.. or the sleepiness, but Tristan was on very poor behavior when we visited with Helena and Bryan today. To be fair, he woke up at 7:30, which to us is like 5:30 is to the rest of you if you’re on a normal schedule. They had a moving snail toy and Tristan had a bit of a meltdown whenever he was encouraged to share or be diverted from it. Since he’s normally not such a shit about such things, I really hope he just wasn’t feeling well. Socially with other babies, he’s a jerk sometimes but also plays nicely alongside them most of the time. By jerk, I mean he steals toys and shoves a little – but I blame the shoving on us letting him climb on us and shove to indicate that he’d like to get by or just to snuggle by sort of sitting up against us. To us, this is nonverbal communication, but socially it’s not exactly endearing since other adults and children have other ways of communicating – shoving others is kind of jerkish, after all. At least he’s not hitting (knock on wood!! I know we will have to be CAREFUL if he starts to avoid it becoming a habit..) But aside from that, he lets go of toys when others steal them as often as he steals them. As long as there are no head or other major injuries or distracting meltdowns, I don’t care if there’s shoving or rudeness or a lack of sharing by either my kid or others’ kids.

Anyway, I will treat this as a momentary and situational thing provided he does not repeat it, and if he does (and is not tired, in pain, or otherwise previously miserable) then we will have some serious discipline work to do. Thankfully, our discipline is fun and positive in most cases (hey, look, people are nicer to you and we get to go more places when you’re agreeable, condensed into baby language), but it’s still hard work.