I See the Future - and it frightens me.

I have this scrapbook page from last year that I did. It shows Jake with my mom and his friend Rachel and I wrote how Jake has this ability to make girls giggle and follow him around. I've watched it happen since he was a baby - I'm not exaggerating. He'd sit in his stroller and I'd be shopping and I'd hear this giggling behind me and when I turned around there would inevitably be some lady - age anywhere between 15 and 65 giggling and smiling with/at him. Of course, he was a baby I thought, but it never really stopped as he got older. I've watching him just smile this shy little smile and shopping ladies fall for it.

So as he got older and began to play with the kids in the neighborhood he developed a great friendship with one of our neighbors' little girls, Rachel. They were in the same preschool class and get along great - he's often called her his best friend. Mike and I joke that we are going to get them betrothed. Then he went to kindergarten and he met another girl there. This little girl has a huge crush on Jake and he often sees her at Playworks (the gym) and they are constantly poking each other and hugging and I can barely separate them. So, of course Maddie constantly teases him about his "girlfriends" and Mike and I would joke that he seems to have a girlfriend everywhere we go.

I said we "would" joke. Now I'm not so sure we should be laughing; I think we should begin worrying about the teenage years. This morning Jake and I went to church and afterward ate breakfast outside on the lawn with a bunch of others after the service. Jake and I were sitting together talking and he mentioned that he was having trouble with the half-banana he had. Just as I'm about to reach and show him how to peel it, in swoops little girl #3. I kid you not - she wasn't even in my radar, but over she comes and without a word takes the banana from Jake and proceeds to peel it. She's six. She got done, smiled shyly at him and sat with her family. But, a minute later she was up and over near us and talking the whole time. Then she had a feather so she'd tickle Jake's neck with it and try to get him into conversations. He just went along with it all...just another day for Don Juan.

I think there's a part of Mike that is secretly proud of all this - I'd even venture that Mike eggs Jake on at times. As for me, I just shake my head and am truly baffled.