Jack and Joker

Today was quite a day and I'm too tired to relate it in detail. After morning at the playground and at the rec center class, Jack worked in his dirt pile, hoeing energetically and then instructing me where to sprinkle the "seeds" before he raked dirt over them.

A Gama-go spouse needed a blond toddler for Gap advertising, so I drove Jack down around 3:00 for a photo session. Jack fell asleep in the car and didn't warm up to changing clothes and posing, so we returned home around 4:30. Guess who was there on our steps to greet us--Joker.

Jack was so excited. Joker ducked under a construction sign with Jack dancing after him explaining "I told John McGill about you, Joker. I told him to watch out for you. I told him you are afraid of riding the Cushman." "Joker, come see the stroller." "Joker, there's a shed here. I have a shed upstairs, Joker." When Jack and I patted Joker, he meowed and Jack was delighted. Joker was content to roll on his back and present his tummy for patting.

We had a real battle of wills late in the day when Jack refused to let me change his dirty diaper. Trying desperately to think what an unconditional parent would do, I reasoned with him every which way. Finally got the diaper off only to progress to a battle about cleaning up and then about the new diaper. Jack took the new diaper and rolled it up into a tight roll. Then he grabbed my glasses so that I had to gently extract them from his hands and put them out of reach. I considered just letting him go without a diaper, but that seemed impractical because I had not been able to take his pants off. Eventually I got another diaper on him and when I started to put him down on the floor, he started to cry, so we hugged and kissed each other and then went in to deposit the poop in the toilet, which gave him great satisfaction. (No flushing until he left the bathroom.) He gave me a hard time each diaper change today, but this last one was really extreme. Is this all about the difficulty of pooping? Does he not want to let the poop go even after it's out? Does he do this with everyone or is Nana special?