Mouth

I've written about it before, but it seems that Jack has gotten a lot mouthier lately. Sometimes it's funny, but most of the time it's just exhausting. Tom is convinced Jack is going to be a lawyer by the time he's 14. He's constantly negotiating and arguing with us - and he's actually getting pretty good at it, which is the really annoying part.

Another thing that has really ramped up in the last week or so is the constantly asking, "Why?" For everything. "Why is it nighttime?" "Why are you a girl?" "Why is Thomas a train?" And of course "Why?" every time we tell him to do - or not do - something. As much as is reasonable, we do try to give him logical reasons, but I find myself saying, "Because I said so," just as often.

For the record, I have no problem with this. Most of our rules are basically personal preferences, so I think "Because I said so" is a perfectly valid response. Although I have to admit today he stumped me. We were over at a friend's house, and the friend was eating chicken nuggets. Jack is also in an extreme "monkey see, monkey do" phase, so he of course wanted whatever his friend was eating. However, we are vegetarians, so I told him he couldn't have it, because we don't eat chicken. In the past, that has sufficed. This time it didn't.

"Why?" he asked.

Of course, I know the reasons why we don't eat meat, but it seemed a little rude to list some of them in front of our friends as they munched on their nuggets. Besides, I didn't think this was the best time to describe to Jack just how food goes from being animals to meat. So I resorted to the only reason I could think of.

"Because we don't," I said.

After a couple of rounds of that, I was able to distract him with something else.

He knows when he does something naughty that warrants a timeout. If he pushes or screams at another child in my presence, he usually looks at me and quickly says, "I'm sorry!" to try to forestall his punishment. The other day, he pushed one of his little friends. After his timeout was over, he tried to excuse himself by saying, "I wasn't paying attention."

The mother of the little girl he pushed looked at me and said, "He's good."

The other tough thing is when Jack is just feeling downright defiant or contrary. If he doesn't want to do something, he'll often yell, "I don't want to!" If we tell him, "Obey me," he'll say, "You obey me!"

Uh, NO.

The tantrums that someone promised me would go away at around three and a half years of age are making a recurrence. I'm hoping this is a last gasp, though. They mostly do seem fake, and if I tell him, "You need to stop crying by the time I count to 5 or you're going in timeout," he can usually stop himself almost immediately. The other thing he will do is pull a sad or mad face to try to get his way, but often it's clear that he's also trying not to laugh when he does it.

Even though this has been our biggest challenge with Jack lately, I console myself with the fact that all this signifies maturing thought processes and verbal skills. And it can be amusing to hear just what sort of reasons he comes up with to try to get us to give him his way. Also, every now and then, his negotiations will reveal a motivation that shows his sweet little heart.

Yesterday, as we were driving home from a friend's house, Jack asked me, "When is my baby going to come?"

I told him in two or three weeks. He got very upset.

"No! Not two or three weeks!"

As I mentioned before, he usually wants things to happen in numbers that end in six, because "I don't like six." So in the past couple months, when he asked when she would come, he would always insist that she come in six weeks. Thinking this was the reason for this particular tantrum, I said, "Uh, six weeks?"

"No!" he said. "Not six weeks!"

"Jack," I told him, "she's probably going to come in two or three weeks."

"No, don't say that!" he said. "Say one week!"

Awww, I'm anxious to meet her too.