Jesse. Age 4.

The other day Jesse said, “Mom, I’ve been wondering about if you turn the air conditioner on or if it just comes on.”

Of course he’d been wondering about that.

Bless his wondering little heart.

Mike alternates between catering nicely to his son’s near maddening curiosities (letting him help fix broken sprinklers, change light bulbs and batteries; taking him to garage sales and the DI where he can purchase various gadgets to take apart and experiment with) and throwing up his hands in utter exhaustion and frustration over the sheer number of things Jesse has broken in our home. (Jesse’s desire to see inside of everything is near consuming. Messing with something to see how it works is one thing . . . but always there is the question remaining over just why it is working . . . and that is usually best answered with a screw driver and a lot of yanking and pulling to get past the superficially interesting outer layers.)


(trampoline and drill pics compliments of cousin Blaire)

But, I comfort Mike with assurances of all the fixing and helpfulness I see in Jesse’s future. Even now no toy or flashlight remains long in a useless dead-battery state (I swear I will let a toy sit for years before I will change the dead batteries in it – luckily now I merely have to hint to Jesse that something might be going a little slow and he’s unscrewing the little lid and replacing the batteries before my sentence is fully out) and he is often able to figure out how to fix, open or unjam some small thing that has me stumped.

Here he is showing sock monkey’s rather desperate condition to his aunt Leisa.

(monkey pics also courtesy of Blaire)

Jesse and Aunt Leisa are rather good pals. When Leisa is here, Jesse typically does not stop telling her important things for even a fraction of a second, and they occasionally head off – just the two of them – to do “projects” (fix broken toys, change bike tires, etc.)

And here is the GPS (Aunt Leisa bravely let him use) strapped to his “lawn mower” (yes, I know it isn’t a lawn mower, but Mike draws the line when it comes to some things – the lawn mower being one of them – so Jesse is occasionally forced to use his imagination).
(Heaven knows one doesn’t want to get lost while mowing – you could waste a lot of energy on the wrong lawn that way.)

I’m rather fond of the little stinker; even if he locked me out of the bathroom the other day as a punishment for my having taken too long to come help wipe him (it felt more like a reward of course, sadly, it didn’t last long as he soon realized that my “punishment” didn’t leave him in the very best of situations).


He often reminds me happily and confidently that he has a “special talent for figuring things out”. I worry a good deal about doing right by this little soul – giving him the right opportunities, channeling his abilities in directions where they will flourish and thrive and not be squelched. But, worry or not, I love how, more than maybe anyone else, he is teaching me that we humans are not all the same. We view, approach, and understand this world from rather vastly different angles. I am learning that while that truth is a bit frightening and frustrating, it is also amazingly beautiful.

(This picture makes me want to weep. Not because of the subject – though I love him madly – and not because the picture itself is, technically, anything special. It makes me weep simply because it is a picture my camera absolutely could not capture. It was quite dark in Jesse’s room when I peeked in to see if he was staying in his bed like he’d promised. My camera would have needed a flash or demanded such a slow shutter speed that Jesse would have been a blur of motion even with the slightest movement. It simply doesn’t have the ability to gather light that fast. I only caught it because I had stolen Blaire’s camera for the evening. Afterwards, I explained to Mike just why my precious (and well-loved) camera wasn’t quite up to snuff. “Oh, don’t worry,” he consoled me. “We’ll get you that camera someday.” Then, with a sly little smirk he added, “Abe doesn’t need braces.” Haha. Someday though!)