Bits of Tid

See the watches in the picture above? Lewis bought me the one on the left for Christmas 2011. It was lost within a few months (based on the time it showed when we found it, it went missing sometime after daylight savings started). So Lewis lovingly bought me the watch on the right for Christmas 2012. We found the missing watch not one week later, stashed away in our storage ottoman as we were cleaning it out. This is why my watches are purchased at Walmart.

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Christmas break makes me even more grateful that Lewis is a teacher. Having him home for two whole weeks? Divine. Jack, however, did not appreciate having his dad around as much as I did. The last few days of the break found us with a whiny Jack that needed to be in his mothers arms AT ALL TIMES. Talk about exhausting. I was not at all looking forward to Lewis going back to school and leaving me with alone with our precious little imp.

But back to school he went. And something amazing happened: Jack and I had the best day! We played lots of games, read a bajilion books, he ate all his food without a fuss (and some of it even leaned towards healthy), he took a decent nap... Oh, it was the greatest.

Until Lewis came home. Then clingy Jack was back. Clingy Jack likes to scream when Mom and Dad are near each other and have a complete melt down if they actually touch each other. Forget about hugging and kissing.

Clingy Jack hung around until I left for a church meeting. Then happy Jack was back and had a blast with his dad until bedtime. We are pretty sure that Jack, the world's biggest Mama's boy, thinks he has to compete with his father for my affection/attention, especially since Lewis was around all the time for break. But if it's just him and Mom, he has all the attention he needs and he's fine. If it's just him and Dad and neither of them have Mom's attention, he's fine, the little stinker. Heaven help us all when his baby sister arrives.

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Jack loves football. His first (easily discernible) word was, "Go" which he yells repeatedly at the TV screen whenever football is on. Obviously our commitment to keep the TV off around the kid does not extend to this, the greatest sport of all the sports. And with the college bowl season in full swing over break, Jack got used to watching football (which he lovingly calls, "go, go, go") all. The. Time.

Well, with the bowl season winding down, football is not on nearly as often as it was before. So when Jack brings me the remote to the TV, asks for "go, go, go," and I have to tell him that it's not on, bad things happen. Tantrummy things. Which escalate when, not five minutes later, he hands me a sock, holds up his foot, and I put the sock on, which was apparently very much not what he wanted(?).

I was at just about my wits end when I had the inspiration to pull out a bag of marshmallows. Jack goes wild over marshmallows. Like, peepants wild. Good thing he's still in diapers. I put a little bowl of them out on a kitchen chair, he gave me a snot-nosed kiss, and has been running back and forth between the bowl on the chair and his sound-light-table thing with a big, silly grin on his face ever since. So today I thank you, Jet-Puffed. You saved my bacon.