Not using our inside voices

The screaming. Oh my, the screaming.

Jack has decided that if we take something away from him -- you know, like a bottle of cleaning fluid or a cigarette -- he should scream. If we tell him no, he can not touch the hot stove, he should scream. If he can't fit the circle in the square hole on his block container, he should scream.

Sometimes, just for the hell of it, he screams. And then looks at me to see what I am going to do about it.

I have tried ignoring it. I have tried reasoning with him. I have tried getting on his level and giving him a stern NO SCREAMING. I have tried saying calmly, "We don't scream."

Last night he tried this little trick at a restaurant when he no longer wanted to eat a quesadilla. So he started screaming at the decible-level of a jumbojet. With a fantastic pitch just below what only dogs can hear.

I scooped him up out of his high chair, took him outside and told him "We do not scream. If you are done, you need to say 'all done' or sign it. You don't scream."

And I shit you not, the kid looked me right in the eye and screamed. And then laughed.

Me, not so much with the laughing. Instead, I was biting my lip trying not to laugh.

Seriously, how do they instinctively know to make themselves so damn cute?