A Boy of Order

From as far back as I can remember, Jackson has been particular. A perfectionist extraordinaire.

He's the one that asks for a napkin to wipe his face and hands. I never have to tell him. He initiates that always. And I'm not exaggerating. He goes to the bathroom after each meal to wash his hands. By himself. Usually without prompting. He just doesn't like the feeling of messiness.

When he grabs a stack of books to bring out to the living room to read, they ARE in a particular order. And he KNOWS the order. And they must REMAIN in the order. And oh mercy, if he happens to drop them and they all jumble together sort of mis-matched like, WATCH OUT. {Which sadly, occurs regularly.} It's almost as if he had been bitten by a gargantuan bumble bee. I mean, there's wailing and gnashing of teeth. You'd think he'd been shot.

He's great about setting his bath toys on the edge of the tub before getting out, so the water drains from them before we put them in the drawer.He just does it. Usually. Because, well, he likes order. And lining things up is order at its finest in his book. To me, lining things up is boring. But that's just me.

And who could forget his pumpkin carving last October. See the pictures here if you want a good laugh.

His fine-motor skills have been fantastic since he was a wee little child. Last year, when he first began 'drawing', this is what he would do.

He would line up his crayons on the table, in a particular order mind you, and then he would do just what you see in this picture.

When done with one line, he would put the crayon back in order, and pick up the next one and, you guessed it. Repeat the process. {And you can only imagine his reaction when the crayon would roll off the table, OUT of order. Because, crayons are round you know. And they never stay exactly where they're supposed to. Do you wonder why I'm losing my mind?}

When playing a game, it's more about getting things in a row than it is the actual game. This was a scene straight from our dining room back in June. For several days he would line them up perfectly. Just so. And he'd call me in and show me. And I'd ooh and ahhh over the line of cards. And - no surprise here - that kid would KNOW if the wind blew in and tussled the order ever-so-slightly.

Remember how this is "Summer of Structure?" Well, he usually doesn't mind cleaning his room and often says, "I like it when my room is clean." What 4-year-old does that? And he gets rather frustrated making his bed because, we all know that unless you're in the Army, it's a tricky thing to master. But we work at it each day and I'm confident that by the time August rolls around he'll be a better bed-maker than moi.

Jack shared that a few weeks ago, after VBS at our church, there was a HUGE Twister game board on the floor of the church gym. And all the kids were jumbled up on the board. Twisting. Turning. Jumping around from spot to spot. Being RANDOM. And there was Jackson. Mr. Methodical. Starting at one circle, walking to the next, and then then next, and well, you get the idea. And then he'd get to the end and step to the next row and repeat. Perfect order. {I do wish we had a picture of that.}

Oh, and here's a recent one. Remember we went to the Candy Shoppe in Wheaton {See here if you missed it.} Well, he got a little gummy pizza thingy, and that was the first thing he wanted to eat. So I said, "Sure." {Cuz I'm a good mommy.} And so we hadn't gone more than 25 steps down the sidewalk and I looked back and there he was, 'arranging' the gummy pizza slices in order because they had messed up while we were opening the little package. No seriously. I'm not joking.

{Oh, and for the record, the silly bands on his wrist are in a certain order, too. Just ask him.}

On a recent trip to Frona's Pantry, he was playing with the big bowl of creamers while we waited for our delicious food and this is how he played.

Perfect symmetry.

Jack would mess with him and remove one and he would either get frustrated with Jack, or remove one on the other side to compensate for the off-centeredness.

And so, all of Blog Land sighed and said, "Ohhh, there might be some OCD issues goin' on in that home." Which just reminds me that the Lord has a good sense of humor. Because messes don't really bother me all that much. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like things in order, just as much as the next guy. But I'm fine with some mess, especially if I know that within a certain amount of time I'll get to clean up the mess. I mean, I can even mix my food together and put it on the fork and put it in my mouth and not be upset. Some can't. You know who you are. Admit it. Some of you take one bite of potatoes. And then one bite of meat. And then one bite of peas or corn. But me, I kind of like the burst of flavour when a dab of each of those are on my fork. All at the same time. Yum.

I've digressed. And that's the beauty of this being my blog. If I want to digress, I get to digress.

But for now, I'll just leave you with this fun picture of Jackson because he's just so darn cute. Can't you just eat him up?

{And, as you might suspect, he was HATING that his tie was crooked.}

We have a future architect or engineer or airline pilot in the making. When perfection counts, he's your guy.

Talk about yummy!