Some time with Jack

Jack, it turns out, does more than shoot droids (or hold his daddy's guitars).

In the last couple of weeks he's matured at an amazing rate. His speech is very articulate (going from "No! Me have cereal" to "No! I will have Rice Chex"). He's playing more complex and imaginitave games with Henry and Sam. And he's spending a lot of time in the upstairs playroom, sitting on the floor, floating in a sea of legos.

I sat down with him yesterday for a good half-hour (until the hard floor hurt my bum and ankles too much). He wasn't playing with the monster-sized Duplo blocks, mind you, he was playing with the "Indiana Jones shirts" and "Stormtrooper pants" of the little lego people, moving them around on various scooters and ships and, well, shooting doids. I fumbled around for a while trying to build my own ships and get into the battle, but it wasn't very interesting to Jack. I was reduced to a lackey finding specific shirts, pants, helments, and arms for him.

Then I picked up a base and started to build a classic lego brick wall. Overlaying bricks, putting in the occasional wall. "Do you like my wall, Jack?" big deal. Shoots some droids. I keep building "Want to help me build my house, Jack?" Nah. Needs another helmet. I keep building. "Want to come over to my house, Jack?"

A-ha!

Jack came over, walked his Indiana-Stormtrooper up and down the walls, looked out the windows, went down the slide on the front, had dinner. He even took a nap (with both blaster-guns pointing straight up) to wake up and shoot droids. He's got an imagination.

Later that night, as I headed off to bed so I could wake at 3:30 for business travel, I came across Jack back in the play room. "Jack, want to go to bed?" Sure. He brought his Indiana-Stormtrooper, we got his jammies on, brushed teeth, crawled into bed, and he was out in a few minutes.

I was a good dad yesterday.