Side Note: I've recently discovered I have all sorts of previously unrecognized readers out there, including the husband's grandmother/Baby J's great-grandmother (Hi, Grandma Van!). And, suddenly, I'm all self-conscious....does Grandma Van really want to hear about my bosom-induced swimsuit shopping travails?? It's almost enough to make me change my ways. Almost, but I'm too lazy! (Sorry, Grandmas Beth and Van!)
Moving on...should you have forgotten, I am raising a boy. Here are just some of the latest examples of J's boy antics:
Yesterday, I walked into the room and saw J sitting on the floor, staring delightedly at a new book. "Wonderful," I thought with pleasure, "he does like this one. What a good choice I made!" I was feeling quite self-congratulatory until I got closer...and saw the string of drool stretching from his mouth to the book. Indeed, in reality he was smiling in glee at having hocked his first loogie. What a treasure! (To give you some idea about my pleasure in that discovery, suffice it to say that in order to write this post, I had to look up how to spell both "hock" and "loogie," so foreign are these words to my vocabulary. Shudder!)
Later that same day, we went to the near-by park. Generally, we stick to the baby swings at this park, so as not to rumble with the older school-aged children who are having an after-school program at the community center there. This day, however, they weren't out playing, so J toddled over to the jungle gym, complete with stairs with multiple handrails (just for him) and three slides, all about four and a half feet tall. After rushing up the stairs, he was a bit confused about what to do next, until I sat him down on a slide and stood next to him as he slid down. He LOVED this and wanted to do it again, so, of course, he immediately tried to climb back up the slide in his plastic crocs, which resulted in his slipping and falling repeatedly. He was MOST put out that he couldn't get back up! Eventually, after I stopped laughing, I pointed him back in the direction of the stairs, and back up he went. Each time, I would point him to the stairs and then go and wait at the top of the slide to help him get situated, then meet him at the bottom. However, after three or four times down, he abruptly changed direction at the top and decided to go down another slide, far away from me, one we hadn't tried and one with twists. As I leapt over the intervening obstacles to get there in time, because WHO KNEW how fast this one was going to go, he also must have thought "Hey, going down on my bum is fun, but what if I just go down headfirst on my tummy?!" Just as I reached the bottom, his head hit my legs. Actually, I should say his smile hit my legs, because he was pleased as punch with himself. I, on the other hand, was a tad out of breath!
People have taken to calling J a "little bruiser," which isn't far from the truth. He walks like a little linebacker. He's also a bit of a daredevil: he has no fear, no inhibitions, and an uncanny ability to figure something out after having seen someone else do something similar once. A few days ago, I walked into the kitchen to find him halfway up our steel shelving unit. He's almost figured out how to climb out of his crib using a daring arial gymnastics move he invented after learning how to jump on his bed. Our dining room chairs now rest permanently on the dining room table when not in use, since he's learned to climb up on the table and launch himself off the side. He routinely attempts to jump out of, off of, or over anything or anyone that attempts to contain him. Sigh.....!
It's a masculine party around here, my friends!
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