Why You Crying? (Apologies to George Lopez)

Ever since the day he was born, Mal has just cried a lot. It was particularly disconcerting when he was an infant, and I couldn't tell whether he was hungry or uncomfortable or sick or who knows what.

Now that he's verbal (hyper verbal?) it's easier to navigate, but he still cries an awful lot. I remember D  being a phlegmatic (if opinionated) little one; Mal is not. He has to feel everything deeply, especially sadness. When he's crying, if I attempt to wipe a runny nose, he'll yell at me, "Don't wipe it! I want to cry!" In the past, he thought that *was* his crying, and when I wiped it, it meant I'd wiped his cry away.

I try to help him navigate these things, alternately sympathizing and asking him if he can cry in a less house-shaking wail-y manner, but it's something we encounter multiple times daily.

Here is a random example of some things that have brought Mal to extraordinarily loud tears recently:

1) That he ate his entire quarter of our Christmas cheesecake and had to save the rest for the rest of the family. He literally sobbed, "I don't want to save any for D and Daddy! I want to eat theirs and they'll be sad!"

2) In the middle of the night, when he awoke asking if we had a Maz Kanata doll and I reminded him that we don't.

3) That I wouldn't take him to Toys R Us the day after Christmas.

4) When we told him that the "stabilizers" (training wheels) on his bike won't lie flat on the ground, he countered with "Ryder's do!" and we bandied back the fact that Ryder is a cartoon and we're not and you can do a lot in a cartoon. "I want to be a cartoon, too!"

5) Because "Empire Strikes Back" isn't playing in a theater.

6) We're out of Lucky Charms. (But any time we're out of anything, really. He'll ask if we have it, I'll say we don't, he'll insist, "But we DO!" then the rending of clothes and the pulling of hair when he finds that I am correct.)

7) I'm not pulling a play set with tiny parts out at 10:45 PM.

8) The knowledge that I intend to take the exterior lights down from the house, even though I have made no move to do it yet.

9) After he calms down about any of the above items, or anything else, and then remembers it again 15 minutes later. He might have episodes about the same issues half a dozen times in one or two days.

Mal is such a sweetie, but as in so many other aspects of his life, he really only has two speeds: Bouncy happy or overwhelming grief. I guess it's good for all of us that I discovered and bought into gentle parenting before I had him. I've certainly lost my temper and yelled at him (for instance, when he needed help getting to the toilet because he was about to pee himself and wouldn't let James, who was right there, help, but kept hollering for me) to stop throwing a fit a few times. But for the most part, James and I try our best and generally do what I feel is an admirable job keeping a level head and trying to empathize with his big feelings, even when we can't make heads or tails of them.

But Mal makes us laugh literally every day, and is such a blessing to have around. An exhausting blessing. On a related note, we found this picture from two years ago yesterday when we were looking at Google Photos last night:

Parenting this kid is treating James like the Presidency treats others: He has greyed SO MUCH since then! As for me, I think my gift is the dark circles under my eyes. But I can't imagine what we'd be doing if we didn't have Mal. He's teaching us so much about ourselves, plus any time you get to see the world "newly" through a maturing kid's eyes, it's complete magic and wonder. Parenting is quite the paradox, isn't it?