What we've got here is a failure to communicate

Poor Jonah. He knows what he wants and is very vocal about it, but he still cannot figure out how to communicate all of his wants and needs with us.  We've taught him a bit of sign language, but as they don't use it at day care, we figured there wasn't a lot of value in introducing a lot of signs that likely would not be reinforced. Perhaps we need to revisit this decision, as we seem to have more and more communication issues of late, and Jonah seems to be struggling to understand the difference between "yes" and "no" and other terms and phrases (perhaps he's also having trouble making up his mind too).

Here's an example Ben used recently to illustrate one of our challenges:

Us: "Do you want this grape, Jonah?"
Jonah: "No!"
Take it away. Jonah: "Mine!"

Jonah (pushing his plate): "All done!"
As soon as it is out of his reach: "Miiiiiiiiiiiine!"

I don't know what tantrums will look like as Jonah moves past his second birthday (can this qualify as "terrible twos" right now?), but I somewhat shudder in anticipation. We have had some pretty serious tantrums and meltdowns in the last 6 weeks or so, with one of the worst coming yesterday morning as we were simply getting up and getting around for work. He seemed to be particularly in need of his Terrific Trains book and Ben read it to him after getting him dressed.  The only way we managed to get Jonah to calm down for breakfast (major crying and thrashing while trying to get him strapped into his seat) was by reading it to him while he sat in my lap and feeding him his oatmeal at the same time. These are not strategies we normally employ, as we don't want to encourage the behavior, but it has seemed to be particularly strong of late. Perhaps it is teething, a cold, or something else that is exacerbating his behavior.

For those of you who think he's the sweetest little guy ever (and he is, most days), here's a sample of one very minor episode from a couple of weeks ago:




I know patience is supposedly a virtue and one that I need some help with at times; Jonah is certainly helping me on this front!