Jake, In Real Life

I've been thinking about how different my two boys are. Cameron is a sweet boy (unless he's with his brother...) and is extremely shy. He is just now learning how to read. He is somewhat hard to understand if you haven't been around him (he slurs his words together, for example, "Family home evening" would be "famihomevening" coming out of his mouth). He loves basketball, and will do ANYTHING to play. He is always seeking out verbal approval from those around him.

Jake is very verbal himself. He can say things that Cameron can't. He is very inquisitive, and when he's super tired and doesn't want to sleep, he'll ask questions that he KNOWS will be answered. He makes up stories and has an incredible imagination. He is an all-around jock. He loves playing baseball, soccer, football, basketball....anything he can. He's even asked grandma if he can dig holes in her front yard so he can play golf. He is constantly busy and can just run circles for hours when he has nothing better to do.

Jake is SUCH the story teller. A few months ago, we went to a movie for family home evening. My parents took the boys (because the boys begged, and my parents are suckers for those little kids). On the way to the theater they passed a police car. Jake started his tale: "My daddy got pulled over by a police officer. He was speeding and got a ticket...." My parents asked us if that was true, and of course, it wasn't. But Jake can be very convincing.

Cameron loves to have very short hair. He complains loudly if it gets too long (he pulls it out on his own if I don't buzz it for him, so usually when he complains, I buzz both boys' hair.) Jake wants "long" hair. We've got school pictures coming up this Friday, and I want Jake to look nice, so I kept offering to trim around his ears. I kept promising him that I wouldn't buzz his hair off, but he kept turning me down. Finally, yesterday, I grabbed the scissors while he was in the tub and the whole time promising him I would be careful, and that I wouldn't hurt him, I trimmed his hair. But it was a HUGE fight.

Jake also loves to eat. He is always begging for food all day long. I swear, I feed the kid, but when you've got as much energy as this guy does, you burn through your food pretty quickly.

He's pretty independent as well. If you don't get right on whatever he asks, he tries to do it himself. I've caught the boy trying to run his own bath, climbing on a chair to get food out of the fridge, moving things, just because he wants to.

He's very different from his brother, but there's no one would would stand up more for Cameron in the whole world. Whenever Cameron gets in trouble, I get the wrath of Jake. He will come up to me, and in his deepest voice he will say, "THAT'S MY BROTHER!!" I try to calm him down by saying, "That's my son..." but my argument has NO validity with him.

He has a wicked sense of humor too. He will do things just to make us laugh. He pulls the best faces and knows he's funny.

What a fun boy I have in Jake. He's nothing like I would have expected to have when I first learned I was pregnant with him, but he's everything our little family needs. We really love, Jake.