Jordan, a Character Of His Own

It was a moment of weakness.  I just wanted him to try it.  How do you know you don't like it unless you try some first?!   I held his arms down.  He cried.  His head turned left and right, shaking to avoid the projectile of my hand inserting something so small and almost unforeseen into his mouth.  No, I wouldn't give in.  This stuff was REALLY good.  If he didn't eat it then, there would be no chance of it lasting cuz I would eat it!  I persevered.  I ignored the volume that kept rising of his anxious and fearful screams.  You are going to like this!  I thought.   Finally... after what seemed like an eternity of evil mom force feeding him some awful poison, I gave up.

A few minutes later, he came looking for me.  He signed "more."  Apparently, some crumbs got into his mouth.  He had a taste.  He was back for more.

Please keep in mind, the thing I force fed him was a scrumptious shortbread cookie with jam on the middle, sort of like the Knott's Berry Farm cookies but these were Harry & David, and they were unbelievably good.  I know he's a little hesitant to try new foods unless he's really hungry, but I thought I could negotiate, the ball for a bite of this cookie.  No such luck.

Yesterday, he threw the same cookie I gave him on the floor, but I'm no quitter so I tried again.  Good thing I did eh?

Five minutes later, a mouthful of cookie and jam, dirty hands reached out to me to clean (he isn't a huge fan of dirty hands though if you ignore him, he'll wipe 'em off himself) and success was mine.  Now he knows how good those cookies are.

This morning, we also had Jordan open his first official Christmas gift.  It is too big to take to Utah with us and then back again, so he got to open it as part of his tree advent calendar.  It had been hiding in our closet where it was normally covered by a towel, but that towel had managed to disappear and he noticed it a few times, fixated and murmuring "ball?"  "ball?" with the intonation of his voice raising into a rhetorical question.  It was so cute.  We knew he'd love it because he is obsessed with balls, and because at the gymnastics gym we frequent often, he cried real tears of pure upset anger when I pried him away from the basketball hoop that did not have the base filled.  He was so devastated and wanted nothing to do with the rest of the gym, only to play ball with this little mini-hoop.

He's already gotten the tearing paper to get to the present down, I am excited about Christmas day and all the ripping he will do (for me as well).  We set up the hoop and he has been having a blast, although he does need to use the couch as we opted for the adjustable hoop which is 4 feet tall at its lowest, still a smidge too tall for Jordan to make without the boost of the couch.

What a fun little dude he is.  As I began counting "one, two, three," he mimicked me, and seems to have one in Mandarin down and two and three in English.  I also said "jia you! jia you," a chant in Mandarin that literally means add oil, but is a chant for keep it up! keep it up!, and the moment I stopped, he tried to mouth those same words unsuccessfully.  He also cannot stop jumping up and down, throwing his hands into the air, and expressing his ultimate love for life and balls.