My Little Labile One

All 2-year-olds cry and whine. A. is particularly good at using "no" as his default answer to everything. But there's this particular look A. gets when he's about to have a real meltdown that's different from the "I don't want to stop playing and get my diaper changed" complaining.

At first, he's soundless, but he gets this look like his head is going to explode, and his eyes start watering. He starts shaking his head, still soundless. It doesn't happen that often, and usually only when he's really tired or overstimulated, but we all know to flee when we see it, much like you would an exploding volcano or an avalanche. Then the wailing and flailing begins. He likes to add some fake mime-like pushing directed at whoever he can't stand at that moment.

Yesterday I made the huge mistake of putting him in his car seat when we were leaving the library. He scrunched up his face, started shaking, and most tellingly, didn't say anything, so I thought, "Uh oh." But I'm the boss, so I buckled him in and got into the driver's seat. Fortunately it was a short drive home while he wailed and flailed. When he gets like this he can't tell me what's wrong, so I guessed it was that I didn't let him climb into the seat himself.

When we got home, he insisted on having what we therapists call a "corrective experience". I took him out of the seat, put him down and he immediately climbed back in. OK, fine. Let's do it again. Whatever. Oh, great, now he won't get out. Not even for macky cheese. He just sits there silently and stares straight ahead. Sometimes he reminds me so much of my mother it freaks me out.

"You're just going to sit there in the car?" I ask.

"Yes," he answers.

"Fine." I have yet to meet a kid I couldn't wait out. I unload the trunk and ignore him.

All of a sudden, as I'm walking by the open car door, he leans out and says with a big smile, "Play soccer ball?" I suggest that maybe Papa is available to play soccer ball with him and he says, "OK!" and jumps out, all fine and happy. I know this is normal 2-year-old-ness, but it's still weird.