Z Man

There is SO much to say about Luke, but today it's all about Zach. Like most three-year-olds, Zach is at one moment unbelievably cute and at the next moment incorrigible. In the past week he has simultaneously added joy to this trip and made it incredibly difficult. But happily for the rest of us he is a sucker for the charms of my dad, who managed to capture him in a few rare, silly, unguarded moments in front of the camera. Here he is holding his new little cat named Balloony (that's "Balloon" with a "y" at the end; not to be confused with "baloney").

Zach's new thing is all toilet talk, all the time. He doesn't really talk about gross stuff, he just likes to insert "toilet" into just about any point in the conversation because that's apparently high comedy among the three-year-old set. The other day when he woke up from his nap he was just lying there in bed for a while so I asked him what he was thinking about. "Oh, I'm just thinking about that toilet machine," he said, pointing to the air conditioner. You get the picture.

Today on the way home from the pool Zach started making up some songs using only the word "toilet" and Luke begged him to stop, so Zach obligingly came up with something new (sung to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle"):

Chicken, chicken in the pool
Chicken, chicken in the house
Chicken, chicken in the tree
Chicken, chicken in the car
Chicken, chicken in the mailbox
Chicken, chicken in the...toilet.

Even though Luke and I didn't want to laugh, we couldn't help ourselves, in part because the comic timing was perfect.

We took Zach to his first movie today ("Cats and Dogs") and he sat through the whole thing (on my lap) without getting up; in part because I kept giving him some M&Ms every few minutes. When we got home he and I brought the old game of Ker-Plunk down from the attic and he had a great time playing with me and Luke and Dad. Then after everyone else had enough, he played with it alone, methodically putting the sticks back in the holes and plopping the marbles in before letting it all loose again. When he was finally ready to stop, he put the whole thing away in the box and carried it around the house with great care so as not to lose a single piece.

Is it worth talking about the times that make us miserable? No, it's not. Anyone who has ever known a 3-year-old can probably imagine. Last night at Rosemary and Fred's house he accidentally knocked over a table with few plants and a china saucer, which smashed to pieces. Fortunately, they are professional grandparents who have more patience and loving indulgence than we could ever ask for. Zach must have been feeling guilty about it on some level because on the way out the door he told Fred he would come back over to help him fix it. And then he said thank you to Rosemary. Except he called her Fred.