinner before he can play.  My favorite though is that he says, "who'un".   Anytime he asks a who question, or says who for any reason, he says, "Who'un made that?"  Every time.  I don't know if I've ever heard him just say "who." I've even heard him say, "Did you'un do that?"  And "What two'un do you want?"  I try not to interfere as I hate when they start to talk properly.

I think I have finally cracked the mystery of Jack being disappointed he will never grow boobs.  He started talking one day about the time he had seen me pumping milk.  He was so excited about the tubes and the milk and the bottles.  One day in church he noticed what's been growing and said, "Why are your boobs so big?" I whispered something about milk and feeding the baby.  He said, in nothing like a whisper, "Why does there have to be so MUCH milk?"

Out of the blue one day he told me, "Mom.  Superheroes have boobs.  They do."  We talked about pectoral muscles. 

After my mastoid surgery in June Jack was so interested in the staples behind my ear. He would position himself so he could get a good look at them and then say, with an exaggerated sad face, "I'm sorry you got staples in your head." But you could always catch a glimmer of thrill and excitement in his eyes.

Every morning he eats scrambled eggs.  One day he explained to me how he eats them before they've cooled off. "I just put it in my cheek, then real fast put it down my throat.  That's how I roll when it's hot."

When we moved into our new house Jack got his own room.  After a couple bad dreams in his new room he became really afraid of it and slept on the floor of Jane's room for a long time.  One night after a warning, he lost the privilege to sleep with Jane.  He sat on the stairs until he finally fell asleep. (And yes, our stairs are really that narrow and steep!)

After throwing a penny into a fountain I asked Jack what he wished for.  He said, "I said, 'I wish I throw this penny in.'"

When Jack was looking at some ants he said, "Mom, they eat our food, and when they get in our butts they make us do the dance thing." 

Jack is so sweet when he wakes up in the morning.  If I'm lucky enough to still be in bed he always gives a sweetest, "Good morning." Then he gives hundreds of hugs and I love you's.

He's also pretty awesome when he's going to bed, too.  He's gotten used to going to bed in his room now.  So, after I put Hank to bed (Hank insists on me lately) I peak into Jack's room to say goodnight.  He always does a hilarious excited jig in his bed until his covers are off.  He usually says, "I'm so excited because I love you so much."  Then he gets to tell me three things.  (He would go on forever but I'm way too close to my nightly freedom to allow that."  Each thing always starts with, "Mom, guess what?"  Then, he'll tell me something about a superhero or about his preschool or about Hank.  It's awesome.

In one of Matt's empty threats, (because we totally know how to parent), he told Jack to do something or stop something or else he would delete Super Hero Squad from Netflix.  Jack said, "If you do, I will hit you."  Matt asked, "How hard?"  Jack said, "Softly."

I guess Jack questioned Matt about his male parts.  He learned a lot about what Matt must have referred to as "ballsies."

After using the bathroom he said, "Look, the pee pee's all gone from my ballsies."

He wanted to impart his knowledge to Jane and started out confidently but then wasn't so sure what to say, "Jane, my balls is inside this......big......thing...... Right, dad?"

Another day Jack asked, "Dad, what's in our ballsies again?"  "They call them hormones, bud.  Well, actually they call it testosterone."  Jack said, "I call it monomes."

Reaching far back into my memory, here's what Jack was up to this last year.

Back when he was three, he went through a fascination with having a big brother.  Well, he had an imaginary big brother, only, it seemed he really believed he had one.  He lived in California, and his name was Jack if you asked about it but usually went by just big brother.  Occasionally he would have two big brothers, the other named John.  But he would talk about the one all the time.  "Oh, my big brother has that."  "My big brother can do that."  One day he said, "My brother pooped his pants last year."   Another day, "Mom, last year my brother peed on the family room lamp."  While Jack was on a toy phone Matt overheard, "Hello?  Hello, brother?  Are you naked?  Yeah. OK, bye."  Jane asked, "Your brother's naked?"  Jack said, "Yeah, he has to go pee pee."  Jane tried a couple times to explain to him that he didn't have a big brother but he did not like that idea.

In addition to having an imaginary big brother he was also fascinated with older boys.  One day when an 8 year old boy was over he stared at him with wonder.  I overheard him say, "Hey, big guy.  I like you."

One of the biggest compliments you could get from Jack was, "I love you more than bad guys."  Nowadays he's more likely to say, "I love you more than Jane loves you, more than dad loves you.  I love you the most."  And lately he's been stretching his arms out as big as he can and saying, "I love mom this much and dad this much and Hank this much."  Then, with his arms still outstretched, he'll bend his fingers in just a little bit and say, "And I love Jane this much."

He sang a song that went like this, "Girls like rainbow things more than bad guys."

After doing something mean Jack said, "Sorry Jesus.  Sorry guy in the sky that can see us."

A conversation about Jesus usually ends with Jack sharing his sadness about what happened to him, and he ALWAYS mentions the crown. "I'm so sad about Jesus having to wear that crown."

And from Matt's old quote piles we have several that we can't quite remember their context.

"I shooted you.  Now you're worse."

"I have another burger (booger).  I just throw it on the ground."

He asked when he would stop not hiccing up.

When he was cold, "I'm brrring, Dad.  It's brrring."

After moving in to our house, "Mom, I want to poo in the new toilet."

After smelling Hank's dirty diaper.  "My breath from my nose feeled his diaper."

After he went poo, "Whoa, I maket it like a stick."

After Jane hit him and made him cry Jack said, "I don't like girls."  Matt said, "Oh, girls are wonderful."  Jack said, "No, they're beautiful.  And I don't like them to be beautiful."

That's what we've got!

First day of preschool

Snowcones with Grandma

his green lantern "costume"

Thanks for all the laughs, Jack!