Randoms

Jack may be a tiny would-be psychopath. On Criminal Minds (et al) they always talk about how serial killers start with animal torture at a young age. Well, Jack finds it absolutely hilarious to try to gauge Jet's eyeballs out and grab two handfuls of kitten hair/skin and pull – hard. Belly laugh funny. Every time he does this I spend time working on “gentle hands” while secretly pleading that I don't someday hear a news story about my son that begins with “members of the crazy man's family say they should have known it would come to this...they say he used to torture his pets.”

Jack fixates on words/objects/books/whatever for a few days to a week and then finds something new. Sometimes they are pretty weird. Current obsessions: geese (real ones, we have hundreds all over the neighborhood), a book called “Farm” and subsequently the words “mud,” “mice,” and “sheep” (although if he said them out of context I'm not sure I would recognize them), turning the TV on and off, The Wiggles, and the aforementioned animal torture. The funniest one is Exit signs. Everywhere we go, the best way to distract him if he is getting antsy is to ask him where “Exit” is. He will hunt and hunt until he finds one and is just elated each time he discovers another one. Places this has been especially useful: Target (Jack's second home), Kroger, the mall, and most importantly, IKEA. I say most importantly because that place is such a ginormous maze, it takes us a minimum of 90 minutes to take a quick trip there. During one trip there, he made eye contact with an employee, pointed up at one of the signs, and said – with PERFECT pronunciation - “EXIT!” She was pretty stunned. I had to reassure her that I was not raising a baby genius and that he had no idea what it meant, it was just a totally random fifth word (first 4: dada, Jet, mama, dog, which I think I have mentioned before, and they were in that order).

He won't wear shoes. This may be problematic sooner rather than later since he is also walking more and more every day, and loves being outside. Plus, I have already had several random oldish women grab his feet and say, “Where are your shoes?” in a little singsong voice. That needs to end NOW. According to the experts at Stride Rite, where baby shoes cost an exorbitant FORTY DOLLARS, they tell me that Jack has size 5.5 extra wide feet. Not just wide...extra wide. My current mission is finding reasonably-priced baby shoes that will fit on his special chunker feet that he will tolerate so I can stop taking flak from passive aggressive Mommy judgers.

More to come... I have to work today so I'm rushing around this morning. Such is the life.