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.
