Jack Speaks....

     Time really flies, not just when you are having fun, but just in general.  It seems like time has been moving perpetually faster with each day and I find myself constantly amazed at how quickly time has passed since, what I thought was, a recent milestone. 
     For instance, I could have sworn that Jack had just turned two and he was a little thinner, a lot more mobile, and fairly talkative, but in that disjointed, two-year-old sort of way.  Then, I realize that this boy turns THREE on Wednesday, and he has a 6-month old little brother.  Our little Bubba who was a sumo baby, then a mover, and a jibbering little toddler is now a three year old who carries on full conversations, recites stories and rhymes to tell him, and quotes you on just about everything you shouldn't have said.  On top of that, he is sharp as a tack, which has resulted in many hilarious moments of conversation in the past year.  This post is to highlight some of the best.  (I'm sure it will continue to get longer as time goes on.)

    One night, while I was using the bathroom, he came in the bathroom, as he usually does.  I typically don't lock the door, and Jack finds it a good time to come in and be conversational.  This time he came in, paused for a moment, and then said, "Ew! Stinky! I gotta get out of here!" and immediately turned and ran.  This was one of the first times I had heard a full sentence come out of him and thankfully I was already using the toilet, because I would have peed my pants laughing at that moment.

     Christmas was a very fun time for us this past year because it was so fun to see how Jack reacted to the whole subject of Santa Claus.  We had spent time telling him how we set up our Christmas tree and Santa comes to our house to leave presents, provided that he is a good boy.  Well, one of the family traditions we have it to bring him to see Santa at one of the malls.  This season, we were talking up the time when we were going to go see Santa when he stopped us and very seriously pointed to our Christmas tree and said, as if to correct his silly parents, "No, Santa come to my house!"

     On the note of Santa Clause, when the time came to actually go see Santa, we were very excited to see how Jack would react.  He wasn't old enough before to really understand the concept on his own, and he was excited to see Santa as well, talking about it the whole time we drove to the mall.  When we finally got there, Brittany went ahead with Ben to get a place in line (which there wasn't one). Jack was standing next to me and was able to see into the little area where Santa sits and took one look at the Santa and said, "Ummmm, Jack see Santa later," and turned around to walk away.

     When Jack was first talking, I had never really taken into consideration how a child is like a word sponge, and whether you are paying attention or not, they are.  Carlotta, one of our cats, has gained a whole lot of weight since we adopted her, and she is hilariously disproportionate with a fat belly, tiny head and tail and skinny little legs.  I had gotten in the habit of just calling her "Fat-Fat," and would greet her by that name every time she came into the room or I came into a room where she was.  One day, I was playing with Jack and Carlotta walked into the room, and immediately Jack looked up, saw her and happily greeted her,  "Oh, hi Fat-Fat!"

The Jack-Jack hilarity continues as he gets older and gets smarter.  He literally is like a sponge when it comes to what he hears, which makes it really tricky when it comes to expressing your feelings.  I tend to use a lot of analogies or other ways to explain things, such as when I'm tired.  Whether I am tired, or someone else looks tired, I tend to use the terminology that they are, "running out of fuel."  One day, Jack seemed to be running a little low on energy himself and he turned to Brittany and me and said, "Me has no power, me's running out of gas."  

On the note of Jack getting smarter, sometimes he surprises us with knowledge that we didn't even know that he had.  As he has been getting more and more adept to using the bathroom on his own, he has also attempted to develop ways to conceal the need to pee.  One day, while he was helping me at the storage unit, he was starting to dance, a classic and very evident sign that he has to use the bathroom.  I called him out on the fact and this was the exchange that followed:

Me: "Jack, do you need to go to the bathroom?"
Jack: "No, I don't need to." (While still dancing)
Me: "Well, then why are you dancing?"
Jack: "No, that's just my rain dance."

Yep, to this day, neither I, nor  Brittany have any clue where it is that he learned the term "rain dance," let alone figured out how to use it.

Back on the subject of Jack being a sponge, Brittany will sometimes jokingly tell me things such as my apparent lack of the ability to listen sometimes.  (Shiny objects are just so distractin- Holy cow, a nickel!)

While we were taking the boys through a drive-thru for some food while we were out one evening and while ordering their food, I opted not to include pickles on Jack's cheeseburger because I was uncertain as to whether he liked them or not, and, as he has inherited an extremely enhanced version of my OCD, one small thing out of place can cause chaos.  (He has woken up many a night in a panic because his fitted sheet on his bed had a wrinkle in it)  As Jack went through his food, he confirmed the contents of his cheeseburger and was saddened to find that there were no pickles.  I received the following chastisement from our 3-year old:

"Dad, you leaved out my pickles!"  And upon my my attempts to obtain his forgiveness, he says, "It's okay Dad, one day, you'll listen..."  (Ouch)

Recently, we moved into our new home here and when we had set up the boys' bedroom, Jack was away with his grandparents' house.  While we were driving home, I was telling him how we were going to our new home and how Brittany and I had set up his and Ben's room.  Jack was already ecstatic about moving to a new home, so when he had heard that his new room was all ready for him, he exclaimed, "I'm so excited, I'm gonna freak out!"

One day, while in the front room, Jack became aware that Ben needed a diaper change and Jack approached me with this plea, "Dad, I has a problem; Ben is all poopy, will you please go get a diaper?"  Honestly, who could say "no" to that?

Brittany and I were in the car with the boys the other day and were discussing a song that Brittany had come across which was by the rapper Eminem.  While we were talking about the motivational message of the lyrics when Jack, a big supporter of candy, excitedly asked, "You have an M&M song?!"