Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011: Hulkster

One week ago Gavin said his first sentence: "All done." He's a talking machine now. There's no stopping him. He's starting to repeat stuff when prompted and he'll even surprise me with things I had no idea he knew (like "thanks").

Two days ago he said "no" for the first time. It is now one of his favorite words. Well, when he says it, anyway. He does not like it when we say it. He's a pretty contrary little dude these days. He's livin' large, toddler style, all fits and fury. He's got the toddler rage thing down, that's for sure. Shelly told me on Tuesday when I went to pick him up at daycare, "He's getting a little temper." It's true. He crumples his face up and folds his arms if he doesn't get what he wants. Sometimes he lashes out. More than once he's turned around and hit Emma in the face. Or he'll grab a handful of Jota's fur and yank. I don't even know where this comes from because it's not like he sees Stacy and I do this (we only hit Emma in the face in private). At daycare last week he got pissed off because, as Shelly told Stacy, he was playing with a toy in a way that was unsafe, and when Shelly told him he couldn't do that he stopped for a second but started right up again. When she called him out for the second time he threw the toy and hit another kid.

So, basically, my son is a burgeoning sociopath.

Just kidding. I hope. As my mom said, all toddlers are sociopaths. But it's hard when he freaks out. Because there's no logic involved. I can't reason with him. And I can't yell at him either. Mind you, I don't want to yell at him. But when he's, say, thrashing like a maniac on the changing table while I'm trying to wrestle him out of a poo-filled diaper and into some fresh clothes for daycare so he can get out of the house on time and not make Stacy late for work, it's like, "Dude, your reaction is really out of proportion with what's happening right now. And also you're about to get poo everywhere. And I am hardly awake right now." That was this morning. Good times.

Granted, his little angry-face is adorable. The way he wrinkles his nose and narrows his eyes and purses his lips. And then there's this little thing he does where it's kind of like he's wringing his hands. Seriously very cute. But also, well, bratty.

My M.O. remains the same whenever he's having a freak out: remain calm. Be "chill" as my students would say. So far the, "Gavin I'm going to sit here on the floor and read books while I wait for you to calm down" thing has worked beautifully several times. Granted that's not something I could do if he toddler-raged in a store or something, but so far so good in that department. I know it's only a matter of time.

He really wants to dress himself these days and, I have to say, he is just not very good at it. We've had some magical moments where he'll get a foot through a pant leg, but most of the time he ends up with both legs in one if he even gets that far. It's adorable, let's be clear, but it can be a problem when I'm in any kind of hurry. Mr. I Can Do It Myself has no respect for anyone's schedule besides his own.

Grunting is a new parlor trick. He likes to try to pick up heavy things -- or at least things that are heavy for him, like a gallon of milk -- and he totally grunts Hulk-style in a very exaggerated way. Stacy said that today he was trying to shovel snow using the grown-up sized snow shovel and he'd push it and grunt and then look at her to tell him how strong he was. He's a little brute. And cute to boot.