Obsession

Jack has a few things in his life that he loves very much. He likes Kyle and I very much. But he loves two things in this world more than he loves anything else.

Gum and drawing.

The gum is something that we have to ration because eventually I think his stomach will be full of it and he'll no longer be able to eat. (He denies our repeated requests to spit out his gum.) He chew, chew, chews and smacks, smacks, smacks, making it perfectly clear that he has a delicious piece of gum in his mouth and then it's gone just like that.

Now, on the drawing front, I daresay the kid is obsessed. He rifles through our things looking for paper- notebooks, notepads, sticky notes, receipts, whatever. Then he takes a pen/crayon/marker and gets to work. I often have to participate "MOM! Come draw Julia and her name!" (a friend from class) as someone who has better fine motor skills and a firm grasp of the alphabet. Then he takes his little drawings and carries them around with him everywhere, tight in his little fist so that no harm can come to his masterpieces. He likes coloring books just find, but give him a blank piece of paper and he is occupied for a long, long time.

I can't complain. The gum hasn't ended up in his hair as it did mine when I was a kid, and the markers have never been within a foot of one of our walls (though they've made some acquaintance with his limbs a time or two).

I promise pictures of the artwork sometime, grandparents.