Pump It Up & Peanut Butter Crackers

These are two pictures from our trip to Pump It Up yesterday with our playgroup (thank you, Brandee, for the pictures!). Notice two things here: first, Jake is the only non-newborn child in the "mommy picture" and second, he's following my friend Jessica around like she's a hero. She was his hero, actually, since Mommy's tummy was way too big to let her jump around and play. So...thanks, Jessica, I owe you...

Pump It Up is this great place filled with those bouncy things, where kids can run and bounce and slide...and generally pay no attention at all to gravity. Before yesterday, Jake and I had only been one other time (when I was pregnant but didn't know it, so was able to jump around with no worries...), but that one time apparently left quite an impression on him. After I told him (Sunday night) we were going, he couldn't get to sleep until 11pm. Then yesterday after school, his teacher brought him to the car and said he was very excited about some place we were going. So excited he couldn't nap.


So did you follow that? Up until 11pm, then no nap? Yes, I was worried about how this all might turn out...He played fine at home between school and Pump It Up, then slept for five minutes in the car on the way there. He ran and ran and ran (and jumped and jumped and jumped) for almost the whole two hours we were at PIU... Then just before it was time to go, someone in playgroup suggested we get a group shot of the moms, since all but one of us was there. We all got into position, then Jake ran over to stand beside me. "Honey, this is a mommy picture," I told him. Well...obviously, that was ridiculous in Jake's mind. Why take a picture without him in it?? He walked away from me, and his face crumpled. It was that pitiful crying that gets me every time: he looks like he's trying so hard not to cry, but he just can't help it. If he'd scream and pitch a fit, I could ignore it, but that "You've broken my heart, you evil mommy" look...well, it gets to me. So, I called him back, calmed him down, and there he is: the reason I'm a mommy in the first place. In the picture with me and all the other mommies.

On the way home, he cried...oh, I'd guess he cried 15 minutes because he wanted peanut butter crackers. He'd eaten dinner before we went to PIU, and he'd had a little "dessert" of jelly beans while we were there...I knew the issue wasn't food, it was staying up later. And here was his cry: "I want peanut butter crackers, I want my daddy, I want peanut butter crackers." This became, "I want to go to bed right away, I want my daddy." And then, "I want Daddy, I want apple slices." When the silence came, I knew he was asleep. When we got home, he went straight to bed with pretty much no complaint.

But the first words out of his mouth this morning were, "I want peanut butter crackers now." (That's a somewhat healthy breakfast, right? I even threw in the apple slices...)

He's got the memory of an elephant.