It’s obvious by now I can’t count on my memory as the useful knowledge-servant it once was, but I’m pretty sure that Dylan is much more snuggly than Riley used to be when he was the same age. Riley was Exceedingly Suspicious Of All Things, as some of you may recall. He’d reluctantly come in for a hug, but first had to furrow his brow and scan his surroundings for any objects that required his glare-services.

Dylan, on the other hand, loves to be cuddled. Well, when he’s not throwing a fit and furiously attempting to bash you over the head with a soup ladle, that is. His obsessive activity of late is to snatch up a picture book and come bustling over, saying “Mo’? Mo’?” (more) before turning himself around and plopping his hind end into one of our laps in order to nestle in and and yell “DAH!” over the photo of the Dalmatian for the frillionth time.

He also loves to be picked up and held, and he often squirms around to tuck his arms underneath his chest while lying flat with his little chin resting on one of our shoulders. It’s no easy feat to carry him around like this, since he has the curious ability to exponentially increase his density every millisecond he’s not touching the ground, but aside from the agonizing tendinitis it’s quite pleasant.

He runs in at top speed for hugs, and will even plant gooey, slobbery kisses upon request. I’d say he’s a lover, not a fighter, but uhhh . . . let’s just say he’s ambidextrous in those arenas.

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If this is your first time at Baby Fight Club, you have to fight. With the base of the sofa. Using your head.

Dylan maybe prefers his father a little, but not so much so that it smashes my heart with a mallet, the way it was when Riley was little. I think the worst of Riley’s daddy preference happened when he was around 2-2.5 years old, so there’s still plenty of time for Dylan to decide—hopefully temporarily— that I’m a piss-poor JB substitute, but dear god, I sure hope we skip that stage this time.

If it’s true we tend to bury or sugarcoat our memories of the worst parenthood moments, the part of my brain that contains data of that painful rejection phase didn’t get the memo to do so, because I can remember it all too clearly. What a suckfest that was, having my own child howl in dismay when I picked him up, his little arms stretching beseechingly for his father. If you’ve ever endured a stage like this, you have my deepest sympathies, and the feeble yet heartfelt statement that this awful period will in fact come to an end, and balance will be restored. If the situation is reversed in your household—if your child only wants you—let me tell you something, don’t offer your story to someone who’s living the opposite scenario. I say this with kindness and the knowledge that you’re just trying to help, but no, you DON’T know how the other shoe feels. I’m sure it also sucks to have a child suction-cupped to your body all day long, a child who refuses Daddy’s loving embrace in favor of following you around sobbing to be picked up, but oh man, it’s just not the same. I’d rather be preferred than rejected any day—wouldn’t we all?

Who knows what stages lie before us, but I’m hoping Dylan’s equal-opportunity lovebug nature hangs around for a while. Right now my lap is as good as JB’s, and perhaps even more encouraging, it seems equally satisfactory to rabbit-kick either one of us in the stomach, Houdini-death-style, during a diaper change. I’ll take that.

I was having a Particularly Challenging Time with Dylan the other day and when we finally got him in bed for the night (lashed securely to his crib with canvas restraints as usual, the toddler-sized Hannibal Lecter muzzle fastened over his snapping, flesh-seeking jaws) I moaned to JB about how Riley hadn’t been this hard, had he? I mean, I definitely remember some difficulty around the 18-month stage, but my god, this is like raising a badger. A furious, unstable badger with nearly every symptom of a viral neuroinvasive disease: slobbering, abnormal temper, and acute cerebral dysfunction (what else can explain his hand-clapping joy at seeing the vacuum emerge from the closet, followed immediately by a bloodcurdling scream of pure terror after spotting the—DEAR GOD NO!—hose attachment? The delirious, lustful trance in which he devours fistfuls of macaroni and cheese one day, the howls of outrage upon having it offered to him the next? His propensity for flinging himself backwards to show his displeasure at accidentally bonking the front of his head on the table, only to roundly—and seemingly purposefully—smack the back of his head on the hardwood floor?).

Dylan’s temperament has not only led me to theorize about his future career opportunities (PETA activist, axe murderer, Blackberry-throwing supermodel), because surely this is all indicative of the difficult adult he will grow to be, but also in my darker moments wonder if in fact there’s something . . . you know, wrong. (“No, doctor, I can’t specifically recall him being exposed to the saliva of an aggressive bat, but perhaps it happened at daycare?”)

It just doesn’t seem like we went through all these exact brain-melting toddler idiosyncrasies with Riley. Diaper changes didn’t fill him with rage—why, he loved the changing table! He was picky, but he certainly didn’t smack spoonfuls of food across the room. He never ran crazily around the room weeping and rending his garments when one of his parents dared to pry the television remote from his fierce little grippy paws, for god’s sake.

I’d remember that stuff with perfect, pained clarity, wouldn’t I?

Well, according to this blog post, written by me when Riley was all of 14 months old, the answer is no.

Blind tantrumy staggering from one area to the next, accompanied by unending shrieks of fury? Check.

Food-smacking, diaper-protesting, toy-throwing umbrage? Check, check, check.

White-hot parental hatred triggered by removal of television remote? Fucking CHECK, and what IT is about the remote ANYWAY, we have EIGHT THOUSAND TOYS THAT FEATURE BUTTONS including OLD REMOTES and the only thing the kid wants is the one object that can permanently reprogram our TiVo to record nothing but DR. FUCKING PHIL.

I happened to re-read that entry only because of a recent incoming link and I was so stupidly relieved to hear my own words describing the multitudes of frustrations I was experiencing back then, I can’t even tell you. I immediately emailed it to JB, who wrote back, Buddha-like, “We forget the young Riley was once a great a-hole.”

I don’t know what this tells me. Maybe that it’s easier to remember the good moments, and cram the collections of bad ones into one generalized mental bucket (“That there year-and-a-half stage is a bit challenging, ayup”). Maybe that my memory is inherently faulty and that’s why I couldn’t tell you the difference between a numerator and a denominator if you paid me. Maybe that the children are slowly but surely liquidating and siphoning away entire cross-slices of my brain, one day at a time.

Whatever the reason, I’m just glad to know that if we are in fact raising a badger, at least we’ve done it before. Even though we clearly didn’t learn anything the first time around.

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