Jude: 10 things

1. Jude is of the belief that he can only love one thing: trains (obviously). If you ask him if he loves something or someone he will respond with "no, I love trains!" The other day Jude was talking very excitedly about Halloween and trick or treating, so I said, "Jude, you love Halloween!" He responded with, "No, I love trains!"

2. Jude has (finally) reached the stage were he plays independently most of the time. It's really funny to hear his little imagination start to work. Some of his favorites things to play are: airport (involving the bus that takes you from your car, the plane you ride on, and the train that takes you between terminals), making things that aren't trains into trains (especially necklaces), and singing songs to his trains.

3. I don't know what it is about boys, but seriously, everything is a gun. Every. thing. And I have no clue where he gets this from! We don't own guns, real or fake, we don't watch movies or tv shows with guns or violence, or even talk about guns. But it doesn't matter, Jude still loves to grab some random object and yell "It's a gun! I shoot you mom!" He really doesn't even know what a gun actually is; one time Peter showed him a toy gun in the store and he had no clue what it was. I've tried to explain that shooting people is bad and guns are dangerous, but it's to no avail. Everything is a gun. Always.

4. A lot of times when kids want attention they start to act out or destroy things to get your attention. Jude used to do this, but recently he's switched tactics. If he doesn't think you're giving him enough attention, he'll climb on your lap and say "I love you!" and smother you with kisses and hugs. And he doesn't stop till he feels he's had enough attention or you go play with him. I must say, this works much better for me!

5. For Jude's birthday, we got him a balance bike. I was really excited about the balance bike idea after watching my old neighbor's kids ride theirs like pros. But of course, Jude was totally uninterested in it for the first few weeks. I would beg him to at least try it, but he kept telling me "I just need ride my old bike 5 minutes!" Finally, this last week we had a breakthrough. Our neighbors 3 year olds both ride "big kid bikes" with training wheels, so I managed to convince Jude that if he wants to keep up with his friends he needs to ride the balance bike. He still prefers his "old one" but is getting better at the new bike. Hopefully we can move completely away from the old push car in the next few months.

6. Jude loves to say thank you. And not just when it's expected. He'll say thank you for snacks or whatever, but he apparently just loves saying thank you, so he'll say it to all kinds of random things. "Thank you mommy for telling me to put away my shoes!" "Thank you for putting me in time out!" "Thank you for telling me to pick up my toys!"

7. I've mentioned before Jude's love of singing random songs. Some times he'll just get in his own world and walk around singing little songs, mostly about trains. A lot of times they are totally made up, like "The Train Goes Down the Track to Jamba Juice" and "The Train Goes Through the Tunnel to See the Fireworkers." (fireworkers = fireworks)

 8. Jude has learned to pray over the past few months. Little kid prayers are just amazing. And hilarious. He always says the same few phrases: "Bless be like Jesus" "Thank you be obedient" "Please bless it." And then he'll throw in some other little phrases about our day or what we're talking about, which always very impressive and sweet. In the words of Peter, "Those are the cutest vain repetitions I've ever heard."

 9. After we potty trained him (or at least, finished stage one of potty training...it's always two steps forward and one step back), Jude started waking up every morning earlier and earlier. I think he just needed to go to the bathroom but didn't understand that he had to go back to sleep afterwards. After he started waking up at 5:30am, I knew I needed to fix this sleep crisis. I'm barely a morning person as it is at 7am...5:30, no way. So we bought him one of those "ok to wake" alarm clocks; it glows green when he's allowed to get out of bed. It actually works really well! Almost every morning he bursts into my room, bellowing, "IT'S GREEN! I play on your iphone!" (I buy myself a few more minutes of sleep by letting him lay in bed and play on my iphone, if Ellie isn't squawking yet.)

10. Jude has recently started saying "No" to me. It's like he's just realized he can do that. Honestly, it's thrown me for a bit of loop lately, trying to figure out how to get him to listen and follow instructions when he does that. Exasperated, I've said, "Did you just say no to me? Who's in charge?!" "I'm in charge mom!" Well, walked right into that one.