Monday, May 11, 2015

Happy Birthday Miles!

Three years old. 

You’re three years old today. 

You’ve made three orbits of the sun. That’s a long way. That’s over 1 billion miles (1 billion, 752 million miles, in fact!).

That’s a lot of miles, Miles.

Sometimes, it seems like you might have traveled that far on the surface of the earth too. You are so active. It’s hard for us to keep up. Every day is a new adventure to the park or the aquarium or the zoo. You’ve started pushing your own cart at the grocery store. You are an independent, sweet little guy. And over the last year it seems like you’re starting to become your own person, with your own personality.

This past year you’ve grown by leaps and bounds. You have started doing puzzles, you recognize all your letters and can even tell us some of the sounds they make. You can count! To ten, reliably! You have started to hold a pen correctly and can trace lines and letters. 

You’re sweet. You give great hugs and kisses. You wait for others when you’re racing so that Frankie or another kid doesn’t get left behind. 

You still don’t eat well. You don’t weigh much. But that means you still fold into my lap perfectly. After a long time of being unwilling to snuggle and sit still with me, you’ve fallen into a beautiful phase of long snuggling sessions. And when I walk in the door, it’s all, “It’s Mama! Mama, will you pretend with me? You be mama cat and I’m Miles cat. Will you be cats with me?” I can feel the joy emanate from your tiny being. And sometimes, just sometimes, you grab my face between your tiny hands and say “I love you, Mama.” And I return with, “I love you too. I’m the luckiest.” To which you insist, “NO, I’m the luckiest.”

I hope we stay lucky for a really long time.


Happy Third Birthday, little dude.

Love, Mama




Sunday, April 19, 2015

March/April 2015


Spring is here, and it has reminded me once again how much easier parenting is when it's warm outside. Going to a playground for an hour is like a magic pill for a happy family. It's nice to be able to get back to the zoo as well! Our neighborhood is lined with flowering trees, including a lot of cherry blossoms, and they come out for about a week and it is incredibly beautiful.

We had a fun weekend trip to Richmond to celebrate Colleen's birthday. We spent her actual birthday sitting in interminable Northern Virginia traffic. It took us 6 and a half hours to get there, including a break to clean up some carsickness troubles. So, it didn't start off great, but the rest of the trip was a blast. We visited the Richmond Children's Museum, which was like a combination of the best parts of Storyville and the Maryland Science Center. We went over to Belle Isle, a beautiful park accessible by a pedestrian bridge hanging below a highway. We climbed around on rocks in a shallow part of the river. On the way home, we stopped at Luray Caverns and Miles was really excited to see a real (well, sort of) cave.

Miles' new fun activity is telling jokes! It started on April Fools Day, where he and I spent the whole day saying obviously false things to each other, like "I ate a train for breakfast" or "Fish go on the ground" and cheering "April Fools". We've got him to switch to saying "Only kidding", but he has really gotten to enjoy the humor in incongruity. One day, we were at the community center and a pick-up truck was parked in the entrance outside, and Miles found it hilarious, saying "I know trucks don't go on sidewalks" as if the universe was playing a delightful joke on him. Next month: Knock knock jokes! 


Jump!

Flamingos are weird things.

Hangin' with some rhinos.


Looking out on (hopefully) the last snow (please)

Lil' grocery shopper

Richmond Children's Museum

Scarf tubes!



Water table!
Riding a Brachiosaurus!
Hanging pedestrian bridge to Belle Isle, Richmond.

I bet this bridge is on no fewer than 10 Richmond-based album covers

We walked across the river on rocks!

And logs!

Looking in a hole. 

Don't fall in!

Looking out over the James

Luray Caverns


Crazy reflection

Getting dressed is hard

O's!

Cherry Blossoms came out in our neighborhood!


It's my favorite week of the year! 

Hooray!

Let's celebrate with ice cream!

First time on the zoo's giant tree slide.

Probably the 30th time on the zoo's giant tree slide, one hour later.

The World's Greatest Detective

We're asleep.

We're up! 




Family picture


He only likes to eat the sprinkles.


It's apple juice! 

Hangin' out front.

Bath time! 

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

February/March 2015


Lots of exciting stuff going on last month. We got some great help from a couple of social worker friends of ours (thanks, Matt and Anna!) about ways to improve listening and behavior, and things have really improved! We're showing empathy! and talking about feelings! and presenting our directives as choices! He's really responded to it, while he's still a little insane person, it's gotten a lot more manageable, and we spend a lot less time not getting dressed and being mad at each other. It's pretty great! 

And just in time, too. Since it's getting nicer outside, and the snow is melting, we can actually get out and do some fun stuff. Last week, Miles and I hopped on a MARC train for a day trip to the air and space museum, which he loved. We're looking forward to lots more trips! 

Puzzles! Miles has gotten really into puzzles lately. He's got 2 46-piecers (Ninja Turtles and Spider Man), a 48-piecer (the Solar System), a 60 piecer (Octonauts) and a 70 piecer (Dinosaurs, which he got as a reward for pooping on the potty). He can do the Spiderman and the Solar System without even needing any help at all! 




Bath Fashion!

We lost our water for a day and a half.  It came back, like, an hour after I bought all these.

Watercolors at the Walters


Hello? May I speak to Mr. Crab? 

MARC Train!

Tickets please!

The Air and Space Museum

Miles visits the Wright brothers plane

He still loves planets.

Train delays on the way home. Some of us are all tuckered out.

Hello? May I speak to Mr. Crab?

Miles, no! The black spots are lava!

Pretending to be mad.

Grrrrr!

Legos at the barber shop

Snow! 



Sometimes you gotta nap on the floor

Brush 'em, brush 'em.

He made this one with no help at all!

Working on connect-the-dots writing. He did the middle one himself.