December 24, 2003 - Wednesday
This past Monday, as well as last Thursday, Jeremy spent the morning at Larissa's house with her four-year-old and one-year-old daughters. Yesterday, back at Mary's, I was told he had a very uncharacteristic tantrum. Unfortunately, he did the same for me yesterday afternoon at the library, again at home during dinner, and again this afternoon. He's two and this sort of behavior is normal, I suppose, but not really for Jeremy. In fact, he is so absolutely transparent about it and that makes it easy to see that nothing is really wrong and that he's just experimenting, so it's much easier to deal with. But why now all of a sudden, I wondered?

Then, last evening at dinner, Jeremy started trying to stick food onto his lips and make goofy faces. That's normal childhood behavior, but not for a two-year-old (at least not this one) and I realized that Jeremy had likely been observing Larissa's four-year-old daughter during their lunch together on Monday. What's more, it's easy for me to imagine that she might be a fine role model for tantrums, too, although I've not specifically seen one from her. I mentioned the possibility to Mary this morning and she, knowing Larissa and her girls, had thought the same thing. Of course, it hardly matters and, all this aside, Larissa's kids are just great. But, perhaps it's helpful to have some understand of the cause of Jeremy's behavior, if for no other reason than to know it will probably not last too long.


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