So Much Much-ness

"You used to be much more...'muchier.' You've lost your muchness." ~The Mad Hatter, from Alice in Wonderland

I love the word "muchness," because I have a son who sometimes, to be perfectly honest, is a little ... much.

Jack is the type of kid who is bursting with energy all the time.  If you were to watch any kind of choir/Primary program and notice one kid not watching the conductor, singing half of the words at the top of his lungs until he gets distracted either picking his nose or putting his tie around his head like a ninja, that would be Jack.

He has a hard time sitting still, focusing, and being reverent, and if he's not bouncing up and down in place, he's climbing on something, rolling around on the floor, doing jumping-jacks, or wrestling with his siblings.  This kid is BUSY.  And sometimes, his muchness gets to be a little bit much for me.

The other morning, I came into his room, where he showed me his hand that had some black on it.

I asked, "What happened?"...

...and he showed me an outlet in his room that had matching scorch marks on it.  He had found a metal hair clip and decided to see what would happen if he shoved said clip into the outlet.

Yep.

I'll admit, I panicked a little bit (by the way, he had pried the "childproof" cover off of the outlet in order to play with it), and lectured him before giving him bandaids for his burns...but then when I took his pulse and saw that it was normal, I figured that he had learned his lesson and decided to let it go at that.

I took pictures to commemorate the occasion, thinking to myself, "This could be a pretty funny blog post," then we went about our day.

(When I told Jack I was taking a picture, he went from smiling and bouncing around the house to what you see above--this is his attempt at looking pathetic...)

This morning, I found an ear phone jack sticking out of the outlet in the kitchen...an outlet neither Clark nor Maggie is tall enough to reach.

Sigh.

So much for learning his lesson.

I understand that Jack's muchness can be overwhelming for people.  Believe me, I notice when people are taken aback by my exuberant boy running full speed into them for a hug (usually managing to shoulder them hard in the crotch as he does so), or when they get irritated by the loudness of the voice that tends to talk about things AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS, or when he is smitten by my teenage sisters' friends and won't leave their sides and they're weirded out by a five-year-old holding their hand, sucking his thumb, and gazing at them adoringly.

I see all of that, and when people understand and hug him back, listen to what he has to say, and allow him to love them with all of the muchness his enthusiastic heart has to give, it brings me more joy than I can possibly express.

I know he's a little much, but I LOVE this kid.

Any time he goes out of the door to play with friends (which is usually during nap time when I'm desperately trying to get some quiet time for myself), he'll usually poke his head back in the door at least five or six times to tell me something super important that he forgot to say...often times it will be him describing how much he loves me (his favorite comparisons are "to outer space," "as many houses as there are in the whole entire world," and "THIIIISSS much"), sometimes it's about the booger he just picked from his nose and how it tasted, and sometimes it's to show me the really interesting rock he found for his rock collection (which I've forced him to keep in the back yard.  Because I'm mean like that).

This kid is the very definition of muchness.  He has much to give, much to learn, much to love, much to feel, hear, and see, and he wants to experience it all, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and share it with his family.

While his personality has its challenges (getting him to sit still and BE QUIET for an hour of church is akin to torture for everyone involved; him, me, Steve, and anyone else within a fifty-foot radius), I wouldn't change a thing about my little boy and his muchness.

I mean, c'mon--do you know anyone else who can do push-ups WITH NO HANDS?

I thought not.