Category Archives: Jack

Who is in Charge?

The other night my poor baby boy came up stairs crying because he had a bloody nose.  I took him into the bathroom and sat him on my lap while I pinched his nose for some period of time that seemed like an eternity but may have been less than a minute.   Jack told me that I was pinching too hard and that he was fine and wanted to go back to bed.   I thought, “Wow!  He recovered from that scare so quickly.  What a big boy.”  Because I remember sort of freaking out about bloody noses as a kid.  Of course Jack has more experience with them, living in this dry air, and living with an older brother who occasionally “hits him too hard with a pillow accidentally.”

I took Jack back to bed, tucked him in, laid there for a second until he screamed, “IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN” and I bolted awake and pinched his nose again.  Some indeterminate amount of time later, he patted my arm and said, “That’s good, Mom.  I’ll lay down and come get you if I need you.”

I trotted off to bed like a good little mommy, shaking my head at my big boy and his calm maturity.

I got in bed, closed my eyes and slept for 5-10 seconds before hearing, “MOM!  MY NOSE IS BLEEDING AGAIN!!!”

This third nose bleed (ok, I am sure it was just a continuation of the first one) is the one that woke me all the way up.  This time, instead of being in awe of the way my 3 year old can take charge of a situation I thought, “WHY AM I LISTENING TO A THREE YEAR OLD?  Who is in charge here?”  Not him, and certainly not me.  So I turned to my good and loyal friend, my constant companion, the internet.  It turns out, you are supposed to pinch a bloody nose for 10 minutes.  Not a random about of time, or until your 3 year old gets bored, and you both just really want to go back to sleep.  It’s 10 minutes people.

Jack and I sat on the couch, and I pinched his nose for 10 minutes by the clock on the microwave.  Then we all went to bed and slept until morning.  Thanks, internet.

The Sands of Time

Sand.  I always assumed that pockets are filled with sand over the course of the day through extreme and rugged playing.  From wallowing in sandboxes, and rolling through dirt.

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But I learned otherwise on a hike through the Black Hills in Custer State Park.

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We drive the Needles Highway one day and did a hike to the Cathedral Spires.

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Jack picked up a piece of wood that was slightly curved, perfect for scooping sand, and there was a lot of sand and dirt to scoop.  Jack was a very good hiker that day, almost too determined, not wanting any help over some of the serious rock scrambles.  But on the way down, he asked me to carry his piece of wood filled with sand, because he was having trouble keeping the sand from spilling out on the way down.  I said he should just dump the sand and then fill it up again at the bottom of the hike.  Logical.  Subtext: Please lose that piece of wood on the way down.   Then I turned forward and started walking again, confident that Jack would dump the sand and follow.  After a few steps, I turned around to see him using the wood like a funnel, and filling his pockets with sand.   Filling his pockets with sand, on purpose.   New insight into the mind of a boy.

Seems odd to have a post about Jack and his antics, but Jack wasn’t really into posing that day.  As you can see.

Then and Now

As everyone knows, I love to stage the same photo over and over again. I was just going to say that I have that in common with my father in law, but then I realized, maybe I got the idea from him?

Probably!

So here are a few pictures of Luke and Jack riding scooters with Grandad.

I think Luke was 3 here?

And maybe 4 here.

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I WANT TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE CAKE

Jack yelled “I WANT TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE CAKE!”  during a fit yesterday.  I took a moment to savor the fact that I have reached the stage of my life where I am in charge of the cake.  It’s a good place to be.  Except when 3 year olds are freaking out about it.  But even then, life is good.

I shared the story with a co-worker and he reminded me of this gem, The God of Cake.

Dave’s birthday cake was The Strawberry Margarita Cake from Kim and Jakes.   It was either incredibly moist, or slightly undercooked.  (Dave votes for undercooked and he let me eat the last piece, so…)  The jury is still out, but didn’t concern ourselves with details.  It was very pretty, a little too bitter for me the first day, but it tasted better as the days went on.  Odd that it lasted so many days, I guess.

>Opposite Day

>I recently, and accidentally, told my boss he was the worst in an IM. In the third person. Almost as if I meant to say it to someone else. I ended up apologizing, but before that I worked on a couple excuses for my terrible faux pas. The best thing I could come up with was, “It’s opposite day.”

So I must have had opposites on the brain when we were camping in Moab because Jack and I got into a big discussion about opposite while we hung out waiting for the rest of our crew to be finished mountain biking. He wanted me to do something, maybe his shoe? Momma, do it! And I said something like, “well first I have to undo it. Then I can do it.” He wanted to know what undo meant and I said it was the opposite of do. What does opposite mean? And so on.

So I just started giving him examples, and it went pretty well.
Me: What do you think the opposite of Up is?
Jack: Down
Me: Left?
Jack: Right.
Me: Day?
Jack:Night.
Me: White?
Jack: Soft. (He didn’t get all of them right.)

But the best was when I asked him what the opposite of GOOD was. I was pretty confident he would get it, and I sat back, waiting for him to say bad. But you know what he said, right? He said EVIL.

>Jackisms

>Eventually, I will blog about our awesome vacation, but first I want to talk about the McDonald’s PlayPlace. (We went twice, so the kids could get exercise during the road trip. And so that we could eat.) Say what you want about the evils of McDonalds, but it’s a great place to run around and burn off some energy when you have been in the car forever. That is, until some gigantic family swarms, swarms, swarms. With their giant kids, and brothers and sisters and cousins, with the yelling and the blocking of the slide, and chasing, and general roughhousing. This same thing happened at both McDonalds stops. And both times Luke retreated to another area, while Jack got trapped somewhere by the swarm. In Kayenta, Arizona, I just sent Luke in after Jack and we left when things got out of hand. But in Albequerque, New Mexico, I guess Jack had learned a thing or two. We were ready to leave, and Luke was avoiding the swarm, and Jack was trapped at the end of the line for the slide, three stories up, behind a never-ending line of cutters. I was about to send Luke after him, but first I just yelled up there, “Jack! Just come down the slide!” Next thing I knew, he had pushed to the front of the line, and as he slid down, this is what echoed out both ends of that tubular slide: “BUH BYE SUCKAS!!!” Other Jack vacation moments: I filmed an interview with him, asking what his favorite part of vacation was. Pointing to himself he said, “This guy.” Speaking of Jack pointing to himself, a few weeks ago, on the way home from Eldora, he pointed at each person in the car and said the following, “You’re a skier, you’re a snowboarder, you’re a snowboarder, and I’m a skier.” Still pointing to himself and looking down at his finger, and nodding vigorously he said, “Yeah! That’s right, finger!’

>Black Swan Parenting

>At some point during Black Swan, I asked myself, “At what point does a child need to start cutting their own fingernails?” So far I have narrowed it down to somewhere between 3 and when they become a prima ballerina. In the meantime, it’s a weekly struggle between Jack and me. We recently came to the agreement that after every bath, I can cut one toe’s worth of toe nails. But the deal has to be renegotiated every time.

After tonight’s bath, Jack was running around the house in his towel pretending that it was a cape, as 3 year olds are wont to do. I could tell he was stalling, but I wasn’t in a hurry so I let it play out. He finally came back into the bathroom and said, “Oh. I realize why I was tricking you by running around. It’s because I don’t want my nails to be cut.”

Thanks for sharing that bit of self-discovery Jack.

Then, when I was promising it wouldn’t hurt, he said, “It WILL hurt. Because of gravity. Gravity makes things fall down. I learned that on Sesame Street yesterday. See? Gravity, I told you.”

>Little Old Man

>Poor baby Jack is quite ill, with a terrible cough, runny nose, headache and fever. I tried twice to put Dr. Burts Res-Q ointment on his nose, which I have always found to be amazingly effective in the past for reducing pain and redness and clearing up the sinuses.

The first time he wouldn’t let me come near him, but the second time, he was more resigned. I put the ointment on his nose and with a sigh, and a shrug, he said,

“See? I knew it wouldn’t work.”

I said, “When did you become such a pessimist?”

With another shrug, he said, “When I growed up.”

My poor little baby is all growed up, and he growed up to be a pessimist. Sigh.

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There was more to his story after that, but since he has laryngitis and a tendency to ramble on and on, I didn’t catch it all. I know there was something in there about how he growed up to be a gentleman, and isn’t Darth a really weird first name? How do you get to be named Darth?

>Sleepover

>There is always going to be someone who gets upset at a sleepover, but this was a new one. Jack came upstairs after everyone had been in bed for a while, and he was so sad. He put on his tragic face and said, pitifully, “I want to giggle with Stella, but Stella isn’t giggling.”