About a boy

It turns out, our Jack seems to be a boy after all. I never anticipated just how different he would be from Anna. Sure, some of it is a difference in personalities, but a lot of it could only be explained with that silly Y chromosome. For instance...

I'm not sure where he learned this, but every right-angled toy (the other night it was some tinker toy-type toy fashioned into an L shape) becomes a gun, complete with mouth-produced, gun sound effects. The thing is, we're not a gun family. We don't own them, we don't use them, we don't talk about them and, unless Kevin is up really late at night, we don't watch shows that feature them on tv. So, the other night, Jack had his tinkertoy "gun" and was making violent bomb-going-off-type of sounds, whilst shooting Anna's Zhu Zhu pet in our living room. It was equal-parts troubling and amusing.

He also loves all things truck, tractor or train. Getting stuck by a train these days isn't a bad thing, when Jack's with me--it's an exciting diversion. Tuesdays are his favorite day of the week now. It's like Christmas morning every Tuesday because that's garbage day in our neighborhood. This week, as a special treat, I let Jack sit on our front room window seat and eat his breakfast there so that he could watch the garbage trucks go by. It was the best day ever.

Trying to splash in the sad little puddle on the patio (we're in a drought right now. And, no, we weren't having a garage sale on our back patio that day. That's what our patio looks like on any given day--replete with plastic crap everywhere. I swore that I would never be that person. Harrumph!)

He loves to be outside. He takes great pride in helping me feed the birds every day (he also likes to sample the bird seed himself. I walked outside to catch him with millet seeds all over his saliva-coated chin one day). He loves to dig in the dirt and help in the yard.

He also loves to push his sister's buttons. He knows exactly what to do to get a response from her. He also thinks that she's the funniest, coolest person on the planet. They very seldom show affection toward one another though, so I was lucky to catch this rare display of affection yesterday afternoon.



He's such a boy and he's just so darn cute. Between the curly hair, the blue eyes and the mile-long eyelashes, he charms the pants off most of the people he meets. He's such a joy, this boy.