Stay this way

Jude just got his first National Geographic subscription from his Grandma Lehman.  It's a special edition for small children.  His first issue had a red fox on the cover, and it included wild-animal trading cards that I tore out and cut up for him.  He keeps them on the shelf of his art easel, and rediscovers them there once in awhile.

He has a favorite card.  It's a photo of a mouse balancing itself between two blades of grass. 

"Look at his little eyes," Jude says as he holds the card lovingly.  "He is very little.  He is very koosy."  Then he rubs his cheek on the card to koos the mouse.

I love that he loves that mouse trading card.  I love how he holds it and talks to it.  I love how he wanted to take it to Donna's the other day and show the other kids, which he did the moment we walked into the door.  "Ellery!  Look at my little mouse!"  Then he carefully placed it inside his diaper bag so that it wouldn't get lost at daycare.

Can I just keep him in this mode, please?  A time when a mouse picture was his treasured possession?  When he had it in his head that he could snuggle the mouse just by rubbing a piece of cardboard on his face?

To be fair, this behavior would be odd in an adult male.  But in the mode I'm in right now, I dread the day he shows more fascination for baseball cards than for mouse ones.

Stuck

Pic by Tyler

Too often we find ourselves hiding smirks behind our hands when Jude does something that is a) naughty, or b) hilarious - but he doesn't know it, and we don't want him to think we're making fun of him.

It's nice to know others are also amused by him. Donna often tells me about something smirk-inducing he did during the day, and she recently told me a story about catching the kids in the bathroom together. Jude wasn't the focus of the story at all, until I got a surprise ending.

"I was cleaning up lunch and suddenly noticed the house was too quiet," she said. "I heard something from behind the closed bathroom door, so I went to check it out. All of the kids were in there together, and Carmine was spraying them with water from the faucet while everyone laughed."

I thought this was kind of funny, but could hardly picture Jude getting a big kick out of water being sprayed at him, especially indoors. He's a particular boy, and doesn't like to get dirty or be wet if he isn't swimming. If he has just washed his hands and sees water drip onto the floor from his fingertips, he immediately springs for the dish towel and wipes the drops up, frantically.

After describing the bathroom scene, Donna chuckled thoughtfully, then was quiet for a moment. Casually, as if she had just remembered it, she said:

"Well, not all of them were in there, I guess. Jude was in the bedroom by himself, stuck between the file cabinet and the desk. He was saying 'oh no, oh no, oh no...'"

As the words came out of her mouth, an image took shape in my head of Jude methodically trying to unwedge his short & stout body from a desk/cabinet crevice, quietly repeating the same two words to himself.

How long this had gone on, she wasn't sure. Apparently it hadn't been overly traumatic for him - he was just a little alarmed - so we were laughing about it. I told her he seems to have an issue with getting stuck in small spaces. Whether this is because of his round head or his cloth-diaper butt, I'm not sure. (I shared how he got stuck in the birth canal too, but that's another story.)

It's just another quirk to add to his many others, like his fear of tinsel, and his penchant to begin all inquiries about what to do next with, "Shall we...?"

He has an adventure-some life ahead of him, I think.

Somebody took a naughty pill...

I was convinced the terrible twos would be a myth for us. He was growing up to be such a gentle boy. Not a people-pleaser, per se, but careful and loving.

He still is, sometimes, and I'm sure he'll continue to be somewhere in the future. But for the moment, a lethal combination has taken place. He's two now. He's in full-time daycare. The results? Bad habits and sass. I'm being a little dramatic, but there are days.

The reason I'm partially blaming Donna's house is Carmine. Carmine's dad left his mom and he's a little angry. I don't mean to make light of that - it's just the way it is for him.

Carmine takes out some of his aggression on the younger kids by hitting them, and he is habitually disobedient and sassy with Donna. When Carmine lashes out, Jude sits there in part shock, part worship mode. Then he comes home, has a meltdown, kicks, swats and yells at his parents, mostly "no" and "mine". Mona gets bossed too, but it rolls right off her. She's a little sassy herself.

Donna claims he's almost perfect in her care, and that he's happy all the time. Perhaps she's suffering from relativism, although I do think Jude is a very good boy over there - sometimes he's better in groups. I'm grateful for that. But lately, when he gets home, something shifts. Maybe he's blowing off steam and stress from his day. Maybe it's his age, I don't know. He's extra naughty right now and I'm adjusting to the idea of my new sassy son.

The other day I put a new photo of him up by my desk at work with a classic, smirking look on his face (yep, that's the one, just above this post). It partly makes me miss him and partly makes me cringe. There's an undeniable naughty glint in his little eyeball. I guess we could call it "personality".

He does still have a hint of compassion in his heart, and I'm nurturing it like nobody's business. When he swats at me I'm either very firm or I pout a bit, depending on his mood. If I pretend to be sad about it, he'll say "Okay Mommy?" (i.e. are you okay?). Then he'll usually let me hug him. How is it possible to go from full-on frustration to having your heart melted in three seconds?

Oh, my dear boy. I love you. But seriously, cut the sass. Mama's tired.

Spilled Milk

The first sentence I remember hearing Jude say was when I asked him where his Daddy was in a photo. He pointed at Jono's face and said, "There he is!"

Since then he's said "Light, I see it!" (pointing to a lamp) and "Look at that!" (after something he thinks is cool just happened). There are also plenty of things he says that have no translations.

Yesterday as he finished his supper he tipped his sippy cup over and put pressure on the nozzle so it would release a small puddle of milk onto his tray. He pressed his face down into it, nose and mouth in full contact with the liquid, and slurped it up until it was gone. He raised his head and looked at me, a drop of milk trembling on the end of his nose and another one running down his chin.

"Slurp it," he said.

He followed the same routine another five or six times, saying "slurp it" every time.

I sat there quietly, intrigued. As often as Jono and I are tempted to slurp milk off the table, I'm thinking he must've picked this up at daycare. Either that or we're in denial he's becoming a little boy. He's so nonchalant lately. When one of us walks into the room he casually raises a hand and says, "Oh, hi."

He seems to have picked up on the social cues of an older child.

For now I'll just watch. And laugh.

"Donna's Darlings"

So Jude is in day-care now. I never thought I'd say those words, but there they are.

We knew this was coming. So far Jono has been swinging the SAHD thing and full-time school with some help from Aunt Kathy and Grandma Lehman. But now his school-work is increasing and he hopes to get an internship soon; we need more child-care.

Jude is a little clingy at drop-off, but doing well with it. I struggled with it the first week, fighting mental battles with myself, including feeling like a failure because I'm unable to take care of my son during the day.

It's more what "day care" apparently symbolized to me than anything else; frankly, it's only part-time and it has been good for him so far. He actually sees other children on a regular basis, which is a huge improvement from before. We were starting to worry about the confused looks he would give our two-year-old neighbor when she approached, because he obviously had no idea what she was.

Our day-care lady's name is Donna. She was a tip from my co-worker Paul who sent his boys there for years. He told me the kids still ask about Donna even though they don't go there any more, and they send her cards on Easter.

He did warn me about a couple things: "Donna is old. And her house is tiny. But you'll love her." We do love her. She calls her in-home outfit "Donna's Darlings" - straight out of the 50's just like her (and I mean that affectionately).

She takes her job very seriously, but is laid-back and gentle with the kids. She notices and remembers every detail of what Jude did during the day, how he reacted to this or that, what his little personality is like. (The other day she told us, "He has an amazing attention span for a kid his age." *Brag alert*) She takes the kids to the library, lets them play outside, plays them lullabies at nap-time and reads to them. She even visits the fire department every other month to make sure the car-seats are installed properly in her minivan. Sheesh. The woman is a gem.

He has little friends now. Their names are Carmine, Manny, Skyler and Peyton. Three out of the four are at least two years older than he is; Peyton is a few months younger. Whenever Jono drops Jude off, three-year-old Carmine is at his side the second his toddling feet hit the floor. He tenderly puts his arm around him, pats his back, and says earnestly, "Hi Jude," with a little bit of precious inflection in his voice. I guess he's the perfect age for them: smaller and more helpless (making them feel strong and big), yet old enough that they can relate to him on some level.

As I walk up to the front door to pick Jude up, five round faces usually pop up in the picture window by Donna's kitchen table, most of them chewing pleasantly on crackers. At first it was so strange for me to see my baby in there with a bunch of people I didn't really know. But lately I can see their mouths form the words, "Jude's mom" in excitement through the glass, and Jude has a smirk on his face. When I walk through the door I get loud, enthusiastic reports of his activities from them.

"Hi Jude's mom!"
"A bus went by and Jude said 'bus'!"
"Jude doesn't like grass!"
"Jude can talk! And walk!!"
"I sat by Jude at lunch!"

Peyton just slobbers and smiles continuously.

It's a good by-product of a somewhat challenging situation. We're grateful for Donna. And Carmine, Manny, Skyler and Peyton. They're starting to feel like Jude's other family.