Blizzards and Tornadoes

For those of you not familiar with the weather on the East Coast we don't really get many a tornado, but we do get plenty of blizzards. Right now we're getting snow coming down so hard with such strong winds that it's literally moving sideways. And it's not supposed to get much better over the next couple days with forecasts calling for as much as a foot and up to two feet for some points east of here. It can really bite the big one, but as natural disasters go it's pretty tame since very few ever lose their houses like in tornadoes or earthquakes unless you don't shovel off your roof after the third foot starts to accumulate.

As for tornadoes, I'm not speaking of the weather related phenomenon, but instead of my son who turned 2 this past July. That leaves him right smack in the middle of what many describe as the "Terrible Twos" which leaves me scratching my head on a daily basis at this point. While I still think some overreact and demonize this point in a toddler's life by exaggerating tales of disobedience to the level of a minor war, there is much to ponder when it comes to the behavior the boy has been displaying of late. He wails about getting his way when if he'd merely asked for the thing in the first place I would have given it to him without question. When he doesn't get his way he crawls across the floor like he's reverting to a previous state in his development. By the end of the day it does look like the aftermath of a battlefield much of the time, but more than getting frustrated with him I'm interested to figure out what exactly is going on inside his head and I don't think it's just because he feels like being a royal pain.

So, for the first time in awhile I think I'll be turning to some of the child development books we bought before my son was even born. In many instances I have avoided reading them for fear I'd become one of those parents that asks the doctor why my kid isn't meeting every little developmental milestone at the exact moment the books tell me he should. That isn't to say I never look, but he knows most letters and numbers and his vocabulary is growing daily to the point where I can actually have a conversation with him! That also entails him getting into more trouble as his skills advance and is resulting in this most recent stage in his growth. More than anything, my common sense tells me that his "terrible" behavior is just the understandable stress of learning how to become a sentient being where everything is just a little bit alien to him. And if any of us were put in a similar situation, I think we'd be more than a little bit cranky too.