defense

Child 2 is a high tensile sort of Child - always has been. As an infant it had to be swaddled incredibly tightly just to get it to calm down and sleep or its wiry little arms would work free and literally wind it back up just by their gyrating action. It has a hair-trigger to this day and great amusement can be had by innocently walking up behind it and saying hello. Granted you have to do it from a safe distance as sometimes Child 2's hair trigger expresses itself as an instinctive sort of judo-flipping kind of thing (no, really, it has laid out several close friends at school entirely accidentally simply because they startled it).

Child 2 also makes very entertaining meeping noises when you tickle it (Child 2 right this moment is bellowing I DO NOT MEEP. It meeps). It's siblings are banned from tickling (it's a universal sibling-wide ban for the sake of Peace in Our Times), but natch I'm the Parent and I have rights and privileges [note: I'm not a monster. I totally only tickle Child 2 when I'm bored as is right and proper]. Child 2 is kind enough to make an effort not to judo-flip or otherwise maim and injure its parent, leading to a certain amount of creativity in its Anti-Tickle efforts.

Which is why this weekend when I surprised it one evening it flipped on its back, showed all of its claws and roared in the Voice of Jehovah:

I WILL WHINE AT YOU!!!

Worked though. I totally didn't tickle it.

Well, not until I stopped laughing anyway.