An Evening with Jack

(photo courtesy of Zefflerphoto.com)
I am sitting outside enjoying the patter of the rain while remaining dry underneath the porch. I am watching Jack push his Tonka truck around that he has been pushing every day since his first birthday. That is about 550 days of pushing that truck for at least 30 minutes a day. I guess if there was ever a durable vehicle to own it would be the yellow Tonka dump truck found at your local Wal-mart. It will cost you a mere $31.50 after tax. Unfortunately, it can only fit your foot so using this for a means of transportation will never be a good idea.

I am putting my book down because even though the plot is really suspenseful, Jack is ten times more so. He has decided he wants to sit next to me. He can't find his blue chair. I see it on the lawn tipped upside down drip, drip, dripping every second with water. I tell him to go and get it. He comes back with Kate's chair that is identical to his, but pink. He puts it next to my chair so we are both lined up perfectly side by side. He sits down just after I see that his chair has a giant puddle of wet mud in the center of the seat where his bum now resides. He looks at me and smiles oblivious to the wet beneath him because he is wearing a pull-up. He still wears those at night and I had put one on him because he looked really clean to me and ready for bed. I thought we could forego bath time this night and just shuffle him in to bed in a few. That was before the rain.

He disappears into the house and comes back with an individual serving container of peanut butter. His latest addiction. He has also retrieved a spoon from the drawer and I am impressed. He hands it to me to remove the top followed by "thanks mom" pronounced " thanks mawwwm". He takes one spoonfull and slops it into his mouth. He sits down with peanut butter in one hand and in spoon in the other. I notice a fly on the side of his head. He does too. He puts the peanut butter and spoon down on the ground, one item by each foot. The ground is covered in dirt from the dust storm that occured one hour previously and I can imagine the peanut butter collecting on the dirt nicely for the next bite. He reaches up and scratches the side of his head where the bug leaves. It was not a fly, but a mosquito therefore resulting in an itch. He nonchalantly scratches it twice and then picks up the articles again. He looks at me and smiles with his sincerely happy and proud smile and begins eating.

I enter the house briefly to check on the baby and return to him covered in dirt. His sponge bob pajama top is covered along with his face. The peanut butter is back on the ground next to the smeared spoon. It appears that he really did roll in the dirt which is confirmed when I look into his inflatable dry pool and see the perfect spot in the shape of his figure now clean from dirt thanks to him. He looks at me with an excited look and says "wain comin!" I say "yes, it is raining!" Fortunately for me he loves baths and with one quiet mention of the word he is off running into the bathroom with me trailing behind him. When it comes to Jack, a bath must never be skipped no matter how clean you thought he would stay.

He is clean and ready for bed. He is telling me that he will go night night and in the morning see Daddy. I gulp down a feeling of guilt because this made me remember that today of all days Josh was working an overtime night shift before his real shift in the morning. He was ready for work by 4 p.m. and when Jack saw this he ran into his room to get dressed for work too. He emerged from his room wearing a weird hat and shoes as if this qualified him for going to work with Daddy.

I give him a hug and he instructs me to kiss both of his cheeks. He then returns the favor on my cheeks followed by a big hug. We said our prayers to which he included pointing to the new longboard wood stored under his bed and said "what's that mom?" "wood for Daddy's boards" . He folded his arms again and said " thank you for the wood boards." He included everything about his day in the prayer and thanked Heavenly Father for all of it. He finished with the most confidence pronounced in his "amen" and rested his head on his pillow. "Night Night Jack" "Night Maawwm!"

And thus concludes one evening of thankfully so many with Jack.