Okay, I lie. I'm sure we will BUT at least we know a few things going forward.
M is at that awkward age where he is too young & curious to walk with us, follow us directionally and hold our hands when needed. On the flip side, he's too old & active to be contained in a stroller for any length of time. He wants to explore but as with any 16 month old, he wants to explore on his terms.
So... that brings us to our next issue. Tantrums! Who replaced my sweet boy with a little man who melts down at the simplest of things?! Taking away something he shouldn't be playing with, putting him back into the stroller or not letting him take sips of coffee or beer drove this kid to distraction. The screeching and tears were unbearable!
And that takes us to the other big issue. Food. Sigh. That means anything edible and it doesn't matter if it comes via room service (where he walked back and forth between us begging for bites), Tupperware (Cheerios were our saving grace this trip) and any sort of time spent in a restaurant. Unless he is starving & the food comes immediately, he is not the sort of dinner date you want at a restaurant. We had more than one trip to a restaurant where one of us had to make a quick exit with him. If he's hungry, he screams. If he's full, he screams. If the food isn't coming quick enough or isn't to his liking at that moment, he screams. It's awesome.
Like that old rule of thumb of one minute of timeout per year of age, I think the same sort of general rule goes for attention span. I think 16 minutes (one minute per month of age) is the most we can get out of this kid. At that point, it's on to the next one and damn it, we have no choice in the matter.
The highlight of the trip? The 45 minutes of pure screaming on the flight back. Thank God we were flying in one of Porter's turboprop planes. For the novice out there, that means the loud humming drowned out M's screams and he simply looked like an oh-so-disgruntled toddler to all those gawking passengers.
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