The little guy is almost 18 months old now, and one thing is sure: he has strong opinions.  He has opinions about what book he wants to read, about what toys are good or not, about what he wants to eat, when he wants to eat, and how he wants to eat.  He has opinions about being strapped into the stroller, and opinions about how much he likes my hugs.  All-in-all, it’s fascinating, because these opinions are expressed without words.

Imagine you are on the streets of some weird French town where they let mimes walk around.  Take the mimes and allow them to use noises, but no words.  Then, give these mimes bouts of irritability and pain because of teething, and make the mimes have temper tantrums.  It is proper for them to be in France, because you do not speak French, but the mimes do.  That is what it is like with the little guy at this moment.

“Blaaaah!”  he says.  “ok, do you want your water?” -pushes it away like it’s rancid- “ok, do you want some crackers.”  -pushes them away with a strong force – “oh, ok, you are not hungry?  you want your book?”  – pushes it away even more strongly, getting annoyed – “WAAAAWWAAAAA” – big tears starting to fall, crocodile tears.  “Ok buddy, what’s the problem?  You just ate your banana, you don’t want any of the other food, and you don’t want your book, your toys, or your pacifier.  What is it then?”  – CRY, CRY, CRY, CRY, BAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!”  -(hmmm.  what’s this about?)  “ok, we will just go then.”  And he stops crying.  I guess he wanted to go (but we stopped because he was whining to begin with)

It can also happen with good things – like for example last night he crawled up into his height chair when he wanted to eat, and sat there pointing to the kitchen and ordering  food from me.  Also, tonight, we were reading, and he then took a book, walked to his bedroom, and started tapping the rocking chair for me to sit and read to him there (indicating he wanted to go to bed).

The hard part of course is those times when you have gone thru the whole list of things he could possibly want, and you have no idea what he’s trying to communicate and it ends in tears, whining, crying, foot stomping, and a full-on temper tantrum.  It could be (and is most likely) connected to the fact that the bottom canine teeth have pierced thru the gums, and that must be really painful.  And if you combine that with the inability to speak yet (but still having opinions nonetheless), I can imagine everything is just overwhelming enough to turn anyone into an annoyed, frustrated little mime. 😉