It's happening

My "little baby" is turning in to a big boy.  Yesterday his uncle Scotty (one of two) saw him and said "Baby Jack, when did you become a man"?

And they say that kids always reflect parts of their parents.  Jack has my pasty white skin and blonde coloring, my love of organizing and cleaning, a manic obsession with lights being turned off when you leave a room and chairs being pushed in, and my dislike of most vegetables.  To date, Jack has Troy's furrowed brow scowl, and love of adventure, but nothing has really screamed "Troy".

Until Saturday...

My wonderful father-in-law Barry likes to tell a story about Troy when he was about 4 years old.  Troy is known as "mumbles" because since he could first talk he has talked at almost a whisper or his mouth sounds like it's so full of marbles you can't understand what he is say.  Verbal from The Usual Suspects was likely modeled after Troy.

One day when Troy was little, Barry took him to get his allergy shots.  They were standing on a street corner and all of the sudden Troy yelled "dad that lady is FAT".  Barry recounts how in Troy's whole life he never spoke above a whisper, and yet he chooses that to shout.

Flash forward to Saturday.  Jack and I are at Fred Meyer when a very large man walks past us.  Jack yells "Hi Santa Cwas"!  Without stopping to think, I turn the cart out of the aisle and start heading the other way.  Jack, thinking Santa was simply playing coy yelled "Hi hi hi Santa.  Ho ho ho".

With all the rain we've been having this winter, I had hoped a sinkhole would develop in the baking aisle of Fred Meyer.  Alas, it did not.

The Boy Wonder reads

Stylin & profiling

Please do not adjust your computer settings - his head is truly that big.

Sparkling pink sequined headband - CHECK!

Homemade superman cape - CHECK!

Thomas the Train jammies - CHECK!

Sly smile - CHECK!

Three cooks in the Kitchen

A few weeks ago I scored an awesome play kitchen for Jack on freecycle.  If you don't already use freecycle - you need to!  It's kind of like craigslist, but everything is 100% free.  You can send out emails saying you're looking for something, or have something to get rid of.  I've scored nearly new toddler rain boots ($20 at Target), an almost new pair of snowpants that Jack can use in 1-2 years, and now Jack's play kitchen!

J bone has LOVED to help me cook for months.  It usually takes about 5 times as long to make the food, and 10 times as long to clean it up, but it's worth every second because it makes him so happy.  I wanted to foster his love of cooking and encourage creativity, but there were two issues:

1) we don't have extra money for a play kitchen
2) we don't have extra money for a play kitchen

Er...I guess that is just 1 issue.

Anyhoo, I posted on freecycle that we were looking for a play kitchen.  Withing 24 hours, someone responded that they had a wooden one that had been "rode hard and well loved, but it should clean up well".  On MLK day, Jack and I drove out to the BFE portion of our county and picked it up.  The little girl who had outgrown it came running out of her house with a huge bag of plastic food and said "he can have these too".  SCORE!  Freecycle isn't about bartering, but I did give them a fresh and still warm from the oven loaf of my bread as a thank you.

It stayed in Troy's truck for a few weeks, but finally this weekend we brought it upstairs after Jack went to bed and cleaned it up.  "We" is a relative term because I made Troy do it all.  We threw the plastic food in the dishwasher on sanitize.  Troy covered the kitchen with a blanket, and we waited for Jack to wake up the next morning.

The kitchen was A HIT!  And who cares that it's pink!

We've run in to a new way of teaching Jack about what constitutes "real food".  I'm doing my best to make clear to him that an onion, banana, egg, and a corn cob are not the core ingredients of a successful birthday cake.  You have to give the boy credit for creativity though!  And hey, the dinosaurs LOVED it.