Weekend update

No real news here, except that the poor boy is heading into his 3rd cold since Christmas. Ugh. Winter is too long. It is the hardest thing, to have a sick toddler. There is so little we can do to help him really feel better-- and when he does not feel well, he does not sleep well, thus neither do we. He's all slathered in Vicks, humidifier on, Tylenol in, and we are hoping for the best night possible. Sigh.

In the face of this cold, Jack has been in amazingly good spirits. He's generally in good spirits, actually. A happy kid, and such a talker these days! He using very nice sentences with very unique grammar, and is constantly making neat connections. The other night on a walk, Jack noted that the "moon turned off!" when some clouds passed over the moon... And then a few nights later he remarked upon getting out of the car in Lakewood that the "moon followed us!". He really likes the moon these days.

Another recent development is that he is moving towards representational drawing. He will make a very purposful line or shape on the paper and then tell us what it is. Yesterday he drew a door (and it really did look like a nice, arched doorway) and then, after telling me it was a door, proceeded to make a doorknob in just the right spot. I was blown away. He also drew what he called a mountain on that same page. I didn't know that he even knew the word mountain, much less how to draw a roughly triangular shape to represent one. It's so fun to watch him learn and develop.

We are also very impressed by how polite and rather compassionate he can be, all of a sudden. When Nat bumped his head on Saturday, Jack offered to kiss it for him to make him feel better. He not only uses please and thank you on a regular basis, he now says he is sorry. When he does something wrong and we snap at him a bit-- he does an amazing job of making us feel bad with his "I'm torry, mommy. I'll try it again!". He also says he is sorry when we are upset, as though he had done something! Today he apologized for not feeling well!

Thinking of things that get me choked up- yesterday over breakfast Jack and I had a full conversation about his future sister. He actually brought it up (I found out later that Nat had been talking about his sister with him the night before, on the way home from visiting Melinda, Will and their little babies). All of a sudden he looks at me and says "my tister! My tister in your tummy!" We proceeded to talk about how she was not yet ready to come out and play (he asked if she was "ready to come out now? Can I play with her?) He also expressed intersest in "checking" her when she gets bigger. Judging by how he held his hands out when saying this, I interpreted "check" to mean something like checking on, touching, or holding. I think this came from Friday night when he wanted to "check" on baby Lillian ( who I got to hold!) and I told him maybe he could when she got bigger. So now I think he imagines he'll have to wait a while to hold his sister, too. I assured him that even though she won't play, he could hold her and kiss her just as soon as possible after she's born. This seemed to satisfy him. I can't wait to see him hold her for the first time, see what kind of a big brother he'll be. Judging by the surprising kindness and empathy he's been showing recently, I'm hopeful for a pretty good relationship!