My big boy

Jack is growing to be such a big boy now. He continues to be a lot of work and a lot of fun. I'll admit that I had hoped that some of the work would have given way to more of the fun at this stage of the game, but Jack definitely marches to the beat of his own drum. It is simply amazing how one little person can fill me with such love and such rage at the same time.

Jack recently learned how to pump on the swings by himself. It is one of my favorite milestones yet. It's so nice not to have to stand there and push him while we go to the park. And he is so proud of himself - justifiably - that he just wants to swing all the time and show off his new skills.

He has recently gotten really into drawing and writing. He knows how to write his name and all the numbers, so he spends a lot of time doing that. While this is undeniably cool, I do wish he would cut himself (and us) a little slack. He gets so frustrated when the letters and numbers don't come out just the way he wants.

He is doing really well at preschool, although I'm afraid the bloom is coming off the rose just a bit with him. He has been asking us the last few days why he has to go to school for so long. He says that he misses me and Violet while he's at school. I don't want to tell him that the three hours he is gone just whiz by for me.

The class recently had a little field trip that I got to chaperon. The teacher had made him the line leader, and all the little kids were holding on to this rope as they walked to and through a nearby canyon. Jack was getting so irritated that the kids were going as fast as he wanted.

"Why are they going so slow?" he kept complaining.

He kept trying to pull the rope to make them go faster, which of course didn't work at all. On the way back, the teacher decided that maybe it would be better for him if he were at the end of the line rather than the front, so she just had all the kids turn around and go in the opposite order that they came. But then Jack started whining, "They're going too fast!"

A couple of months ago, we finally had the conversation with him about what it means to be a vegetarian and why we don't eat meat. We weren't explicit about the process of how animals become food, but we told him that meat is made out of animals and we don't eat animals. Now, he always asks if something has meat in it before he eats it. He is very interested in which of his friends eat meat and why do they eat meat? We tell him that different families have different rules. He wants to tell everyone that they shouldn't eat meat, but I tell him, no, it's not polite to tell other people what to do. It's such a fine line between trying to pass down our values without stigmatizing those of other families.

He is getting to an age where his friends are starting to get more into superheroes and typical boy things. He still doesn't really have any firsthand experience with them, but it's amazing how quickly he picks the up the lingo, even if he doesn't really understand what it all means. One of his friends was talking about ripping off the arms of one of "the bad guys" so that he'll be dead. For the next several days, Jack kept saying, "Rip off his arms so he'll be dead."

Another time, this same friend was talking about killing a bad guy. Later that same day, Tom and Jack went to pick up a pizza. Jack wanted to wait in the car while Tom ran in to get it, but Tom said, no, they had to go together because he wouldn't want someone else to think that they could just take Jack home because his daddy wasn't with him. He was taken aback when Jack said, "Wouldn't you just kill him?"

We were at some friends' house recently, and they have nerf guns that one of the boys was teaching Jack how to work. I don't really love guns, but I had to laugh the next time we went to these same friends' house and Jack asked me, "Where are the gums?"

We are trying to teach him what it means to be grateful. We are very blessed to have all that we do, and sometimes I worry that he thinks it all happens by magic. I want him to understand that everything he has is the result of someone's time, effort, money, and love for him. He still doesn't quite get it, but he tells me that one thing he is grateful for is Violet, whom he has taken to calling simply "Sister."

"She is a blessing to me," he told me.

"Yes, she is," I told him. "She is a blessing to all of us."

"She is my biggest blessing," he said. "And I am your biggest blessing."

Well, Jack, you are definitely one of them.