We're still having the tantrums but since his sleep has been a bit improved over the past day or two, I think that the tiredness factor behind some of them (which no doubt makes them worse) has been eliminated, and in turn, I feel better able to cope with them and to search for solutions.

I'm still finding them hard, but I do believe there is a HUGE developmental/frustration factor involved. He's a super active little boy who wants to do things as fast as possible and needs to understand WHY things are happening. He gets frustrated very easily if he can't do things or work them out so I think now, when he's on the brink of talking and is trying to tell me something, it gets really frustrating for him when we don't understand right away, what he wants/needs. I'm sure it will pass once he can speak and communicate more effectively.

In the meantime I'll persist with trying to be calm and go through a process of elimination at working out what is behind it (and trying to avoid them in the start by acting promptly on tiredness/hunger/thirst/boredom etc) and obviously providing some distraction (although as I said before, that's hard too LOL).