You and I, we're the same soul.

About a month ago, I was telling Jeremy how this part in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown always makes me cry a little. The other day, I look at Evie at the end of the song, and she has tears streaming down her little cheek. I immediately gave her an appropriately big hug.

Cartoon Doppelgänger

Maybe not, but I sure think they look alike. Gotta give proper respect to my mom for pointing out this comparison to me.

The big eyes, they high cheeks, so very cute and rascally ... Charlie is so Jerry Mouse.

Where is my mind?

I'm beginning to feel concerned for my mind. This past week I have been such a complete space cadet. When I tell Jeremy my concerns, he says "your brain is just kid-fried." I hope that is it and that I'm not losing my sanity before I turn 30.

Example 1.

On Friday, I drove to Dallas to meet up with some friends of mine (Pidge and Jared), and also Jeremy, who has been in Duncan, Oklahoma. I printed out directions to my friends' house and noticed that our ink was a bit low, or else our printer is a bit wonky. The point by point directions have alternating backgrounds, to make it easier to read. But with our printer issues, ever other point was invisible. I didn't realize this until I was already a good ways on the road. I called my brother when I was in downtown Dallas and I said "she said she lives about 15 minutes from downtown." He looked up the directions and said "um...no, I don't think so." As it turns out when I asked my friend if she lived near downtown, she assumed I meant downtown Fort Worth. She assumed this because I actually have been to her house before, but I apparently never pay attention to anything and had no idea where she lived. So Drew gives me the directions and I keep moving along. I put on my headset and called an old friend and talked to her for a while. I end up getting lost because I wasn't paying attention to the signs while on the phone with her. I tell her that I have to go because I'm a little lost. I call my friends that I'm meeting to ask where I am, and I'm way away from where I'm supposed to be. So, my friend tells me where I'm supposed to go, and he stays on the phone with me to make sure I am going the right way (he can tell that I clearly need help.) So we're on the phone and he says "now, look for a restaurant called Burger Box on your right, and turn right after that." I'm driving along and I am telling him the signs that I'm passing. He says "what?! How did you miss Burger Box?!" Take the next right!!" Eventually I make it to their house.

Example 2.

When we go to leave their house I grab the Nissan keys off of my friends' counter and I go outside to start the van. It won't start. It is doing that thing where it won't turn at all, like the wheel is locked, so I turn the wheel to try and unlock it. Nothing. I tell Jeremy, and he takes a shot at it. While he's doing that, I walk back to my friends and tell them that we can't start the car. Jeremy says "well, I see what the problem is... you were trying to start our van with Pidge's Sentra keys. Where are our keys?"
"I don't know." Then I reach in my pocket, and there they are. (I do deserve a little leeway for this. Our keys look identical, except that we have one additional silver key on our keychain, and they have none.)

Example 3.

Jeremy and I decide to take in a movie (Iron Man 2) at the IMAX. When we leave the car, I decided to leave my phone in the car because I didn't want to carry anything (a novelty because I'm usually toting three kids and all their stuff.) When we get to the theater, I told Jeremy I was wanting some caffeine so I stayed in the food court while he went to secure some seats for us. I get my drink, and go to the ticket guy. I give him my ticket and he points to the left and says "last one on the left." So, I turn left and go to the theater at the end of the hall, and I see the "Iron Man 2" sign above the door, and go in. The movie had already started and I'm trying to peer through the dark, walking up one aisle and then down the next. I can't find him. I feel really sad at this point because this is our weekend away from everything and I've been away from him all week, and I just want to be next to my Jeremy. So, I sit on the front row, in the best spot for him to find me or for me to find him if he comes down the aisle looking for me. So, I watch the movie, looking closely anytime a person would walk down the aisles. After about an HOUR of this, Jeremy comes into the theater with a look of pity and amusement (probably exasperation too, but he wouldn't admit it.) He holds out his hand for me to come with him. Apparently when the ticket man said "all the way down on the left", he meant that when the hall ends with one Iron Man 2 screening, it curves to the left, and there is a whole seperate area with the IMAX theater in it. Oh wait, we were watching an IMAX, right. So, you would think I would have noticed that I was sitting in a theater with an average screen, but NO. You would be wrong. It was like I had forgotten about the giant screen we were supposed to be seeing this movie on, because I was so busy thinking about Jeremy and constantly wondering where he was and why he hadn't seen me when I was walking around. As it turns out, Jeremy had gone into the IMAX and there were no two seats together, so he waited there for me to come. When I didn't come after a while, he walked around the lobby looking for me. He called and called and texted my phone that he knew I had left in the van. Later he was like "I was hoping you would come out to the van and get your phone", an idea that had never crossed my mind since I assumed we were sitting in the same theater. He said that he was just walking around looking for me, and then he saw that second theater with Iron Man 2, and he KNEW I was in there. We ended up going to a different viewing of the same movie that started at 3:05, or something. So, I watched Iron Man 2, one and a half times. (Lesson learned: never leave your phone in the car. Never.)

Example 4.

Jeremy bought a netbook, and it came in the mail last week while he was gone in Oklahoma. When it came, I was trying to hurry out the door with the kids, so I opened it quickly and plugged it in so it would charge while I was gone. Later I unplugged it so I could take it for a test run, but when I unplugged it it shut off. My first thought was "oh great, it's messed up, just like the netbook Jenna got for Christmas." She had had the same problem-- where it wouldn't hold a charge so she could buy a new battery for it, or return it. I told Jeremy about this and he said "well, look at the manual and see if there is something you're supposed to do with the battery the first time you use it." I did look at the manual and there IS something you're supposed to do with the battery the first time you use it.

"Powering on your Eee PC
These are only quick instructions for using your Eee PC
1. Install the battery pack..."



D'oh.

"Serpent!! SerPENT!!!"

I have been really wanting to post this story about Evie and the egg and now I'm going to, even though it happened a couple of days before Easter... and I've already told many of you the story. The good thing about having waited this long is that now I can retell the story without feeling nauseous, so, that's a plus.

Johnnie and Tammy came to our house the Wednesday night before Easter. The next morning, we loaded up the cars and headed to Tennessee. Well, before we left, the kids were all playing in the front yard while the grown-ups were loading the vehicles. When I was inside the house I heard a bird squawking, and I remembered that a few days prior I had seen a bird who seemed to be protecting her eggs in this batch of rocks at the end of my driveway. I had remarked to Jeremy at how weird that was that a bird would lay her eggs in rocks. (We thought it was a mockingbird.) So as I heard the bird squawking the first thing I thought was "oh, I should go tell Tammy about that bird, in case the kids are playing near her eggs. Where's my wallet? Did I get my phone charger? Did I pack Evie's Easter dress?..." And so my thoughts wandered away from the poor bird. Several minutes later I went outside. We were all standing out there and Evie comes up to us with this dark red gook all over her shirt. We were really alarmed and confused "What the heck is that?" We knew that she had been near that bird and we were wondering if maybe the bird pooped on her or something, but it was dark red gook... hmmm. Well, Jeremy grabs her and takes her in to clean her off. While he was washing her hands... she said... "yucky, chocolate egg!"

Blergh.

We headed out for Tennessee and for the next 2 and a half hours I felt sick to my stomach, and couldn't stop thinking about "the egg incident." Finally, Jeremy said "I am really glad that I didn't see her bite into the egg, but MAN, I wish I could have seen her look of disappointment when she realized it wasn't chocolate."

When we got to Tennessee and were telling Jeremy's uncle about the incident he told us that it was a Kildeer bird, and that they lay their eggs in rocks. Apparently the Kildeer bird will act like it has injured its wing if a prey comes near his/her eggs so the prey will be more interested in this injured animal than the bird eggs. Very neat, and also very sad-- because Tammy said that she had seen that bird acting like that when Evie had run over there. That poor bird was trying so hard to protect her little eggs, then Evie, the little terror monster, destroyed one.

Well, it took a while for the eggs to hatch, but I actually was able to see a couple of little Kildeers walking around. So, all's well that ends well.

"These are little known facts that now you know!!"

How interesting you find this post will be pretty proportional to how familiar you are with Jack's nickname: "Jackamo." I made a reference to this in a flickr title and it made me want to write a blog post about it.

For whatever reason, Jeremy and I watched the 2005 Kentucky Derby (I was pregnant with Jack at the time.) Well, it ended up being a pretty crazy race and was talked about a lot on ESPN the following week. I will post the video here, and you can watch it if you like-- or you can just skip to the end. Or you don't have to watch it at all. What do I care? The point is that for no particular reason, this is where Jack's nickname comes from. He was Jackamo before he was born.



And you haven't heard cute until you've heard Evie call her big brother 'Jackamo', which she does most of the time.

Mustard?! Don't let's be silly.

I had to search my blog to see if I had ever used that subject title before. Do you know what the result was? Nothin'. Not once in my 325 posts have I ever mentioned mustard. Why would I talk about mustard? Exactly.

I hate that I haven't been blogging lately. I sometimes wonder if blogging is worth the time and effort, and I have concluded that it is. The main thing I like about it is that it is a good reference for me when I want to see how old my kids are when they did this or that. Ah well. I'm going to have a pretty bad reference for the past year. I'd like to say I'll be better about it, and maybe I will. But I doubt it. But maybe. Not.

I guess I've got some filling-you-in to do. Well, life seems a lot different these days. Jeremy is working a lot and at random times. The other day he only came home a couple of times, for a couple of hours each time. He spends a lot of time sleeping in his truck, which I hate for him (when proofreading this, I read that as "I hate him for." I just wanted to make sure you didn't misread it. I do hate him, but not for that reason.) He seems to like the change in his job situation, so that makes me happy.

Charlie is WALKING. Big man, Charlie... strutting his stuff all over the place. A video you ask? Of course...



Evie is "mostly" potty-trained. I'll spare you the details as to why she is just "mostly" potty-trained and not "fully" potty-trained. I don't like to tell it and I doubt you'd like to hear it. Whatever the case, I'm glad to be almost 2/3 of the way done with potty-training my kids.

Anyhow, all's well. We're doing well-- went to a marriage retreat last weekend and got to know a lot of cool people in our Sunday School class. For some reason it had been pretty difficult to get to know anyone. Yep, I guess that's it. Now all that are missing are some pictures.........


Brrrrrrrring!














And, there you go.

You can call me "Mr. Jack."

Jack was referring to himself as "Jack-Jack". I said "does Unky Drew call you 'Jack-Jack?"

"No, Unky Drew calls me 'dude'."

"And what does Aunt DeeDee call you?"

"Jack."

"And what does Aunt Jenna call you?"

"Jackamo."

"And what does Mia call you?"

"Mr. Jack. And she calls Evie 'Mrs. Evie'."

"And what does Grandmommy call you?"

"'Darlin' boy' and 'Precious'."

Oh, how He loves us.

Wednesday: Jack starts throwing up, throws up all night while I sleep on floor beside him.

Friday: I start throwing up, and continue to throw up all night.

Saturday: Evie throws up a couple of times, I still feel sick all day.

Sunday: Good day, everyone feels good, I get to play volleyball with Andrea. While I'm gone, Charlie starts running fever. Charlie runs fever all night, waking a couple of times.

Monday: I'm in an exceptionally bad mood all day for whatever reason (lack of sleep? Or maybe because of my entry-way and my daughter getting mucked up with toddler poo while I'm trying to get my kids out the door.) Charlie runs fever all day, and all night. High of 104.2 degrees. Doesn't sleep most of the night. Neither do I.

Tuesday: I take Charlie to the doctor-- has an ear infection, but Jack and Evie's ear infections from a week or so are healed. Jeremy comes home throwing up and continues to throw up...

So here I am. And that was my week, which, when combined with not getting to spend time with Jeremy and the stress of handling three children, it feels like a lot. And all I can think all week is "I have nothing to complain about." I want to complain (boy, do I want to complain.) And frankly, I'm a little annoyed that I don't feel I have the right to complain. But really, my life is easier than a lot of peoples' lives. I'm richly blessed with healthy happy children and a healthy happy husband, and a healthy happy self. Some days seem almost too much to handle, but that's because I don't know what that phrase really means. I know that this is what God is mostly teaching me in this season in my life. To be thankful. I thanked him when I was cleaning up Jack's vomit: "Thank you that he is a healthy child and that this is a rare occasion." When I'd throw up, when Evie or Charlie would wake me through the night, when Jeremy would be late at work, when I felt overwhelmed by my kids or my house. God kept showing me the blessings that are continually surrounding me and that I overlook. And really what it boils down to is this: no matter what is going on in my life, there will always been some blessing I'm not noticing or some good I take for granted, because God takes care of me.

Anyhow, that's just something I've had on my mind a lot all week. It's nothing clever or funny or stupid. It's not even well thought out. And that's why I like my blog. It can be whatever I want it to be.

Professor Quigley showed me how.

When Jeremy's mom and dad came to see us a couple of weeks ago, Tammy asked what toys she could get for the kids. I told her that Jack has REALLY been into the alphabet and remembering how to spell words, so any toy that involved spelling words would be great. She found the perfect things: this and this. She got one of those for Evie, but I can't remember which, and neither can Jack. Nowadays my house is covered with these letters ALL day long. I clean them up a few times a day, and then wonder why I did that. Today, after weeks of this craziness, I finally just put all the letters up on the mantle and told Jack he could play with them tomorrow. He went into the kitchen and started playing with the letters on the fridge. I tell you, he is obsessed. This morning, I was on the couch feeding Charlie. Jack wakes up and walks into the living room and I'm thinking "I know just what he's about to do." He says "Good morning, Mommy", sits in front of the couch, opens the drawer of the ottoman, opens the drawer where all of his letters are and says "I'm going to spell a word."

In the past, I have been completely amazed by Jack's insane memory and his attention to detail even at an early age. In fact, I'm a little ashamed because his memory is so much better than mine. When he was a little over three he had been asking me to "draw" a bunch of words and he would just watch me form the letters. He started writing the letter "H" and "A" on his own, but that's all I knew he knew how to do-- until one day, he was sitting in his room coloring. He came to me and said "Mommy, I drew Halliburton." I went in his room really not knowing what to expect. When I saw what he "drew", I was dumbfounded. He had written the letters H-A-L-L-I. I had never even told him how to spell the word Halliburton, he only knew that much from having seen it on Jeremy's work truck and his coveralls.

Basically Jack learned how to write all of his letters (upper case and lower case) on his own, from just having seen us write. Recently I realized that he can spell about 30-35 words from memory and even more recently I realized that he knows how to read basic three letter words, and he's not even four yet. He blows my mind, and that's the point of this blog. I didn't write it to brag on my son, although I am, of course, very proud of him. I wrote this because he's crazy smart and it baffles me and I thought it might baffle you too. That's all.

Sleepy-head, spaghetti-face.

(And speaking of sleepy bears...)

A little bit of sweetness

I have been wanting to post, and I don't have time, so I'm using this as an excuse to post. This is one of my favorite pictures of all time, and I only just realized that it is isn't on my flickr account, so I'm posting it here. SO THERE!

Thank God for Charlie

We recently had to put Evie in a toddler bed because she discovered how to climb out of her crib. I was pretty glad too, because I really wanted Charlie in the crib instead of the pack n’ play. A few days before her 2nd birthday, she made the transition. We weren’t really sure how this would go because Evie has always been an amazing sleeper. She rarely cried when she woke up or went to sleep. She usually seemed grateful to be laid down for a nap. But that first night of sleeping in her toddler bed, she woke up around 1:45 and would NOT go back to sleep. No crying, she just wouldn’t stay in her room. I was up with her until 5:15. Then she woke up crying at 6:30, (because for some reason, Jack and Evie always wake up around 6 or 6:30 no matter what time that go to bed the night before.) That was the worst of the nights, but I really haven’t been getting much sleep since then. Well last week I felt like I was at my wit’s end. I was tired and my patience with Jack and Evie was worn thin. And I realized that no matter how difficult life was at that point, the happiest I was during the days (when Jeremy wasn’t here) was when I was looking at Charlie. I felt a renewal when he smiled at me. That little face and those little coos really helped me get through and I thanked God so much for such a little treasure of a baby—and he really is. He doesn’t fuss unless there’s something to fuss about and I find that I almost never get irritated with him. I think it is wrong to have favorites when you have children, but surely there isn’t anything wrong with having day-to-day favorites? In fact, I think it’s impossible. I always love my kids equally, but I definitely favor specific ones on specific days. At night I used to always say “thank God for Evie” because she was the only one not waking me up at night. Then during the day I would say “thank God for Jack” because he would be so sweet and Evie would be—well, not so much. And really, in the end, it doesn’t matter because they all go through stages. Of course I’m going to prefer some stages over others, and no matter what Evie is putting me through right now with her terrible twos and her difficult sleep transition, she’s always going to be my sweet little Evie-Bear, and the sweetness of her hugs and her precious little voice is enough for me to forgive her of all of her transgressions. And really, that’s the only reason I have three children. God knew he had to make them cute and sweet or no one would want to populate the earth.

Note: while writing this, I have been trying to get Evie to take a nap. I’ve been trying to get her to go to sleep for two hours. I’ve been in her room countless times, and one of those times was spent cleaning up a mess she made of trying to change her own dirty diaper. I think it’s time to go look at a sleeping Charlie. Sometimes having a third child can actually make life easier.

Accept this video and pictures.

I really don't even have time to post this, but I thought I would go ahead and do it since it's been so long. My regular camera is broken, so I apologize for all of my camera phone pictures. Maybe I'll get a camera for my birthday? Pretty nice timing for my camera to die, I'd say.


Anybody that sees regular pictures of my kids may notice that Jack is almost always just wearing his underwear and no pants. That is because he still frequently gets his pants wet when he needs to go to the bathroom. If anyone has a suggestion on how to help him with this problem, don't be shy. I'm all ears.



Camera phone or not, this is one of my favorite pictures of all time. The way the sky is reflecting in her all ready blue eyes. The way she is sweetly holding her apple. The way her shirt is so accurate.



Jack loves Looney Tunes now. This was taken a week or so ago. He has now gotten better at placing his letters in the right spot. He does that-- just practices and practices doing things until he gets it right.



I walked in to see Evie placing diapers on top of Charlie. One by one... "here ya go, Charlie. Here ya go, Charlie. Here ya go, Charlie..." Yesterday she killed my head when she comforted a crying Charlie "don't cry, Charlie. What's wrong, Charlie? Don't cry, Charlie."



And there's Charlie, being too sweet, as always.

I like my life.

Evie saw Jack playing with his drawing board. "I heppoo, Jack."(I'll help you, Jack). He tugged it away and said "no, Evie. This is for grown-ups."

All this has happened before...

Quick, Jeremy... the camera!!



One thing you may notice in this video is Evie dropping her food on the floor. She is such a stinker. She gets in trouble when she does this, but she TOTALLY took advantage of us focusing on Charlie to drop the remains of her food on the ground. Even though Jeremy is filming, he didn't realize what she was doing until we watched the video together. We looked at each other and exclaimed "that little stinker!" (This behavior is not unlike her OLDER brother- who did something similarly scampy when we filmed Evie's first laughing video.) Man, I always underestimate the sneakiness of children.

(I may as well post a link to Jack's first laughing video.)

"They look the same."

You may have heard us talk about how much Charlie looks like Jack when he was a baby, but I thought you might like to see some photographic evidence.

Jack


Charlie


Jack


Charlie

Inside guitars and under houses

It's so hard to imagine how three-year-olds see the world. What's even stranger is to imagine what they think of dreams and how they relate to that world. To my knowledge Jack had never told me about anything from his dreams, so I had never thought to explain to him what dreams are.

A few nights ago, Jack woke up in the middle of the night, crying. I went into his room to see what was the matter. He was crying and yelling something about "pop monsters". I thought that maybe he had a bad dream about monsters (which I thought strange since the only monsters he knows about are nice monsters-- Grover, Cookie Monster, etc.) Then Jack started yelling "I want my pop monsters!!" I said "OK, Jack. Where are your pop monsters?" He said "in my toy box!!!" I turned on his light, walked over to closet, opened the toy box and said "there aren't any monsters in here, Jack. Just Cookie Monster and he's a nice monster." This only added to the fury of his crying. "I WANT MY POP MONSTERS!!!!" I said "Sweetheart, I don't know what you're talking about. Where are the pop monsters?" He said "in my guitar". Well, I wasn't going to get his guitar for him because I didn't think it would help anything and also it's kind of loud. I just wanted him to go back to sleep. Jeremy came in the room and told me that Charlie was crying, so I went to tend to him. Jeremy held Jack and calmed him by saying that he could play with the "pop monsters" in the morning.

Well, 6:30 rolls around and Jack strolls into my room. "I found my guitar, Mommy." I yawned and said "oh, good, Jack." He walked over to my side of the bed and said "can you open it and get the pop monsters out?"

"Um... Sweetie, I can't open it. See? It doesn't open."

[Starts screaming and crying] I WANT MY POP MONSTERS, MOMMY!!!! GET MY POP MONSTERS OUT!!!" (By the way, Jack isn't prone to crying and screaming when he doesn't get his way) It was very alarming and I wondered if he ever went to sleep or if he just sat in his bed waiting for the first sign of light to get his pop monsters out of the guitar.

I started trying to calm him down.

"OK, Jack, well tell me what the pop monsters look like."

He calmed down and said "red, green, blue and yellow."

"Are they small?"

"No, they're big."

"Do they have eyes?"

"No, they have music notes."


???

(Later when I looked at his guitar he showed me the buttons on it. They were different colors and had music notes on them.)

He was still upset so I tried to explain to him what a dream is, and I found it a very difficult thing to explain. He seemed to accept it, but for the rest of the day, continued to tell everyone about the pop monsters.

Moving on from one crazy child to another...

Later on, we went over to a lady's house so our kids could have a "playdate." [Shudder.] (Can I just say how much I hate the word "playdate." I HATE IT. This lady, -we'll call her "Mrs.M"- asked us over for a "playdate." If you use that word, that's quite all right. I don't think there is anything wrong with you. Just try not to use that word around me. Or do.) Back to my story.

When we first got there I was talking to Mrs.M, asking her if there was anything my kids could get into, explaining to her that if there was, then my kids would get into it. I said "they're kind of wild." She said "oh my kids are very wild." (Maybe she meant to say "mild", because I never saw evidence of any wildness in them.) Later the kids all started playing outside. I saw Evie spot the three outdoor cats Mrs.M owned and she got so excited. It was her first time to see a cat in.... person? (Oh, okay. Definition: in one's bodily presence.) So her first time to see a cat in person. She ran over to the side of the house. I'm so used to my kids getting into all kinds of mischief that I have to think about the worst things that could happen. I thought about their house and how it was situated and I thought it seemed likely that the cats were running over to the side of the house to climb under the house. I immediately asked "is it possible for Evie to climb under your house?" She said "yeah, but I doubt she would." Her saying those words only confirmed it in my mind. Evie was under the house. I ran over there and sure enough, she was crawling in this extremely dark damp muddy place under the house. She was just crawling around with the cats. It would have been extremely amusing if it hadn't been so so very terrifying. I tried to sound calm and not think about the possibility of broken bottles and snakes that could be under that house. "Evie, sweetheart. Why don't you come over here to mommy? Maybe we can get some juice in your cup! Mmmm. OK? But you have to come over here to mommy."

..... Nothing.

Fortunately, she followed the cats to another opening at the back of the house and even though the open space was small, I was able to grab her and pull her out. Man, just typing that out and remembering how scary it was really stressed me out.

Maybe Mrs.M now knows just how literal I was being when I used the word "wild" to describe my children.

Au contraire, 'Etagere.

Thanks to my mother-in-law for educating my mind this past weekend. I had never heard the word "'Etagere" before, but apparently it is another word for bookshelf. And so I post it here for all of you readers, to add another word to your vocabulary, if it wasn't there already.

We had a great time (as always) with Jeremy's family. Jeremy had training in Spring on Tuesday, so we used it as an excuse for a long weekend... a really long weekend because we added two days to Jeremy's days off. We were able to spend five days in Texas! Very nice. And since I am a complete doofus, I forgot to take pictures while we were there. Maybe I have some on my camera or my phone. I'll have to check on that. Anyhow, it was very delightul (it is extremely difficult typing the letter F on this laptop, so forgive me for any F related typos.) As I was saying it was very delightul, except or the last day. Little Evie got pretty sick (high fever, vomiting, some sort o mini-seizure...) No bueno. So we drove back home and she has been eeling much better. Now we are all ive o us dealing with colds.

On the way back from Kingwood, Jeremy got to experience an embarrassing parenting moment. We stopped at a gas station to use the restroom and Jeremy took Jack to the men's room. While Jack was using the restroom, a man came in and occupied the stall next to them. When he sat down, Jack, upon seeing the man's shoes said "who's that, Daddy?" (Mind you, Jack only recently became a potty-trained citizen so using a public restroom is a bit foreign to him.) Jeremy said "That's a guy." Jack said "Is he using the bathroom?" Jeremy tried not to laugh and said "yes." Soon after that, I guess the man started really taking care of some "business." Jack said "Is he tooting?" And before Jeremy could say anything Jack said "he's tooting really loud!"

Sorry, I don't mean to turn my blog into one of those humor sections from Reader's Digest. I just find some of these situations too amusing not to share.

In addition

Yesterday, as I was giving Charlie a bath, Jack was climbing around on the bathtub. Jack started touching my back with his pointer finger, and each time he did, he would count "1,2,3,4,5..." I didn't think much of it because he always does random stuff like that. Then he did it again and said "I can count on you, Mommy." An amusing interpretation of the phrase, which he undoubtedly learned from Handy Manny.

No, YOU spell it!

Jack has been very interested in spelling lately. Or rather, Jack has lately been very interested in spelling. He actually knows how to spell halliburton because he frequently sees it on Jeremy's truck and coveralls.