Jack Finally Gets Some Doggie Time

Weekend before last while we were in Warrensburg for my high school reunion, Jack got a chance to play with my parents' beagle Maggie.  He was in heaven and was actually very gentle with her.

Raising a Yes-Man Who Will Climb to the Top

Even though he won't hit terrible two for another eight and a half months, Jack's got the saying "no" thing down.  It's just that he uses actions, not words.  He starts to do something he knows he shouldn't (throwing his sippy cup off the table, for instance), then stops and shakes his head "no." Then as he's shaking his head, he does exactly what he's telling me he knows he shouldn't do.  Or at least what will make me say "no."  Ugh.  

So now we're working on learning to say "yes."  Any time I ask a question and either want him to say yes or know that he would respond affirmatively, I make an exaggerated nod, say "yeeeeesss" very slowly, and move Jack's chin up and down.  I think it's a good lesson to learn--say what you mean.  He thinks it's hilarious.  

For a while now I've firmly held to the conviction that Jack my no longer play with keys.  Not just not playing with my keys--not playing with any keys.  I know that means I'm being mean Mommy, and I'm glad that he's able to identify them and to attempt to say keys, but he was starting to throw tantrums when someone wouldn't give him keys, and that just won't fly with me.  Plus not generally letting him play with keys enables me to give them to him as an incredibly effective incentive to make Jack behave really, really well in certain clutch situations like when I had to take him with me to the eye doctor today.  That's double bonus time--no regular tantrums and reliable path to ensuring an extra-good boy.

But last week Jack shocked me yet again with his ingenuity and drive for obtaining keys.  We have a mudroom off the garage where we keep all our keys and bags and occasionally keep one

 of Jack's strollers when I plan on using it a lot and don't want to mess with carrying it down the stairs to the garage.  Generally I keep the door from the mudroom to the living room closed during the day, but I was trying to unload the car from our visit to Nonna and Pops' house last weekend, so I had the door open and the light on yesterday morning.  Jack loves, loves, loves to go into

 this closet-sized room, close the door behind himself, and play the "Where's Jack?" game wherein I ask, "Where's Jack?," he knocks on the door, I turn the doorknob (which he blessedly can't reach yet), and he opens the door wide and lets out a squeal of excitement that I take to mean, "Here I am, silly mommy!"  Add some of him sticking his fingers under the door and me wiggling mine back underneath in response and we've spent a good half hour at play.  Ah, the simple things. 

At any rate, last Wednesday Jack capitalized on my having left the mudroom door open and light on.  He went into the mudroom and closed the door as usual, but when he had spent a minute or so in there without going through the rest of his normal routine, I decided to go in to check on him.  Jack greeted me from the seat of his Bugaboo by holding out a set of keys and saying, "Dees!"  He had pushed his stoller over to the table where we keep our keys, climbed into the stroller (which I've never seen him do before), and retrieved the keys from their dish.  Persistent little boy.  

Crazy Mumbum

I'm going a little nuts, I think.  

Not nuts like the horrible postpartum depression I experienced last fall.  That debacle was seriously bad around the time I started this blog.  It only started subsiding in any meaningful way after we decided around Christmas that our move back to the US was imminent and I would say it wasn't really over until after we had been in our St. Louis house about a month (less than two months ago for those of you who are counting).  I've started to volunteer with a group called Mother to Mother that provides moms experiencing postpartum depression with support by pairing them with mentors in the form of moms who have gone through it before.  I'll have to go through some pretty extensive training in the fall before I actually get to help someone, but I'm very excited about the possibilities.

But anyway, that's not the crazy I'm going through now.

The crazy I'm going through now is a fairly benign kind mostly induced by a little boy who loves reading so much that he's made my shins black and blue.  How could reading cause bruised shins, you may ask?  Picture this: a mommy is trying to wash the breakfast dishes.  A little boy wants to hear "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!" for the tenth time that morning.  So he brings it to his mommy and throws it to her.  Her knees don't make the catch.  She reads it.  He repeats.  Five times.  Before noon.  It's great, really, but I don't know how much more my legs can bear.

It isn't helped by the fact that this is Jack's idea of a fashion show:

"Manatee Baby" onesie was a very cute birthday gift from Uncle Stephen (and a meaningful one for those of you who know the story of Ben's 21st birthday).  Polar bear slippers are adorable, if I do say so myself.  And I find his penchant for Ben's socks adorable.  But all together?  The socks look a little like legwarmers.  And with that obvious pose?  As my friend Kristin is fond of saying, "The Eighties called.  They want you back."

The other main cause of my current craziness is that Jack is really starting to say "Dada" now.  This is a great development, and I'm really happy about it.  Occasionally it comes out "ah-da" (Dada minus the initial d sound), and sometimes Jack says it in reference to my cell phone (I'm assuming he's recalling talking to Daddy on the phone), but it's definitely there.  Not so about "Mama," which is the rub.  Except for a brief appearance in London (at which time I'm pretty sure he was instead saying "yum, yum" in reference to his food), the closest to saying "Mama" Jack gets is when he says "Mumbum."  I'm trying to be excited about it, but I'm really jealous.

Also Jack just finished his very last Ella's Kitchen packet, our miracle British-only pure organic fruit and veggies in a pouch.  Even though over the past month and a half he slowed down to eating only about one every week, and even though he now eats well and drinks tons of milk and yogurt from a similar pouch, it's a little unnerving not to have that safety net.

About the only evidence of my newfound craziness, however, is that I'm considering switching to cloth diapers.  Now hear me out on this one.  They're not as bad as they used to be; no pins are involved, and velcro and all-in-one innovations mean they go on just like disposables.  The brand I'm especially considering is called Bum Genius and was created by a mom in St. Louis but has become a big name in reusable diapers worldwide.  The only difference is that we would have to rinse smelly diapers off over the toilet (FYI, according to basic sanitation standards and diaper packaging, that's supposed to be done with disposable diapers as well!), and would have to wash the diapers every other day.  That and the fact that they'd be slightly less expensive even if we only used them until Jack was two and we'd be creating lots less waste that takes over 500 years to degrade.  

I don't know.  I'm not bothered at all about the prospect of extra laundry (more on our fantastic new washer and dryer in another post), and with the addition of a portable spray bidet-like toilet attachment ($40 and easy to install), I'm not even all that concerned about the yuck factor.  But Ben's threatened to strike and not do any of the poopy diapers if I "insist on persisting in this pointless crusade."  I'm not sure I'm willing to risk that actually happening.

Thoughts on that, anyone?

Oh, and here's the "woof, woof," I promised.  It has changed a little since he started in that he used to get his head into the action so much that he looked like he was frantically nodding as he said it.  But I think it's equally cute now.

 

Dancing, talking, and other random thoughts

Jack has developed some new dance moves.  Tops on the list of things he can now do is spinning around in a circle.  It's not a really new development--he's been doing it a few weeks--but he's getting a lot of practice dancing to some musical greeting cards that we've been given.  He's done it hundreds of times now, but every time he cracks open a card and hears the music start he's still amazed.  His favorite is a birthday card Ben got from my parents that plays "I'm So Excited."  Strange that probably 15 years after it came out I still can't hear that song without thinking about the Saved By The Bell episode where Jessie gets addicted to caffeine pills ("I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so...scared!").

Jack's favorite noise is now "woof, woof."  He says that any time he sees a dog, sees one of his stuffed animal dogs, hears the word "dog," or I think any time he even thinks about a dog (this happens frequently).  I'll definitely get video of that soon, because he puts his whole head and body into the effort of saying it, and unlike many words at this stage it's fairly easy to understand, even by people who don't spend much time around toddlers.

His second favorite word is "keys," which sounds like a slightly spittle-filled version of "dees."  Jack has always loved electronic things with buttons.  Cell phones are tops with Blackberries the best of all.  A few weeks ago he managed to sit through almost all of a church service without a peep because we let him take the remote with him.  This from a boy who sees maybe 15 minutes of TV a week.  But keys have been quickly moving up the rungs of coveted items to play with since we moved back to America.  Now that we have cars (unlike in London), keys are much more interesting to Jack.  "Why?" you may ask?  Because car keys generally have red buttons, and those red buttons make cars honk and lights flash.  Some babies might be scared by such commotion.  Not Jack.  He loves it.  He's even more thrilled with Nonna's keys that have a button to make her car's trunk pop open.  

When we go anywhere, Jack is always pointing out people's keys.  This can be great while standing in line at Subway or Target or the grocery store--Jack says "dees" and points, the person holding the keys smiles and remarks on how clever and cute he is, and presto 30 seconds have passed in which I've been holding Jack without having to struggle to keep him from trying to jump out of my arms.  At other times his fascination with keys is not so convenient.  The week before the Mass of the remote, the guy in front of us put his keys on the pew, so Jack squirmed and pointed and yelled "dees" every time we stood up and he saw the keys.  I had never realized just how many times we Catholics stand up and sit down.  Poor Jack was so tormented.  

Now for the random thoughts section of this post.  We finally have a lawn!  Our sod was supposed to be put in a week after we closed on our house, but frequent rain delayed that until about a week ago.  But now we have several feet of yard.  Tiny by Midwestern standards, but it's a massive garden by London's take, and even fairly good sized for New England homes.  With the addition of sod, Jack has been introduced to the world of sprinklers.  He jumps right into the spray with no hesitation, regardless of what he's wearing.

We live in a row of 10 brand new houses, the earliest of which was completed last August.  Our neighbors are great.  We certainly can't replace Rich and Stacy and Kaia (Stacy, puzzlingly, keeps laughing when I say the house next door is still for sale), but we know everyone and we've become friends with several of the families.  Two more families just moved in this week, so Jack and I are off to be the welcome wagon this afternoon.

On a very random note, about thirty minutes ago I started reading "The Feminine Mystique" for the first time ever.  I'm not quite sure how I got this far in this life of mine without having read it.  But even reading just the first five pages, I am floored that it was written all of 45 years ago (when JFK was still President!).  It could very well have been written last year.  It's incredible.  So after having reading Perfect Madness and starting this and having tips on a few other good liberal mommy tomes, I've decided that I need to start a feminist stay-at-home moms' book club, because I'm dying to talk about the issues raised in each of the books with other like-minded women.  I'm just slightly worried that it might be a little hard to find membership for this bookclub...