Jackhammer Stevenson Long

More jackhammer action at 854 Chenery Street and naturally, Jack is right there to watch. At some point, we got Jack's own jackhammer and he took up his position right in front of 864 Chenery where he put his blade into a crack and worked away, earmuffs in place. The workingmen loved it as did all the people walking up Chenery Street. He worked for a very long time until finally he must have been a little cold and agreed to go in to breakfast.

Jack ate two big bowls of oatmeal and a little bit of trail mix. He said the seeds are "not so good." We went to the playground where Jack did a lot of good digging with his big shovel and his bulldozer. He made a new friend named Aydin who is four months older than Jack. I was standing too far from them to hear their conversation, but they were talking just like grownups. They worked cooperative on building a road. Jack had a piece of plastic that is part of one of the play structures. He covered it with a thin layer of sand and talked about asphalt, tamping it down. Aydin gathered a bucket of sand and added it to the road.

Since Jack ate breakfast so late, I knew I wasn't going to get much lunch into him. He ate some yogurt and some fruit from my lunch and nibbled on my peanut butter sandwich. Ultimately, after his hour and a half nap, he ate a whole banana. Good poop.

I really enjoyed watching him play in the afternoon. He is so imaginative. The photo shows him painting on top of the cherry-picker truck. Note the ladder that he carefully positions and climbs up and down. Jack was talking about his guitar and I said I didn't know how to play one. Jack picked up the guitar and said "Like this, Nana, like this."

Backhoe action on Chenery

The backhoe job at Diamond and Chenery was the big event of the day. We watched as the working men filled a big hole in the road with cement, smoothed it down with a broom, and then had the backhoe cover it with three large metal plates. Then the backhoe drove back to Chenery Street to pulverize some chunks of asphalt to use to cushion the edges of the steel plates. Tamp, tamp, tamp. Then the backhoe used a clamshell bucket to pick up the asphalt and dump it on the steel plates.

We spent a long time at the library, listening to story time, choosing our books, and playing with the wooden toys in the green container. Jenny had called earlier to say that Emma has a cold and so they stayed home today. Jack made friends with another little girl whose name we couldn’t learn. Jack moved right in to kiss her. I tried to explain that he should ask her first and he did, but she seemed incapable of saying yes, so Jack said yes for her. It’s a start.

Sharon announced that she is cutting back to part time and moving to a different library! She will be there for two more storytimes. As Jack said, “Oh, no”! There will be a new temporary children’s librarian until March and then some other arrangement. Let’s talk to Jenny about presenting Sharon with some flowers or something on the last storytime day.

After the library, I snuck past the hardware store with no objection from Jack and we saw that the working men were gone from the intersection. Jack suggested looking for the backhoe up Diamond Street. Sure enough, the working men were sitting back on a doorstep eating their lunch. We could see a jackhammer in a truck on the other side of the street, so we went over there and examined it carefully. There were additional bits for it in the truck and another jackhammer. One of the workingmen came over and showed us where they are breaking up the sidewalk. He gave Jack a high-five and explained that we should be very careful of their triangular signs because they are sharp. When we got home, Jack warned me to be careful in the living room of some imaginary signs. Every working man we ever meet tells Jack to stay in school.

He ate two bowls of oatmeal with milk and syrup for breakfast. For lunch I offered some of that ravioli, but he didn’t really eat any. He did eat a whole container of the baby yogurt. No poop today. Lots of juice. He napped from 2:00 to 4:00 when he woke up; however, when I took him out to the living room, he fell asleep again on the couch for another half an hour.

Jack showed me the tiny chicken statue in the wardrobe! Then he took it out to the living room and announced he was putting it in the garbage truck. That's where you will find it.

Little Chicken

The other night I was putting Jack to bed in Mommy's room and we were doing our normal ritual of me checking out the wardrobe to make sure there's no chickens in it. (Jack may be a little scared of chickens hiding in the wardrobe while he sleeps). I opened the first door, no chickens. Opened the second door, no chickens. Opened the next door, no chickens.

That's normally what I do and then we lie down, but that night he said "No, Daddy, no - there's a little chicken in the closet! Check the closet!"

So I said, "Ok, but I don't think there's a-" and as I opened the door there was this tiny little chicken statue sitting on the floor looking up at me.

"Jack! There IS a tiny chicken in there!"

I was SO surprised, I started laughing and Jack was clapping his hands and saying "I put him there! He's in the closet!"

So funny.

Daddy's a Backhoe

Yesterday on our way to the hill park to meet Scott and Jake, Jack was pretending my head was the bucket on a bulldozer. He kept making me raise up and then lower my head and "dump" out the dirt from my mouth. I asked him if Daddy was a bulldozer and he said "No, no! Daddy's a backhoe!"

The beginning

Hello!

This is the first post to the new Blog to document the funny stories of Jack.

Welcome.