>As I was putting Jack to bed the other night, we had this conversation:
Mama?
Yes?
Mama?
Yes?
Mama?
What, honey?
Mama?
What?
Mama?
Yes?
Mama?
I love you, Jack.
Mama?
Good night.
Mama?
Do you have something you want to say to me, honey?
Yes.
What is it?
Mama.
>
We took the boys to a CU game recently. Got there sort of late, left early, napped through the middle, and yet somehow Jack absorbed the fight song. The game was a few weeks ago, and yet it wasn’t until this morning that Jack was running around the house saying, “Shoulder to shoulder. Fight! Fight! Fight!” I felt the need to explain it all to the daycare teachers this morning in case all they heard was “Fight!” and all they saw was a fist in the air. The teacher said, “Oh I know. He says, “Go go go Buffaloes!” all the time. Especially when he sees a buffalo. There’s one in the sand box.
In other news, we ate a late dinner on the patio and enjoyed a beautiful fall evening as the stars started to come out. Dave said, “I see one, two, three stars. No, four.” And then Jack said, “Five.” Yes, my little genius knows some numbers. He also said “Seben. And eight, eight, eight.” But when I tried to get him to count starting at 1… well, I regretted it. Because when he starts at one, he can’t stop himself from following “one” with “two, three, GO!” And then he jumps up and down a bunch of times. Yeah, I know, it’s really cute, but when he is standing on your lap it’s not that great.
Hmm, what other cuteness? Jack and Luke were kicking the soccer ball in the back yard and Jack fell. Dave was trying to get him to just shake it off and keep going. Jack said, “I tan’t. Leg hurt!” But then once he got a kiss from his daddy and big brother, he was just fine.
Speaking of the big brother, he was at the game too!
>Sometimes the daycare posts the song of the day, and sometimes we look to see what it is. And on those rare occasions, a little magic happens.
One day Dave noticed that the song of the day was Ring Around the Rosie. So when he got home with Jack he started singing it. Jack was so excited, he just gave a look that said, “Holy Cow! You know that song too?!”
So it’s been a popular song this summer. Of course, this version is more like, “Ring Around the Rose.”
>
Jack had his first trip through the pop jet fountain on Pearl Street this summer when Grandmom and Grandad were here. If only I had my camera with me then! Jack would run straight for the shooting water, only to have it disappear before he got there. Then he would stare down the hole and wait and wait, and just when you thought he was going to get a face full of water he would give up and run away as the water shot up into the air behind him. Then he’d run straight for another water spout only to have the same thing happen again and again. The suspense was killing us all. A cheer would explode with each narrow miss. On and on, as a crowd gathered, he remained dry and warm as the russian fountain roulette continued. I say dry and warm because it was about 7:30 pm and 60 degrees. More than once I considered putting a hat out to fund his college education, because he had a bigger crowd than the zip code guy. But he did finally end up cold and wet as his luck ran out. And I had nothing in the diaper bag but a spare diaper and an old bib. Grandmom took the opportunity to get Sweet Jack a new shirt.
He has as much fun as Luke did the first time he hit the pop jets, and I had a camera for that trip, as you can see above. But Dave brought the camera with him on the next trip to Pearl Street:
>I try to take a picture like this every summer at the airport. My pictures are not really well organized on this computer, so I am going to guess that this was summer 2004, when Luke was about 17 months.
And this is Luke and Jack before we went to Mexico, when Luke was 6 and Jack was about 17 months.
>I was sharing my wonderful Fourth of July memories with my family during the fire works on Saturday. My dad used to outdo everyone with a different adjective for each firework display, and my mom went with the old standby of “oooh” “ahhhh” “ohhhhh”. And I LOVED the fireworks. My favorite of my dad’s adjectives was “multi-faceted” which I heard as “multi-fascinating”. Of course nothing could top Bay Days, and all through college whenever I would meet someone new from Bay Village (which was often since lots of people from Bay went to my college and since I didn’t go to Bay High, I didn’t know any of them) I always said, “Wasn’t Bay Days the best?” The answer was always yes. I partly did this to annoy Dave because he thought Bay Days was lame.
What was Bay Days? Well, I think it was mostly a place where goldfish went to live their last week. I know we always left with one or two and the fate of one of those goldfish could be the subject of a chapter in my memoir. More on that some other day. Other than the goldfish you could win, I think there were rides. And maybe a parade? Definitely fireworks. Bay Days and Mardi Gras were the highlight of my social calendar from about age 6 until 14.
I still love to go to the fireworks, so this year, when I was told to dial into a conference call at 9:00 pm on the 4th of July, I had to politely decline. And then when Jack fell off a chair and split his lip I told him to shake it off. And when Luke started whining, and whining, and whining, and Dave said, “Maybe going to the fireworks isn’t such a good idea after all”, I responded with, “I want to go to the fireworks, so we are going to the fireworks. Now everyone needs to quit whining and bleeding, and start pedalling or we are going to miss it, and I am going to be angry!”
It was really the stuff of memories. Family togetherness and all. So once we got there and sat down 2 seconds before the show started, I tried to fill everyone in on how much fun I had at the fireworks as a kid, with my family. It really worked to change everyone’s mood. Dave came up with some great adjectives. Jack did a lot of oohing and ahhing. I ran out of adjectives pretty quickly, and I think that might be because the fireworks display was a lot longer, and possibly better than the Bay Days display. Luke got into the spirit finally. Well, sort of. His favorite fireworks response was, “Oooh. Ahhh. Lame.”
>Last week, we had one of Luke’s friends over after camp, and this week, Luke and Jack went to his house. Dave and I had a date! Yea! And then, when I was putting Luke to bed, we had this conversation:
Luke: What do you do when you are invited to someone’s house and they have a brother. Do you need to play with them?
Me: Are you talking about you and Jack at your friend’s house?
Luke: No! No, not like that!
Me: OK, what are you talking about?
Luke: Like, um, if you had a friend, with a brother, or a sister, or like, a twin brother, and you are at their house, and you like the sister, but do you have to play with them?
Me: Well, if the sibling wants to play with you, then you would be a polite guest and play with them. But I can imagine times where you’d just want to play with your friend and then maybe the parent could arrange for that. Are you talking about (Insert a million examples and a million “No” answers.)
Luke: Long convoluted example that makes no sense, but in which he insisted that the example sibling was at least 4 years old.
Me: Are you talking about you and Jack?
Luke: Yes. I don’t want him coming on my play dates.
Poor Luke. I had to explain that it wasn’t really a play date for him as much as a date for mommy and daddy.
In other news, Luke lost another tooth. This one didn’t seem that loose, but Luke took a kazoo from Jack and put it in his mouth, and when Jack yanked the kazoo out of Luke’s mouth, the tooth came with it.
>I am sure Uncle John, my loving and caring brother, will be happy to read that the batteries in the Tonka Ambulance that he purchases for Luke about 4 years ago are still going strong. It has a siren, flashing lights, a little song about Tonka and a little saying that goes like this, “Mission Complete, Let’s Head Home.” Or, if you are Luke, you might insist that it says, “Mission Complete, What Ten Ho.” And now Jack has discovered the truck, and he likes to play that song that goes, “It’s Tonka, to the rescue, we’re coming through for you!” while he does a little dance. I took about 10 videos over 2 days but I could never quite capture the perfect dance. Part of the problem was that Luke was thwarting my attempts by making the truck play the other noises instead of the song. Over and over. This all took place about a month ago, but I’m just blogging about it now for several reasons. Number one reason is laziness. You wouldn’t believe the ideas I have filed away, with no time to write them all down. Then yesterday, we saw a real rescue vehicle, which was very exciting. Also, I was just hearing that my biggest blog fans, Rose and Anthony, like videos the best, and since my camera is broken I decided to see what I could find in my archives. So here you go:
Sometimes it turns out that the first take is the best one:
>According to Luke, Alexander didn’t have anything to complain about because at least he didn’t end up in the emergency room. But the way I see it, if you fall out of a tree and end up the E.R., but it turns out you just have a (Pause because Jack is throwing up. And… I’m back.) bruise and a flesh wound, then hey, it’s a good day. Well, that’s what I was going to say before I cleaned up a bunch of vomit.
What happened? Luke fell out of an apple tree and landed on a stump or something. I had my back to the tree, so I didn’t see it, and that seemed to make the nurse think I was a terrible mother. Luke wished Aunt Beth was a nurse at the hospital and I did too! He got the wind knocked out of him when he fell and he was pretty scared and upset, and he said it hurt to breathe. So off we went. X-Rays showed that everything was fine. I had imagined canceling the whole summer of camp and swimming lessons and soccer and just laying around healing, but instead they said to take it easy for a few days, and no tree climbing for 6-7 days at least. Totally doable!
As for Jack, I think we’ll have to see how the rest of the night goes! Wish us luck!
>So, this may be my last post ever about nursing. I mean, I have 14 posts with the label of lactation attached, and there are probably more that I just forgot to label. But it has been a few weeks now, and while Jack did try to nurse today and threw a fit when I gave him a sippy of milk, I am still just going to call it and say he’s weaned. It’s offical. I am sure he was going to throw a fit anyway, because he was one hangry little boy. (Those of you who get hangry know what I mean right away. Thanks to my sister for sharing the term with me! Hungry+Angry=Hangry.)
I was worried that the time would fly by and I would forget what it was like to nurse my little Jack, but after a year and a half, I think we are both ready to move on. I have one more story to share that, depending on your perspective, is either adorable or disgusting, and then I retire the topic. I’m mostly writing it down for me, so I don’t forget.
In Mexico, Jack went a whole 24 hours without nursing and I thought, “Oh, that was easy!” And then the next day he wanted to nurse first thing in the morning, so we did. And he nursed for a little while and then he paused and looked up at me and said, “Num!”
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