Our two-year-old brain is the one that always thinks, as the commercial says, “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.” That behavior is becoming more and more common in Miklos. And like the two-year-old who is told no, he sometimes throws a tantrum. Usually, he just balls up his fists and pouts or shouts, but he has recently pushed me when he didn’t get immediate satisfaction of a desire.

We were trying to take an updated family photo, which I hoped to display prominently in our home. We were dressed in complementary colors, the day was sunny, but chilly, and we were posing on a bridge — a lovely backdrop with beautiful fall foliage. Miklos at first refused to remove his baseball cap, and when I asked him to remove his jacket, he said, “But I’m cold.” We explained that it would only be for a few minutes, and then we would go inside and warm up.

He pushed me when I tried to show him where to stand for the photo. And he was sulky. He pouted and in the first couple of shots, he looks like he is being tortured. I am not sure he quite understood what we were doing, even though we had explained it before we went out.

He finally quit pouting, but he never tried to smile. Our last family photos had been taken seven years ago, and since we don’t have the habit of annual photos, I suspect that these will be the last. I wish we could see a happier Miklos, beaming down from the photo as he always beams when one of our daughters arrives for a visit. Sadly, that won’t be the case.

At present the two-year-old is not always in evidence. Miklos is more likely to be sentimentally affectionate, which is a welcome change from the years when he was consumed by work. I am trying to build a reserve of patience and strength so that I can cope if the two-year-old begins to show up more frequently.