The laws of toddler motion

This weekend we had a remarkably perfect unremarkable day. Eli woke up before 6 a.m. as usual and I presented him with a flashing Mickey Mouse cup, a Mickey spinning toy and a card full of Hot Wheels stickers in honor of Valentine's Day. In the morning Phil and Eli lounged in their pajamas building intricate towers out of magnets and blocks while I ran a frigid local 5K with the women of my moms' running group. When I got home we packed up and headed to Williamsburg for swim class, where Eli blew bubbles like a champ and had to be dragged bodily from the pool while insisting that he had to keep looking for "treasure." He slept in the car on the way home and then we all headed back upstairs for more playing before Phil's mom arrived to put Eli to bed so Phil and I could go on our Valentine's Day date at Luke's Lobster.

It was unremarkable because we didn't do anything out of the ordinary, but it was remarkably perfect because it was virtually tantrum-free. That's 12 hours without any meltdowns, fits or crying jags. There was no stomping of feet or banging of heads or flinging of toys, no wailing or shrieking or howling.

I wouldn't say that Eli is any more dramatic than your average toddler, but he can throw a temper tantrum with the best of them. He's been known to fling himself to the ground and beat it with his fists after, say, being denied a fourth slice of cheese. On one memorable occasion, he cried because he wanted to go inside the picture in his book and he couldn't because, well, it was a picture inside a book. A few weeks ago, while suffering from the lingering after effects of a virus, he was having such regular meltdowns over such inconsequential occurrences that Phil declared, "This is not normal behavior!" and insisted on bringing him to the doctor, who diagnosed him with a very grave condition: Eli, he explained, was 2 years old.

The mysterious non-patterns of toddler behavior are particularly difficult for Phil, who's an engineer, to understand. In his mind, a particular pattern of input should reliably produce a similar pattern of output (let's call this Phil's Second Law of Toddler Motion). He likes to analyze Eli's tantrums to review how we can change our behavior to prevent future meltdowns. (This Monday-morning post-tantrum quarterbacking is exactly as enjoyable as you can imagine.) So he's always saying things like: "Historically we know that when Eli eats yogurt for breakfast during a waxing moon phase, he'll require one or more hours of physical stimulation before 10 a.m. in order to facilitate optimal midday napping. So in the future we should ensure that all yogurt consumption is accompanied by early visitation to (a) the Hall of Science or (b) Twinkle Playspace."

But what Phil's Second Law of Toddler Motion repeatedly fails to account for is the Toddlers Are Bat$&!t Crazy escape clause, which decrees that every force you exert upon a toddler to produce a reaction will eventually be accompanied by an equal and opposite reaction. Like last night at dinnertime, which went like this:

Eli: "I want a meatball. I want a meatball. I want a meatball. I WANT A MEATBALL!"
Meatball is placed in front of Eli.
Eli: "I don't want a meatball! I WANT PEANUT BUTTER!"

So when we had this remarkably perfect unremarkable day, I had a realization that was a relief: We hadn't done anything differently than usual. We hadn't hustled Eli out of the house as early as possible to burn off energy or fed him a specially protein-packed lunch or infused the morning with the correct balance of screen time. We just had a remarkably perfect unremarkable day because, well, toddlers are bat$&!t crazy and this time it worked in our favor.

Rachel's Laws of Toddler Motion

1. A toddler in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by a parent attempting to direct the motion of the toddler toward the door of the house because it's time to leave, at which point the toddler will plant himself in a corner and refuse to move. A toddler at rest has probably been clubbed over the head or plied with a pacifier and blankie.
2. The acceleration of a toddler toward an object is inversely related to the parent's desire for the toddler to leave the object alone (i.e., the more forcefully a parent expresses a desire for the toddler to stay away from the object, the faster the toddler will accelerate toward that object). More undesirable objects will require a greater magnitude of force to be exerted on the toddler: For example, a toddler's acceleration toward a toothbrush at bedtime will require a much greater magnitude of force than his acceleration toward a cookie.
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite bat$&!t crazy toddler reaction.