four

Jake turned four.
Ten days ago.
A St. Patrick's Day baby.  Born sometime first thing in the morning.  One am, maybe two-ish.  You think his mother would know, but she doesn't remember.  It's written down somewhere.  It was a Friday, that much is certain.  He was twenty inches long, now he is double that, plus a quarter inch.  He weighed five pounds and twelve ounces, now he's thirty more.

For the first time in his entire life I don't want him to get any older.  I want him to stay exactly the way he is.  The baby stuff I can do without.  I wanted that to pass.  I wished those days away.  I prayed they'd seem to fly by so we could get to four. 

To exactly this.

I used to write lists, month after month, with the things Jacob was doing.  I'd start at the top of his head and work my way down.  Listing the words he could say and foods he was eating and the motor skills he'd adopted and the milestones he'd hit and the teeth he'd cut and toys he loved.  I can't do that anymore.  He's too much of a boy to make a list of who he is.  Too much of his own person.

He's so beautiful that I want to keep him away from the world.  Have you seen him?  If you have, if you know him, maybe you understand what I mean. 
All mothers think their child is beautiful, of course.  But I'm almost quite certain that Jacob is extraordinarily beautiful.  We can't go anywhere without prying hands.  Awkward long glances.  Jealous stares.  It scares me sometimes.  Makes me proud others. 
He's so beautiful that I want to show him to the world.  To let other people know that it is still possible to make something so gorgeous out of nothing but a little bit of love and a few minutes spent in privacy.

He's funny.  The sort of funny that makes big kids and grown ups laugh with him.  At his jokes and not just at him because he's little.  Sure he tells those ridiculous knock knock jokes that make no sense, and he still has his own language, but he's really funny sometimes.
One of my new favorite things to do is play the games I learn at Improv class with him.  He's infinitely better at them than anyone I know, of course.  Any kid would be. 
I'd like to say that some of the funny is passed down from Dave and I.  We like to think that we are a riotous pair of people, but who knows.  Maybe funny is just something you are born with and has nothing to do with the house you live in.

Jacob likes to sing and play guitar, and he brings it all together with the jokes too.  Jake rocks out.  Think Helter Skelter.  Times three.  Plus unadulterated giggles. 
Jake loves the Beatles.  You know the end of Helter Skelter where John Lennon screams "I've got blisters on my fingers"?
Jake was making up songs on his guitar the other morning and then screaming things like "I've got monkeys in the toaster" and then he's do another and yell "I got nosehairs in my lunchbox".  I was in the shower and we were here all by ourselves.  I came down and he had his animals lined up, he was putting on a "rock and roll show with jokes for them because they were bored".  His lyrics to the song were even better.  I've got to start getting this stuff on non-camera phone video.

Just recently, I mean, like last weekend recently, Jacob started to smell like a kid.  Like laundry left on the line.  It took me by surprise.  When we lie down together he's just big enough that I can curl into him the way that he can curl into me, so sometimes I do.  I push my face into his chest and he puts his chin on my head so he can watch television over me while I take a nap and he wraps his arms around my neck and puts his knees into my guts and I pull my legs under his butt and it's just as good as the days he was small enough to curl in my bellyspace and I would close my eyes and pretend he was still in there.
I breathed in his new smell- trees and skyscrapers and playground equipment and bicycle tires and the breeze from the next block up and the immigrant neighbor's mystery dinner that came through the open window that evening and hit our shoulders when we were playing hopscotch on the sidewalk out front and the dog at daycare and the basement floor and marbles and tap water and peanut butter and my perfume and Dave's baseball glove and the juniper from the yard that he's not supposed to touch and the rosemary and lavender that he can if he wants and something else that no one has a name for but everyone can recall because we all smelled that way once and we took comfort in it and it's the reason we never wanted to take a bath when we were little because if we did it would go away and that smell is what put us to sleep and kept us safe at night.

I don't make Jake take too many baths. 
If I did he'd lose that smell that puts me to sleep and keeps me safe at night.