Hijacked

Those who have met him know Jack isn't exactly shy. From the time he was born, he's been dragged to bike races, where people he's never met come up and call him by name. Pretty soon, we have him yelling, "Run, you monkey," at cyclocross racers. So yeah, he's been socialized adequately.

That's good and bad. Good because he doesn't hide behind our legs and go mute when he meets new people (well, at least not for more than a minute or so). Bad because ... well, because if he feels like saying or doing something, he'll just do it.

The results are fairly entertaining. At church on Christmas Eve, when it was time for the kids to come forward for the children's sermon, he wandered across the altar to get where he was going. Behind him, one of the pastors was trying to herd him toward the right area.

Yesterday in Algona, again at church, he was "that kid" — the kid who's so excited to share and participate that he just talks a lot. And loudly, almost to the point of hijacking the whole bit. His confusion about which day is Christmas and which day is Christmas Eve led him to correct the pastor, who said Saturday was Christmas.

And then, when prompted, he said, "I opened presents!" We were pretty sure he was going to break down the contents of each present, but he refrained. When discussing how to use and get rid of wrapping paper, he went into a fairly demonstrative miming of smashing it down and taping it, while explaining it ... loudly.

It was our first instance of thinking, "Oh, wow. That's our kid ... ohhhhhh."

But after thinking about it more — and having my mom say, "Good! We need more kids like that. Those other kids just sit up there like lumps!" — we're over our momentary embarrassment.

So yeah, that's our kid.