fearlessness

Today, I got a preview of some of the anxiety and sleeplessness that surely awaits me in Nicolas's future. Not only is he rough-and-tumble, but he is defiant and loves to get me riled up.

It begins innocently enough, with some sensory exploration (banging metal cars on windows, tables, chairs, walls, etc.) and distance measurements (throwing metal cars - and food - down the stairs, across the room, at people's heads, etc.). He then takes a pause to see my expression: if I ignore him, he soon gets bored and moves on to some other seemingly random, but potentially intentional, act of home destruction. If, however, he sees my eyes widen, a gasp leave my mouth, or my body move to stop him, his eyes twinkle and he smiles. He then poses, yes POSES, as if to repeat the action!! Today, he was threatening to dive off the couch. I was on the floor, he was bouncing on the couch, and it's as if he noticed that I was a little worried he'd fall. So he started putting his hands up in the air, going towards the edge, and acting as if he were going to fall, ON PURPOSE, to see me worry. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

Of course, the stuff we learn in our Psych 101 class leads us to believe that he is just looking for attention, that if we give him positive reinforcement during other, safer pursuits, he will look to obtain attention that way.

Ha!

Not.

I can already see that this will be the boy who initiates me into another dimension of worry. It seems that it wasn't enough to worry about Sebastian's sensitivity and fears, and Lucas not doing well in school: I had to spawn a boy who will dare-devil his way through life so that I could experience the full spectrum of motherhood angst.

Amen.