6/4/09

Miles has just a couple of weeks left in kindergarten - it's shocking that the end of the school year is here already.  We've been swamped with end-of-the-year activities, and we're gearing up for our first summer in over 5 years without childcare for Miles.  We're feeling very (very) fortunate that Nana and Grandad moved to the area so they can help us out this summer and keep us on a somewhat normal work schedule.  On that note, Miles and Micah had their first overnight visit to Nana and Grandad's house last weekend, and everyone survived - thrived even.  We're thrilled at the prospect of possibly being able to take more trips in the future without the kids!

As for school, there are a few interesting things to report on.  First, Miles and some of his friends seem to be competing for who can write the longest papers at school.  He sometimes comes home with 4 or even 6 page stories about what he did over the weekend.  It's fun to see how much his writing has improved this year (in addition to his spelling improving, he's now starting to use small and capital letters correctly, and periods at the end of his sentences, all of which make his writing much easier to decipher).  We also like to see what he chooses to write about - it's a whole new insight into his world.

The marathon we mentioned in a previous post finished this week, and Miles ran or walked 17 miles during his lunch recess over the past few weeks.  We're really impressed that he worked so hard at this goal, and that he made it so far in the marathon!

Our last school story is about Miles's transition to 1st grade next year.  When asked if he was excited about being a first grader soon, Miles paused, and responded simply:  "I will miss Ms. Lailey".  She's been a great teacher, and he's really connected with her.  We're all going to miss her a lot.

The only other Miles-related news is that we had his blood tested again recently to check his egg allergy.  He still has a Class II allergy, which is disappointing since we'd hoped to see stronger signs of him growing out of the allergy by now.  On the plus side, dealing with it is becoming almost second nature to us now, so if he doesn't end up outgrowing it, at least we'll know how to handle it!

5/18/09

We've noticed recently that Miles doesn't seem to need as much sleep as he used to.  He occasionally sleeps in quite late (causing us all to scramble to get out the door in time for school since he's our alarm clock), but he's often up early, and more often that not he sits up and reads in bed for a while after we tuck him in.  He's reading most books marked "Level 2" quite well on his own now, and this includes Frog and Toad books which he enjoys a lot.  He will also work at his Magic School Bus chapter books after we've read a couple of chapters to him and he really wants to know what happens next.  He's not as good about reading to us these days, though - he will always choose to have us read to him once he's gotten us to sit down with him and a book.

Miles still really enjoys writing.  He writes his school papers quickly (rather than carefully) and gives the appearance of wanting to get all of his ideas down as fast as he can.  We chuckle a little, because we think he's trying to get his writing to keep up with his talking!  He recently came up with a couple of books that we liked so much we scanned them so we could post them here. 

The first is a Mother's Day Book he made for Molly. 
The second is called "No, Micah" - it's a book he wrote to follow the tone of the "No, David!" books.

Miles's school is also working on running a marathon this spring.  During the lunch-time recess, the kids can choose to go to the field and run laps around the track.  Every six laps is a mile, and there are volunteers counting the laps each child runs.  For each mile they run, they get a charm for a necklace, and a large percentage of the kids in the school wear their necklace every day to show their progress on the marathon.  The goal is to get as many kids as possible to run 26.2 miles by the end of the year.  After a few weeks of doing this, Miles has run 8 or 9 miles, and he's very excited about his necklace.  It's fun to see such creative ways to get the kids to be active.

5/5/09

Ever since Miles was a baby, we've noticed a Jekyll and Hyde tendency in him.  This is still true today.  Some days he just can't seem to stop himself from torturing Micah, and us, and everyone around him, and other days he is incredibly sweet, and helpful, and grown up, even with Micah.  We find ourselves talking a lot about how to tap into Dr. Jekyll when Mr. Hyde seems to have taken up residence for the day :). 

Luckily, Miles's interests are many and strong, so we can usually get him interested in doing something that distracts him from causing trouble.  He still loves legos, making art projects, and doing puzzles.  And of course, he'll play games for as long as we'll let him.  He's also been more interested in reading lately, even on his own on occasion.  We've discovered The Magic School Bus which he loves, and also Encyclopedia Brown.  He still much prefers it when we read to him, but we do find him reading on his own some now, especially at night after we've tucked him in. 

The other activity Miles will choose over almost any other is playing with his friends.  He loves having friends over, going on playdates, and just generally seeing his friends.  He asks for sleepovers and playdates all the time, and Molly never knows what to expect when she picks him up from school because he often comes out of the building with hopes of getting a playdate of some sort organized.  Luckily the weather is getting nicer, so we can often hang out on the school playground for a while after school with other kids and get in some extra play time.

4/24/09

Miles had a grand time on our recent trip to Cabo.  He loved the beach this year, and didn't regress at all with his swimming skills from last summer, so he was a little fish in the pool.  He still just doggy paddles (we need those swimming lessons again this summer!) but on our trip he figured out how to pop his head up to take a breath during a long swim, and by the end of the week he was swimming across some pretty wide pools all by himself.  He also had fun diving for toys in the pool and chasing the waves on the beach.

Miles learned something else new this trip.  He learned that Matt has a Nintendo DS.  Not surprisingly, he became obsessed.  Now that we're back home we're having to figure out how to keep his play time to a minimum.  When he isn't playing the DS, he often does pretend play with his friends or with Micah, or even just with a drawing on a piece of paper, and he reenacts some of his favorite parts of the DS game called Zelda.

Miles is back at school now after a couple of weeks off for spring break and for our trip.  He still really likes school and the activities they do and the friends he's made there.  We're happy that his first year of school has been such a good one.

3/31/09

Miles lost another tooth!  We haven't gotten a good picture of this yet, but we will soon, we promise!  He's excited that he's started losing his teeth, and his adult teeth are already starting to poke their way through his gums.  He's going to look so different soon!

Miles really likes to construct things.  He hasn't asked for a lego kit in quite a while now - he's been making his own creations with all of the pieces we have.  He likes to use his blocks to make all sorts of things (airports, jails, leprechaun traps) and still tells us elaborate stories to go with his creations.  He's been asking us to save his recycling so he can use it to do art projects (you can see one of his creations in the photo gallery below).  Many of his art projects are 3-dimensional these days.  Today he made hand rockets for all of us by stapling together two sheets of paper, folding over the top and stapling it to make a point, and leaving the bottom open to fit a hand.  It's a great toy for Micah, since it's very easy for him to wave his hand around to make it fly.  It's fascinating to see what Miles comes up with.

We're still playing a ton of games with Miles.  Whenever Nana comes over, they play games together for hours.  Molly is thrilled that there is someone else around who will play games with her obsessively.  She's working hard on teaching him strategy so that he'll be able to give her a run for her money soon!

Miles's recess woes continue to come and go.  Some weeks he has happy stories about the games he and his friends invented and played on the playground.  Other times he has trouble finding a friend to play with him.  It sounds like the kids often pair off, and 3's a crowd in kindergarten.  Also, the other kids are occasionally choosing to play games that get them in trouble (usually games that involve pretend weapons) and Miles doesn't like to get yelled at, so he won't join those friends.  We have to applaud that choice, but sometimes it makes it hard for him to find kids to play with during recess.  He seems to be dealing with it all pretty well, but we still talk fairly often about who he found to play with each day.  We keep trying to think of new suggestions to offer him to help him figure out what to do on the days the pairings don't work in his favor.

3/18/09

When Miles was $3 shy of his goal to purchase a lego kit, he suddenly realized he could use the money instead for his latest obsession:  Bakugans.  Miles was introduced to these at school, and seems to have really bonded with a couple of the other boys in kindergarten who are also obsessed with Bakugans.  They are spheres that open up into creatures of various shapes when you toss them on the ground, or when they touch metal.  There are associated cards, and a game you can play, though it seems trading them and talking about who has the coolest Bakugan is the most fun thing right now.  He now owns 8 Bakugans, and has plans to buy more as soon as he can.

We still have Miles enrolled in soccer, as well as his Great Play class where he is currently learning about soccer and baseball.  He enjoys these classes a lot, and they help us fill out his exercise calendar for PE (he needs to exercise for at least 20 minutes, 3 times/week).  Unfortunately the Great Play coach we especially like is moving on, so it may be time to move back to gymnastics, or try something else new! 

Miles got his 2nd report card from school this week, and he's continuing to do well.  We're really pleased that he's doing well academically, that he really likes school, and that he's making lots of friends.  When we were talking today about our upcoming trip to Cabo (which will make him miss a week of school), he said it was hard to choose whether he wanted to go to Cabo more, or go to school more, since he likes both things so much.  Of course, in the end he decided he would rather go to Cabo, but it was a close one.

2/23/09

Miles lost his tooth just a few days after our last website posting.  He was very excited, and is wiggling the next one furiously in hopes of more cash from the tooth fairy.  And speaking of cash, Miles has been busily saving his allowance each week so that he can buy a lego kit.  He's just a few dollars away from his $40 goal now, and we've been very impressed at how he's saved for many many weeks now to get this kit.  He knows exactly how much money he has, and will happily report the amount to anyone who will listen.  Aside from all the great money management skills he's gaining, it's really helping his math/addition skills!  We're glad to finally be out of the phase where he immediately spends his allowance the day after he gets it on whatever toy he sees first.  And we were equally pleased that despite his determination to save the money he needs for a lego kit, when he decided one day he really wanted to use one of his dollars to buy an extra popcorn at school on Popcorn Friday, he was willing to treat himself knowing he'd have to save a bit longer.  It's great to see him making these kinds of decisions so well.

Miles has had some time off of school recently, and he really enjoyed the extra time with Molly and Nana.  We've been playing a ton of games recently - mostly Uncle Wiggly, and Mastermind, but also Racko and Sequence, a couple of grown-up games that he's figured out how to play reasonably well.  Miles also got to build a castle at Nana's house out of cardboard boxes from their move.  He got the idea from a book he read, and the castle he and Nana built is pretty impressive!  We may eventually show some pictures of it here, but since Grandad says that as soon as we've taken our pictures and declared it complete it's moving to our house, we're going to hold off as long as we can on letting Miles declare the project completed :). 

Miles is continuing to really enjoy school.  He talks mostly about recess and the friends he plays with, and occasionally about not having anyone to play with at recess which is clearly upsetting to him.  We're surprised at how often we talk at home about social interactions with other kids - how to find kids to play with on the playground when it seems like everyone has already paired off, about friends saying they like one friend better than another, about shifting allegiances among his classmates... it's fascinating to hear about all of these kindergarten dramas, and to hear Miles's perspective on them. 

One other interesting thing with Miles is that he has started calling us "Mama" and "Dada".  We're not sure if he picked this up from one of his friends, or if he is starting the gradual shift from "Mommy and Daddy" to "Mom and Dad".  We'll let you know!

2/3/09

Miles has a loose tooth!  It's been loose for a couple of weeks, but it's so loose now that we're a little worried we won't get this website update done before the tooth falls out.  He has his tooth fairy pillow all ready to go and he's very excited about joining the toothless crowd at school.  It's pretty funny visiting his classroom and seeing all of the lopsided grins there.

Miles has been especially interested in building and art toys lately.  We're surprised how often he chooses these activities even over using the computer.  And as always, he has fantastic stories he likes to tell us about what he's making.  His buildings all have secret openings, special parts that break off and can fly, people who live in them with magical or super powers, etc.  Today he came home from school with a picture of a rocket blasting off.  The bottom of the page had about 30 staples in it.  He said they were the launching pad for the rocket.  The rocket  was in the sky at the top of the page, and most of the rest of the page was covered in red.  He said this was because of the fire from the rocket blasting off.  He pointed out then that there was a red tree in the background, just behind the stapler launching pads.  We asked him if the tree was red because it was on fire.  He said no, it's because you're looking at the tree through the fire. 

We haven't let Miles see a lot of the popular movies that the kids at school are talking about because we're not totally sure he's ready for them.  But since he comes home from school telling us he played Star Wars, or Wall-E (which he has now seen) on the playground, we've been trying to get him up to speed on the basic stories by reading him books about the movies.  He's totally fascinated by his Star Wars book and asks us to read it to him often.  Interestingly, though, with all of these movie-based books, the thing he asks about the most is whether or not it's real.  When he sees things on TV, reads them in books, or hears about them from his friends, he always wants to know first and foremost f they're real.  He thinks that lots of the kids at school don't know that the people in Star Wars are just actors acting out an imaginary story, and that light sabers aren't real.  We're curious if he went back to school and told them all that :).

1/8/09

Miles was pretty worried about all of the snow right before Christmas because he desperately wanted to go to Grandma's house and see his cousins, and we wanted to warn him that we might not be able to take off.  He was thrilled when we got on the airplane and we agreed that it sure seemed like we were really going to make it!  After we landed in Chicago, we had a huge break-through with Miles and his behavior towards Micah.  Micah fell asleep as the plane was landing, and was very out of sorts when we woke him up after only a 20 minute nap.  Micah desperately wanted to be first as we walked through the airport, but he's not nearly fast enough to beat Miles, and Miles always takes his advantage and runs ahead of Micah everywhere we go, much to Micah's dismay.  When Micah lost it in the airport and stood rooted to the ground, crying loudly and refusing to walk towards baggage claim because Miles was first, we decided that Miles would be more likely to step up right then than sleep-deprived Micah would be.  Sure enough, after a little coaxing, we got Miles to walk behind Micah the whole way, and Miles even seemed to actually enjoy watching Micah run on his little legs, checking back constantly to make sure he was still first.  It was a small step, but a huge deal for Miles, and we were proud of him for being able to let go of his own need to be first for once!  We've seen him make a lot of good strides forward since then in finding ways to work things out with Micah that don't always leave Micah in a puddle of tears.  It's not all the time, but we're glad to see it even occasionally!  Go Miles!

Miles was very excited about all of his Christmas presents, especially his spiderman web shooter that Santa brought him.  He had a great time playing with his cousins, and he didn't want to leave at the end of the week.  It snowed a lot while we were in IL too, and Miles said at one point he hoped our plane wouldn't be able to take off this time so we could stay longer at Grandma's house.

He's back at school now, and was excited to see his friends again, especially Olivia, a girl in his kindergarten class that he spends most of his free time (lunch and recess) with.  We did manage a few playdates with Nev over the winter break too, though, which Miles always loves.  He wishes more of his friends (like Nev and some of the kids from daycare) were in his kindergarten class instead of the other one.  Hopefully in first grade that will happen.

Miles told us the other day that he no longer wants to be a police officer.  He thinks chasing bad guys might be pretty hard.  He wants to be a scientist or an artist, or maybe both if he can find a job that lets him do both.

12/15/08

Miles is getting very excited about Christmas coming.  He loves to help us wrap presents and make cookies, and tonight he thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas drum show we took him to.  He danced through most of the show, including dancing with a polar bear, a snow princess, and he even got to play one of the performer's tambourines for a while.  He ate two peppermint tootsie-pops during the show but the dancing seems to have helped burn off the sugar because he was asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow tonight.  In case anyone thinks this exuberance at a loud drum show indicates he's finally gotten over his dislike of loud sounds, don't be fooled.  We had him wear hearing protection this year - it worked wonders.

12/7/08

As some of our family members already know, Miles has been working (a bit obsessively) on doing a craft project for Christmas.  We can't say much more, because it really is supposed to be a surprise, but we'll eventually be able to post some pictures.  He started out intending to make three of this item, and to date he has made 16, and he's still going.  We just hope a few of our relatives find a use for what he's created!  He's having a lot of fun doing them, that's for sure.

Miles is continuing to enjoy school (mostly) and he talks a lot about all of his friends.  We signed him up for soccer again along with some of the other kids in his kindergarten class.  Interestingly, on the way to the first practice, he told Molly he didn't feel well - he was tired and his legs were sore.  This surprised her (it's unlike him) but she figured he was nervous about doing something new, so they talked about the sports arena they were going to which he's been to for soccer classes before, and about which friends would be there.  That seemed to help, and he admitted that he was nervous and a little unsure about what to expect.  He was happy when they got there, and he remembered the place, and immediately saw Nev getting ready to head out onto the field.  He ended up loving the lesson that day.

Miles also went to the allergist again recently, where they did a prick test for egg (still positive) and for the flu shot which contains egg (that was negative this year, so he got a flu shot, much to his dismay).  Although there is still some indication that his allergy may be decreasing, the prick tests are not quantitative, so we really don't have any new information.  We'll do a blood test again in May and we'll have more information then.  We're keeping our fingers crossed that he will grow out of this still.  Something like 75% of kids do between the ages of 4 and 7, and we're just about at the halfway mark for that age range. 

11/24/08

We had a conference with Miles's kindergarten teacher this week and learned more about how things are going for him at school.  We were really proud when she told us how well he's doing academically, socially, and just generally following the rules and being a "dream" to have in the classroom.  It's so good to hear all these nice things about him.

Miles has a new rhythm to his weeks now that Nana and Grandad are here.  Because he gets out of school a little early every Wednesday, Nana has been picking him up and spending the afternoon with him so Molly can have a somewhat more normal work day on those days.  Miles is loving his extra time with Nana, and we think Nana is loving her extra time with Miles!  They've done some fun projects together, and Miles apparently tells anyone who listen at school on Wednesdays that his Nana is coming for him that day.

Miles is also in a new kind of extra curricular class.  He's taking it with his friend Fiona from preschool who we haven't seen much of since kindergarten started, and he's thrilled for some extra time with her.  The classes are also pretty interesting.  They're just 8 week sessions, and each sessions covers 2 different sports.  They draw parallels between the skills you learn for each of the sports, and they walk the kids through basic things like passing, dribbling, and scoring.  The sports for this session are basketball and hockey.  Miles really enjoys basketball, but despite all of the coaching he's receiving, he's still quite sure that launching the ball as high as possible from between his legs is the best way to make a basket.  With hockey, though, he seems to have a little more skill and is quite good at controlling the ball with his hockey stick and working his way through and around obstacles.  It's fun to watch him try these sports, and he seems to really love these classes.

Miles is also still talking about learning to play the violin, and since the piano classes we tried weren't working out very well, Molly is going to try to teach him piano at home for a while.  It's only been a couple of weeks, but it seems to be going ok so far!

11/1/08

Miles is really doing great these days.  We often hear from other parents at his school that their kids talk about Miles at home and it sounds like they really like him.  And closer to home, he is doing a terrific job with Micah.  They still fight, but Miles is way more likely to try to work through a solution that will help Micah.  As an example, Miles got a magic wand at a birthday party he attended, and he didn't want to have to share it with Micah.  After fighting over it, and Micah ending up in tears (that part didn't go as well as we'd hoped), Miles offered to make Micah his own wand.  At first Micah refused, so Miles said Micah could help him, and that got Micah's attention.  He stopped crying and followed Miles into the office where they proceeded to make a magic wand out of paper with a little help from Molly (you can see the result in the Halloween Part 2 photo page below).  Miles is showing us more and more that he can creatively work through issues he's having with Micah, which is just great.

Along those same lines, they decided to play board games together this morning.  It was a bit hairy, but funny to watch.  First they played Uncle Wiggly, which is a game that requires reading and the ability to count to 150.  Clearly not a game for Micah, but Miles tried desperately to coach him through it and get him to follow the rules. He tried to teach him out to count out his spaces, he read Micah's cards for him and told him what to do, etc., all the while stopping Micah from randomly moving the pieces to new spaces, going out of turn, upending the stack of cards, etc.  Micah lost interest pretty quickly, so they switched to Candy Land Bingo, a game that is within Micah's ability.  Miles thought he should simplify the rules for Micah, though.  Interesting choice.  The simplification made the game last about 2 minutes.  Then they tried playing Chinese Checkers.  When it was Micah's turn to go, having no idea how the game is supposed to be played, Micah dug in an swiped his balls all over the place sending them flying around the room (he thought this was a great game).  Miles cried out in exasperation - "Micah, you're making me lose my marbles!".  If only he knew how funny he sounded just then.

10/27/08

Knock on wood, we may have finally hit a real turning point with Miles.  It's been about a month now, and Miles is continuing to listen well, interact nicely with Micah, and just generally be a lot more fun to be around.  He will always have his moments, but we're seeing way more happy, positive behavior from him these days.  It's such a breath of fresh air.  We're also getting good reports about him from school - we'll have official conference in Nov, but Miles comes home from school telling us that the teacher pointed out to everyone what a good listener he was, and that he created a pattern in math that she was so impressed by that she showed it to the other kindergarten teacher.  Ms. Lailey also told Molly that he is a real pleasure to have in the classroom, that he listens well, follows instructions, gets along with the other kids, and does well academically to boot.  We're really glad that he seems to be settling into kindergarten so happily.

One change that we're seeing in Miles at home is his excitement about writing.  Although he has been typing letters and email for a while now, school has helped him get a lot better at actually writing things on paper, and he's been making more notes and pictures with words on them.  This past weekend he made his very first book.  It was titled "Trane Book bi Miles".  Each page of the book had a train car on it which he labeled, including a coal car, a garbage car, a dining car, and a caboose, among others.  He took the book to school to show Ms. Lailey - we're hoping that we will get it back at some point!

One of our issues with Miles right now is that he is constantly asking for new toys, or new experiences.  From the second Molly picks him up from school, she hears a string of questions that goes something like this:  "Can we go to the lego store?  Can we go to the water slide?  Can we go to the museum?  Can we to go to Starbucks?  Can we go to the toy store?  Will you buy me a toy at the grocery store?  Can we go to the lego store?" (this last one is the most common one).  We've been talking about starting Miles on an allowance so that he will begin to learn how to save and what the value is of some of the things he's constantly asking for.

10/13/08

It finally feels like we're settling into a routine now, and Miles is showing signs of relaxing a bit into the new rhythm.  Although we still have bumpy days, he's been much more patient with Micah, and generally more reasonable with us these last few weeks.  With the exception of meal times, when he has a ton of trouble sitting still and not spilling his food everywhere, we're enjoying a bit of a respite from behavior we'd been seeing from him.  He continues to love to help us around the house, and he prefers any activity that involves one of us to any solitary activity, with the notable exception of watching TV.  He's getting very good, though, at identifying games he can play with Micah when one of us isn't available, and of course Micah loves this.  They have dress up games, games of catch, and a chase game that are especially popular with both of them.

As for school, we occasionally hear from him that he doesn't want to go, but usually that's not an issue in the mornings.  He likes running into some of his friends on the walk to school, and most days of the week there's something to look forward to in his day: Molly volunteers in the classroom on Mondays and sometimes stays to have lunch with him; Matt volunteers on Tuesdays, and Tuesday is also Miles's sharing day; Wednesday is "Wacky Wednesday" - it's a short day; Thursdays he just has to get through; and Fridays are popcorn Fridays - the lunchroom sells popcorn for $.50 that the kids can take onto the playground for their after lunch recess.  Miles loves getting his quarters ready in the morning, and it sounds like popcorn Fridays is a huge highlight of the week.  He's also very animated whenever he talks about recess.  Although he played exclusively with Gunnar the first few weeks (Gunnar was at the same preschool as Miles), he now talks about playing with a wide range of friends, and even lamented the other day that it's so hard to pick which of his friends to play with each day.  The games they play all have names - helicopter, ship, strongest girl in the west, and one that is unnamed, but we're guessing would be called "John is Dead" if it had a name.  Most of these games are rescue games, some are chase games.  Miles's descriptions of them are very involved, and different kids play each of the different games.  It all sounds very complicated to us, but it's clearly a big deal to Miles.

And speaking of friends, Miles tells us which of his friends are "up here", meaning at the top of his list.  Fiona is still on that list, but now Gunnar and Ari (two kids from his preschool who are also at his kindergarten) are on that list, as is Nev, a little girl who lives quite close to us that we've started having playdates with fairly often.  Miles asks to play with Nev after school almost every day, and we hear from Nev's parents that it's the same from her.  They like to play soccer, ride their bikes, go to the park and pretend Micah is chasing them, and make up elaborate stories to act out.  They've also had fun using our train tracks and legos, and playing board games and tic-tac-toe on the rare occasion they settle down inside to play.  And they have both discovered the wonder of Starbucks, and are good at convincing both sets of parents to take them for a Starbucks treat.

9/26/08

Well, the bloom is off the kindergarten rose.  Not for Miles - he still loves it.  But for us!  For whatever reason (probably because it's hard to hold himself together all day every day at school), Miles has been letting loose at home.  He isn't listening very well to us, and he's antagonizing and hurting Micah more than usual.  This isn't to say he's always causing problems.  At times, he is as sweet and polite as ever.  But we're not seeing that side of him as much as we'd like!  We hope that his new schedule will soon settle into a routine for him, and he will settle down along with it. 

That said, there are some fun new things going on with Miles.  We enrolled him in the local soccer league, which has practice and then skirmishes once a week.  It turns out that lots and lots of kids from his kindergarten are in the same league, and it's nice to have another chance to get to know some of the other families from the school.  Miles seems to really love the chance to play soccer with his friends.  One of these days we'll remember to bring a camera to document the occasion.

Miles shows lots of signs of enjoying learning and trying new things.  He likes to make his own breakfast whenever possible, and sometimes he'll make Micah's as well.  Often he makes cereal, but he recently learned how to make toast, so he makes that sometimes too.  We've also discovered that Miles really likes thinking about numbers.  The other day he told Molly that 10+10=20.  She figured he'd memorized that, so she asked him what 20+20 was.  He thought about it, said 22, then said No, wait! and told her it's 40.  She asked him why, and he said because 2+2 is 4, nad 0+0 is 0.  At that point he was able to easily extrapolate to 40+40=80 and 30+30=60.  He also likes to "Count 10s".  He said Harrison taught him this, and it means that if you count to 10 ten times, it makes 100. 

Molly had the opportunity this past week to see Miles in action at school when she volunteered for an hour in his classroom.  Whatever problems we're seeing at home don't seem to be happening for him at school.  Miles did a great job listening to the teacher and following her instructions, and staying focused on his task even with Molly in the room.  Ms. Lailey also told Molly that Miles is very independent (something she pointed out as she and Molly watched Miles buy his own milk for lunch that day without any guidance).  It's great to hear about and see his successes in school.  Now if only we could duplicate that at home!

9/4/08

Miles is now officially a kindergartener.  We walked him to school on his first day (in his spiderman shoes and wearing his spiderman backpack), and dropped him off in his classroom.  He was very excited to finally be going to kindergarten, and after 2 days the excitement hasn't waned any.  Today when Molly picked him up, Miles had a 2nd bag over his shoulder, and inside was a teddy bear and a 3 ring binder.  Miles informed Molly that this was the Listening Bear, and at the end of each day the teacher will send the bear home with the child who was the best listener that day, and before the bear goes back to school the next day Miles can use a page in the binder to tell others about what the Listening Bear did while he visited with us.  We're very excited that Miles was the first one in the class to get to bring the Listening Bear home.  It was also pretty funny that Miles made sure we knew that even though the teacher pretended the listening bear was listening all day to decide who to go home with, it was really the teacher (not the bear) who decided.

It's been very fun to see how excited Miles is about kindergarten these last few days.  It's a little hard to believe that he's really old enough to be in school already.  But he's clearly ready to be starting down this road.  And yes, both of us cried after we dropped him off (though we managed to wait until we'd left the classroom so Miles wouldn't wonder what the heck was wrong with us - how could anyone cry on such an exciting day?).

8/29/08

Not surprisingly, the biggest thing in Miles's life right now is the start of kindergarten next week.  This past week we went to a parent orientation where we had a chance to meet Miles's new teacher (Ms. Lailey) and see his new classroom.  The next day there was an open house so Miles got to go and meet his teacher and see his new classroom.  He really enjoyed this, and he wanted to stay and play with some of the toys in the room as long as we were allowed to stay.  Afterwards we went outside and played on the playground a bit along with lots and lots of other kids from different grades who had chosen to do the same thing.  We saw some of the other kindergarten kids we know while we were out there.  Although there are 4 families we know from daycare and our neighborhood who will be at the same school as Miles, it turns out all 4 of them are in the other kindergarten class, so Miles will only see those kids at lunch and at recess.  We're looking at it as a chance for him to make lots of new friends.

We thought that Miles might be concerned about changing schools, or sad to leave his old school, but he's just very excited about the upcoming start of kindergarten.  He had a graduation ceremony from preschool a week ago, and he was very disappointed when he learned that he would have to go back to his daycare for another week before he got to start kindergarten.  He loves his spiderman backpack, and spiderman lunch sack, and spiderman shoes, and all of his school supplies.  He can't wait for that first day to come.

One other new thing in Miles's world is his attachment to his teddy bear, Beary.  Miles has never had a particular stuffed animal that he's connected with for any length of time, but now, at age 5, he has suddenly decided that Beary needs to come everywhere with us, sit with us at meals, ride in the car, go to school, etc.  Luckily for him, the first day of kindergarten is 'bring your teddy bear to school" day, so at least for the first day he'll get to have his trusted friend with him at school.

8/12/08

It's hard to believe all of the new things Miles is doing.  He has started reading books (very simple ones) to himself, he is continuing to practice the piano on his own and learn new songs, he is riding his bike quite well now, he's swimming a bunch, and even started trying to do a backstroke and side-breathing on his own the other day, he learned to dive for things in the pool while we were in Chelan, and he practices his whistling way more often than we'd like!  It's incredible to watch this burst of new skills all happen at once, and see his pride as he conquers each new challenge he sets for himself.

We went shopping for Miles's school supplies the other day, adding to the general excitement in the air about the upcoming start of kindergarten.  Molly and Miles also attended a "kindergarten playdate" at a local park where they had a chance to meet other families with kids who would be in kindergarten at the same school.  Miles is excited about using his new spiderman backpack and going to a new school, but he seemed somewhat overwhelmed by all of the new faces at the playdate.  He was relieved to eventually recognize a girl who lives a block over from us that we've occasionally seen at the park. 

7/28/08

Miles had a ton of fun playing with Etienne and Gaby while they were visiting us this past week.  He liked doing puzzles, making airplanes, and playing games with Gaby, though he showed some of the same tendencies with Gaby that he has with Micah - when he found out certain things would bother her (like not quite following the rules) he seemed more inclined to do those things.  But generally they played pretty well together with some encouragement from the adults.  Etienne is just a hero in Miles's mind since he seemed to have endless energy for all the games Miles wanted to play.  Matt and Molly were both thrilled with the break they got thanks to Etienne!

Miles continues to tell us that he wants to be a pilot (sometimes he clarifies that he'll be a violin playing pilot) when he grows up, but when he's pretending, he's almost always a superhero.  He used to switch around what kind of superhero he was, but now he is always the same one.  He's "Changing Man".  His super power is that he can change into any super hero he wants to depending on what's required.  When he's on his scooter, he's "Scooter Man", and he can go really fast to catch bad guys.  When it's hot out, he's "Ice Man".  Sometimes he's Spider Man, etc.  We thought his Meta-Superhero choice was very inventive.  Oh, and he asked us the other day how many years he has left to choose what he's going to be when he's grown up.  He seemed relieved (and somewhat surprised - maybe even a little daunted) when we told him he still has 16 or 17 years (at least) to figure that out. 

7-28-08 Update:  Miles learned to ride a bike without training wheels tonight!  Check it out!

7/14/08

Apparently turning five really agreed with Miles.  He has been a huge help at home, with Micah, and even at school.  He came home from school with a superstar award the other day because he had done extra work to help clean up, had been nice to his friends, and was a good listener all day.  He pulls out the homemade award his teacher gave him all the time, and he's so proud of himself for getting it.

Miles has had other big accomplishments as well.  He's turned into a little fish in the swimming pool again, which is great to see.  He'll show anyone who will watch that he can do a front float/glide all by himself, as well as a reasonable crawl (without side breathing for now) for a good distance in the pool.  It's great to see him be so comfortable in the water.  He also discovered the other day that he can do the monkey bars at the playground at his new elementary school.  Since then he's been disappointed that other monkey bars still elude him (they're either too high up or the bars are too far apart which makes him nervous) but he's still glad he found some he can master.  He says he's going to like his new school because he can do the monkey bars there.

7/1/08

Miles has had a couple of very busy weeks.  He started swimming lessons, went on a field trip with his preschool class, started the summer session of gymnastics (with Fiona), and had his 5th birthday.  He's been a bundle of excitement - thanks to everyone who sent packages and kept his need for constant presents fulfilled.

Although Miles is loving rotating through all of his new birthday presents, his biggest obsession at the moment is the new Sorry game he received.  Since he opened it on Friday he has asked to play Sorry instead of watch TV every single night, which is unprecedented for him.  He even puts up with Micah joining in on the game.

And while we're on the subject of Micah, Miles is definitely NOT thrilled with having a younger brother right now.  Although he does sometimes do a good job of playing with Micah and helping him, more often than not he spends his time trying to get away from Micah, pushing Micah to his limits (by waving things in his face, or chasing him around while Micah screams), or complaining about how Micah gets things he doesn't.  The other day Molly sat down with him and made a list of all the things he's mad about that Micah gets and he doesn't (as an example, Molly carried Micah home from a walk the other day, but she refused to carry Miles too which Miles thought was totally unfair), and then a list of all the things he gets that Micah doesn't.  It seemed to help (for the moment anyway) to remind him of all the privileges he has as a 5-year-old that Micah doesn't, even though it seems at times like we cater to Micah.  It was all a good reminder to us, too, about how often we have to ask Miles to step up and deal because Micah simply can't yet.  It's a constant balancing act for all of us. 

Swimming lessons have been going well.  Although Miles was in the big pool at the end of last summer, he wasn't ready for it at the beginning of this one, so he's just finishing a class in the wading pool where he's had a chance to get comfortable in the water again, and he's doing really well with it.  He had lots of un and passed the class, and tomorrow we'll ask him if he's ready to try the big pool again next week - it should be an interesting conversation!  We've only had one gymnastics class this summer, but Miles clearly loved taking a class with his best friend Fiona.  They're like two peas in a pod, and the teachers were great about honoring their constant requests to do everything together.  And his self-imposed piano lessons are going great - he practices almost every day so that he can learn enough piano to convince us to get him a violin.  Two weeks and counting - he hasn't forgotten.

7/2 update:  We forgot to mention that Miles had his 5-year-old checkup with the pediatrician on his birthday.  He weighed 40.4 lbs (50%) and was 41.75 inches tall (25%).  He has good eyesight, and was pronounced in good health by the doctor. 

6/22/08

Miles has been writing a lot of notes to us lately.  They have a certain theme to them.  Here are some examples:

NEVR LISIN TO MOMY AND DADY
MICAH IS NOT ALAWD IN MILES IS ROOM
MICAH NO FROW ALAWD

A nicer one he wrote on our recent trip to Texas said "A BUTRFLY LANDED ON MILES".  He wanted to take this last one to school so he'd remember to tell all of his friends about it.

Miles had a great time on our trip to Texas.  He has always loved to travel, and that hasn't changed.  He says his favorite things were swimming in Bill and Janine's river, feeding treats to their dog Bonnie, seeing the bats, and swimming in the hotel pool.  We think he also loved how much extra TV he got to watch on the trip! 

One interesting thing happened while he was watching all that TV - Miles saw a kid playing the violin.  He has since decided he desperately wants a violin of his own.  We told him we want him to try the piano first, so today he spent half an hour showing us how much he learned (and retained!) from the couple of months of piano lessons he had earlier this spring.  He wants to return to those lessons this fall.  We'll see if his energy around this continues to be so strong over the next couple of months.  He's never asked for anything so relentlessly before, though, so this should be interesting.

6/11/08

Miles is very excited about his upcoming 5th birthday.  He's been specific about what he wants at his party, for his cake, for the goody bags we hand out, for activities we do, etc.  We've actually already had his party for his school friends - we had a joint party with Fiona whose birthday was at the end of May.  We'll have another party for our family friends closer to his actual birthday.  He thinks it's pretty cool that he gets TWO parties.

Miles has continued to be interested in crafting things out of paper and tape.  Sometimes his ideas are beyond his abilities, and he gets pretty frustrated when that happens.  Eventually he's able to communicate what he wants, though, and with a little help we've been able to make some interesting things, including birthday crowns (based on his design concept) for him and Fiona, and more recently an astronaut radio (how would YOU make an astronaut radio out of paper and tape??).

Miles has shown more interest in reading lately.  While driving the other day he pointed to a new apartment complex and said "Mommy, see that sign in the window?  It says that one is sold."  He has also picked up a few of Micah's books recently and read them pretty successfully.  He loves telling people that he can read whole books by himself now.

And speaking of apartments, Miles has been working on figuring out how the world works, and he's decided that apartments are where people live before they get married.  This came up when we saw the aforementioned apartment complex, and another time when he was driving in Seattle with Molly.  The conversation went something like this:

Molly: I used to live up there on that hill in an apartment.

Miles: Before, when you were still looking for Matt?

Molly: Yes.

Miles: And then you met daddy and you moved to the blue house which turned pink and I was borned and we moved to the house we live in now when Micah came in our family?

Molly: Yes, that about sums it up.

5/28/08

As always when there's a 4-year-old in the house, there are surprises around every corner.  This week we were talking with Miles about why it's not ok to pretend to shoot people (a rule at our house and at preschool) and he wanted to know why they make pirate costumes if pirates are bad and you shouldn't pretend to be a bad guy.  That one required a deep breath and lots of thought before responding! 

One of the more fun things we've seen him do recently is figure out how to make the props he needs for his role playing games.  It's fascinating to hear him say "I need a ____ but I don't know how to make one."  Brief pause.  "Oh, I know!  I can <insert long, convoluted explanation here>."  More often than not, though, he successfully goes and puts his idea into motion and comes back with a finished product made with a combination of paper, scissors, and tape (lots of tape).  Recently we've seen him make a shield out of paper, a crown that fit his head by taping pieces of paper together, paper dolls that are strung together, and paper fans.  He also wrote a note for us that said "Yoo are grate mommy and daddy and micah."  He asked for help with the spelling of "are", but he managed the rest on his own. 

5/12/08

Some days it seems like Miles is growing up by leaps and bounds.  He's helpful and fun to talk to and interested in so many new things - don't get us wrong, we still hear whining and have other issues at times, but in general he's just a lot of fun right now. 

This past weekend we decided to plant a vegetable garden in our backyard.  A few weeks ago Miles planted an apple seed in our backyard from an apple he ate, and every morning before school he fills a cup with water and takes it out to the backyard to water his apple seed.  Since he planted it underneath an already huge apple tree, and it gets quite wet every day, we don't think it's likely to grow.  But we figured this was a good indication that Miles was ready for a garden that had a better chance at surviving.  Miles worked hard to help us dig out a bed and plant some tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers.  Next weekend we'll see if we can get a few more vegetables to put in the other half of our garden once we finish preparing it.  We're hopeful that Miles is going to enjoy watching the vegetables we planted grow this summer.

We occasionally hear more stories now about things that have happened during his day at school.  Usually the stories he tells us are about a child whose feelings were hurt by someone else saying or doing something mean (purposely excluding someone, knocking over someone else's tower, etc.).  He's quick to point out what the child did that was wrong, and why it wasn't a nice thing to do.   We're surprised that these social interactions are the first thing he regularly tells us about (oh, except for the food - he can now usually give us a very accurate description of every meal and snack he ate during the day).

One other thing we've learned about his days at school is that he loves math.  He told us it's his most favorite thing to do, and he wants to only do math all day at school.  We told him he will learn even more math in kindergarten and he thought that was very cool.

4/28/08

We finally found a new obsession to rival legos.  A friend recommended a book series called "The Magic Treehouse" so we got the first four books in the series. They're chapter books, which is something Miles loved already.  The new books came this past weekend, and three days later we've already read the first 3 books in the series.  Miles asks for us to read another chapter every chance he gets, and has chosen to have us read to him in place of computer time, TV time, and bath time (he didn't get away with the last one).  He really likes these books, and it's fun to see him so excited about these stories.

We continue to be surprised by how grown up Miles is becoming.  More often than not he is helpful around the house, and especially with Micah.  He seems to really understand that Micah can't share as well as he can, and he's very good about giving Micah extra turns, or trading off the short-term win for Micah for the long-term win for himself, which is great because both kids are happy that way.  He's also big enough now to use a booster seat rather than a car seat in the car.  He was unbelievably excited by this milestone, and is proud that he can do the seat belt all by himself. 

We recently had a conference with one of Miles's preschool teachers, and it was a very nice conversation.  It's clear she really likes Miles and enjoys having him in her class.  She said he likes to do all of their activities, that he's very nice to his friends, and that he listens well and is helpful.  The only problems/concerns are that sometimes he gets distracted by his friends during circle time and has to be reminded to pay attention, and for some reason Miles has started to really dislike Spanish.  We're not sure why he doesn't like Spanish, except that he may not be following along very well with what's happening.  We only have a few more Spanish classes before the teacher leaves to take the summer off, but it will be something for us to keep an eye on when he starts school next fall.

4/17/08

Miles continues to show a love for traveling and doing new things.  He loved our trip to Cabo, and he has trouble naming his favorite thing because we did so many fun things.  He was thrilled we got to go swimming so much, even at night one time; he loved the pirate scavenger hunt and piñata at one of the Valve parties; he talks a lot about feeding the dolphin some fish; he liked riding the trolley, especially when we went to get ice cream; and he enjoyed meeting and playing with the other kids on the trip.  He also really loved the lego kit we bought for him.  When we bought it we told him it was just for Mexico, so he had to wait until we got there to open it.  The second the plane landed he asked if it was time to open his legos, and he continued to ask again and again at customs, waiting for our baggage, on the bus to the hotel, while we waited to check in, you get the idea.  We had to drag him away from the legos to go to the pool and eat dinner that night, and at 4am the next morning he was waking us up to ask if he could work on his lego kit.  We expected extra excitement, but we figured it would be for going to swimming, not for sitting in our condo doing legos!  It wasn't until he finished the kit that we got him to focus on doing the fun things we went all the way to Mexico to do.  Next trip we're going to hide the lego kit until we need the diversion!

April Fool's day seems to have made an impression on Miles, because he's been very interested in trying to fool us lately.  Today Matt took the kids on a bus ride to the library (a huge hit with both of them) and Miles wanted to bring some of his own money from the coin jar to help pay his bus fare.  He got out his two quarters and then later came up to us with his fists closed, held them out, and said "I'm ready to go!"  Molly said he must have his quarters in his hands, and he laughed and opened them to show that they were only pennies - he'd fooled us!  He thought this was great fun, and he often finds ways to try to fool us, saying he wish it were April Fool's day today.

He talks a lot about what he's going to be when he grows up.  Often this is focused on what kind of costume he'll get to wear.  It was fire fighter for a long time, and then superhero, but he's worried that adult clothing stores don't seem to carry superhero costumes (he's a little worried it may not be a real job).  Then he decided he wanted to be a police officer, and more recently he's thinking about being a pilot.  At one point he thought about being an astronaut, but he thought that might be a hard job, so he's sticking with pilot.  Or maybe an artist.  But probably a pilot.

4/3/08

Miles's obsession with lego (yes, it's reached obsession level) has only grown since our last update.  We've bought him a couple of kits recently, and he is surprisingly good at following the directions and building the correct thing.  He seems to really love this activity - he even turned down TV the other night in favor of working on his truck! 

Although we haven't mentioned it in a while, Miles's fascination with "why" has never waned.  We're not sure why we thought this would be a passing phase, because it hasn't been.  But we have some very interesting conversations with him as a result of his questions.  Today we talked about what "heck" is (cousin Alex taught him to say "what the heck?" and he wanted to understand what it is that he's saying).  We've had other conversations about car accidents (but accidents are ok, mommy, because it's ok for people to make mistakes), and lots of conversations about what laws there are, and the differences between laws, family rules, and being polite.  It's fun to see him so curious about the world around him, and to be able to help him make sense of it all.

3/23/08

For anyone who has been following the kindergarten saga, we were #9 in the lottery for all day kindergarten, so Miles will have a full day (rather than a half day) schedule starting in September.  This is good new for our work schedules, and probably for Miles too since he's already used to a full day at daycare.

Since there's been a general trend lately with Miles trying new things (gymnastics, piano), we thought we would give him a chance to try skiing as well. We went up to the mountains with Mike and Alexandra, and they taught Miles some of the basics.  He was nervous at first about going too fast, but he eventually started to get more comfortable, and he had a surprising amount of control and ability to slow himself down and stop.  He really loved it, and didn't want to leave until we could assure him we would go back sometime.

Miles's interests have not changed much lately - he likes to play outside, watch TV, play on the computer, and play games.  The biggest change is the addition of doing legos to his list of interests.  We're surprised by how often he chooses to go sit at the table and work on building things.  It's nice to see him find something he can do on his own that holds his attention so well.  We've also noticed that he's getting good at some of his games.  In particular, Matt and Molly have both started to need to pay a lot more attention when they play checkers with him, because if they don't (and sometimes even if they do) he wins.  He's very proud that he's figured out how to finally beat us at this game.  The other interest that's returned is reading.  For a while now he hasn't wanted to read any of the books that he can read on his own, but in the last week or so he has started picking them up again.  He especially likes reading "with" someone, which means we take turns reading alternate pages of a book. 

3/9/08

Our biggest excitement right now is that we registered Miles for kindergarten this past week.  Mostly this was nothing more than filling out a bunch of paperwork, but Miles got a chance to meet one of the kindergarten teachers as well as some other kids who may be in his class, so that was fun.  We should find out next week if he will be in all day or half day kindergarten.  In the process of going through kindergarten tours and registration, we've learned that there are 6 or 7 kids from our daycare who will most likely be attending the same kindergarten.  It's nice to know there will be some familiar faces around the halls (for us and for Miles).

We finished the most recent session of soccer, and in addition to the gymnastics class Miles is taking, we've enrolled him in piano lessons.  The first lesson was yesterday, and Miles seemed to really enjoy it.  There were about 8 kids in the class, and they all play on electric keyboards.  They did things like learn what middle C looks like on the keyboard, and in written form, learn where their thumb should go, what rests are, and what a quarter note looks like.  Miles participated in the singing and note counting questions, but what he liked the most was when she showed them how to play a rhythm with just a few notes in it on the keyboard, and then all of the kids played their notes along with a pre-recorded song.  At the end he asked if we could take that music class again, and later in the afternoon he wanted to get his CD and his piano book out and show Matt what he'd learned. 

Miles loved our recent trip to Sycamore.  Although he said he was homesick at the end of the trip, he also said that at the same time he really, really didn't want to go home.  He wished he could stay there forever, and he had so much fun playing with Katie and Alex we believe that he really would love to stay there forever.  We were surprised how well they all played together, and how much we could leave them on their own to find things to do.

One funny thing that came out of the trip was right at the end when we were waiting at the lost baggage counter (ugh) and we asked Miles to stop banging his feet repetitively on his chair, because our nerves were shot from the long day of travel and we just couldn't take it.  We reminded him that grown-ups don't like repetitive noises.  He told us it's not fair that grownups make all of the rules because they don't like repetitive noises and that means he never gets to make them and it's just not fair.  After laughing a bit at this 4-year-old frustration with not being in charge, we told him that maybe we could agree on having 5 minutes each day when it was ok to make as many repetitive noises as you like.  So far he hasn't remembered this promise, but we'll stand by it when he does (and maybe don some ear protection too)!

2/27/08

Miles is so busy these days it's hard to know where to start.  He is taking a gymnastics class that he loves - in particular, he likes doing handstands against the wall, and wants to learn to walk on his hands, so he practices this trick a lot.  He still loves to play games with us.  Right now he's especially enjoying a new Uno game that Nana sent with the characters from the movie "Cars" on the deck.  This is a huge improvement over hours of Candy Land, so we're thrilled.  Mostly, though, he wants to play with his legos.  He likes to build helicopters, rescue vehicles, and anything that needs a drawbridge.  When he's not doing these things he's either asking to watch TV, or using the computer.

We've been impressed lately with Miles's ability to deal with and help with Micah.  In the past couple of weeks we've seen them really play together for the first time, and it's heavenly.  We got the kids a new big rubber ball that Micah can handle quite well, and when they started fighting over it, Miles quickly discovered that he could get Micah to actually share it by offering to play catch.  They've done this together without any parental intervention for 15-20 minutes straight, with lots of giggling in the middle - music to our ears!  Miles is really starting to internalize acceptable ways to get Micah to do what he wants.  He's remembering not to grab things out of Micah's hand, but instead ask him if he can have a turn.  Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, but even when it doesn't, Miles does ok with figuring out how to work things out with Micah.  Miles has also noticed our trick of figuring out what the next thing is that Micah will like and trying to entice him with it.  The other day we were headed to a restaurant for lunch, and Micah was getting distracted by every single thing we passed on the sidewalk.  Miles tried to grab his hand and pull him towards the restaurant, which caused Micah to stop in his tracks and start yelling "no!  no!".  So Miles bent down to Micah's level, and said "Micah, do you want to go eat?".  Eating is Micah's favorite activity in the world, so he said yes, grabbed Miles's hand, and off we went.  Unbelievable!

With all these grownup behaviors appearing, we find ourselves thinking more and more about the start of kindergarten in the fall.  We've had a chance to tour the local school and visit the kindergarten rooms during the school day.  In early March we will register Miles for kindergarten and shortly after that we'll find out if he will be in an all day or a half day class (we'll ask for all day, but we may not get it if there aren't enough slots - it's a lottery system).  He's excited about starting kindergarten, though he's still getting his head around the fact that some but not all of the kids from his current daycare class will be going to the same school.  We're not sure that he's really realized that he won't get to see Fiona every day once kindergarten starts.  They have continued to be very fast friends, and Miles is very clear that she is his favorite friend at school, and everyone else pales in comparison. 

2/11/08

Miles recently caught one of the stomach bugs that Micah picked up.  He had been complaining all day that his stomach hurt, but we couldn't figure out why, and when we asked if he wanted to skip the playdate we had scheduled for that afternoon, he assured us he felt up to it.  Unfortunately, within moments of arriving at the pladyate Miles threw up and we had to turn around and go home.  He was much (much) more upset that he had to miss the playdate than that he had thrown up.  He continued to be sick a few more times that day, but by the next day his worst symptom was fatigue, and after just one more day he went happily to soccer class and ran around crazily with all the other kids.  Most grownups wish they could bounce back so quickly!

Miles continues to be good at negotiating - we're told he does this with his friends at school, and we see it at home quite often.  Most recently he realized that in the mornings, if he gets dressed and lets Micah use the computer first, then Miles can have a much longer turn on the computer when it's Micah's turn to go get dressed.  So he graciously gives up the computer to Micah and runs downstairs to get dressed fast so that he will be supported by us when he kicks Micah off the computer, though he often asks to be reassured that if he goes to get dressed first, he'll get a much longer turn than Micah, right?

Miles also says funny things to us as he tries out phrases he's heard adults say.  The other day we were having a snack at Starbucks, and Matt said something about shenanigans happening.  Miles said "speaking of shebaginans, I love bananas!".  We asked him if he knew what shenanigans were - he didn't, so we explained.  It turns out it can be a tough thing to define for a 4-year-old.

We love to see the things that Miles is doing.  He's gotten much better at catching balls lately, and he really enjoys practicing this new skill.  He's also gotten very interested in legos recently.  The combination of his new lego table and being allowed to play with Matt's old legos from his childhood has been pretty exciting for Miles.  He especially likes building helicopters and rescue vehicles.  The other interesting thing we saw him do lately was create his own dot-to-dot.  He tried 3 or 4 times to put dots in the right places so that connecting them in order (he numbered the dots) would create a bus.  He got it right on the last try and was very excited by that.

1/23/08

Miles had more fun during Sylvan's visit than we even imagined he would.  He was so excited that they were having an extended sleepover, and he really liked having a playmate around all the time.  School days were very tough during her visit because he thought it was so unfair that he had to go to school when he could be home playing with Sylvan instead.  Miles and Sylvan both showed how much they had grown up in the past year as they did a great job sharing toys, taking turns picking things to do, and working out their differences on their own.  Of course we still had occasional issues, but overall they played incredibly well together.

We signed Miles up for soccer lessons again at his request, and he looks forward to Saturday mornings all week long.  It's great to see him get so much exercise, and also have a chance to see how well he does (or doesn't!) listen to his coach in that group setting.  In general he takes direction quite well, and he's very excited about all the drills and scrimmage matches they do.  He especially likes it when he gets a chance to play goalie. 

Our funniest story about Miles is a conversation we had about a free razor that arrived in the mail.  Matt asked Molly if it was ok to throw it away, and Miles looked very concerned.  He asked us to keep it for him for when he starts shaving, because when he gets old enough to shave he'll need to spend his money to buy a car, and he might not have enough left over for a razor too.  Matt told Miles that he would buy a razor for him when he was old enough, so we didn't need to save the freebie razor for the next 12 years!  Miles agreed that was probably ok.

1/3/08

We are having a ton of fun watching Miles learn new things about the world.  It seems like everything around him is interesting to him, and it's fun to hear his questions and his theories about how the world works.  He's continuing to improve with his reading, and he seems to really enjoy doing math problems.  He's also working on figuring out how to tell time.  Before Christmas, he started asking to play our board games (ones for grownups) instead of his.  We didn't have many that he could understand, so we got him a checkers set for Christmas.  He has asked us to play a surprising number of times in the past week - he really loves it (as long as we help him win occasionally).  Playing board games, doing puzzles, and using the computer are the things Miles most loves to do inside.  If we're outside (which he would be all the time if we'd let him) he loves baseball, soccer, and riding his bike and now his new scooter.  He will be starting soccer lessons again this week, and he's happily telling anyone who will listen.

We're also really enjoying Miles's new attitude.  He still has his rough days, but in general we are having fewer and fewer issues with him all the time.  He is even capable (with some gentle reminding) to use his nice voice and words to tell Micah to get away from his stuff. 

Most interesting is listening to his negotiation skills as he tries to get what he wants from us.  He learned to use "but it's a special day" over the holidays, and today he told us that he should get dessert after lunch today because it's a special day since he's starting soccer on Saturday.  He asked for an ice cream cone for dinner tonight which is also a "special day" kind of dessert, and when we pointed out he'd just had one last night, he said "you can just give me a bowl of ice cream today, then".  The most advanced logic we've heard recently is when he wanted to take both music and soccer at the same time (we generally try to stick to one activity at a time).  He argued that when he starts kindergarten he'll be in school 5 days a week and won't have free days to do all of these extra things, so we should take advantage of his 3-days-a-week schedule now while we can.  We're still considering this well-thought-out argument :).

12/20/07

Miles is continuing to work on his reading.  He generally prefers that we read to him, but then he surprises us at times when he chooses to do the reading.  As always, his loves the days he goes to the grocery store with Molly and Micah.  Recently he has been asking to be in charge of the list.  He likes to scan it to find things he can read on it.  One day Molly had a small magna doodle with her to entertain Micah, but when Micah stole the grocery list, she switched tactics and used the magna doodle to spell things out for Miles that he needed to go get.  Among other things, he read milk, red pepper, butter, macaroni and cheese, granola, peas, tater tots, yogurt, and vanilla.  He thought this game was a ton of fun.

Miles seems to really enjoy doing things grownups can do, and being responsible.  In preparation for Nana and Grandad's visit, he asked if he could do the vacuuming.  He spent a very long time vacuuming the cushions on the couch and one of our rugs, and he did it all on his own.  He also asks for more responsibilities all the time when we cook.  He makes cases for himself, explaining how much older and more careful he is than he used to be.  Usually this works out quite well for everyone (he always surprises us by being more capable than we think he is).  The other day, though, he was opening a can by himself (something he's been doing on his own for a few months now) and for the first time he cut himself on the sharp lid.  He was surprised by the blood, and worried he'd have to go to the hospital.  The cut wasn't very deep, though, and like kids seem to do, he healed very quickly.  He hasn't wanted to open another can since then, though!  He also really steps up when we ask him to help with Micah.  This is a very good tactic in a situation where we might not need help exactly, but we need him to behave well and not need taking care of too.  The other day Molly had to take a package to UPS, and wasn't sure how she was going to keep Micah safe walking from the car into the store while carrying the big box.  She put Miles in charge of holding Micah's hand on the sidewalk while she grabbed the package out of the car, and then asked Miles  to walk Micah into the store.  It worked wonders - not only was Micah a bit safer in Miles's firm clutch, but Miles was focused on getting into the store himself, and less likely to do something erratic like try to walk on the curb or do his jump and twists along the way :).

Miles is very interested in secrets right now.  It may be the upcoming holiday, or just the age he's in, but he's fascinated about things that not everyone can know.  The most interesting way this has come out is with his afternoon snack.  Every day that Molly picks him up from school he has a rolled up piece of paper that she isn't allowed to see.  On the paper he has drawn a picture of what he'd like to have as a snack when they get home.  Molly isn't allowed to unroll the paper until they get home.  For anyone who's intrigued, the snacks he draws are peas, oranges, apples, and ants on a log (celery spread with peanut and raisins on top). 

We are very happy to find that Miles is a lot more easygoing these days.  He's ok with Micah playing with his things (within reason), he doesn't throw a fit if he can't have the secret snack he drew, he even understands if we mistakenly start a 1 hour TV show on a night when he only has time for a half hour program, and he has to stop in the middle.   These may seem like minor accomplishments, but around here we feel like a monster that used to live with us has moved out (or at least gone on a little vacation).  It's great to have him be so reasonable, especially when Micah is involved, since Micah can be so UNreasonable right now.  Miles is just plain fun to be with, even if he does continue to ask us to play games with him every time he sees us sitting down to do something on our own for just a second or two, arguing that we haven't played games with him in months if we hesitate.

12/2/07

Miles is starting to try to think about some more difficult concepts, and is asking interesting questions.  In the past, during our numerous conversations about death, he has asked a number of times where the first mommy came from.  More recently he asked how we make seeds.  When we told them they come from trees and plants, he wanted to know how the first seed came to be, if there weren't any trees or plants yet, way back before the dinosaurs.  You can imagine that was an interesting conversation.  He's also started trying to figure out what behaviors are mean.  He loves to point out differences between himself and others, and usually does so in a way that implies what he has, or what he can do, is better.  As an example, he points out that he got more blueberries than Micah, that he can eat faster than Micah, that his coat is warmer than Molly's, that Micah isn't really cooking he's just standing by the counter, etc.  We've begun trying to help him see when the things he's saying might hurt someone else's feelings.  The other day, on the way to a playdate with Ian and Nathan, he found out that he's 1 week older than Nathan.  He said he was going to tell Nathan that when we saw him, but then he said maybe he shouldn't because that would be mean, right Mommy?  It's good to see him thinking through these things, but very hard to explain the difference between stating a fact, and making a value judgment!

A few weeks ago Matt took Miles back to the allergist for a regular appointment (he goes every 6 months or so).  We were very pleased to learn that Miles's egg allergy seems to have lessened.  The prick tests they do is only somewhat accurate, so we can't guarantee this yet, but it's looking good so far.  We will have a blood test done in a few months to verify that his allergy is decreasing, and we may even be able to begin introducing him to baked goods that have egg in them and see how he does.  The allergist did say that his chances of an adverse reaction to egg have decreased now from 90+ % to 50%.  We're hopeful he will completely outgrow this allergy - if nothing else it will make eating out and sending him over to friends' houses much easier!

Miles continues to want to engage with us as much as possible (a favorite phrase is "What can we do together?").  It's hard to get him to play by himself except during quiet time (and even that can be a bit touch and go).  He especially likes to play games with us, and most recently he's been excited about working on our Rudolph puzzle.  It's a 550 piece puzzle so he definitely needs some help, but he's doing surprisingly well with it!

Not surprisingly, Miles is thrilled beyond belief that Christmas is coming.  We're going to be busy the next few weeks keeping up with him and his Christmas energy.

11/18/07

The most interesting thing about hanging out with Miles these days is you just never know what's going to come out of his mouth.  Here are a few of the more interesting things he's told us recently.

Whenever Miles makes a mistake (with reading, or telling us about how something works, etc.) and we correct him, he tells us he knew that, he was just tricking us.  We've had a lot of conversations with him recently about how it's ok to make mistakes, everybody does, and now as a result when we make a mistake he tells us it's ok.  He tells us less often now that he was just tricking us, but the phrase is definitely not gone!

Miles has (ahem) occasionally heard us say words we shouldn't in front of him.  We're impressed by his ability to pick up on these phrases in the midst of all the other things he hears and repeat them.  So far nothing too horrible has come out of his mouth, but it's really only a matter of time at this point.

Miles told us recently about a bad dream he'd had the night before.  We asked him if it scared him, and he said "No, it was just a dream, Austin didn't *really* bite my head off".  This didn't stop him from crawling in bed with Matt last night, though, after another scary dream.

We often have surprising conversations with Miles, usually at surprising times.  The other day he asked Molly out of the blue what happens to people's bodies when they die.  She explained that it depends, but sometimes the body is buried in the ground, and sometimes it's cremated.  He added that sometimes the body is wrapped up to become a mummy.  Yes, said Molly, that's another thing that can happen.  A conversation about cremation ensued, because Miles wanted to know why someone would want to be set on fire.  Molly started to explain that being buried requires a plot of land (with only a vague idea of where she was going with that train of thought), and she was thankfully interrupted by Miles who pointed out that that probably costs money, and dead people couldn't pay money because they were dead.  He started to ask how they could pay, but then decided on his own that maybe their families pay the money for them.  His 4-year-old brain happily moved on from there to less deep topics. 

Miles has become more interested in money lately.  He gets an allowance of sorts in the form of a coin that he can put in his coin jar each night before bed (usually a penny, but when a quarter is all we have on hand, that's what he gets).  He likes to inspect his coin collection and watch it grow.  Recently when we've talked about how much things costs he's told us that we can use some of the money out of his coin jar to help us pay for things.  He's insisted that we take some on a few occasions.  We're starting to think about ways to help him occasionally spend his money so that he can start to understand the value of the coins.  We figure the upcoming Christmas holidays may give us an opportunity - Grandparents, this is your fair warning that you may get some odd presents from Miles this year!

10/28/07

Our biggest news this update is that Miles has started reading.  He has a number of books now with simple words in them that he is able to read (given enough time).  He's getting very good at sounding out words, and we catch him trying to read signs and other things he sees, with moderate success.  It is incredibly fun to watch him figure this all out, and he's clearly very excited by it and proud of his successes.

Miles is also learning to whistle.  He walks around practicing quite a bit, and is able to make a sound more and more often.  No tunes yet, but we suppose that will come with time!

Although past experience tells us it's dangerous to say it here, since that always means he will prove us wrong immediately afterwards, Miles's behavior has been impressively good these last few weeks.  He's listening well, playing well with Micah (including successfully redirecting Micah sometimes when Micah gets into his stuff), and being very helpful around the house.  It's such a pleasure to see him be so positive and helpful, that we don't mind as much when he does act up.  His favorite thing to do is to yell or squeal to get Micah doing it too.  Of course we can get Miles to stop, but once Micah gets going it's very hard to get him to stop, which Miles finds an effective way to bug us.  He can contritely stop screaming, but at least someone gets to keep making all of that good, ear-piercing noise. 

We think Miles may finally be ready to give up his nap.  We tried to stop having them around his 4th birthday, but we still had "quiet time", and 9 times out of 10 Miles would fall asleep during his quiet time.  In the last few weeks he's been staying awake more often during quiet time, which is a good thing in our minds.  When he does nap he is often up until 10 or 10:30, unable to sleep, and calling to us over the monitor for company, help with something or other, or fears about intruders.  It's better for all of us if he doesn't nap and then doesn't have time to mess with us or get scared at night as he waits to fall asleep.

Miles has always been very intent upon learning to do new things, and being independent.  This hasn't changed as he gets older.  As soon as he does something himself once, he doesn't ever (ever) want help with it again.  He was able to snap some of his jeans himself recently, and this morning, after having a meltdown, he chose to change to a different pair of jeans rather than let one of us help him with a particularly tough snap.  He has a new jacket that he refused to wear until he mastered the zipper on his own.  His toothpaste tube is getting low, and it was a disaster when he realized we forgot to buy him a new one and he was actually going to have to get help from us to brush his teeth.  We've always encouraged his desire to be independent and succeed on his own, but sometimes we wonder what we've done!

10/07/07

It's the end of an era here at the Rhoville household.  For years we have been spelling words when we wanted to discuss things without Miles knowing what we were saying.  He recently started asking us what we're spelling, but even worse, twice now he has figured out what we spelled.  We've probably got a little time left (especially if we use long words and spell them really fast!) but our time is clearly limited now.  Sigh.  Along those same lines, Miles has shown a lot of interest in reading and spelling lately.  It's so much fun to watch him start to figure out words.

Miles is continuing to enjoy his new preschool room.  He has started getting homework (called Family Projects) each week that we do together.  He has really loved doing these projects.  They mostly involve finding things at home that he can bring in to share with his classmates.  For example, this week he is supposed to pick 3 of the 5 senses and bring something in that represents each of the 3 senses he chooses.  He likes figuring out what to bring, and also really likes sharing his project with his friends.

He is also very excited about Halloween coming soon.  They've already decorated at his school so he has a constant reminder, and he likes to tell us all about the ghosts and spiders and pumpkins adorning the walls at school.  As a result, we've begun our Halloween decorating at home already.  We have a number of Halloween-related art projects, and Miles has spent a lot of the weekend cutting, pasting, and taping pumpkins on the window.  As for his costume, he wants to be a superhero (this is also what he wants to be when he grows up).  After lots of questions, we've determined that all he requires is a cape and a mask.  We have a cape, and we plan to make a mask since he has a very specific mask in mind.  The funniest part is that he's insisting Micah be a superhero as well.  We have a cape for Micah too, and we will try to get him to wear a mask, though we don't anticipate it will go very well.

9/16/07

Miles had a wonderful time on our recent camping trip with the Bedwells.  He was so excited about this trip that he was telling everyone he saw (whether he knew them or not) that he was going camping with his friend Ashton.  We think the reality of the experience was every bit as good as his imagination led him to believe it would be.  He had fun picking and eating blackberries, playing dust-maker and rocket fight with Ashton, going to the beach and climbing on the rocks, and of course making a campfire and eating s'mores.  When asked what his favorite part was, though, he answered that it was having Ashton there with him.  The two of them were inseparable, and played incredibly well together the whole weekend.  It was great to see Miles having such a good time exploring this new environment.

Other than camping, Miles's new experience was a change in preschool rooms at daycare at the beginning of September.  He moved from the 3-year-old preschool room to the 4-year-old room.  He was excited about this move because he likes anything that lets him be more grown up.  The transition to the new room was very smooth - he knew the teachers and most of the kids already (many moved up with him to the new room), so the biggest change was the room itself, but it came with lots of new toys which is always fun. 

Our funniest daycare story actually happened at home this weekend.  Matt put on some background music while Miles and Molly were playing Candyland, and he happened to choose the soundtrack to the movie Grease.  Within a measure or two of the beginning of the first song on the CD.  Miles got this funny look on his face, and said "I know this!", and he jumped out of his chair saying, "I'll show you how it goes".  And he proceeded to do an elaborate dance that changed as the music changed, and appeared to be rehearsed.  The dance moves included leaps, turns, jiggling his bottom, rolling his eyes up to the top of his head in a somewhat disturbing way, and a "flip" that simply landed him on his back, though we expect he had something else in mind originally.  The song ended, and he sat back down at the table with Molly slightly out of breath, ready to play the game again.  But when the next song came on, his eyes lit up again, and he jumped up saying "I know how this one goes too!", and he proceeded to leap around again, with yet more dance moves we hadn't seen before.  This happened through 4 or 5 songs, before he finally settled down to the game of Candyland.  He says he learned this at school, but he doesn't know which classroom he learned the songs/dances in, or which teacher showed them to him.  We're going to ask around at school this week, because clearly some teacher there really likes this soundtrack, and played it often for the kids to dance to!  The funniest part was the slow section of "Summer Nights" at the end of the song.  Who knew that you were supposed to creep around and pretend to be an animal during that part of the song?

9/4/07

Miles's imagination continues to be a huge source of amusement.  He recently told Matt the following story.  Matt says he only captured about half of what Miles told him, and that Miles was very serious while explaining all of this. This was Miles's description of a "reptile entry bear":

"It’s tiny like a lizard; it’s really small [holds his finger and thumb about 1cm apart] but it’s a bear. It’s a reptile, but it’s a bear. People have them as pets because they’re nice. They help you get air if they see you. You have to watch out because it’s the same color as the rock. It’s just like a spider, except it can dig, because a spider can’t dig because it might twist its ankle. You can tell where it stings you because you’ll see the red spot on its head, that’s where it stings you. That’s how you can tell what kind it is. A lizard told me that; I’m telling the truth."

We also thought we should document that Miles has joined the Sudoku craze.  We found a Dora Sudoku book that uses pictures and stickers instead of numbers.  Miles has really enjoyed working his way through these puzzles, and he's getting quite good at figuring out how to solve them all by himself.

With the end of summer approaching, we've finished up soccer and swimming lessons and are taking a short breather before we take a Family Time music class that both Miles and Micah can attend.  Miles continues to really love soccer.  In his last class they had scrimmage matches between two teams, and as expected, the kids all followed the ball around the field.  All except Miles, that is.  There was one little boy on the other team who was very good at scoring goals, so Miles planted himself in front of the goal to stop that boy from helping their team win every time.  Maybe he's a future goalie.  Miles also really enjoyed his swimming lessons, especially the most recent two weeks in the "big pool".  At the beginning of the summer Miles wouldn't willingly put his face in the water.  This weekend we went for open swim at the pool after dinner one night, and Miles showed us that he can jump into the pool and swim over to the stairs all by himself, all in water that is over his head.  His crawl stroke needs a lot of work, and he has to hold his breath the whole time, but it was still pretty impressive to see him be so confident and capable in the water.   

8/26/07

As expected, we're seeing some of the transition pain from Micah's newfound mobility.  Miles is usually torn between being excited for Micah, and wanting to play with him, to being frustrated that Micah won't leave him and his things alone, and generally being more jealous of Micah.  Our least favorite behavior is when Miles announces he was just about to play with whatever toy Micah has decided he wants to use.  Luckily most of the difficult moments are balanced by very fun moments where we can see how much the boys enjoy playing together.  It's getting harder to get pictures of each of them alone since they both choose more often than not to be wherever the other one is (for better or worse!).

Miles continues to really like helping us with whatever we're doing.  One of the things he especially enjoys is going grocery shopping.  Our grocery store has "little carts" for kids to push, and Miles fills his to overflowing every time we shop.  He often picks out a lot of our fresh produce himself (he asks how to tell if something is ripe if he doesn't already know what to look for -- he's been known to sniff the end of a cantaloupe without being told -- and he's learning to check for visible spots on the fruit).  He knows enough of our brands now, and where things are on the shelves, that we can tell him "go get a loaf of bread and an onion" and he will do it without help and return for his next instruction.  He also really likes to put the 12-packs of soda and the gallons of milk into the big cart all by himself, and bursts with pride when other shoppers see him and comment on how strong he is.  When we're ready to check out, Miles puts all of the things from his cart on the counter all by himself, and returns his cart to its home while he waits for the checkers to finish ringing everything up.  He's so capable and helpful now that we actually finish the shopping *faster* if we bring him along.  It's great to see him be able to do so much on his own, and also know that he likes to help us out with some of our chores.

8/15/07

The most interesting thing to do with Miles right now is to talk to him and hear the amazing stories that he likes to tell.  Did you know that trash dumps grow from trees?  And that Miles can see all the way to Florida?  And that he doesn't go to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays because there are people on his computer who need him to help him on those days?  His imaginative world is fascinating if you take the time to hear what he has to tell you.  His curiosity has grown as well, and it's so much fun to try to answer his more and more complicated questions.  The story about trash dumps growing from trees came when Miles asked what would happen when the dump got filled up with trash and there wasn't room for any more.  He's apparently found his own creative solution to this problem.

Although we almost hate to type it here, since past experience says doing so will jinx it, Miles has made amazing progress in the past few months with controlling his temper.  When he gets angry he doesn't hurt us, but instead is able to use words, or walk away and come back later, to express his anger.  It's great to see him figuring this out, and it makes him much more pleasant to deal with.  Of course he has his good days and his bad days, but at least he's not raging at us in quite the same way on the bad days!  Now his angry words come out as threats - he threatens to not play with us anymore if we don't do what he wants, or threatens to never do <insert thing we're asking him to do> again.  He's very dramatic.

Tonight, Miles watched with glee as Micah took his first steps.  Miles was so excited, and he laughed and bounced up and down with the rest of us, until he suddenly stopped and said "Now Micah is going to get my toys".  Ah.  He has been listening to our warnings of what's to come.  We said yes, he will have to be ready to share his things with Micah more now, and he responded by telling us he would take them away from Micah because they were all his toys.  Sigh - we clearly still have our work cut out for us.

Our happiest story about Miles this update is his new bedtime habit.  The other night Molly had a migraine, and she went to bed at the same time Miles did.  He thought this was wonderful (big surprise) and came to visit within minutes of saying goodnight.  Molly was reading in bed, and Miles wanted to know what she was doing.  She explained she likes to read before bed to help her sleep.  Miles asked why he can't do that to help him sleep.  She told him he could, but he was quite sure it would only worked if he had a lamp next to his bed just like she does.  So Molly found a spare lamp and set it up on the shelf next to his bed.  Every night he now happily reads by himself in bed before going to sleep.  Since both of us are huge bedtime readers, we're thrilled that Miles is showing interest in this habit!  Of course, Matt tells stories about staying up all night reading by flashlight, so in a few years we may regret that we encouraged this habit.

7/26/07

Miles really enjoyed our trip to Lake Chelan and Nana's visit.  He loved all of the swimming and outdoor activities, but more than anything he enjoyed all the time he got to spend with Harrison and Isabella.  It wasn't unusual for us to ask him what he wanted to do, and suggest a bunch of different activities (miniature golf, swimming in the pool, going to the beach, riding his bike, etc.), only to have him respond that he didn't care what we did as long as we did it with Harrison and Isabella.

Along these same lines, Miles's play has changed a lot recently.  He is more and more interested in creating elaborate scenarios to re-enact, and he especially likes having others participate in his drama.  Usually he likes to be a firefighter who rescues people, but the theme varies a bit.  In Chelan, he and Harrison and Isabella had a lot of fun catching "bad guys".  They were good guys, and they would identify where the bad guys were, run over there, and then use potato mashers to flatten them, and a turkey baster to turn them into good guys.  Occasionally they also locked the bad guys up in jail and didn't let them out until they turned into good guys.

Recently Molly had a conference with Miles's teacher from school, and Molly found that the teacher has definitely figured out some of Miles's idiosyncrasies.  She said he behaves very well unless he's hungry or tired, but in general really likes to be helpful, and stays very focused and engaged on their activities.  Interestingly, she said he gravitates towards the quieter kids in the classroom (this surprised us a bit).  When he does get mixed up with some of the more boisterous kids, his instinct is to just walk away.  With his friends, she said he always turns to negotiation (rather than hitting or yelling) to work out his problems.  He's a master negotiator with us, so this didn't surprise us at all.  It was good to hear that he seems to be getting along so well with the other kids at school, and seems to be well-liked by his teachers.

7/3/07

Miles is 4 years old now, and is generally thrilled to be such a big boy.  He loved all the festivities around his birthday, especially all the cake he got to eat.  We took him for a check-up with the pediatrician, and he successfully stood on one foot for 3 seconds, drew a line, and answered their questions.  She said he looked great, though as always we need to continue to monitor his eczema.  He weighs 35 pounds now (25-50%), and is 38 3/4 inches tall (25%). 

In the past week or so we've had our first taste of how Miles will react when Micah is mobile.  Micah can scooch just enough to get into things if we set him too close to where Miles is playing.  Miles is definitely NOT sure he likes this.  On the plus side, his default reaction is to go get a new toy for Micah, which is excellent, and used to work great.  But Micah is a lot more stubborn now, and he is less willing to be distracted by a new toy if what Miles is playing with looks more interesting.  We know in a few months we're going to laugh at how naive we were about how hard all these interactions will be in a very short time.

Miles is in swimming and soccer right now.  He loves both and is thrilled we're letting him take two kinds of classes at the same time.  He has a friend from daycare in his swimming class which makes it even more fun.  He's doing well with his swimming, and is slowly remembering his successes with putting his head in the water from last summer.  We're also seeing him begin to coordinate some arm motions and kicking at the same time which is fun.  The soccer class he's in now is for slightly older kids and he seems to be enjoying the more focused atmosphere.  Miles also got a baseball bat, mitt, and ball for his birthday, and he's been enjoying playing baseball in the backyard, and at the park with his friends Ian and Nathan.  There is some hope that he will get an athletic education!

Miles continues to enjoy practicing reading and spelling.  When writing thank you notes for his birthday gifts, we only asked him to sign his name.  But for Nana's card, he wanted to write her name too since he knows how to spell it.  While he was writing "NANA", Molly needed to go change Micah's diaper, so Miles continued on his own.  He shouted from the other room "is the k sound in thank a c or a k?".  And a bit later, "is the s sound in nice a c or an s?".  After asking only those 2 questions, Molly saw on her return the following:

NANA
DANKYOO
FLP DA  (for the)
NIC

Molly helped him with the E on NICE, and then helped him figure out the AS part of "easel".   He thought it was funny that the "z" sound in easel is actually an "s", just like in Miles.  We were impressed with how much of this he figured out.  Now if only we could help him figure out that TH sound!  Oh, and we don't know how the O in "for" became an L, but it's easier to see how the P must be an R that he didn't write quite right.

6/12/07

Miles has really enjoyed all of our adventures and visitors the past few weeks.  It's hard to say what he's enjoyed the most since he seemed to love everything we did (and will in fact tell us he liked all the things the best).  Our best guess, though, is that fishing, sawing, and playing with Etienne and were the high points. 

We continue to be amazed at how much Miles loves to help us with our "projects" around the house.  Given the choice to play with any of his toys, or help us mop the floor (or take out recycling, or do laundry), he will choose the chore almost every time.  We think this is partly a native interest in how the world works, and partly because Miles seems to have a constant need to talk, and that requires him to be wherever we are so that he has someone to talk to.  The "why" questions have never gone away, though they're often more involved now. 

We've been surprised the last month or so by how much work it can take to manage Miles's social calendar.  His daycare class and our PEPS group were set up by age, and this is officially "birthday season".  We have a birthday party to go to almost every weekend, and sometimes more than one!  Combine this with his playdates, and any classes he's taking, and we're already getting a taste of how much time and energy it will take to keep his commitments organized.  He seems to thrive on all the activity, though.

5/9/07

Miles seems to be growing up by leaps and bounds lately.  We have interesting conversations with him all the time now - all instigated by him.  We talk about death a lot these days (he's curious about Grandpa and Mercer, as well as dead bugs, etc.).  He's always interested in knowing about what's coming up - whether it's activities at school, or trips we're taking, or simply our errands for the day, he likes to know what's ahead.  And he asks questions that lead us down interesting paths.  Today he asked (out of the blue) "Why if the world is round are all the people standing up straight?". 

In addition to an interest in reading and spelling (which ebbs and flows a fair amount), Miles is more consistently interested in math.  He likes to talk about how numbers add up or subtract to make other numbers.  Recently he figured out that even though 4+4=8 (a sum he has memorized and tells us about often), 7+1 also equals 8.  He was quite sure we were wrong when we first told him this, since clearly 4+4 is 8.  But once we showed him that there are lots of different ways to make 8, he enjoyed seeing there are more ways to make other numbers too (2+2 isn't the only way to make 4).  It's fun to watch this native curiosity.

And of course, Miles wouldn't be Miles if he didn't use some of this curiosity to test us, and our rules.  For many many months now he has enjoyed saying "Bad girl!" or "Bad boy!" to us when he's mad at us.  He gets in trouble when he does this, so he tried telling us he'd actually said "bad toy", not "bad boy".  Hm.  We've since broached the topic of lying.  He appears to not want to lie, since now he's very careful to shout "Bad toy!" instead of "Bad boy!" when Matt does something he doesn't like.  That's our Miles - he has to find the loop hole in our rules.  Can we really reprimand him for saying "bad toy"?  He'll be the first to point out that it's ok, because toys don't have feelings.  Arrrggghhhh.....

On the plus side, it is very, very rare now for Miles to act out physically when he gets angry at us.  He will stomp his feet, growl, say mean things, and stomp out of the room on occasion.  But he's learning to control his actions somewhat.  It's a roller coaster ride, but every once in a while we feel like we're leveling out a bit.  Now that he's almost four, it seems like we may finally be nearing the end of the terrible twos! 

5/9/07

Miles is as inquisitive as ever.  Lately, though, he's started telling us a few things about how the world works.  Some examples are below.

The other day Molly and Miles ran into one of Molly's old co-workers.  After chatting for a bit the co-worker went away, and Miles asked why he was a boy.  After a few clarifying questions, Molly learned that Miles thought Molly worked only with girls, and Matt worked only with boys. 

One morning Matt was getting breakfast for himself and Miles, and Miles specified which bowl was his, and which was Matt's.  Just in case Matt forgot, Miles told him "Whenever you don't know, ask me and I'll remind you - because I think I have a bigger brain than you do".

On two different occasions Miles broached the topic with Matt and then Molly about where he will live when he grows up.  It seems he's worried he won't have a house to live in because all the people are using them already.

At a birthday party we went to recently, Miles needed to use the potty.  He chose to go into the bathroom alone, and we told him he had to close the door since there were other people around.  After quite a while Matt went in to make sure everything was ok.  It turns out that Miles had used up the last of the toilet paper, and had searched for and eventually found the spare roll to replace toilet paper for the next person.  He was in the process of putting the new roll on when Matt walked in.  Now that is a well-trained 3-year-old!

4/20/07

A while back we posted that Miles was starting to get an attitude.  It went away for a while, but it's back with a vengeance now.  We're constantly having to ask him to say things again with a nice voice to prevent him from ordering us around and speaking rudely to us.  We expected to go through a phase like this when he becomes a teenager, but we didn't think we could get this much attitude from a 3-year-old!

Luckily, Miles makes up for this behavior by being very, very sweet the rest of the time.  He continues to be good with Micah, and he's exploring and learning all sorts of new things.  Most recently he's figured out how to add simple numbers together, and he likes it when we give him math problems.  Molly had fun with him one day by showing him that every number + 0 adds up to the original number, and even though he couldn't use his fingers to prove it, he even figured out that 100+ 0 would be 100.  She threw him for a small loop when she switched it around and said 0 + <insert number here>, but he eventually figured that out too.  Fun.

Miles has a number of funny speech patterns that we realized we wanted to document, so we're going to list a bunch of them here.  You'll notice that a large number of these stem from the fact that he doesn't use "th" in any of his words.  He has a large variety of letters to substitute in, though!  Here are Miles's odd pronunciations of common words:

lellow = yellow
singer = finger
dis/dat = this/that
everysing/nussing = everything/nothing
eiver = either
togever = together
someping = something

4/9/07

We're noticing that Miles is starting to do more advanced negotiating with us now.  The other day after five games of Candyland, he asked Molly to play a sixth.  She told him she couldn't because she needed to empty the dishwasher.  He said he would help, and then she'd have time to play again.  Sure enough, he helped put the silverware and his dishes away, and they were able to play another game!  We're surprised by how often he offers reasonable compromises to help him get what he wants.  Of course, the unreasonable ones pop up now and then too.  The other day when Molly said she didn't have time to make pancakes for breakfast, Miles said "can I just have a lollipop then?".  Hm...

Miles has been much better about playing by himself in the last couple of weeks.  He would always prefer that one of us join him, but if we can't, he'll often find something else to do instead of just follow us around.  We're seeing him act out scenes more often - many times they're scenes from the movie "Cars", but sometimes he puts his teddy bears in time-outs for hitting, or tells them that the need to ask him nicely to do things.  It's funny to hear our words coming out of his mouth. 

And our favorite thing Miles said recently during dinner:  I love Micah.  He filled up my heart.

3/23/07

Miles is showing signs that he's ready to give up his nap, but he's just not quite ready yet.  Two or three times a week now he doesn't nap, and he's ok for a while, but by dinner time he's usually very cranky and tough to manage.  It may not be long now before we'll be saying good-bye to that nap.

Miles is starting to show more interest in his friends.  Although he has always loved the playdates we've set up for him, only recently has he begun to ask us to set up playdates for him.  When he's bored, he tells us he wants one of his friends to come over.  Since we've had some nice weather in the past few weeks he's been able to go outside and often ends up playing with the little girl next door (Nicole) who is 5.  They seem to really enjoy blowing bubbles, climbing the dirt pile in our backyard, and just being silly together.  He also told us last week that his friend Fiona wouldn't be at school for a while because she was going on vacation with her mom, and he was sad that he wouldn't be able to play with her.  We hear more about Fiona than the other kids at school - clearly we need to have another playdate with her!

3/15/07

We're learning life is never dull with a 3-year-old around.  Miles is a bundle of energy and he definitely keeps us busy!  His latest obsession is playing games - specifically Candyland, though we can occasionally get him to play "the monster game" (otherwise known as Crazy Eights) or "the key and ball game" better known as Cranium Cariboo.  Mostly he does very well with these games, though we see occasional problems if one of us picks the peppermint candy card, or worse, wins the game.  We're working hard on teaching him to be a good sport whether he wins or loses... maybe in a few years it will sink in.  Miles can't seem to get enough of these games.  It's not unusual for him to want to play 7 or 8 games of Candyland in a row, and then he'll still be upset when we tell him we don't want to play again.  Any guesses which of us he takes after?

Other than playing games, Miles is continuing to show interest in reading.  He is reading simple words himself now (e.g. Max, me, dog, frog) and he will occasionally tell us how a word is spelled (e.g. the other day he told us F-O-O-D would spell food, because he knows two o's together make an oo sound - his explanation).  He also has some workbooks he likes to do - they practice writing skills as well as counting, shapes, colors, and other fun concepts.  He's surprisingly interested in doing these workbooks, and occasionally we can get him to do them at Starbucks while we enjoy some coffee and even a little reading if Micah is napping!

Miles is also really discovering his sense of humor.  He has told us on occasion that he wants to be funny (like his friend Ian) and yesterday he came home from school feeling very proud that he had told a funny joke at school.  Apparently one of his friends said they wanted to go home, and Miles said "that's silly, because we can't drive cars yet!".  The best part about this was that he was so proud of himself that he came home and told *us* his joke and how it made everyone laugh.

Miles had an allergist appointment and a dentist appointment recently.  We learned at the allergist's that he is definitely still allergic to egg.  We have a follow-up blood test we need to do still to see if the allergy appears to be getting better or worse.  The prick test they did in the office didn't make us hopeful that the allergy was decreasing.  Miles did great at the dentist's office.  He was excited to go, and especially excited about getting a new toothbrush there.  The only bad part is that they gave him (and us) a hard time about his thumb sucking. 

We are having fewer and fewer issues with Miles misbehaving.  We've also started using time outs again rather than taking away stories, which is helping a bunch with defusing the situations rather than escalating them.  Unlike last time we tried it, he actually stays in the time out spot which is great, and it's great not having his bedtime routine impacted by any difficulties he had during the day. 

And lastly, Miles is continuing to love spending time with Micah.  He learns from us what new skills Micah is working on (like pressing a  button to play music on his exersaucer, rolling over, or sitting up by himself, etc.) and he announces happily when Micah shows he's learning a new skill.  He likes to make Micah laugh, gives Micah his own toys and says it's ok if Micah chews on it or does whatever he wants with it, and continues to want to hold him and snuggle him.  He's also very good about making sure the toys he hands to Micah are safe toys.  And he often tells Micah he loves him.  It's great to see him so interested in Micah and the things Micah is doing. 

2/23/07

The other day when Molly picked Miles up from school, his teacher said he'd been saying that maybe his mom wouldn't come that day (she assures us he thought this was a funny joke, that he wasn't actually worried).  She asked him what he would do if everyone else left and went home?  He told her he would go to a hotel.  Too funny.  It turns out Molly had told him a story about Max the Lizard going to a hotel, and it stuck with him.  When we were painting the bedroom downstairs, Miles recalled a Max the Lizard story where Max decided to paint his carpet because he wanted it to be a different color, and Max had to use money from his piggy bank to fix his mistake.  Miles said he would be very careful not to get paint on our bedroom carpet so he wouldn't have to use the money in his piggy bank.  We're beginning to think that we should be very, very careful about the adventures we make up for Max the Lizard!

One of Miles's favorite things to do is plan for and track upcoming activities by writing them on his calendar.  We counted down to Nana and Grandad's recent visit (and Samantha's birthday part, and the day the guy would come to look at our flooding problem), and he's getting a much better grasp on the order of the days of the week, which days he goes to school, and which days are weekends.  His current obsession is about when Easter will come, and when Micah will be 6 months old and can start eating real food.  They're both on his calendar, and he goes to look all the time to see how much longer it will be.  He usually then runs over to Micah, gets right in his face, and says in an excited, conspiratorial voice "Micah, only one more month until you can eat REAL FOOD!".  Micah inevitably smiles and wiggles at this special attention from his big brother, which has led Miles to conclude that Micah is thrilled about getting to start solids.

Miles continues to be very interested in letters, reading, spelling, and writing.  It's unbelievably fun to watch him tackle these reading skills.  He's much better at figuring out how to spell words than he is at reading words.  The other day he decided he wanted to add apples to our grocery list.  He got the list and a pen, and without any help he sounded out and wrote "APLS".  We were pretty impressed.  The conversation changed, and Molly was talking about the numbers on the clock and she said the word zero.  Miles still had his pen in his hand, and he said "I know how to write that".  One by one he sounded out the letters, and sure enough, again without help, he wrote "ZERO".  The Z was backwards, the E started out as an O and was corrected, but still - he eventually figured it all out!

Recently we had a conference with Miles's teacher at school.  She's only been with him for 4 weeks, but it was still good to get to know her and hear her initial observations about Miles.  She said he is one of the best behaved kids in the class, he always listens well and follows the rules, he's nice to his friends and empathetic when they get hurt, and he's very good at the various activities they do (she specifically mentioned math activities).  She said the one thing that she thinks he needs to work on is standing up for himself - she's seen him give up his toys very easily when his friends ask, and she's worried he doesn't know he can say no.  Huh.  This is NOT the same kid we see at home and on playdates.  Either she doesn't know him well enough yet, or he saves all of his good behavior for school!  We have another conference next week with Miles's old teacher who had him for a whole year, and we hope to make some sense of out it when we see her.  It was great, though, to see how much this new teacher liked Miles and to hear that he was doing so well in her eyes.

2/9/07

Miles has found a fun new activity he likes.  Although he's always loved getting things in the mail, he recently figured out that he could send things to people as well.  Every couple of days he asks for help with writing a letter on his computer.  He tells us who it's for, and what he wants it to say, and we help him sound out the words so he can type the right letters.  This is a great way to work on his reading skills, and we've noticed that he's better at figuring out how words are spelled than reading words.  It's so exciting to watch him learn how to hear each sound and figure out the letters.  When he's typed everything he wants to say, we print it out, fold it up, put it in a "sticky" envelope (meaning the kind you don't have to lick), and then he begs us to let him write the address all by himself.  His writing skills aren't quite there yet, so we usually let him write the person's name, and his name for the return address, and we write the rest.  Then he puts a stamp on, and we put it in the mailbox for the postal carrier.  Miles loves ritual, and this new activity is all about ritual for him.  He also pointed out the other day that if he sends Nana thank you notes for the things she sends, she might send him more things.  We swear this was totally unprompted, he figured that one out all by himself.

Things in Miles's new room at school are going really well - he's settled into it and we're not having any more issues.  It helps that we have a calendar of activities for this month so we can tell him what to expect and be sure to participate in the letter share days where each kid brings in something that starts with that day's letter.  His classroom also recently went to see "Jack and the Beanstalk" at a nearby theater (it was a walking fieldtrip) which Miles thought was just wonderful.  It's great that they offer so many fun new experiences for the kids.  We are about to have some teacher turnover in his room, but since he's so new to the room anyway we're hopeful it won't shake things up too much.  The new teacher seems very nice and competent so far.

We've noticed lately that Miles is interacting with us in some new fun (and not so fun) ways.  The other day he told us to "keep an eye out" for his balloon, and he told us he would "keep an eye on Micah".  It's fun to hear him pick up these new phrases and use them correctly.  Unfortunately he's also started talking back to us.  Sometimes when we ask him to do something, he simply says "No!".  We haven't heard that in a while.  Other times when he's angry with us he'll tell us we can't have any dessert, or that we'll have to stop playing with toys.  Even more worrisome, when one of us tells him not to do something, he says "but Mommy (or Daddy) lets me".  And the phrase "I was just..." is heard far too often.  On the one hand it's great to see him trying all of these new negotiating and coping mechanisms.  On the other hand, we'd love it if he would simply do what we ask him to :).

One technique we've started using when Miles gets angry is to have him go draw a picture of how he's feeling.  We're a little surprised at how well it's working, but instead of spitting at us (oh yes, a new fun behavior) or growling, or yelling, or throwing a toy, he walks away and comes back with a picture of a person looking angry (you can see some of these pictures on the refrigerator in the 3 Years 7 Months gallery).  He's calm enough by the time he's done with his picture to be able to tell us about how he's feeling and why so we can talk it out a bit.  We're always happy to find new ways to help defuse him.

1/25/07

We've had a very exciting couple of weeks here.  Sylvan came for a visit, and she and Miles had a great time playing with each other, eating together, and even having sleepovers every night.  There wasn't as much sleeping as the adults would have liked, but the kids really enjoyed it!  They played really well together this visit, and everyone's sharing skills were tested thoroughly.  Miles was pretty sad the day Sylvan went to Portland, and again the day she left to go home.  For being so far apart from each other most of the year, they seem to remember each other really well, and enjoy each other too!

Miles also started in the new room at school - today is the end of his second week there.  He was very excited to go, and seemed to take the transition in stride at first, though he's showing a few signs of stress now.  They told us he appeared to sleep walk one day at school during nap (?) and this week he has been extremely resistant to going to school in the mornings.  The reasons vary from I want to stay home with Micah to I want to go to kindergarten to I'm worried Mason might hit me to I'm sick.  His new teachers tell us he's doing great while he's there, and we're hopeful he will settle into it soon like he has with past transitions. 

Despite all the turmoil of guests and transitions, Miles is doing really well.  He's listening well, and being quite helpful at home.  The other day he even helped Molly do some filing and clean out her closet.  He really enjoys doing projects with mom and dad.  He's also having fun (still) with all of his construction toys and his puzzles.  And occasionally he gets excited about sounding out words, and writing his letters, so we take those opportunities to encourage him! 

1/10/07

The biggest news in Miles's life (and he'll tell anyone and everyone who will listen) is that he now wears underwear to bed.  For a number of weeks he'd been dry 6 out of 7 mornings, so when we came home from Sycamore we told him he could try sleeping in underwear.  He's been dry every morning so far!

Life with Miles is fun, and chaotic, and a constant battle of wills.  He loves to learn the rule, and then test it in every way imaginable to make sure it's really a rule.  Mealtimes continue to be a big source of testing - he makes a bridge with his legs over to Micah's bouncy chair, he sticks the handle end of his spoon into his apple and then uses the spoon to scoop food with the apple still on it, he gets his hands messy eating and then sees how many things he can touch before we stop him... such fun.  He also tells great stories, goes to Micah when he's sad to try to help him feel better (and it usually works), and he's getting more and more helpful with chores around the house.  We love watching him grow and learn new things.

Most recently, Miles has been more interested in scary things.  We still tell him Max stories every night before bed, and he always asks for a scary Max story now.  We try to oblige, but since he has occasionally had nightmares, and talks a little about monsters and bears in his room, we try to forget to include anything scary in the stories we tell.  The most interesting nightmare was about big red ants that came into the house - he woke up in the morning and asked Molly if she put the door there that let the ants come in.  She assured him she didn't, and that it was just a dream.  Later that day she heard him tell Micah he didn't need to be scared of the big red ants because they weren't real.

Miles has also become very interested in calendars.  It started with our advent calendar counting down to Christmas.  He missed doing that every night when Christmas was over, so we bought him his own calendar, and wrote a few upcoming events on it that he could count down to.  He has loved telling us how many days it is until Sylvan comes for a visit, and how many days before he moves into the next classroom at school.

12/30/06

We went to Sycamore for Christmas this year, and Miles really loved playing with his cousins.  He was finally old enough to go off on his own with them, so we got a wonderful break from childcare.  The kids played lots of video games :), a few board games, and also did puzzles, played with the train set, and even danced some.  Miles slept in the same room as Katie and Alex which he loved, but all of the kids (and especially Alex) kept getting to bed late because of this arrangement.  We thought we were doomed on Christmas morning, but they managed to wait until 6:30 before waking us up.

We've heard people say before that their child is 3 going on 13, but we didn't really understand it.  Suddenly it's making more sense - Miles has an attitude now.  We see this most when we tell him to do something and he responds with "Fine!", and the word is dripping with attitude.  He also says "I don't care!", and "you're on fire!".  This last phrase originated from a joke we play on each other saying "you're fired" when the other person does something we don't like.  Miles apparently didn't quite understand what we were saying, and it came across as "you're on fire" (he would then proceed to pretend to put out the fire).  In the last day or so he correctly told Matt "you're fired!", and then explained it was just like the elf boss in Rudolph who fired the elf who didn't want to make toys.  Apparently that scene finally made it all click for Miles. 

Fire plays prominently in Miles's life right now - he loves to play rescue which consists of him pretending to be asleep, an alarm goes off, and he races to the fire to put it out, or to save whoever is on fire.  The props he uses are his car as a fire truck, a plastic coat hanger that he hangs on the front of his shirt and uses as the phone to take the calls for help, and a turkey baster that he stuffs down the front of his shirt and uses as a hose.  One of these days we'll get a picture of him in this outfit.  Usually if we ask him what he wants to be when he grows up he says a fire fighter, but he recently learned that fire fighters have to be careful because it's dangerous fighting fires, so he's now considering being a doctor or a pilot, because then he won't have to be careful. 

12/19/06

Miles really loved all the commotion with the water in our basement and the power outage.  He enjoyed helping us move things out of the basement, and although the big blowers are a little scary, he's been down a few times to investigate and has made it clear that this was very brave of him.  He also really loved being able to use his flashlight during the power outage.  He was sad he couldn't use his computer or the TV, but the flashlight was a cool alternative.  And in the end, the fact that the power outage allowed him to see a bunch of Harrison and Isabella and have a sleepover two nights in a row made him quite sure the power should be out all the time.  He really had a ton of fun playing with Harrison and giggling into the night playing the "clock game".  From what we can tell, the clock game consists of Miles staring at his digital clock and telling Harrison each time it changed.

Miles has been doing very well lately.  He's great with Micah, and isn't having any huge behavioral problems right now.  He's very excited about Christmas and our upcoming trip to Illinois.  We've also told him that when we get back from our trip he can try going to bed at night in underwear instead of a pull-up.  We heard him telling Harrison about this big news and he's clearly quite proud of himself.  He's dry most mornings now so hopefully this will go well.  Miles will also be transitioning into a new room at daycare when we return from our trip, so there are lots of big things ahead of us in the upcoming weeks.

12/9/06

Miles is so excited about Christmas coming he can hardly contain himself.  He's had a ton of fun with all the preparations, especially putting up the Christmas tree.   We've been surprised by how much he remembers from last year.  When we got out the box of decorations he proceeded to tell us where everything goes based on his memory from last Christmas.  We have an advent calendar this year which he loves.  We've already had the conversation about whether or not we can take the calendar to Grandma's house since we won't be quite done with it when we leave.  He's also very curious about how Santa gets into our house, and whether or not Grandma's house has a chimney with a hole Santa can use.

We've had a number of on-the-floor-screaming tantrums lately.  Although they aren't fun for anyone, he is actually dealing much better with his frustrations.  He's a lot more likely to scream (loudly) than to hit someone or throw something now.  It's a definite improvement, and to make it even better, he can talk to us afterwards about how he handled his anger and what he could have done differently. 

Miles is making us laugh a lot more lately, mostly when he picks up on things we didn't mean for him to catch on to.  The other day Matt said he was buggered, and Miles had all sorts of questions about why Matt was buggered.  Although Matt stopped using that word as he explained what was wrong, Miles did not.  Things like this are happening to us more and more, and we're finding we have to hide our smiles a lot!

11/24/06

Miles shows more and more signs of growing up all the time, and he never misses an opportunity to remind us that he's a big boy.  He loves to enumerate the things that he can do that Micah can't do.  Hopefully he'll grow out of that by the time Micah can understand what he's saying. 

Miles has gotten more interested in building toys lately as you'll see from the pictures below.  In addition to explaining to us why his tower is "stable", or how he "balanced" it, he will tell us stories about magic properties of the tower, or about the people who live in it.  One of his towers started out as a castle, but then it turned into a magic school where kids go to learn magic.  There is apparently a train and a bus for the teachers to get to the school, and they have their own parking lot.  Hm...

Some of the funnier "grown up" expressions he's saying now are "I'm bored" and "I don't care".  He also says quite often that he really likes having a baby brother, and he's glad Molly went to the hospital to have him.  One day he said "I like Micah, but I don't like him when he cries".  Molly told him that made a lot of sense to her.

11/10/06

Miles is continuing to do really, really well - we think his acting out is now at a normal 3-year-old pace rather than an "adjusting to new baby brother" pace.  Our biggest issue now is the occasional throwing of toys, usually from over-excitement or excess energy.  Generally, though, he's helpful, he listens to us, and he's fun to be with.  We're all very happy to be at this point!

Our biggest Miles news is that we're no longer using a gate at night to keep him in his room.  He's thrilled about this, and is subsequently doing a great job of enumerating and following all the rules so that the privilege won't be revoked.  We happened on a huge benefit as a result of this change, too.  For some reason Miles no longer feels compelled to wake us up as soon as he gets up.  He comes into our room to check if we're awake, and if we're not, he goes back to his room to wait.  We're not sure he'll keep doing this, but for now we're enjoying an occasional morning of sleeping past 7:00!

We've noticed that one of the few activities Miles remembers about his day at school is what he did during Art time.  He is also very excited about doing art projects at home.  Any time we're at a loss for how to entertain him (or distract him) the suggestion of an art project works wonders.  The other toys he plays with the most right now are building toys (blocks and wedgits), puzzles, indoor croquet, board games, his musical instruments, and his computer.  Without our realizing it Miles has become a video game junkie.  Whoops.

Of course, we haven't mentioned Miles's truly favorite activity in a while:  talking.  He can really talk up a storm.  Matt has noticed that during his soccer lessons Miles's lips never stop moving - he narrates everything, all the time.  He's also still asking "why?" constantly.  It's often hard to get a word in edgewise with him.  This is something you have to experience to really understand - just ask our friend Heidi who was rather taken aback in Chelan when she woke up at 6:45am and sat down at the breakfast table with Molly and Miles where Miles was chattering away non-stop and asking a billion questions.  Heidi was pretty sure no one should be that awake at that hour of the morning - and we swear he's gotten worse since then!

10/29/06

We've hit what we'll assume is a temporary lull in the regressions Miles has been going through since Micah was born.  Our biggest remaining problems - bedtime and potty training - both seem to be under control for the moment.  Miles is also ever so slightly less obsessed with Micah.  Although he still wants to hug him and touch him and hold him at every opportunity, and is thrilled that he gets to feed him a bottle occasionally, he is willing to let us do the occasional diaper change without his help.  It's a step forward, albeit a small one.  We also heard our first "I don't like Micah" last week when Miles had to wait for Micah to finish eating before Molly could get him a cup of milk.  We took it as a very good sign that it took him over a month to hit this point!

With Halloween approaching we needed to make sure Miles had a costume.  At first he told us he wanted to be a lion.  We already have a lion costume (thanks to cousins Katie and Alex) so we were all set.  We were surprised, though, that he didn't want to be a firefighter, since that's been his latest obsession.  We even had a back-up costume handy just in case.  And one day recently when we were watching Dora she asked what the viewers wanted to be when they grew up.  Miles has been saying for a long time now that he wants to be a firefighter, and since we had recently talked about his Halloween costume, it clicked that he could be a firefighter for Halloween too.  We got out the back-up costume, and he's been wearing it or parts of it for most of the past week.  He likes to pretend he's rescuing us from fires, and uses this as an excuse to climb up high on our furniture.  He's very excited about all the candy he's going to get on Halloween.

Miles has recently rediscovered his musical instruments.  As an outlet for his excess energy sometimes we tell him to put on one of his CDs and do the "Miles Carpet Dance" (this is what he calls it when he dances around in the living room).  He loves to dance, and eventually he starts pulling out musical instruments to play along with the music while he dances.  The best part about this is he tries to pick an instrument that is similar to the ones on the CD.

Our funniest story for this update is from Nana and Grandad's visit.  Nana often calls Miles "Mr. M", and apparently this registered with Miles, because one day when he was talking to her he called her "Mr. N".  After laughing (a lot) Nana told him he should probably call her "Mrs. N" instead.

10/16/06

We've noticed in the last few weeks that Miles has picked up a new skill: negotiating.  He has learned how to argue with us and sometimes offer good alternatives when he doesn't like something we're asking of him.  It's impressive watching him figure this out and work through "compromises" with us.  In general this is a good new skill, though it's a bit scary to think about how long it will be before he is calling all the shots around here.

Another new behavior is his self-imposed time out.  This started a few weeks ago, and he still uses it semi-regularly.  When he gets really mad or frustrated with us, instead of hitting or biting he walks away (hooray!), goes into a room by himself, and closes the door.  Usually this causes Matt and Molly to share a raised eyebrow look, but we leave him alone.  After a few minutes he comes out and, without fail, he apologizes for whatever he did that caused the issue, and we are able to move on.  The first time it happened we didn't really believe it, but he's done it 5 or 10 more times in the last few weeks.  Based on our previous experience with time outs we think that this is an amazing turn of events.

We've learned that Miles has definitely been paying attention as we've talked about food and nutrition.  For quite some time now he has asked for dessert after dinner.  We usually allow him to have something small as long as he's eaten well.  Often he chooses his dessert, but lately he's been wanting us to pick what he should have.  As a joke, we suggest mushrooms, onions, bread, etc.  He used to just laugh and tell us what he wanted, but the other night he looked at us and said "No, I want something unhealthy for dessert".  He's definitely learned the principle that things that taste good aren't good for you!  We're not sure we meant to teach that, but such is life.

There are a few more things Miles has learned.  He knows left and right now, and the other night he successfully sounded out the word "moon" in his "Goodnight Moon" book.  At first he forgot what sound two o's together make, but all Molly had to do was ask him to remember, and he remembered all on his own and figured out what the word was.  He practically fell out of his bed in excitement when he realized he'd done it all by himself.  Molly almost joined him in falling off the bed in amazement.

10/8/06

It's been over two weeks, and Miles isn't any less interested in Micah.  The first thing he wants to do in the morning is hold Micah.  He wants to be there for every diaper change.  This evening he got out of the bathtub instead of having play time because Micah was about to get his jammies on.  He just really, really likes having Micah here.  He told Micah he loves him, he told us that having a baby is cool, and he has said numerous times that he's really glad Micah is here.  Miles occasionally forgets to be gentle with Micah (and is frustrated by the constant reminders) but otherwise he has been really great with him.

That said, all this outward love for Micah hasn't hidden the fact that Miles is going through some inner turmoil with all the changes.  He's still a bit on edge, prone to meltdowns, and regressing in a few areas (potty training and bedtime are the most notable still).  We're all soldiering on, trying to keep as many routines as normal as possible.  A few of the changes that Miles seems to be responding well to are Molly's willingness to read him stories when Micah is nursing, and the fact that he has more one on one time with Matt. 

We're also very happy to report that Miles is getting a little better at playing on his own (great timing!).  Some of his favorite activities are coloring, playing with his cars, and building with legos and blocks.  He's also more inclined to make up games of his own now, as well as make up stories and songs for us.  He's getting more adept physically too - he's figuring out how to slide down the pole at the park, he can hop on one foot now, and he loves to challenge himself to jump off of things, or jump to a certain pattern on the carpet.  In the past month or two he has become much, much more energetic.  We're going to have to work hard to give him enough physical outlets as we head into the rainy season.

9/30/06

Miles's biggest excitement continues to center around Micah.  He still want to hold him at every opportunity, and he just loves to help in any way he can.  Today Molly asked Miles to get the boppy and her water bottle so that she could feed Micah, and Miles said "Sure!  No problem!".  Micah was fussing a bit when Miles returned with these items, so Miles said "It's ok, Micah, I got the things we need, it's ok".  It was just adorable.

Although Miles is great with Micah, things have definitely continued to be a little rocky here in general as Miles adjusts to new routines.  We wondered what area Miles would regress in, and the answer is "all of them".  Luckily, though, this means we've seen small regressions across the board, rather than any one major problem.  Miles has hit us a couple of times, he's had a few accidents, he's had a few surprising meltdowns, he's not eating as well, and most notably, he has been calling us down to him multiple times every evening after we put him to bed.  This last is probably the most persistent problem - we're hoping it's just adjustment to Micah rather than a sign he's ready to give up his nap!  It does seem like things were better at the end of the week than at the beginning, so we're hopeful we're on a good trajectory.  It's really too early to tell, though.

That said, a few things haven't changed.  Miles is still really interested in letters and reading - it's so much fun to show him how the letter sounds he's learned so far (and is still learning) fit together to make words.  He just loves playing word games with us.  And he's continuing to be very interested in coloring and doing art projects, both at home and at school.  We're finally starting to hear more about his school day when we pick him up - for a long time he used to tell that he couldn't remember, or that he didn't do anything.  Now we get long soliloquies about who did what and what the art project was that day.  We notice signs all the time of how much he's growing up - and having Micah with us really emphasizes that Miles is not our little baby any more.  He's growing into a terrific little boy!

9/23/06

After months of being so very patient, Miles is thrilled beyond imagination that Micah is here, and he is finally a big brother.  He wants to help with everything, and we're learning how to give him tasks that he can manage while still making sure Micah stays safe.  Miles's favorite activity, though, is holding baby Micah.  He asks at every opportunity and looks so pleased when he can hold the baby "all by himself".  He likes to turn on the mobile during diaper changes and get the new diaper, he will fetch anything we ask him to get, he'll sing songs when Micah is getting fussy... he will even *try* not wake Micah up when he's sleeping, but the urge to jiggle, bounce, and touch Micah often proves too much for him.  Luckily Micah seems to be able to sleep through anything.  We're not sure how long this interest (and general pleasure) in Micah will last, but at the moment it's working very well for us.

We've also tried to keep Miles's routine as normal as possible to keep the upset to a minimum.  He's been going to school on his regular days (MWF), and is now officially in a 3-year-old preschool program at the daycare.  He really likes school - even with Micah here we don't get any argument from him when we tell him it's time to go.  It helps that this preschool program has planned activities each day that they print on a calendar, so we can tell Miles something exciting about his day.  Often it's a "letter share day", which means the kids bring something from home that start with that day's letter.  Miles loves to find something he can bring.  They also have pajama day, wear blue day, crazy hat day, etc.  These go a long way in getting Miles excited about his school day.

We have seen the strain of all the changes impact Miles some in the last few days.  Although he is thrilled and excited, by the end of the day he is clearly having more trouble dealing with the world, and the past couple of nights he has melted down over small things.  He's also a lot more likely to try to avoid using the potty when he needs to go (he just won't leave when fun things are happening with baby Micah) so he's had a few accidents.  Hopefully we will all settle into some new patterns in the next few weeks so that we're less on edge.  Overall we're impressed, though, with how well Miles is taking Micah's addition to our family in stride.

9/15/06

Miles continues to be excited about the baby's arrival - he knows it's not long now.  The other day he announced that he wants to be a fire fighter when he grows up, but while he's still little he can be a teacher for the baby.  He likes to talk about all the big boy things he can do and how he'll teach the baby to do them too.  He's also very interested in helping us take care of the baby.  We know this level of excitement probably won't last once the baby arrives and Miles is faced with the reality of a baby with lots of demands on our time, but it is nice to see him so excited at least initially!

Miles has been dry in the morning almost every day this week, so we're thinking about making the big switch to underwear at night, and hesitating to do it so close to the baby's arrival.  He may insist on it himself soon, though.  He's really just unbelievably fascinated with trying new "big boy" things and seeing how much he can do by himself.

Miles's interest in letters and words hasn't diminished any.  He's still talking up a storm, and asking "why" constantly.  He's also beginning to understand about how to sound out words, and he just loves (and is pretty good at) the game of figuring out how words would sound if they started with a different letter (e.g. if "robot" started with "m" it would sound like "mobot").  He falls over laughing and says "stop kidding me mommy!" whenever we play this game.  Recently he noticed when we sound out words together that sometimes an ending "e" doesn't make a sound, so he now points out "silent e's" when we run across them.  He also likes to try to write his letters, and as his success increases his frustration level has gone down some - though he did come to Matt sobbing this morning because he couldn't write his name right (he'd forgotten the "i").  It's just fascinating watching his interest and understanding increase. 

We've been hesitant to say anything here because it always backfires as soon as we do, but it's been quite some time since Miles has lost a story for hitting, biting, kicking, or head butting.  His whining has even improved some as we've worked with him to use a normal voice and talk to us about what he wants.  And he's showing some good signs of trying to compromise. Halfway through a book last night he wanted to switch books, and Molly said no because they'd already started this one.  He said "can't we read part of both books?".  Molly thought that was an excellent compromise, so Miles picked a different book and they read the last half of that book, and everyone was happy.  He's not always so easy to deal with, but it's great to see that it can happen!

9/7/06

We are noticing a definite increase in the number of bumps and bruises Miles is acquiring.  We had our worst scare so far (except for the croup last winter) when Miles took a header getting out of Molly's (parked) car.  His feet hit the ground, and then his head (no hands or knees touched at all to help break the fall).  The sound of the thump on the cement driveway was enough to send Molly's heart to her throat and make her yell for Matt.  Despite a lot of tears, a fair amount of blood, and a call to the pediatrician even though it was Sunday night, Miles was fine.  You can see a few pictures of the wound in the photo gallery below.  Miles had skinned his knee falling off his bike the day before, and was bothered more by the scrape on his knee than the bruises and cuts on his forehead.  Go figure.

We've also noticed that Miles has more energy these days - he's almost constantly in motion, and if he's not in motion, he's talking.  We're going to need to work harder at physical activities for him this Fall.  We've signed him up for soccer again which should help.  We're not sure what to do about the talking, though.  It really is practically constant from the moment he gets up, and the "why's" have not diminished any at all.  We're contemplating not responding to him any more to see if that makes him less interested in asking!  (ok, not really, but it is tempting).

Miles wants to help with absolutely everything these days.  Often he's surprisingly helpful, but sometimes he misjudges what things he can really do and gets very frustrated when we tell him he can't do something, or he tries and isn't able to do it.  On the plus side, he picks his clothes out and gets dressed mostly by himself every morning (including doing some buttons himself).  He clears his place after meals, sweeps under the table, and does all sorts of cooking tasks.  He will undoubtedly choose helping us cook at dinner time rather than doing anything else.

Miles's coloring has changed quite a bit lately.  He has gotten very interested in coloring books, and likes to try to color within the lines.  He's also working harder at drawing specific things.  He wanted Molly to show him how to draw squares, and when Matt was using animal stickers with him, Miles wanted to draw cages around each of the animals. 

At the moment we have no concerns about Miles being shy.  We've seen him randomly shout "hi" to a woman who was parallel parking across the street (after the initial shock that he was talking to her, she was very amused), and today he offered a bite of his peach to another kid at the park.

8/27/06

We've continued to be very busy at home getting ready for the new baby.  Miles is really enjoying helping us with all of this work, and asks lots of questions about the baby along the way.  He seems especially surprised that the baby won't have any teeth when he's born, that the baby will (and already does!) squirm a lot, and that the baby won't have a pillow in his bed. 

His hitting issues have been a bit better the last couple of weeks, but we've seen a definite increase in whining and overall drama.  If it's not one thing, it's another! 

Miles is still not fully potty-trained - he wears a pull-up at night.  A few months ago he seemed to be heading towards being dry more often than not, but now we rarely see a dry pull-up in the mornings.  We figure it will come eventually.  Other than that, though, he's continuing to do great during the day.

One interesting change is his preference in TV shows.  He is more likely to choose Blue's Clues or Diego now over Dora.  That's just fine with us - we were ready for some new programs! 

Miles is showing a lot of interest in letters, words, and reading.  He understands that each letter makes a sound, and knows that he can use those sounds to sound out words.  With help, he can figure out easy words - like hi and cat.  The other day he insisted on reading the invitation to Harrison's birthday party with Molly.  They sounded out each word together so he could figure out what this exciting mail was all about!  He loved it (though of course Molly did the sounding out since all of the words were too hard for him).  He's also been writing a lot more letters, though this is one of those things that makes him very, very frustrated.  We're working on getting him to either try again later, or ask for help, rather than throw the object of his frustration (in this case an open marker) across the room.

One of the funnier things he said recently was when Molly was talking about arguing with him (and how she doesn't like it).  He said "Why did we arg me?".  He thought Molly was saying arg you - apparently this isn't a word he's familiar with.  Molly couldn't help but laugh about that one.

8/13/06

We've been very busy the last week or so.  Primarily we've been getting the house ready for Miles's baby brother.  Miles is also taking another 2-week swimming lesson course, and we've been attending some end-of-summer picnics.  The house tasks have been very interesting (we took some pictures so you can see) because Miles has been surprisingly helpful.  He used a mallet, a screwdriver, and a wrench to help assemble shelves and the baby's crib.  He also used a paint brush to help paint the wall!  It's strange (and very nice) to see him help us make forward progress on things instead of just distracting us.

On that note, Miles has become very, very independent in the last week.  In addition to picking out his clothes and getting dressed by himself every morning (including doing a button for the first time), he has been brushing his own teeth with big boy toothpaste (which has thrilled him beyond imagination), he's clearing his place at the dinner table, and occasionally clears ours as well if we tell him that's the fastest way to get the dishes done so we can turn Dora on.  He's been using the potty by himself, and has even figured out how to climb onto the sink so he can wash his hands by himself.  He's also been more interested in and more helpful with household chores.  He can gather, carry, and sort laundry, and even (with some help) put away the clean laundry.  He's also been requesting to do more and more cooking tasks by himself (each night he asks to help cook dinner rather than go play).  We're hopeful that all of the independence is good timing for the new baby coming so that he will be happy (not frustrated) when mommy and daddy need him to do more things for himself.  We can hope, anyway.

Along with all of the independence has come a mild resurgence of his hitting.  Interestingly it is often out of frustration now - frustration if he can't do something he's trying to, and frustration that he can't have what he wants.  Over the past few years we've seen hitting/head-butting as affection, hitting as over-excitement, and hitting out of anger.  Frustration had to come eventually.  Luckily this bout seems to be mild (so far) and he's responding very well to our now consistent consequence of losing a bedtime story.  He HATES losing his bedtime story and is always so happy on the nights he still gets both his stories.  Of course, bed time is rather rough on the nights he doesn't get any stories (which happened multiple times this past week) but we figure that pain is a necessary part of the whole process.

The other interesting thing we've noticed recently is how much Miles craves social interactions with other kids.  We've always known this, but it's become more apparent in the last few weeks.  The other day Molly took Miles to the park, and he spent much of the time lamenting the fact that there were no other kids there to play with.  He used the time by himself to accomplish some new climbing skills.  He was very proud that he climbed a few structures that he's never been able to do before - so much so that when another father and son showed up Miles was so excited he immediately ran over and launched into a very long (and somewhat convoluted) explanation of how earlier in the summer he couldn't climb these things but now he can.  The father really didn't know what to make of him and this long soliloquy.  Along those same lines, at Matt's company picnic, Miles moved from activity to activity not because of his own interests, but because he was seeking out other kids.  When everyone left the slide to go eat Miles was no longer interested, and tried to ask another boy (who was 2 1/2) what he was going to play on so Miles could do that too.  When that little boy wandered off and a new group of children started using the slide, Miles happily went back on the slide since there were now other kids there. 

8/2/06

We've been out of town more than we've been in town this past month, which is our excuse for the long delay between website updates!  In mid-July we went to Sycamore, IL to visit with family and attend the memorial service for Molly's dad.  In late-July we went on our 4th annual trip to Lake Chelan with the Showman family.  We had a good time on both trips, and you can see lots of pictures (mostly of Miles) below.

Miles was really fun on all of our trips, and he picked up some great new skills from his cousins and from Harrison.  Most notably, he can now get dressed by himself (with the occasional backwards shirt), he is starting to write his name somewhat recognizably (see the Playing at the Condo pictures in the Chelan page), and we're seeing him raise his hand to hit and then stop himself more and more often.  He's also getting better and better at figuring out what letter words start with, and has started trying to figure out what words rhyme with each other.  He also has begun to very occasionally point out words in books as we read them because he recognizes the starting letter (for example, one night we read "Bundle up", and he pointed out which word is "Bundle" because he saw the starting B).  This is our first indication that he's noticing the words and not just the pictures on the page.  The other day he also figured out that a postcard he received in the mail was from Nana because he saw the starting N.  This was especially impressive because he was still in his car seat (Molly handed the card back to him after collecting the mail) so he had to find the right place on the postcard to look for the signature all by himself.  Of course, it doesn't hurt that almost all postcards he receives are from Nana so he was inclined to look for the "N"!

This week we had Miles's 3 year check-up.  He is 36 1/2 inches tall (25%) and weighs 32 pounds (50%).  Right on track for him.  He got a shot and did just fine with it.  He also showed the doctor that he can jump up and down and balance on one foot.  She said he looked great.  She was surprised that we answered the developmental question of "does he say no all the time" negatively.  Of course, that's because Miles prefers to say "why" all the time rather than "no".  The whys definitely haven't stopped, and in fact he passed this behavior on to both Harrison and Isabella while we were in Chelan.  Molly thinks that's terrific!!  Ken and Heidi aren't so sure.

7/2/06

Miles is 3 years old now!  We had a big party for him, and Nana and Grandad flew in for the festivities.  Miles was thrilled to get so many presents, eat lots of cake, and turn three years old.  He'll announce to everyone that will listen that he's three now, and he can do all sorts of new things.  He tells us that now that he's three he won't hit, bite, kick, or head-butt.  Hooray!  Let's hope it sticks - there has been a noticeable decline in these behaviors in the last two weeks.  He also told Nana that now that he's three he should get 3 stories and songs before bed (instead of the two he actually gets).   Tricky tricky.

Miles is not fully potty trained yet - he's still wearing a pull-up at night.  He hasn't had a daytime accident in months, though, and he's waking up dry about twice a week.  We know he'll get there, and this is about as easy as it can be without being all the way there!  The funniest thing about his bathroom habits is that he's pretty scared of public toilets because sometimes they're quite loud.  We have lots of discussions about whether or not the toilet will be loud, and occasionally we have to help him aim while he keeps his hands over his ears in case someone in a neighboring stall flushes.  The lengths we'll go to for our children are impressive.

Miles has recently rediscovered the "big boy bike" that's been in our garage since last Fall.  Our next door neighbors gave it to us, and although Miles tried it a few times, the wobbling between the training wheels seemed to scare him.  But we tried it again a few weeks ago and now he wants to ride his bike to Starbucks or the park every chance he gets.  It doesn't hurt that Matt also got a new bike, so they can ride together.  That really means that Molly chases Miles on foot while Matt rides way ahead because it's impossible to go as slowly as Miles does.  He's very good on his bike, though he has fallen a few times.  It would appear we're officially entering the skinned knees and elbows phase.  That said, if you noticed the huge lump/scrape on Miles's forehead in any of the pictures, that's not from falling off his bike!  He was running on the sidewalk and tripped - apparently he landed right on his forehead.  Ouch!

A new development we really love is that Miles is getting more expressive with his emotions.  He pretty consistently tells us he loves us at bedtime, and occasionally he will tell us out of the blue that he loves us or that he likes being with us (this came out one day when he and Matt were "fixing" their bikes together in the garage and Miles told Matt he was having fun and really liked being with him).  We've also noticed that when we're frustrated with him he'll ask us if we're happy, and more recently when he was being especially difficult he asked Molly if she loved him.  We're wondering if he notices how these questions stop us short and make us take a breath and deal with him more calmly!

Today we saw another new accomplishment from Miles.  He drew his first intentional, recognizable object today.  He was making a shape that he called a balloon, and when Matt suggested he put a string on it, he did, and it looked just like a balloon!  Miles proceeded to draw about 50 balloons (one on each piece of paper) and would even tell us when a slightly lopsided one appeared to be losing its air.  He seemed very excited that he was so successful drawing something recognizable.

6/20/06

We've been very busy the last couple of weeks, and we're sure to be even busier as Miles's birthday approaches.  He's very excited that he'll be 3 soon, and we're using it as a goal to help him learn to stop hitting.  No luck yet, but it has to happen eventually, right?

One of our exciting adventures recently was a sleep over with Ashton.  Ashton spent the night with us one night while David and Heidi went to Vancouver.  The next weekend Miles stayed at Ashton's house and Matt and Molly stayed in a hotel in downtown Seattle.  Everyone would agree it was a beneficial exchange for all involved!  Miles was so excited to get to spend so much time with his friend Ashton, and after leaving Ashton's house on Sunday morning he asked if he could go back right away.

We recently took Miles to the allergist for a check-up and to have him tested for pineapple.  He's not allergic to pineapple, but we know there's some other allergy out there that we're missing, so it's a little frustrating that we haven't found it yet.  We'll keep trying!  Miles did great at the doctor's office - they were very surprised how well he withstood the pinpricks on his back.  The funniest moment, though, was when the doctor was giving us a lengthy explanation about the possible signs of asthma (something we may have to worry about with Miles down the road), and Miles turned to Matt and said "Daddy, she has a lot to say".  Everyone (including the allergist) had to smile at that one.

One of the reasons the allergist thinks Miles may be a candidate for asthma is because he got croup again.  It wasn't nearly as bad as last time (no trips to the emergency room) but it was still plenty scary to watch him have so much trouble breathing.  It was short-lived, and all that remains is a cough that is hanging on.  Miles was a trooper through it all.

We've noticed lately that Miles has started asking what things are when he doesn't understand them.  He'll ask both about what certain words mean that he doesn't understand, as well as concepts that he doesn't understand.  For some reason it's strange for him to be so direct about his learning process since in the past it's always been in passing.  It's fun to feel like he's just absorbing everything around him.  We've talked once or twice about "keeping an eye on something" meaning we'll watch it closely, and he has used this phrase himself.  Today at the grocery store Molly told him they should keep an eye out for an item they were having trouble finding, and Miles pointed out that they might have to blink.  He's still plenty literal.

Lastly, Miles is getting pretty good at dressing himself.  He has successfully put all articles of clothing on all by himself except his shirt, and even that he can do mostly by himself.  He doesn't always WANT to get dressed himself, but we know he's mostly capable of it.  Interestingly, one of the most motivating factors with him is to tell him that you don't think he can do something, or that he's forgotten how.  He always laughs and then goes and does it to show you he can.  It feels like a cheap trick, but it's incredibly effective in getting him to do what we want.

6/4/06

Miles is getting very excited about his upcoming 3rd birthday.  We kept telling him it's in June, and now that it's June he's asking every day if today is his birthday. 

We're still hoping that he'll magically get easier to manage when he turns three, though things have been a bit better these last few weeks.  We're trying to teach Miles about making compromises when he's angry or upset instead of just hitting us.  Our hope is that if we can teach him that words are more likely to get him closer to the result he wants, he'll be more inclined to use words than his fists or teeth.  It's unclear at this point if it's working - though he is managing to get both stories before bed at least half the time now.

Miles is getting very adept at using our reprimands against us.  When we ask him a question that he doesn't want to answer, he will simply ignore us.  We've told him that we don't like it when he doesn't answer our questions.  Now he uses that against us, usually when we're trying to get him to do something (like put on his pants and underwear after peeing).  Instead of doing what we're asking, he'll pepper us with questions about what happens to the pee after he flushes and what kind of bug is on the ceiling, etc.  We ignore these questions and repeat our request for him to get dressed, and he tells us we didn't answer his question and he doesn't like it when we do that.  Somehow getting into an argument about who asked a question first doesn't seem like the best solution, and is sure to backfire within a week!

Miles has been a puzzle fiend lately, wanting to make his favorite puzzles over and over again, and always with an audience.  We've also been playing more games lately - we rediscovered his Cariboo game and he wants to play it every morning.  He's also been having a lot of fun with some glitter glue pens that Nana sent.  He uses them like finger paints which is surprisingly messy, but he loves it.

He's excited about the upcoming arrival of his baby brother.  He asks if the baby is here yet, and if it will come today.  The best part is that he'll ask if "his" baby is here yet.  Hopefully he will continue to feel this kind of attachment/responsibility towards the new baby once it's here!

5/19/06

Well, it never fails. As soon as we post some new accomplishment on the website Miles immediately backslides - it happens every time.  Since the last post we instituted a new rule.  If Miles hits us, he loses a story at night, no warnings.  If he hits us again, he doesn't get any stories before bed.  In the past two weeks he's gotten both his stories MAYBE two times.  Sigh.  Honestly, though, taking away stories seems to have more impact than the time-outs we've been trying.  He's gotten very obstinate lately, too.  If you tell him not to do something (like throw large rocks at the Miata) he grins his devil grin and does it again as fast as he can before you can stop him.  He's been very trying, and we're trying to keep our cool and hope that this will all magically go away when he turns 3!

On the plus side, many fun new things are happening.  Miles is waking up dry in the morning about half the time now, so there's hope that we may see the end of potty training one of these days.  He's very excited when he's dry in the mornings.  He also has a new utterance that makes us laugh (though I suspect by the next update we'll be very sick of it).  If he doesn't hear something we say, or if he doesn't understand a word we used, he'll say "What?" in a very abrupt way.  He's clearly mimicking our tone when we say it to him, but it seems a lot more rude when he does it!  It's so surprising it's just making us laugh right now.  It probably won't be funny much longer.

He's still really enjoying interactive play, and with all the catch we've been playing he's getting much better at it.  He also got very into his puzzles again on the trip to Hawaii.  We had a few new ones that he did over and over again.  The concept of practicing things to get better at them has been a common topic of conversation lately (soccer, peeing on the potty, catching) and he's informed us that he's practicing with his puzzles so he can get better at them.  He's also still very interested in what letter words start with, and he's getting good at figuring it out on his own. 

5/8/06

We've made all sorts of progress in the sleep department recently.  In general Miles is a good sleeper, but lately we've had problems with him waking up a lot during the night.  Sometimes he just wants his blankets put back on (he couldn't figure out how to do this himself), and sometimes he wants to check every half hour or so if it's morning yet.  We solved part of the problem by buying Miles a clock, and telling him that we can go upstairs when the first number is a 6 or a 7.  Now instead of waking us up by coming to the gate leading to our room and asking if he can go upstairs, he wakes us up by shouting "Six!!  It's morning!!  SIX!!!   SIIIIIIIIXXXX!!!".  It's a bit jarring, but since it's not 2am it's better than it could be.  One day he even fell asleep on the floor in front of the clock waiting for the number to turn to the right thing.  We solved the blankets problem when we bought Miles a big boy bed.  He is so excited about his new bed, and we told him that he would be able to put the covers on all by himself now that he has a big boy bed.  The result with these two changes is that we are all sleeping through the night again on a regular basis.  Just in time for a newborn to join the mix. Sigh.  Miles also woke up dry one morning this past week, which is only the 2nd time in his life.  It hasn't happened again, but we're hopeful that someday it will become a more regular occurrence.  Other than at night Miles is in underwear all of the time and hasn't had an accident (even at nap time) in quite a while.

Another change we've seen is that Miles is occasionally serving himself at the dinner table.  This is a skill they use at daycare and he started doing it at home.  It's funny to see him watch us out of the corner of his eye as he ignores the carrots on his plate and dishes up another serving of macaroni and cheese for himself.

Miles has been keeping us very busy playing with him lately.  He loves to play chase, hide and seek, catch, board games, and do puzzles with us.  He's basically figured out that playing is a lot more fun when Mommy and Daddy do it with him, so he's ignoring the toys he can use on his own and requesting our presence more and more often.  It's really fun to see him enjoying these interactive games, but we miss the days when his trains would entertain him on his own for half an hour! 

4/18/06

When Miles was a baby it felt like every day he was a different child because he was learning and changing so fast.  He still is, but sometimes the differences aren't as dramatic from one day, or even one week, to the next.  These past few weeks though we've seen a lot of changes in him that are making him seem more like a little boy than like a toddler.

First, we're thrilled to say that when writing this update, we couldn't remember the last time Miles had hit, bitten, kicked, or head-butted one of us.  We're still having to work pretty hard to help him direct his emotions appropriately, but at least for the moment we're having success with getting him to use his words or otherwise redirecting his anger.  Matt invented a character for made-up stories named Max the Lizard, and any time we're heading into the danger zone all we have to do is offer a Max the Lizard story and Miles calms down right away.  When we put Miles to bed, Miles often asks for a Max the Lizard story in place of one of the books we would normally read for him. 

Miles is able to do a lot more to get himself ready to go in the morning, and we've started letting Miles pick out his own clothes more often.  His favorite pair of pants is a pair of bright orange (OSU) sweatpants that Nana gave him.  Unfortunately we don't have many shirts that match these, so in the past 2 weeks he's worn them with his purple shirt, his orange shirt (different shade of orange of course), and his red shirt.  Molly always feels the need to explain to others on these days that he chose his own outfit.  On that note, keep his self-dressing in mind as you view the pictures in the photo gallery.

Soccer class is still going really well.  Miles loves it, and wants to play soccer all the time at home too.  He's also gotten more interested in playing catch.  He's better at it which helps a lot.  The biggest problem is that now when he doesn't catch the ball he often blames the person who threw it.  We're spending more and more time talking about how nobody is perfect, nobody can do things right all of the time, and that the important thing is for us to have fun, not do everything perfectly.  Anybody who's laughing at the thought of the two of us teaching Miles these lessons can just be quiet right now.

One of the more fun things that Miles has started doing is asking about what letter words start with.  His daycare has "letter share days" a few times a week where the kids bring in something from home that starts with that day's letter.  Miles has really caught on to this, and often asks us what letter something starts with.  He's getting quite good at figuring it out for himself, but when he guesses wrong and we tell him what the word would sound like if it started with the letter he chose, he thinks it's hysterical.  Today in the car he figured out on his own that Tree starts with T, but then offered up D, F, H, and other letters to get Molly to say "Dree?  Free?  Hree?".  Miles giggled at each one.  Humor is easy to come by when you're two.

He's as curious as ever, to the point where strangers who overhear our conversations often comment on it.  Many of them are women who fondly remember that phase with their own children.  We're thrilled that they remember it fondly, and look forward to the day when we can too!

3/31/06

Boy we've been busy lately.  Nana and Grandad came for a visit, and while they were here Miles went to his first soccer class, we visited the Showizalas, and Miles performed at his school's SpringFest.  Shortly after Nana and Grandad went home, we had Ashton over for a babysitting playdate.  You can see pictures of all of these events in the Photo Gallery.

Potty training is continuing to go well, and Miles's behavior problems are still improving slowly.  This week we checked with his daycare teachers and confirmed that he only acts out with us at home, not at school, so that's good to know.  Getting dressed or putting on pajamas is still a tough time of day, but we're learning good tricks to get through it without any flare-ups, and it feels like we're making steady progress in a positive direction.  It helps that Miles is getting better at putting some of his clothes on himself, and on days he's interested in doing this, he forgets to try to run away from us.

The other day we were looking at the ultrasound pictures of the new baby, and Miles wanted to see too.  We took the opportunity to tell him that there's a baby in mommy's tummy.  This was right before dinner, and during dinner Miles had lots of questions, including whether or not the baby was eating too, and what the baby would do next.  He asks periodically about the baby, usually during meals.  Recently when he was asking what the baby would do when he was done eating, Miles asked if he had any toys in there.  Too funny.  We've noticed that Miles usually refers to the baby as a "he", though we've been careful to let him know it might be a baby brother or a baby sister.

Miles's latest thing is to want to be first at everything.  First up the stairs.  First to put his jacket on.  First to the bathroom.  We can often use this to our advantage to get him out the door in a timely manner.  But occasionally it really backfires.  The other day he noticed about 10 minutes after Molly had finished breakfast that she'd finished first, and this was a disaster.  If we tell him he can't always be first he usually scowls and shouts something to the effect of "Yes I can!". 

Lastly, the question "why?" has not diminished in frequency at all in the past few weeks.  It's been a couple of months now, and we're wondering how much longer this phase will last.  We don't need to explain why, do we?

3/15/06

Our most recent excitement was our trip to San Francisco.  We had a little family time and then Matt attended a conference for work while Molly and Miles toured the city.  It was a fun trip and Miles definitely got to do lots of exciting new things, including riding a BART train, riding a cable car, and going on a carousel.  He thought all of this was great.

Potty training is still going really well.  We're seeing fewer and fewer accidents, and he did great in San Francisco even though he often had to use public toilets (which can be loud and therefore very scary) and he didn't have his stool or his seat insert.

Behaviorally, we're still having issues, though they've calmed down some since the last update.  He definitely gets very angry when things aren't going his way and tends to act out physically (still only towards Matt and Molly we believe).  But it's happening less often, and we hope that trend will continue.  Finding consequences that mean something to him (fewer stories before bed time for example) is making a big difference.

Another behavior that is still with us in force is asking the question "why?".  At times it feels constant, and it is very (very!) wearing!  A typical conversation might go like this:
Molly:  Miles, here are your chicken nuggets.
Miles:  Why?
Molly:  Because you asked for them.
Miles:  Why?
Molly:  I don't know, I guess you like them.
Miles:  Why?
Molly:  I don't know why you like them.  You tell me.
Miles:  Why?

2/20/06

Well, it hasn't been dull around here.  We all caught a nasty cold that kept us pretty sick for a while.  Miles ended up with croup, and we discovered this when he woke up having a ton of trouble breathing one morning.  We took him to the doctor, and she sent us to the emergency room in an ambulance.  Luckily the oxygen they gave him worked wonders, and he was quickly much better.  He didn't have any breathing trouble after that, though the fever and cough were with us for a while longer!

Potty training is still going well, though it's been a little up and down the last few weeks.  He is in underwear all day long now (including during naps) and only has occasional accidents.  We're really proud of him.

The question "why?" is still with us in full force.  It makes for some very tiring conversations!  We try to help him learn new things, though, by giving him thought-out answers when we can.   His imagination is also coming out more and more.  The other day he got up early, and when we asked him why he woke up so early he said he heard a noise.  He then went into a long story about a monster and a bird that were outside in the backyard making noise, and then they flew away together up into the sky!

Unfortunately our biggest change in the last few weeks has been behavior issues.  Miles has been hitting us, head-butting us, kicking us, and screaming a bunch the last few weeks when he's frustrated.  The usual pattern is that he does something that's not ok (throwing a toy or refusing to get dressed), and we approach him to take away the toy or to put his clothes on.  He gets mad, and acts out physically.  He's getting stronger and more accurate with his attacks, especially his head butts!  We've been giving him a lot of time outs and encouraging him to use his words when he's angry, but it hasn't had much effect yet.  We're slowly getting smarter about all of this - we realized putting on pajamas was always a problem, so we told him if it takes more than 5 minutes to put his pjs on we won't have time to watch Dora.  He's been very docile during pj time ever since.  Hopefully we'll find other good consequences for the root behaviors to prevent him from acting out in the first place. 

1/27/06

Miles moved to a new classroom at his daycare at the beginning of January.  His new teachers (Emily Rose and Tami) both seem great, and we've noticed that Miles is complaining a little bit less on the days he has to go to school.  He seems to really enjoy all the new activities.  He's also had a ton of success with his potty training since the move.  With the exception of the night we had our PEPS friends over, he's now gone 2 weeks straight wearing only underwear (when he's awake) without any accidents.  He also occasionally requests underwear for his naps, and has only had one nap-time accident - more often than not he wakes up dry from his naps.  He's still in a diaper at night, but that will come later.  In general he's made just tremendous progress, and we're thrilled.  We don't even have to prompt him to go to the potty most of the time - he tells us when he needs to go.  We're crossing our fingers that we don't have any backslides.

Sylvan, Sacha, and Auntie Jenny came to stay with us for about 10 days - both Sacha and Jenny had meetings in the area.  Miles and Sylvan had a great time playing together, though all of the adults started wondering how parents with twins do it.  They both worked on their sharing and negotiation skills, as well as their argument skills (Yes!  No!  Yes!  No!).  It was amusing when we remembered to be amused.  They really had a good time, though, and were just adorable together (the pictures prove this irrefutably).  While they were in town we had a PEPS get-together which was long overdue.  It was great to see everyone again.

Miles is continuing to learn new things all the time.  The most obvious one this week is that he's learned about "why".  He is now the classic toddler who asks "why" about everything you tell him.  We're very sure we're not ready for this phase yet.  He's also been very interested (for a couple of months now) in arranging his toys, food, etc. into "faces".  He usually makes two eyes and a nose and is very proud.  This week we've seen this behavior change a bit.  He made a face on his placemat with his cup, bowl, and plate (nothing unusual here).   But then he used food from his plate to add on a mouth and two cheeks. Pretty funny.  Then yesterday at dinner he was talking about how there were three of us there, and he said "this is my family".  He smiled and pointed at Molly and Matt and said "two eyes", and then pointed at himself and said "and a nose!".  He's also showing another typical toddler trait of drawing strange and sometimes circular conclusions about things.  He asked Molly if adults are tall enough for bed.  After some digging she figured out he was asking about why adults don't take naps, and if they sleep in their beds for naps or just at night.  The words for all of these concepts were a little hard for him at first!

Our scariest moment this month was when we discovered that the paints we bought have egg in them.  Miles was happily painting away (his latest thing is to cover every square inch of the paper with color) and when he looked up his cheeks were bright red.  Molly started paying closer attention, and noticed that he was wheezing a bit.  Yikes!  We put the paint away immediately and we'll donate it to our neighbors.  We knew some paints could have egg in them but since it's not food there's no way to tell from the packaging.  We just hope his daycare pays attention when they paint with him!

12/30/05

We had a good Christmas here in Seattle this year, and we managed to get some pictures of Miles's daycare teachers, our Christmas celebrations, and our trip to Leavenworth.  It's been nice having so much extra time with Miles since his daycare is closed, though we'll all be ready to resume a more normal schedule next week.

Potty training is moving along slowly still.  Miles has pretty much figured it all out now, especially the part where it's much easier to just wear a diaper than deal with going to the potty.  To combat this (since underwear is no longer an incentive) we're letting him be naked as much as he wants (sorry in advance for any pictures that reveal a little too much).  This is working very well, and he hasn't had any accidents since we started doing this.  Unfortunately we can only do it when we're at home so the time we can spend on potty training is somewhat limited.  We'll get there, though!

Miles has loved experiencing Christmas this year.  Everything from the music (he knows a bunch of new songs now) to the decorations to the presents have been a ton of fun for him.  We can only imagine what it will be like next year when he understands it even better.  One of our favorite quotes of the season came when Miles was playing with a stuffed reindeer and snowman that we have as decorations.  He was narrating to himself (as always) and we heard him say "This is a snowman.  A snowman goes in the snow.  Here's a reindeer.  A reindeer goes in the rain."  I wonder if all 2-year-olds would think this, or if it's just ones who live in Seattle who would come to this conclusion.

We also found out in an interesting way that Miles knows all the words to Jingle Bells.  Molly took him to a local mall to do a little Christmas shopping, and while they were there they had lunch at the food court.  It happened that there was a grade school giving a Christmas concert there over lunch that day, and one of the songs they sang was "Jingle Bells".  Luckily they invited audience participation because as soon as Miles heard the tune he started belting out the words along with them, much to the amusement of the people sitting nearby.

Once the holidays are over Miles will return to the school, and he'll begin his transition to the new room.  Our fingers are crossed that it will go smoothly for everyone.

12/15/05

We're late doing a website update, but hopefully we'll make up for it in picture quality (or at least volume).  We've been getting ready for Christmas, we had some snow in Seattle, and Molly and Miles took a trip to Illinois.  Needless to say it's been busy around here!

Miles did great on the trip to Sycamore, especially given the weather delays because of a big snowstorm.  His biggest complaint was that Molly drove much too slowly in the snow, and he was really read to get to Grandma's house "Right Now!".  He loved seeing his cousins Katie and Alex and torturing their dog Toby.  He also got to spend some time with Grandma while Molly worked which was fun for everybody.

We're still making forward progress with potty training, but it's slow going.  Miles now recognizes before he pees that he's about to go, and has successfully told us a couple of times and made it to the potty.  He's less interested in doing this now, though, and often requests to wear a diaper instead of underwear.  Two steps forward, one step back.  It turns out that he's going to be moving to a new room at his daycare in January, and we think his new teachers will be more focused on potty training.  He's one of the oldest kids in his current room - they range in age from 20 months to 2 1/2.  In the new room the kids will be 2 1/2 to 3.  We're looking forward to the change because his new room is bigger and the teachers are a little more experienced.  Once we get through the transition we think it will be good for Miles for a number of reasons.

Miles is very excited about Christmas this year.  He's figured out most of the basics - that Santa will come and bring him presents.  He's not quite sure what to expect, but he knows it's going to be good.  We made a Santa Chain for him to help him count down the number of days until Christmas.  So far this chain has helped him understand why he can't open the presents under the tree, but we'll have to see if it continues to work for 10 more days.  Luckily if you ask him to count the links in the in the chain he gets distracted counting and forgets about the presents he wanted to open :).

11/25/05

The good news is that potty training is going really well.  We've started putting Miles in underwear whenever we're going to be home for more than an hour.  He is very excited about wearing his underwear, and three times now he has noticed ahead of time that he needed to poop, and he made it to the potty in time without a problem all three times. We're not having as much luck with peeing, though.  On the plus side, he can now pee every time he gets on the potty, so that's excellent.  But he hasn't figured out the advanced sensation yet, so if we don't remind him to go often, he has accidents.   Still, it's progress.

Our not so good news is that Miles figured out he can get out of bed.  A week or so ago we went to Ken and Heidi's house with a plan of putting Miles to bed at their house so the adults could enjoy the rest of the evening together - this is something we've done quite often over the past few years.  Because Miles is in a big bed now, we couldn't put him in the office like we used to because it wouldn't be safe.  So instead we thought it would be fun to put him in Harrison's room.  At first it was adorable - we could hear the two of them over the monitor talking to each other, giggling, and generally enjoying themselves.  We even thought it was cute when we heard Harrison explaining to Miles about how he likes to get his blanket and pillows and sleep in the hallway.  We were a little less amused when we had to go home early because Miles wouldn't stay in his bed even after we moved him out of Harrison's room.  We stopped thinking this was even remotely cute over the course of the next week as Miles relentlessly got out of his bed time after time.  Today we put up a gate in Miles's bedroom door so he can no longer leave his room.  In addition to helping us get Miles to bed much more easily, it's safer - last night Miles got up during the night and we didn't hear him so we don't know where he went or what he did.  We'll all sleep better knowing he'll be safe in his room if he wakes up.

Miles's love of trucks and cars hasn't waned any.  The discovery of a bunch of Matt's old matchbox cars in our attic was a goldmine for Miles.  He's also renewed his interest in his puzzles - he pulls them all off the shelf and puts them together one by one, lining them up as they're completed.  He also still really enjoys playing computer games, cooking with us, and using his legos.

Our favorite story from this week was at breakfast this morning.  Miles is always very concerned about what we're going to eat, and he was quizzing Matt about what he would eat.  Matt said he didn't know, and Miles said he should have Cheerios.  He then went into a long explanation about how Matt couldn't have Cheerios because the bugs had come into the house and had taken the Cheerios away, but that we could go to the grocery store to buy more.  He told Matt he'd get them for him, and he went to the cabinet and got out the Cheerios box and handed it to Matt.  Hm. 

Miles still loves to sing, and his repertoire is growing all the time.  Most recently he has started making up his own songs.  He sang a song during his bath with Matt all about the color of the water (no recognizable tune).  When Matt tried to sing it for Molly later, Miles told him he was singing it wrong.  Miles then sang an epic song that started out about bath water but turned into a musical narration of everything he was doing as he danced around the living and climbed on furniture and interacted with his toys.  The mind of a two-year-old is a wondrous thing.

In addition to using the potty, Miles has one more new skill.  He can now successfully count objects up to around 10 of them.  We have a 12 Days of Christmas book and he just loves showing us that he can correctly count 2 turtle doves, or 5 golden rings.   Of course the most interesting thing about that particular book is the facial expressions of the milk maids and the leaping lords.  Miles asks constantly "What's wrong with him?" if any of his storybook characters don't have a big smile on their face.

Oh, and Miles has told us a few times not to talk with food in our mouths.  Apparently this is a rule at school, because we sure haven't ever tried to enforce that rule here!

11/12/05

Miles had a great time this Halloween.  We let him carry a flashlight while we trick-or-treated, and he thought that was very cool.  He figured out pretty quickly that if he said trick or treat and thank you he would get candy, so he was very willing to oblige.  The only downsides were that it was raining a bit, and there were dogs at some of the houses that really scared him.  Since Halloween ended we've had our hands full doling out the candy in reasonable portions.  He asked for it for breakfast, snack, lunch, and dinner, and if we told him he could have it for dessert he would immediately announce he was done with dinner.  We learned, though, that if we gave him his allotted candy he would go back to eating his dinner when he was done with the candy, so we didn't worry about it too much.  Luckily we didn't visit too many houses so the candy is all gone now, and that particular battle is behind us (though he still asks for candy every day anyway).

We haven't had any success at all with the potty since we got home from our trip.  We must have broken our stride.  Hopefully that will pick up again soon.

Miles is getting more opinionated, and we've seen an increase in whining and in tantrums over the past couple of weeks.  Nothing too horrible yet, though he had screaming fits in both Starbucks and the grocery store, so his tantrums are getting to be more public.  Luckily both were very short-lived. 

Our favorite change is that he's suddenly sleeping a lot more.  He will often sleep for 12 hours (occasionally more) at night, and then still take a 2 hour nap.  We like it when this happens because he's always in a great mood on those days.  When he doesn't sleep that long he's way more likely to melt down at the end of the day.  Maybe he's playing a lot harder now.

Miles is starting to play by himself more, and he's getting into much more elaborate play scenarios.  He'll be playing with his trains or his cars narrating (to himself) what's going on.  It's very cute.  We've also been working with Miles on his sharing lately, and he loves to announce to us now when he's doing a good job sharing (with his friends or with us).  We've also started telling him that all the toys in the house are "ours" and although he's having a turn with them right now, he isn't allowed to tell us that we can't play with them.  Believe it or not this seems to be helping some.  Apparently he voluntarily got off a tricycle at school the other day so that another little girl could ride it.  That's a huge step forward!

His sense of time is still pretty sketchy (every meal is breakfast, he's never sure if he's taking a nap or going to bed for the night, and often he'll talk about something that happened in the morning as "yesterday").  He's more likely to remember small things from one day to the next now, though.  If we tell him we'll do something tomorrow, he'll often wake up asking to do whatever it was we talked about.  And of course he occasionally really surprises us by remembering something that happened months ago.  Their little brains work in such interesting ways.

Lastly, we've noticed an improvement in two physical skills lately.  Miles is able to catch his beach ball about 1/3 of the time now.  It's great to see him start to master this skill.  We've also seen his jumping improve a lot - he can get both feet off the ground at the same time many times in a row.  And he looks a lot less like he's about to fall over when he does this now.

10/30/05

What a crazy few weeks!  We started out with some more potty success - Miles told us ahead of time that he needed to poop, and so we took him to the potty and he went!  Yay Miles!  We celebrated by buying him some big boy underwear which he thought was very cool.

Then we went on a week-long trip to visit Aunt Sarah and her family in Kansas, and then Nana and Grandad in Oklahoma.  Miles did great on the flights, though he didn't sleep as we'd hoped he would.  It was fun seeing so much family, and we did all sorts of fun things like visit a science museum in Wichita, and feed ducks and go fishing in Stillwater. 

Now that we're home, we've decided to move Miles out of his crib.  We didn't bring the pack-n-play on the trip, and he did better than we ever would have imagined.  He didn't get up and wander around when he was supposed to be sleeping, and he even called us to come and get him whenever he woke up.  We were very impressed.  He did fall out of the bed at Nana's house, and roll under a nearby table at Aunt Sarah's house, but mostly he slept really well.  And then the day after we got home Matt caught him trying to climb out of his crib and we decided it was time to make the move.  We haven't gotten him a big bed yet, but the mattress on the floor is working well for us right now.

We're gearing up for Halloween - Miles has enjoyed wearing his new orange and black clothes from Nana the last few days, and he tried on his Halloween costume as well as some dress up clothes Aunt Amy gave us.  We'll see tomorrow how he does with the trick-or-treating.

The other big change over the past month is Miles's favorite new phrase.  He is constantly asking us what we're talking about.  Any time we try to have a conversation when he's within listening range - at the dinner table, in the car, at Nana and Grandad's house when Miles is playing nearby - he asks us what we're talking about if he doesn't understand the conversation.  Although we try to answer him, sometimes it's tough to explain our topic to him.  The funniest time this happened was when we were having a fight in the car, and Miles pipes up from the back seat "What you talking about Mommy and Daddy?".  Whoops. 

10/11/05

We've had more successes with the potty since our last update.  Miles has peed four times now, and the last two times he seemed to do it purposely rather than accidentally. Progress!

We've started attending music class again now that the Fall session has begun.  Both Harrison and Isabella are in the class and all the kids have a great time singing and dancing and trying out new instruments.

Miles spends more time than he probably ought to using his new computer.  He asks for it even more often than he asks to watch TV, and he's gotten very good at using the mouse to play the games on the Sesame Street website.  He's even learned how to click the x at the top to close the browser when he's done.

He's getting more insistent now with telling us when we've done something we're not supposed to.  Matt tossed Miles's clothes into the hamper one evening, and Miles pointed out that he shouldn't throw things.  Molly nudged Miles with the shopping cart at the the grocery store, and Miles insisted she apologize for bumping him.  While Miles was playing with Ashton at Ashton's house, we're told Miles requested a "thank you" when he gave Ashton a toy.  Luckily Miles has also started monitoring himself.  He had a snack at Starbucks the other day, and halfway through he noticed he was wearing his hat.  He said "Oh!  I forgot, no hats at table".  And he took it off and hung it on the back of his chair.

9/22/05

We can hardly believe our news this update - Miles peed in the potty this week!  We're pretty sure it was a complete accident, and it hasn't been repeated yet, but it's a step forward, and we were all pretty excited about it.  He's also been sitting on the big potty with a special insert, which he thinks is pretty cool.

Miles is getting a lot more interactive in his play now.  On the one hand this is exciting because he's actually playing games with us.  We got out a box of old board games that Nana sent us, and Miles was so interested that we bought a copy of Candy Land as well since it doesn't require spinning a spinner or counting.  He does surprisingly well with Candy Land, and he also really enjoys making up his own "rules".  On the other hand, it means that he is demanding a playmate pretty much constantly.  He's much, much less willing now to do anything by himself, even if all he wants is for someone to sit next to him while he plays and respond back to his constant running commentary on what he's doing.  We find ourselves trying to get more creative about finding ways to convince him to play alone for a few minutes at a time.  So far we haven't been very successful with this, but we keep trying!

We've noticed for a number of months now that Miles is starting to discover humor.  He will occasionally tell us we're funny, and he's learned that when other people laugh it means something funny happened and he should laugh too, whether or not he understands the joke.  At dinner the other night he started laughing for no reason, and we asked him what was funny.  He said "Miles funny because I laughing!".  Cause and effect definitely aren't quite there yet.  Now that Miles's day care is closer to home we occasionally walk to and from school.  Walking home the other day we saw a number of people out jogging, and Molly told Miles that they were getting exercise.  He got out of the stroller, started running, and said "Miles get exercise because I running!".  That was ok, but it was quickly followed by "Miles running because I get exercise!".  He likes to repeat his phrases over and over, so Molly heard these two phrases about 20 more times as they walked the rest of the way home.

We think part of the reason Miles repeats himself a lot is because he's figured out that if he says something enough times sometimes the answer changes.  It turns out adults can get pretty sick of responding the same way 20 times in a row, so we alter our responses slightly each time.  This has been especially apparent the last few weeks since Miles became very interested in the moon.  Now that it's getting darker earlier we've seen the moon a few times, and Miles loves it - he gives us the biggest grin ever when he sees it.  But of course we can't always see the moon, even if it's dark, so more often than not (Seattle's a cloudy place) Miles asks to see the moon, and we have to tell him we can't see it right now.  That doesn't stop him from continuing to ask for it, and we find ourselves trying to say "sorry, we can't see it tonight" in a billion different ways in the hopes that we will eventually hit on a phrase that will finally make him stop asking.  So far he's proving he can outlast us.  He's two, and we all know it.

9/6/05

Our biggest excitement this update was Miles's first camping trip.  We took a ton of pictures (up until our camera battery died) so you can experience it yourself.  We had a great time, and Miles thoroughly enjoyed himself.  We also went to Harrison's birthday party which was a lot of fun.

Miles really loves to explore, and continues to constantly asking "what's that?".  We have a ritual we go through (if it's not obvious what he's asking about) where we ask if he sees something or hears something, and what color it is or what kind of sound it was.  The day he picked up cat poop and said "what's that?" no additional questions were required, though lots of hand washing was!  Now he's very quick to tell us when he sees poop that we shouldn't touch it.

We've noticed that Miles's counting has improved recently.  If you ask him "how many are there" he'll either answer 1 or 2 (2 is the default answer if there are more than 1).  But now if you ask him to count them, he will semi-correctly point to each item and count them as he goes.  He's not always accurate, but he's improving a lot from waving his finger in the general direction of what he's counting and randomly picking a number.

His phrases continue to make us laugh.  He recently said to Matt (who was reading) "Daddy, what your book about?".  He's also using "somebody" and "something" now in sentences, though something comes out as "someping".  And on a shopping trip he saw a man heading to his car with a full cart, and said "That man put stuff in car".  We thought the word "stuff" was amusing, and he's definitely added it to his regular vocabulary now (as in "Miles put stuff in tent").  It's worrisome to hear some of our speech patterns come out of him - we've never been so conscious of what we say, how we say it, and how often we say it!

Amidst all this fun, Miles is definitely 2, and he likes to remind us regularly.  He's getting very demanding, and he has begun whining and occasionally yelling at us when we don't give him what he wants.  The whining is just frustrating and annoying, but the yelling is somewhat humorous.  Like most 2-year-olds, he expects us to respond to him when he talks to us, but he talks A LOT and it's incredibly easy to tune him out.  He's recently discovered that when he's tried 2 or 3 times and we haven't responded he can yell "Mom!" or "Dad!" at the top of his lungs and get us to notice him.  The volume is part of it, but since he has always called us mommy and daddy up until now he's figured out a double whammy for getting us to pay attention to him.

8/21/05

We finally settled down to enjoy the rest of the summer here in Seattle.  Things are going well at the new day care.  We haven't had any more sleep disturbances in the past few weeks, and at the end of one school day Miles said "Miles so happy go school."  Unfortunately he still doesn't want to go to school in the mornings which is hard, but we're hopeful it's just a matter of time before he gets to know his new teachers and playmates better.

The desire to stay home from school isn't helped any by how much fun Miles has been having at home lately.  The other day Matt was working on organizing the garage and he brought Miles out to help him.  Miles had a great time sweeping, playing with washers, and (the highlight) driving the truck.  He spent half his time leaning out the window saying "Watch out Daddy, here comes truck!".  He told Matt about how he was driving to Starbucks to bring Matt coffee, going to the grocery store, and going to work.  He also occasionally pretended hit a bump which required him to bounce up and down on the truck seat - endless fun.  He loves to play pretend now and has come up with some fun new games.

Miles is busy learning new ways to make things go the way he wants.  He had some juice with dinner the other day, and when he finished it he asked Molly for more.  When Molly said no, he could have milk now, he turned to Matt and said "Daddy, Miles have more juice?".  It was a little hard not to laugh since we were both sitting right there, but it won't be funny when he does this when we're not in the same room and within hearing distance of the other parent's answer!

His favorite activity right now is, without a doubt, riding his tricycle down to the park.  We bought him a helmet to keep him safe and we've made the trip about 4 times in the last week.  It's actually a lot easier when he's on his tricycle since when he's walking he stops to pick every dandelion, look at every bee and ant, and throw every rock.

On the talking front, we've heard a few new things recently.  "Salsa" has been officially replaced with "what's that?".  When he wants to find one of us, he shouts out "Mommy, (or Daddy), where's you?".  One of the funnier mistakes he makes is to call sounds "loudly" instead of "loud".  For example, if he hears a truck, he'll say "That truck be loudly".  He also talks a lot about being a "big boy".  "Miles big boy no use lid".  "Miles wear helmet like big boy".  "Miles big boy who use railing".  If you tell him he's a cute little boy, he'll correct you and say "Miles not little boy, Miles big boy".  It's clearly very important to him to grow up and be ready try new things. 

8/9/05

Miles is now fully transitioned to his new day care.  By all reports he's doing great and has been very helpful showing the other kids what to do, especially at clean-up times.  We're noticing some new sleep disturbances on the nights when he had school, though, so we know it's taking some toll on him.  Hopefully he'll settle into the new routine soon.

Miles has started to pick up a few new skills lately.  On a couple of occasions he managed to catch a big beach ball we threw to him as long as we threw it perfectly into his outstretched arms.  He was really excited by this.  We've also noticed a change in how he colors.  For a while now he has scribbled lines and curves all over the paper, focusing mostly on changing colors often.  More recently, though, we've seen him start to fill in objects on his page.  In one instance he colored in all the stickers he'd placed on the page, and when he doesn't have stickers his goal seems to be covering every inch of white space with color. 

The other new skill we've started working on a bit more is potty training.  At Miles's old day care the teacher would ask a few of the older kids if they wanted to try the potty before diaper changes happened.  Miles quickly learned that if he tried, he would get a gummy bear, and so he always volunteered.  One day a couple of weeks ago we were at the drug store and we walked through the candy aisle.  Miles saw the gummy bears, asked to have them, and said "Miles go potty?".  Molly bought the gummy bears, and eventually persuaded Miles he could wait until they got home to try the potty.  Sure enough, ever since he knew there were gummy bears at home, he has asked multiple times a day to try the potty.  He's never actually produced anything in the potty, but we figure it's a great start.  We've started reading stories to him while he sits there to give him more time to accidentally go in the potty and learn how it feels.  Hopefully some day that will happen.  It didn't hurt any that Harrison demonstrated his potty skills for Miles multiple times in Chelan, as anything Harrison does must be cool.

The other big change we've seen is in Miles's language skills.  He just continues to amaze us with how fast he's picking up new things.  Right after our trip to Illinois he started saying "mm hmm" instead of "yes", which sounded strangely grown up.  Recently he's added "ok", "sure", and "yeah, sure" to this list of affirmative answers.  He's also started using pronouns.  We hear lots of "I", "me", and "you" now, and occasionally "his" and "her", though these last two are more rare and not always used with the correct gender.  The switch from "Miles go downstairs with Mommy" to "I go downstairs with you" feels huge.  Other phrases we hear a lot are "I get it for you", "I'll do it" and "Oh, I see it".  He's also started asking us more interesting questions and having back-and-forth conversations with us.  The other day when we were walking home from the park he asked to be carried (not a new thing) and Molly told him she would for a little bit, but when she got tired he'd have to walk again.  In a little while he said "Mommy, you tired?" to find out if it was time for him to walk.  We also had an interesting conversation about things with wings.  He pointed out during dinner that owls fly and have wings just like birds.  We asked him what else has wings and flies, and he said bees.  We told him that airplanes fly, and asked him if they have wings too.  He said yes, and then said "helicopters have wings?".  We told him they don't, they have propellers, and pointed out that propellers were a little like the fan that was turning above us.  He looked at the fan and said "fans have wings?".  It's amazing how you can practically see the learning happening in his little head.

Lastly, we've had another break-through on the song front.  In addition to singing new tunes, Miles has started making up his own words to sing to these tunes, and when he's done he laughs and says "Miles sing funny song!".  As an example, he sang "Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder whzazazazazazazaza" - we think he picked this up from watching an episode of Dora with Harrison where they mess up the words to songs.  He also sang (to the tune of the Barney clean up song) "butterfly, butterfly, everybody do your share".

7/23/05

Miles did a great job on our trip to Illinois for his grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary.  He was so excited about the airplane, and about all of the cool vehicles he could see out the airport windows.  He kept himself amused on the plane with books, puzzles, and a little Elmo.  Once we got to Illinois he was so fascinated by all his cousins all we had to do to take care of him was remember to feed him and occasionally make sure he napped (though this happened a little less often than we would have liked because he was so excited about playing with his cousins).  He had a great time.

Despite our great efforts in Sycamore (and for the previous 4 months) to get Miles to sing anything other than the ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, we were unsuccessful.  Just to show us all who's boss, though, in the car on the way back to O'Hare Miles sang multiple verses of "The Wheels on the Bus" for us.  Shortly after that song ended we passed a farm with sprinklers going, and Miles sang (to the tune of a song from his music class) "Sprinklers, sprinklers, I love you".  True to form, he sang it over, and over, and over.  At least it wasn't the ABCs.  Since we've gotten home we've heard him try out a few other tunes as well, and we're thrilled that he's finally breaking out of his musical rut.

Now that we're back home, Miles has started transitioning to his new day care.  Molly spent Wednesday morning there with him, and on Friday he was there by himself for about 5 hours.  He did great - he didn't get upset when Molly left him and wasn't especially concerned when she came back either.  The teachers there were impressed by  his skill in riding a tricycle, by the amount he eats and how neatly he ate his soup (??), and by how well he went to sleep at nap time.  We're very pleased that he's adjusting so well to the new environment and look forward to getting to know a new set of teachers.

In addition to all the other excitement of the summer, we enrolled Miles in a parent/child swimming class.  It's 2 days a week at the local pool.  The pool is outside, and let's just say it's not all that warm in the morning in Seattle, even in July.  Miles doesn't seem to mind, though, and he's having a great time in the class.  One of the things they work on is teaching the kids how to do a standard swim stroke by telling them to "reach and pull, reach and pull".  Miles hardly moves his arms when we do this, but he loudly chants "reach and pull" along with all the adults, apparently under the false assumption that simply saying the words will propel him through the water.  If only it worked that way.  The class is definitely making him more comfortable in the water as you can see from the pictures of him jumping into the hotel swimming pool.

7/13/05

Shortly after Miles turned two, we took him to the allergist for a checkup.  We confirmed that he is still allergic to eggs, but he's not allergic to cat hair or dust mites.  He didn't really like the pinpricks for the tests, but he held up great through the exam.

We've had so much excitement the past couple of week with visitors in town that Miles hasn't had much opportunity to misbehave.  He loved having his cousins here, and continued to ask for them long after they left. We've had multiple trips to the beach, a ferry ride, shopping, ball games in the back yard, all kinds of fun.

Miles continues on his quest for the longest and/or craziest sentence possible; but the big news on the speech front is the word "mine," which has vaulted to the top of the charts in the past week or two. Miles can say something along the lines of "No Daddy play that toy, that belongs Miles," but "MINE!" is so much more succinct, right?  Another recent gem was "Daddy, what you doing?".

6/28/05

Miles is 2 years old now.  We've been busy celebrating his birthday with Nana and the Showmans.  We also took him in for his 2 year check-up.  He weighs 28 lbs (50%) and is 33 inches tall (25%).  He is no longer anemic (hooray!) and he only got one shot.  He did amazingly well with the shot - he was very upset when we told him what was coming, but he hardly made a sound when he got the actual shot.  It's probably the easiest it's ever been (at least for us).  The doctor says he looks great, and we won't see her again for another check-up until Miles turns 3!

As Miles gets older we're continuing to see more "terrible twos" behavior from him.  He gets frustrated very easily and often deals with this by screaming loudly, and more recently by throwing full-fledged tantrums.  He's had his second time-out (again for biting) and he continues to spend meal times finding every way he can to push our buttons.  Usually he sits in a big chair at the table with us, eats with utensils, and doesn't use a lid on his cup.  When he misbehaves he loses these various privileges, and the other night he started dinner out as normal, but by the end he was in his high chair with a lid on his cup and no utensils.  Luckily that was an extreme and he usually manages to avoid this because he likes to be a "big boy".

We're continuing to hear more and more interesting words and phrases from Miles.  One of our favorites recently was when he answered a question Matt asked him with "sure" instead of "yes".  He has also learned to get our attention by saying "Hey Mommy" or "Hey Daddy" just like we do to each other.  He also occasionally says "Hey Matt".  He's also very clear now when he doesn't want you to play with his toys.  A common utterance is "No Daddy, this is for Miles".  This is much better than screaming so we're making at least some forward progress with him.

6/13/05

We're happy to report that we haven't had to give Miles another time-out since our last website update.  He hasn't bitten us for a few weeks, and we're crossing our fingers that we're done with that phase.  He's still finding plenty of other ways to test us, but he hasn't caused us any bodily harm recently.  Our biggest issues now are whining instead of asking nicely for things, banging his fork/spoon on the table (still), banging on the window, and more drawn-out crying sessions when he's upset about something - the other day he had a melt down because he didn't want to wear the overalls Matt picked for him, and it was a big deal to him.  We're not used to him caring so much about things like this, but we expect we'd better get used to it and fast.  On the plus side, we've had two instances recently where he raised his hand as if he were going to hit us, and instead chose to touch our faces gently (we call this "giving gentles").  Without any prompting, he then volunteered "no Miles hit Mommy", so he was definitely making a conscious decision to alter his actions.  It's progress.

After a year and a half at our current day care, we've decided to move Miles to a new center.  Mostly we want to have him closer to home so that Molly won't have to travel so far to pick him up now that she doesn't work at Microsoft.  We're also trying to think ahead a little since his current day care only goes up to age 3 and we'll have to move him in a year anyway.  Since he was about to transition to the 2-3 room we figured this was a good time to make the change.  We'll start Miles's transition to the new center in mid-July, and he'll be fully moved over by August.  He'll continue to attend only part-time (3 days/week).

Miles continues to be a happy child, and he's showing stronger and stronger preferences for certain activities.  Playing outside is always high on his list, though we've had a lot of rainy weather which has kept us inside.  Top on his list right now when we're inside is having us read books to him.  He'll happily pull every book off the shelf one by one and ask us to read it, and often he'll want some books to be read multiple times in a row.  When we're not reading, he still loves to play with his large collection of trucks and cars, and with his musical instruments.  He also really enjoys coloring, painting, and playing with play dough.  He's become very directive in these last activities, telling us where to sit, which crayon to use, what to draw, and where to draw it.  If he can have his way, though, he would almost always prefer to be someplace other than home.  A common refrain when we're in the car is "no go home?", and if he knows we're headed out someplace, especially if it's to Harrison's house, Miles spends a lot of time confirming that we really are going where he hopes we're going.  He'll ask, in varying order, the following questions:  "no go home?", "no go school?", "no go Starbucks?", "go Harrison house?". 

Watching Miles figure out new concepts is great fun.  He enjoys telling us about what color the stop lights are and whether we are going or stopping.  Some of the more interesting comments are "still green!" when we're approaching a light that's already green, and one time when we turned right on red he said something to the effect of "light red, Mommy go".  We found ourselves trying to explain how the rule he'd so carefully learned was a little more complicated than he thought.  He also made an interesting connection the other day when we were talking about how he sits in a "big chair" at the table now instead of in his booster seat.  We told him he was turning into a big boy, and he said "big boy like Michael".  After pausing and thinking for a minute (there's no Michael in his day care class) we realized he was referring to a character in his potty book - Michael is a big boy because he uses his potty. 

One of our favorite new behaviors is Miles's ability to express at least some of his emotions in words.  A very handy way to help him stop crying is to ask him why he's sad.  He will work very hard to answer you and it seems to help a whole bunch that he's been able to explain what was wrong.  He also voluntarily lets us know when he's happy, and has on occasion explained why.  A common phrase now is "Miles happy see Mommy".  Obviously Molly loves to hear this.

5/30/05

It's clear the terrible twos are just around the corner.  We're in a phase where Miles is testing us constantly - and we're not really sure if we're passing the test!  His favorite transgressions are to bang on the table with his fork, throw his food on the floor (still!), stand up in his chair during meals, run away from us when we need him to do something he doesn't want to (like get in the car, or brush his teeth), scream at the top of his lungs for the fun of it, and our personal favorite, bite us.  We're finding that we have to work a lot harder now to figure out how to address each behavior to make sure he understands the rules and knows what the consequences are for breaking them.  For the most part we're figuring out reasonable consequences as we go that seam somewhat effective, but we were surprised this past week with how much worse his biting became.  After Miles bit us 4 times in a row one evening, we realized our firm words weren't doing the trick, and we put Miles in his first time-out.  Our policy since then has been to give him a warning whenever he bites and tell him he'll have to stand in the time-out corner if he does it again.  He's never done it twice in a row since then, but we're sure it's only a matter of time.  He does occasionally stop himself before he bites us now to say "no bite stand time out corner".  It's progress, but we can tell it's going to be a long, slow year.

On a happier note, we're having a ton of fun watching Miles continue to learn and grow.  We've seen him successfully get both feet off the ground when he jumps, though usually he does more of a hop from one foot to the other.  He's getting very fast when he runs which makes him a lot harder to corral in stores.  The other day we took him shopping, and he went from item to item saying "too small Miles".  We're not sure if this was a roundabout way of telling us he didn't like the clothes, or if he had just internalized that we were shopping because his current clothes were getting too small.  At any rate, there were a few items he wouldn't let us buy because he didn't like them and he chose something else instead.  Sigh.

Music class has continued to be a lot of fun, and Miles has started singing along with the songs during class.  It's pretty funny to hear all these adult voices along with one little 2-year-old voice singing off-key and missing at least half of the words.  It's wonderful that he's trying, though, and he clearly just loves to sing.  We have a bin full of musical instruments at home and he likes to take them out one at a time and play them while he sings the ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and dances.  We're not allowed to sing or dance with him when he does this.

We're starting to see Miles pretend a lot more now.  When he draws he tells us what it is he's drawing (which is a good thing since everything is circular scribbles, lines, or dots right now).  He'll make a quick scribble and say "Miles draw Daddy!".  Then do the same thing again and say "Miles draw Mommy!".  When he's riding in his toy car he'll tell us he's going to Starbucks, or occasionally that he's going to work.  One day he gave Molly a kiss good-bye before getting in his toy car and driving to work.  Another night Matt took the Miata to get some take-out for dinner, and after watching Matt drive away, Miles got in his car and said "Miles drive Miata just like Daddy.  Bye-bye Mommy.  See you later!".  He's also added some words to his fake phone conversations.  Now when he picks up a phone he says "Hello?" and then follows it up with "good".  Apparently a lot of people who call us ask us how we're doing!

5/9/05

We had a wonderful visit with Nana.  She and Miles wore each other out playing so hard, and Miles had more fun than he knew was possible.  They read stories, drew pictures, played with blocks, went to music class, visited Harrison and Isabella, went to two different parks, and sang songs.  It was great to have Nana here.

Right before Nana arrived in town, we discovered that Miles could sing Sad ABCs.  He makes a sad face, and proceeds to sing the alphabet song while looking (and sounding) sad.  It's hysterical, and since Nana thought so too she encouraged him to do it a lot (causing them both to crack up).  She may have been sorry for this by the end of the trip, though, since we all probably heard him sing that song over a hundred times during the course of her visit.  Seriously, we're not exaggerating. 

Miles had also learned a physical skill before Nana arrived in town.  He learned how to climb ladders on playground equipment in order to get to some of the bigger slides.  He demonstrated this for Nana, and she also taught him a new skill.  She taught him how to walk on his tip toes which he's now able to do for a few steps in a row.  He's very proud of this new accomplishment.

Now that Nana has gone home, we're noticing that Miles's language skills also took a step forward while she was here.  The other day Matt and Miles were playing outside, and eventually Matt told Miles it was time to come in for lunch.  Miles got very (very) upset, and cried for 10 or 15 minutes.  He didn't want to eat lunch, he wanted to ride his scooter outside.  After a while Molly asked him why he was so sad.  He stopped crying to think about his answer, and said "Miles get sad Daddy take scooter".  That was the first time we heard him identify the cause and effect behind one of his emotions.  The question distracted him and he got interested in helping Matt stir the macaroni cheese - very exciting stuff.  After a little while he looked up and said "Miles got sad.  Miles happy now".  We almost fell over because he'd never talked about his moods changing like that before.  He did one better, though, when we sat him down to eat his macaroni cheese.  We were still getting our own lunches ready as Miles started eating his.  After a few bites he looked up at us and said "This is good."  Molly wasn't sure she correctly understood because he'd never commented on the quality of his food before, so she asked him what he said.  He paused for a minute, and then said "This is yummy."  Who knew.  Of course, this ability to comment on his food cuts both ways.  A few days later, after taking a bite of the dinner Molly had cooked, he said "This is yucky."  He then said "Miles try!" because we always make a big deal about him trying foods even if he doesn't like them.  Needless to say, he didn't eat any more of the yucky dinner.  Sigh.

There's one other thing we realized we should put on the website so that years from now we'll remember it.  For many months now Miles has been asking "what's that?".  He doesn't, however, have the words quite right.  Since we always answer this question with "That's a <insert noun here>" what Miles is actually saying is "that's a?" rather than "what's that".  To add to this little idiosyncrasy, Miles doesn't pronounce "that's a" very accurately, so to the untrained ear, it sounds like "salsa".  We always forget that the rest of the world hasn't made the connection between "salsa" and "what's that" and are a little surprised when people don't explain to the curious child what it is that he's looking at.  Every once in a while we remember, though, and laugh about how other people must wonder at this little boy's strong desire for Mexican cuisine, because "salsa" is one of the most common words to come out of his mouth. 

4/23/05

Miles is singing all the time now.  Unfortunately he pretty much only sings one tune.  It's usually a medley of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the ABCs, but he does offer a little variation.  The other day he sang this:

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky

You may notice that in this version the song never ends.  He also likes to pick a word and sing it over and over again to this tune.  Our favorite was when he sang "no no no no no no no" to this tune.  He does occasionally sing other songs - there's one called slippery fish that he learned in day care that he especially likes.  We finally had to ask for the lyrics so we could follow along.  For our own sake, we're working on getting him to pick up some other melodies.

We've decided that Miles is definitely running now.  He's getting faster all the time.  We've also seen him occasionally walk up shallow steps without holding on to anything.  It's nerve-wracking, but he hasn't fallen (yet).  The down side of these new tricks is that Miles asks fairly often to wear his "special shoes". This is a pair of sandals that we bought to wear to the pool for our Las Vegas trip.  They're slightly too big on him so he's a little unstable in them.  Watching him run and climb stairs in these shoes can be a little hard to take.

Miles is getting more and more particular about what he does and doesn't want.  It's impressive to see him try all of his different phrases to make things go his way.  The other day, while playing on the swing set in the backyard, Matt held on to an unstable piece of equipment as Miles climbed on.  Miles didn't want Matt's help, so he said "Miles do it".  When that didn't work he tried "No daddy do it", "no hands, daddy", and "no daddy hold".  He's also more likely to demonstrate new verbal skills when he's most worried something won't go the way he wants.  When we were at Ken and Heidi's the other day Isabella (who's crawling now!) tried to take a truck Miles was using.  Miles said "No Isabella!  This is my truck!"  We'd never heard him use a pronoun correctly before, though recently we have heard him start to use them incorrectly.  For example, he'll say "Mommy carry you" when he means "Mommy carry me". 

Lastly, Miles is doing well with his colors.  He knows all the basics now with reasonable accuracy, and he especially likes telling us what colors the trucks are that he can see out our living room window.  In the end, everything comes back to trucks.

4/12/05

One of the most common phrases we're hearing these days is "Miles do it by self".  He wants to walk down the stairs by himself, put on his socks by himself, sit by himself when we're reading a book, etc.  He can't accomplish all of these tasks on his own, but he tries first, and then asks for help when he needs it.  As long as we give him the chance to try it himself first we usually avoid a tantrum, and he's willing to get help once he's had a chance to try.  He has surprised us occasionally when we do this - the other night he took his shirt off all by himself. 

Miles is really enjoying playing with his train tracks these days.  He asks us to play ("daddy play train tracks?") which means we're supposed to set up a track for him, preferably with a bridge and a tunnel.  He then lines up all of the train cars and turns on his battery-powered engine.  We watch the train circle around and around, and the fun is in "fixing" the train when the cars occasionally de-rail or get stuck.  He's very clear about who is supposed to fix it - he says "Miles fix it train tracks" or "Mommy fix it train tracks?" to make sure we know who is (and who is NOT) supposed to touch the train at any given time.  As long as we do exactly as he instructs us to (and never, ever turn on the engine ourselves) everyone has lots of fun.

He's continuing to sing the ABC song all the time, and he's getting better and better about singing the right tune.  Apparently in day care the other day he sang it for all of the other kids during circle time, and on another day he sang it along with the guitar player who comes in every Friday to play for the kids.  We may have a little performer on our hands.

Miles is also more able to talk about things that happened in the past, or things that aren't immediately visible.  This started a month or so ago when at dinner one night he said "Hillel sad."  We asked him why Hillel (another boy in his day care class) was sad, and he said "Hillel sad daddy go work."  He's doing this more and more now.  If we ask him on the way home from day care what he did that day, he'll tell us "play toys" or "play outside" or something else appropriate.  When we tell him we're going to Harrison's house he'll say "Mommy push button" and when this confuses everyone he says "ding dong!" so we can figure out the button he's talking about is the doorbell.  He's also willing to answer open-ended questions like "what do you want for breakfast today?".  The other day he answered "fruit" (big surprise) so we asked what he wanted with his fruit and he said "applesauce".    The boy knows what he likes.

3/28/05

Life calmed down a little the last two weeks after all of our guests left.  Apparently they tired Miles out because he's been taking mammoth naps lately.  We can usually count on him sleeping 3 or 3 1/2 hours.  It's nice to get such a long break during the day, but it doesn't leave a lot of time to go on outings!  We've spent much of our time at home lately, or taking walks around the neighborhood.  It's great that the weather has occasionally been nice enough to let us explore, and Miles is having fun walking rather than riding.  On every outing he sticks a toe into the street at least once just to make sure we're still going to tell him no.  Often he'll preempt us by saying "no walk street.  street cars."  The other day when he was on a walk with Molly they were approaching a street they needed to cross.  Miles took Molly's hand (unprompted - that was new) and said "hold Mommy's hand".  After crossing the street he let go and said "Good job, Miles!  Good job hold Mommy's hand street!"  Molly wasn't sure whether she should be more impressed by the fact that he held her hand so willingly instead of struggling to get away like he usually does, or by the fact that he put so many words together like that!

Miles is continuing to work on his jumping.  He always gets one foot off the ground now, and occasionally we think the second foot may have also left the ground for a moment, but it's hard to tell.  He's clearly making progress.

He's doing much better at listening to us while he's playing.  He shares with his friends quite well when we remind him to, and if we ask him not to throw his toys he will comply.  Unfortunately this behavior has not transferred to the table.  He ends almost every meal now by throwing as much of his food as he can on the floor.  He also tears off his bib and throws it on the floor, and will even throw his placemat on the floor if we don't get to him fast enough.  We're still working on figuring this one out.  It's not helping that food has become less interesting to him in the last few weeks.  He's eating what we would consider more normal-sized portions now, and he's getting a lot pickier about what he will and won't eat.  Luckily some healthy things, like fruit, are still high on his list of "will eat" foods, so it could be worse.

Miles is still really enjoying his music class, and has started to sing more and more often.  The other day he wouldn't let us close the door to the dishwasher because he was sitting on it and singing the ABCs - "Miles sit sing ABC".  He'll sing the song the whole way through on his own now, and you can tell what it is because he gets enough of the letters right.  He's attempting to change the pitch in the right way, but he's a lot more successful with this if one of us sings with him.  He's singing a lot of other songs now, too, and asking him to sing a song is a great way to distract him when he's upset or you need him to hold still for a diaper change.

3/14/05

We've had a couple of crazy weeks.  We went to Las Vegas at the beginning of March with the Showmans.  We spent our days entertaining the children and trying to maintain some semblance of a nap schedule, and in the evenings we took turns babysitting while the other parents gambled.  Overall it worked surprisingly well, though we were all exhausted by the time we got home.  A couple of days after we got back Sacha and Sylvan arrived in town to greet Steve, who finally completed his year and a half in Iraq.  And a few days after they arrived, Molly's college roommate Monica arrived in town for the weekend.  Miles has had a wonderful time with so many guests and so much activity.  He's been especially happy to see his friend Sylvan again.  This morning we decided to try to combine his two favorite things, and asked if Sylvan could go to Harrison's house.  When Molly said no because today is a school day, he suggested that Sylvan could go to school with him.  We give him credit for trying.

With so many new adventures, Miles has learned a bunch of new things.  Harrison taught him to say "yeah" instead of "unh," which is a huge step forward from our perspective.  He's trying harder than ever to jump, after watching Sylvan do it so well.  And he's continuing to say new things and put words together in surprising ways.  The other day on the way home from day care Molly and Miles were singing the alphabet song together.  Miles can sing the whole song by skipping a lot of letters and then jumping in when a familiar part comes along again.  When they finished the song, he said "Good job, Mommy!".  Molly thought this was pretty funny, and said "Well thank you, Miles!  Good job to you too.".  And he said "Everybody good job!".  He's playing with the words "both" and "everybody" a lot now.  He's also starting to sing a lot of songs with us.  Twinkle Twinkle little star is a very popular one, as is the Clean Up song. 

Miles is also amusing himself in new ways lately.  He's more likely than ever to pick a book off the shelf and read it to himself now.  He's also more interested in his toy kitchen now, and will announce what he's doing as he plays "Miles wash hands".  He loves to ride off in his car and say "Bye Bye. See you later!".  Then he turns the car around and says "Miles come back!".  For some reason it's very fun to do this over and over again.  And much to our dismay, he's figured out how to open the doors in our house.  Our doors have lever handles instead of knobs, so it's not really all that hard.  He started getting interested in them when he figured out he could close them by using the handle to pull the door shut.  This caused him to lock himself into strange places - the toilet part of the master bathroom and the hallway outside the laundry room are good examples.  Although he really enjoyed being locked away, and loved to call us to open the door for him again ("open please!" - he always greeted us with huge giggles when this happens), he eventually got stuck enough times that he worked on opening the door himself, and has done it himself 9 or 10 times.  Luckily he's only tried this on one door so far - it just hasn't occurred to him yet that it will work on all the other doors.  But we're quite sure it won't be long now, which is going to mean we need to install a few more gates in the house.  Luckily his fascination with toilet water seems to have subsided, so hopefully we won't have to also buy toilet locks.

Last but not least, we've made a small amount of forward progress on his hitting and biting.  It's pretty rare that he does these things now, and when he does, we can now say "What does mom say about biting?" and he'll respond with "no no biting.  Sorry mommy.". He'll then stop biting or head butting or whatever it is he was doing.  He's most likely to act up when he's tired, so we try to be on the lookout and offer calming games when he seems to be getting riled up.  We're just waiting for the next wave of whatever it is he's going to learn to do that we don't like.  The fun never ends.

2/27/05

We've been having a ton of fun with Miles the last few weeks.  We're still having occasional problems with him hitting or throwing toys, but (knock on wood) we're finding that he's listening to us and doing what we ask more often now.  He also apologizes ("sorry mommy") after he does something he's not supposed to, and usually follows up with "Miles no no throw car", or some appropriate version of that phrase. 

He's getting a little more confident and exploratory physically.  He usually asks now to walk rather than be carried or ride someplace.  He attempts to run and says "Miles go fast!" but he still isn't really running yet.  Similarly he tries to jump but at best he gets one foot off the ground.  He has so much fun doing these things, though, it always makes us smile to watch him try.  He's also trying to walk up and down stairs by himself whenever possible.  If there's a railing or baluster for him to hang on to he will send us away ("No daddy hold hand") and do it himself.  He's pretty good at it, but it still makes us nervous to let him go on his own.

Miles is starting to try to figure out the concept of time, though he's not there yet.  He says "day" for "today" when he's talking about something he's doing, though the word is often superfluous right now ("Miles eat cheese, day").  He will also say "one more minute ride car" without really understanding what he's saying.  If we tell him he can have five more minutes before he has to go to bed he spends the whole time asking us if he can continue to ride his car in an attempt to not have to go to bed right away.  He'll probably figure this all out eventually!

His love for vehicles is stronger than ever.  We went to the toy store and Miles desperately wanted to ride and and play with everything he saw that had wheels - his favorite was a bicycle with training wheels that was small enough for him to reach the ground and push himself forward.  To his delight we bought him a car to ride in and a new scooter for outside.  He loves both.

Miles is starting to figure out his colors.  He correctly identifies orange, yellow, pink, and black most of the time.  Occasionally he gets green and blue right also.  Red is the color he's least likely to name correctly (he usually says green).  He's also recognizing a bunch of letters now, and can occasionally be heard trying to sing along to the ABC song when we sing it.  He also really enjoys counting, though he always skips six, and he jumps from "ten" to "fourfeen" and back to "five" again. 

Last but not least, he's making an art of wearing us down with his requests for things he wants.  He says "fruit please?" at every meal, over and over again.  He asks for "Harrison house" constantly.  Most days of the weeks he goes to the window, says "trash truck, please?" and puts on his sad face and asks again and again when we tell him not today.  At least with the last one we don't get tempted to give in just to stop all the asking!

1/30/05

Miles has started to really enjoy playing with his train tracks.  He likes to put all of the cars in a line (whether or not they actually connect with each other) and then push them around the track.  He's also learned how to request a playmate -- "Daddy play train tracks?" -- so we find ourselves playing with him more often than ever.  He still occasionally throws his toys, though this is less frequent now, especially since he's figured out the toys are taken away once they're thrown.  A common refrain we hear now is "no no throw train tracks".

We've also made a little progress at the dinner table.  Miles finishes most meals now by handing us his bowl, plate, utensils, milk cup, placemat and bib.  As long as we're ready to receive them quickly and get them all out of his reach, we usually get away without anything landing on the floor.  Usually. 

Miles's new music class started this week and really likes the class, though it's an hour later than his old class, which causes it to run through lunch and bump up against nap time.  He was pretty tired this week by the end of class, but he made it all the way through!  He also had a big kiss for Harrison at the beginning of class.

And speaking of Harrison, Miles can't seem to get enough of him.  Most of this past week has been filled with "Harrison house?".  Over and over and over again.  He loves to play with Harrison, and he also really, really loves to ride Harrison's tricycle.  Luckily Harrison is doing a great job of sharing his tricycle with Miles.  They've also started to enjoy pushing each other around the house on the scooter as fast as they can.  There are lots of giggles accompanying this new activity!

1/30/05

Matt and Miles have both had colds this week, and unfortunately Miles's cold made his persistent cough worse again so we're all a little short on sleep.  We seem to be on the upswing now, though.

We're continuing to have problems with Miles hitting and occasionally biting us.  We hope our patient and persistent approach to this will pay off soon.  He's also returned to throwing food at meal times.  Sigh.  We thought we'd finally seen the end of that one.  We're very worried about how hard the terrible twos are going to hit us.  We honestly hope that this is the beginning - that would mean that we're at least on that road instead of still waiting to start down some other, much scarier, unknown road!

Along those same lines, Miles is getting very particular about what he wants, when he wants it, and how he wants it done.  He picks out his socks every morning.  He picks the books we read to him at night.  He closes the gate at the top of the stairs by himself.  He is not lifted into his high chair anymore, he climbs, end of story.  When he wants to walk, we darn well better let him walk.  He tries to pick what he eats at mealtimes ("fruit, please?").  And he gets very frustrated if you don't play a game the way he wants you to.  On the plus side, his verbal skills are working hard to rise to his need.  Today he was coloring with Molly, and when Molly incorrectly drew the object he requested on his paper instead of her paper, he started to scream, then worked very hard to sob out "No draw Miles paper!".  He's also finally started pronouncing "Miles" more accurately so it's getting much easier to figure out the difference between "Miles" and "Mommy".  This is critical since he wants to be directive about who does what, and it was hard to do what he wanted when Miles and Mommy both sounded like Mommy!

One last note for this update:  Miles still really loves his music class.  There is a dance tune in this session with steps that include knee bends, walking left and right, forwards and backwards, and turning around.  Miles can do all the steps (some more accurately than others, of course) along with the parents in the class, and he really gets a kick out of dancing to this song, even when we play it for him at home.  We have one more week in this class, and then he'll move up to the next age group.  He'll be in that class with Harrison which ought to be lots of fun for everyone!

1/18/05

Miles had his 18-month check-up last week.  The doctor said he looked great and is doing fine developmentally.  He got one shot, which he didn't like at all.  They also tested his iron level again.  It's still a bit low, though not as low as it was last time, so we're headed in the right direction.  We'll continue to give him iron drops to supplement his diet.  His height was 31 3/4 inches (25%).  His weight was 24 lb, 4 oz (25%).  His head size was 49 1/2 cm (90%).  His percentages were basically the same as last visit.

The main thing we talked to the doctor about are his skin/allergy issues.  She gave us a prescription to help his skin, and agreed that we're doing all the right things (putting his clothes through a double rinse, not using fabric softener, and cutting the tags out of his shirts).  All these things were already helping when we had our appointment, and in combination with the prescription she gave us his skin is looking quite good.  He has one remaining patch of eczema on his neck which is almost better but still hanging on.  He's stopped scratching so much and asks for his medicine when he starts to itch, so we feel good that we're doing the right things for him.  We still think there may be another allergy causing some of the trouble - his watery eyes and persistent cough help support this.  Unless we notice more worrying symptoms, though, we'll wait until he's 2 to do any more testing.

To continue on the health theme, Miles threw up multiple times in a row last night.  We're still not sure what caused it - although he's been really, really tired, and has been sleeping a little more than usual, he doesn't seem to be showing any other signs of illness, and hasn't thrown up again.  He's also eating ok (though not quite normally).  We're keeping our fingers crossed that he continues to be ok, and that neither Matt nor Molly catches anything from him!

Miles is starting to really love playing with his friends.  He had a great time when Sylvan was here, and he's started asking for Harrison quite often.  Unfortunately, along with this desire to play with his friends, he's started getting very upset when his friends play with a toy that he really wants.  He deals with this by screaming, and sometimes following up with a tantrum.  We've started working really hard on helping him understand how to take turns, which is actually going quite well so far, all things considered.  It's pretty tough on him, though.  He's also started acting up at home - he has thrown toys at us, bitten us, and continues to occasionally ram his head into one of us (usually hitting a nose square on).  Luckily this behavior is limited to his parents so far - his day care says they haven't seen anything like this with his friends, and we haven't either.  Let's hope it stays that way.  We're having mild success at helping him understand these behaviors aren't ok. 

On the plus side, he's talking more than ever (which does seem to help when he's acting up).  We're hearing a lot of three word phrases now:  "Miles ride scooter", "Mommy drive car", "No-no throw car".  He says "thank you, mommy" or "thank you, daddy" spontaneously all the time now - usually when we hand him something, but occasionally it seems to come out when he's just having a really good time.  He also said "I see you!" while playing peek-a-boo with Sylvan at dinner one night.  This is probably a one-word phrase to him, but since we'd never heard it before we were pretty excited, especially since it contained some pronouns!

1/6/05

We traveled to Illinois for Christmas this year to see all the Scovilles, and then Nana and Grandad Rhoten came to Seattle for New Year's.  It was great to be able to see so much family over the holidays, and Miles really loved all the attention and excitement. 

Our sleep issues discussed in the previous update have mostly gone away, though Miles is still waking occasionally during the night calling for one of us.  He doesn't need us in his room in order to sleep, though, which is a good thing.  Unfortunately this problem was replaced with a new one.  When we got to Chicago Miles started having a bunch of skin problems.  At first we thought he was having more allergic reactions to food, but we're beginning to think that the problem is a combination of the dry air in Chicago and allergies to fabrics and/or detergents (and it didn't help that Molly accidentally fed him something with egg in it while we were there).  He's doing a little better now that we're back in Seattle, and we've started taking more care with how we're washing his clothes.  We'll see the pediatrician next week for more information (and for his 18 month check-up). 

We're curious to find out how he's grown at our next appointment.  Miles's appetite hasn't declined in the least, and he's eating a wider variety of foods all the time.  At most meals he eats the same thing we do, and occasionally eats as much as we do!  We've been making potstickers a lot lately, and Miles will eat 6 or 7 of them at one sitting.  His stomach is hard as a rock afterwards.  We're not so sure this is good for him!

Miles talks a lot now - he has a constant commentary going about life for whoever will listen (and take the time to try to understand).  He has started "counting", which means he will say numbers in a row, sometimes in the right order.  Often he starts at 2 and says 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9!  He likes 8 and 9.  He also will answer "what color is x" with the name of a color, though 9 times out of 10 he says the wrong color.  He usually says orange, and occasionally green.  He can recognize a few letters now, "M" being the most consistent one.  He loves to read, play with cars and trucks, and dance to music.  He'll occasionally ask for us to turn on music, and he's started requesting "Elmo" on the TV.  Luckily Elmo is the only TV character he knows to ask for so far, and often we can play "Elmo's song" to avoid turning on the TV.

Miles received a whole bunch of great gifts from all of his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  He's continuing to have fun exploring all of them - it will be a while before he gets bored!  So far he seems to especially likes his harmonica, his Cariboo game, his BoohBah, his kitchen set, and his matchbox cars and trucks.  Thank you to all of the relatives who helped him have such a nice Christmas!

12/20/04

We took a step backwards in the sleeping arena this week.  After over a year of successful bedtimes, Miles has started fussing when we put him down at night.  If one of us isn't in the room with him he cries until we return.  For a few nights we solved this by staying in the room with him until he fell asleep (which always took less than 3 minutes) but we agreed this wasn't a good long-term solution.  Now we have a new night time routine which includes moving closer and closer to the door and when he begins to cry saying "lie down, find your thumb, hold your bear" until he calms down again.  Eventually we make it out of the room and out of his sight, still repeating the refrain if he starts to cry.  Even when he can't see us, hearing those words will calm him down, and before long we're able to walk away with him still awake and he puts himself to sleep.  Hopefully if we do this enough times he'll stop crying when we leave his room at night.  On the plus side, he's using his most recent sentence structure to let us know he doesn't like this whole thing very much.  When you tell him it's time for bed he says "no night night".

The other night at dinner Miles had a great time reviewing that Mommy didn't have shoes on, Daddy didn't have shoes on, but Miles did have shoes on.  When asked if either of us had shoes on Miles would say "no shoes", and when asked if he had shoes on he would raise his feet so that he could see them over his tray and say "Shoes!".  He really loved this game.  Since then we've played it quite successfully with glasses as well.

We also heard a longer phrase than usual from Miles this week.  He asked for more oatmeal by saying "ma mo oameal pees", which means "want more oatmeal please".  He's putting words together in new ways all the time.  When he got a new tractor as a Christmas present and wanted to ride on it (that's what you do with tractors) he said "tractor sit".  And when Matt was cleaning up the food he spilled at dinner he said "Daddy clean up".  He also said "careful" for the first time today when Molly warned him that his oatmeal was hot.  The impressive part about this one was that Molly hadn't said be careful, he just associated "this is hot" with "be careful".  That's the kind of learning we like to see!

12/12/04

The most exciting news this week (at least in Miles's mind) is that we've started letting him push a child-size grocery cart when we go shopping.  He thinks this is the best thing that ever happened to him.  He's reasonably good about not running into other shoppers, but he's a real terror if you don't let him push or try to help him, especially since he can say the word "push" now.  He's also had a lot of fun pushing our luggage cart and our laundry sorter around the house.  Push!  Push!

He's had some new teeth come in - the 4th one on the bottom front finally came in, and he has 2 bottom molars starting to poke through.  He's up to 12 teeth now.

He's starting to get creative about how he uses his words in order to tell us what he wants.  He puts a noun after "all done" to make it clear what he's done with.  He also really likes to point out when Matt or Molly is all done with something on their plate.  "All done.  Juice.  Mommy."  The other day during breakfast with Molly he said "Daddy.  Home".  We often talk about when Daddy will be home at the end of a work day.  This particular morning Molly told Miles that Daddy was home, he was just downstairs sleeping.  So Miles said "All done night night".  He's been fascinated by "Clean up" for a while now, especially when we sang the clean up song at the end of a meal.  He now likes to go get a rag out of the drawer in the kitchen and go around the house wiping things saying "be dup" (clean up).  He also has started saying "be dup" when he sees one of us doing dishes, and when we give him a bath.  And he asks to "watch" now whenever we're cooking on the stove and he can't see what we're doing.  He loves to watch us cook.

We've started talking about colors a lot lately.  Miles can say the names of many colors, but he doesn't recognize them when he sees them.  If you ask him what color something is he says "geen!".

The only other news is that one of Miles's day care teachers is no longer teaching in his room so he has a new teacher as of last week.  We've only met her a couple of times but she seems nice.  She seems to really like Miles and expressed pleasure over the fact that when he's worn out at the end of the day, instead of falling apart, he just asks to snuggle a lot.  We're glad she's willing to snuggle with him when that's what he needs.  If you want to see a little about what day care is like for Miles, check out the pictures the day care gave us in the photo gallery below.

11/26/04

We had a good Thanksgiving this year, though Miles was sick and not very hungry which was too bad.  He was sent home from day care on Wednesday with a low fever, and on Thursday it became clear he had an eye infection (it's a good thing we'd already decided to spend Thanksgiving at home).  We took him to the doctor this morning and she prescribed some eye drops. Hopefully that will help him to feel better soon, though he's actually been in surprisingly good spirits considering how bad his eyes look.  He hasn't been sleeping well, though, which we hope will improve now that he has some medicine!

On a happier note, Miles is trying out some new 3-word phrases.  This week we heard him say "help please open" when he wanted help opening the Tupperware drawer in the kitchen and "help please moon" when he wanted help finding the moon in his lift the flap book.  Of course, "help please" actually comes out as "hep pees".  We know what he means though.

He's also really enjoying helping us with household chores.  He loves to help put away the clean dishes, which means we have to be sure to make sure the dishwasher is locked closed when the dishes are dirty.  But he's good at handing us the silverware to put in the drawers he can't quite reach, and he'll put the Tupperware and the spatulas away all by himself since he can reach those drawers.  He also likes to move laundry from the washer to the dryer and into the laundry basket.  You just have to keep an eye him to make sure all the clothes move the right direction through the cycle.

And lastly, Miles is taking a music class now.  We signed him up for a Kindermusik program in Kirkland on Saturday mornings.  It's for 0-18 month old babies, though most of the kids in the class are 14-18 months old.  The kids play musical instruments (bells, triangles, xylophones, drums) and dance, and we sing lots of songs.  Miles really loves this class, repeating "class!" happily the whole way there.  And Matt and Molly are trading off taking him to class so that the other parent gets a little time to themselves.  It's a win for everyone.

11/18/04

Miles is continuing to learn new words.  He's also using them in new ways.  He's been able to say "more" for a while now, and this summer when we heard a bunch of lawn mowers he started saying "lawn more" and making the sign for more when he wanted more of something.  Now we think that "lawn more" has become "want more" (though it sounds more like "ma mo").  It's hard to know sometimes what he's really saying, but we *think* he's saying want more.  Along those same lines, here are phrases we think he said in the last couple of weeks, but it's so hard to know for sure if he's saying them or we're just imagining them:  "want more car" (after a car drove by),  "cheerios breakfast",  "mommy book read", and "bye-bye bird" (this last one was when he wanted a bird to fly away - he got quite mad when it didn't seem to work).  He also seems to be aware of possession now.  He says "mommy" and points to Molly's car, and then says "daddy" and points to Matt's car.  And most mornings at breakfast he goes around the table and says "mommy milk", "daddy milk", and "me milk".  We're not sure where the "me" came from since we usually refer to ourselves in 3rd person, but it's pretty clear what he means.  We can see that "mine!" is just around the corner.

In addition to language skills, Miles is working on physical skills too.  He likes to climb up and down Molly's step (for step aerobics), and he can occasionally get up and down without using his hands.  He also desperately wants to be able to jump.  So far all he can do is squat down and stand up really fast, though.

Miles is also getting better at playing by himself.  He prefers to be in the same room with one of us if possible, but he is more likely to occupy himself now than he ever has been in the past (which means for 5-10 minutes at a time).  Let's hope it lasts.

11/5/04

After every meal we sing a clean up song to help Miles deal with us wiping his face and hands.  It turns out he's actually been listening because we realized this week that one of his common utterances that we never understood was actually this song:  "be dup, be dup" which is "clean up, clean up".  We're definitely in the phase where we can understand what he's saying only because we spend so much time with him and have learned to interpret him.

Miles can identify all the parts of the face now, including "cheeks", which one of his daycare teachers was delighted to teach him this week.  We're glad that she's taking such a strong interest in his verbal skills.  It probably doesn't hurt that *every* time you pick him up he starts reciting the words while poking you in the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, etc.  He's also started stringing words together occasionally. We first saw this in Kansas when he asked for "more cheese".  Occasionally he'll specify other things that he wants more of, though this is still pretty rare.  He also says "more please", "help please", and he has on occasion said "bye bye daddy", "bye bye milk", and "bye bye truck". 

His other great accomplishment this week is that he learned how to blow bubbles in the tub.  This is something we used to practice back when we were taking swimming lessons, and we tried again when we swam in the river on our recent trip to Texas.  He didn't figure it out until this week when he started putting his mouth in the water and blowing bubbles in the bathtub.  Now that he's started, we can't get him to stop!

With all these new skills, Miles is getting a little harder to manage.  He gets frustrated very easily when he can't do something, or when he can't have what he wants.  Our theory is that now that he's capable of successfully communicating what he wants (at least occasionally) he gets mad when he isn't able to communicate, or worse yet, when he does communicate successfully and still doesn't get what he wants.  On the plus side, it seems to help if you tell him you did understand him and then explain why he can't have what he wants.  He doesn't understand it all, but he seems happier to know that he's not misunderstood.  Aren't we all?

10/29/04

The words are coming fast and furious now.  Some of the more interesting ones are tractor, pumpy (pumpkin), please, cracker, jacket, shirt, nose, ears, eyes, mouth, trash, no-no (when he's doing something he knows he's not supposed to), train, wa-wa (water), milk, and juice.  His day care teachers also told us that they discovered he knows the names of all the other kids in the class.

Miles did great on our lengthy trip to visit family.  He especially enjoyed the airports where he could see airplanes and trucks on the ground.  Nothing compared, though, to the luggage carts and the airport cars that drive people around to different terminals.  He spent about 45 minutes playing with a luggage cart in DFW and occasionally pausing to watch the an airport car drive by.  Too bad we couldn't bring either of those onto the plane with us.

Miles is also enjoying Halloween this year.  Yesterday we carved a pumpkin and let Miles help.  Today we went trick-or-treating at Microsoft and Miles figured out how to get candy out of the bins and put it into his pumpkin.  He clearly hasn't figured out the value of the candy, though, since he was equally as likely to take the candy from his pumpkin and put it in the bin.  It's all good.

10/15/04

As we head towards the rainy season we've been trying to take Miles to the park as often as we can while there's still some sunshine.  He's learned to climb the stairs for the slide by hanging onto the rail and stepping up each stair just using his feet (not climbing on his knees at all).  At the top of the stairs he turns around, gets on his tummy, and slides down feet first all by himself.  He loves to do this over and over for as long as we'll let him.

He's started trying to kick balls - mostly that means walking into them, but it's a good start.  He also really (really) loves to walk backwards.  We keep watching to see if he's running yet.  He walks really fast, but we're not sure that it counts as running. 

He's continuing to use more words.  Some of the more interesting ones we've heard recently are: nana (banana), apple (used for all other fruit), bath, night-night, brush, car, bubbles (Molly learned this when she was changing his diaper after nap and he started saying bubbles and then blowing - he must have picked this up at day care), block, down, bowl, door, truck, help.  He also tries to say his friends' names:  Ashton, Alex, and Harrison have all been attempted with varying amounts of success.

Probably his most important verbal tool is the ability to ask "what's that?".  He's actually saying "that is" or "that's" since that's how we always respond to his question, but it means "what's that?".  When he says it, it sounds more like "daddis" and can be hard to distinguish from "daddy", but since it's usually insistent and accompanied by some serious pointing, we've started to be able to tell the difference between the two.  It helps that "mommy" and "daddy" are both becoming a lot clearer as well.  And we sure do love to hear them.

9/30/04

Miles has two molars on the top now, and one more tooth on the bottom, bringing him up to a grand total of eight.  He's still drooling a bunch too, which makes us think there are more on the way.

The number of words he says is increasing at an incredible rate.  We're now starting to make a distinction between words he's able to repeat when we say them first, and words he comes up with on his own to communicate something to us.  The first list is way too long now so we'll give some examples of words he says unprompted: eat; ball; woof; fish; kitty; light (when he wants to play with the light switch); off (when he turns the light off);  bye; up; all done; truck; bus; baby (when he sees a baby, or sees himself in the mirror); shoe, socks; door; cheese; book; uh oh; boom; outside.  And then there are our favorites - mommy and daddy.  These last two happened definitively only this morning when he pointed to Matt and said "daddy", and then turned to Molly, pointed at her, and said "mama".

He's also learning more animal sounds all the time.  Among others he says "hoo" for owl, "tweet" for bird, "meow" for cat, and he learned how to trumpet like an elephant at day care, complete with his arm acting as a trunk.  The other day he was on a walk with Molly when an ambulance passed by.  Apparently the sound the siren made reminded him of an elephant because he trumpeted and made an elephant's trunk for the next ten minutes.

Matt and Molly have started playing in their quartet again, and the 1st violinist's wife has offered to watch Miles while the quartet plays.  The first rehearsal was this week, and Miles had a great time watching his mom and dad make music.  He danced for a while, but eventually he got tired and insisted on resting his head on Molly's leg while she played, causing her to have to bow around him.  Next rehearsal we'll bring the portable crib so he can go to sleep when he's had enough.

And last but not least, Miles had his 15-month check-up today.  The doctor said he looked very healthy, and developmentally he's doing great.  We did find out today that Miles is mildly anemic.  The doctor recommended iron supplements, which should help.  We'll also probably keep him on baby cereal a little longer than we might have, since it's fortified with iron.  And Miles got 4 shots today, which didn't make him happy at all.  We think, though, that the main thing that was upsetting him was the band-aid that was on his toe from the hemoglobin test.  He fussed on and off for 20 minutes after we left the doctor's office, and pulled at his sock a whole bunch.  We finally took the sock and the band-aid off and he was happy as a clam after that.   Who knew?  As for his growth in the last few months, he's apparently getting taller and slimming down a little.  His height is 30.5 inches (30%), his weight is 22 lb, 10 oz (25%), and his head size is 48.5 cm (90%).  We're glad to see he went up a bit in his height percentile, but it doesn't replace the fact that we've noticed that Miles is shorter than all the other kids in day care, and all off his PEPS friends.  Poor kid - those Scoville and Rhoten genes just don't add up to much height!

9/11/04

A couple of months ago we mentioned that Miles might have an egg allergy.  Well, this past Friday we saw an allergist, and sure enough, the prick test confirmed that Miles is allergic to eggs.  Most kids grow out of this kind of allergy, but in the interim we can't feed Miles any eggs, or anything that has egg in it (including cookies, cake, muffins, some kinds of pasta, pancakes, etc.).  We've been avoiding egg for the most part for the last couple of months, so we already have some idea what we're in for, and it doesn't seem that bad really.  The toughest part will be making sure we provide his day care with enough egg-free snacks to substitute for the regular snacks.  We'll test him again after his 2nd birthday and see where we are then.

Miles is saying more new words.  In the last couple of weeks he added "oh wow!", "eat" (which comes out as "tee", and is accompanied by the sign for eat), "boo", and "shoe" (which sounds more like "djoo").  He will also fake cry if you say "Miles, are you sad?" or "Miles, can you cry?".  And if people around him laugh he will start laughing.  Miles also discovered that objects have a temperature.  We figured this out when he would touch the fireplace and turn to us and say "ot".  It's always a little warm because of the pilot light.  Much to our amusement, any food that is warmer than room temperature is "ot" and is to be feared (we apparently gave him something that was too hot at some point because he really shies away from putting anything that's not cold into his mouth).  He hasn't figured out that there's a different word for cold things, though.  When we were at the pool in Lake Chelan, Miles was walking around on the warm concrete and he walked over to a part that was in shadow and quite cold.  He started stomping his feet saying "ot!  ot!".  Molly checked to reassure herself that it really was cold and told him this, but he insisted it was "ot". 

The drool faucet has been turned way up in the last few weeks.  We keep forgetting to mention that Miles has a 5th tooth now (it came in about 3 weeks ago).  He also has two molars on the top that look and feel as if they're going to break through any day.  Soon his teeth will finally catch up to his desire to eat everything we do. 

8/28/04

The most fun new thing Miles is doing is making animal sounds.  If you ask him what a cow says, he says "mmmmm".  If you ask him what a sheep says, he whispers "ba ba ba ba".  We have no idea why sheep whisper in his world.  If you ask him what a dog says, he says "fff" (for woof).  If you ask him what a bee says he attempts to make a "zzzzz" sound but usually only succeeds in spitting on anything in range.  He's also recently started saying "bye" in addition to waving.  More than anything, though, he's understanding an awful lot of what we say to him.  For example, he will toddle over to his high chair if you say any of the following words: hungry, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, or eat. 

The change Matt and Molly are happiest about is his reaction to day care.  It's been 3 weeks since we've seen any tears at drop-off time which is wonderful - there's nothing worse than having to walk away from him when he's crying and not be able to see him for a whole day.  He happily gives us bye-bye kisses each day and waves and smiles at us as we walk out the door.  The nap situation is also improving.  He seems to be adjusting to the single nap during the day (though he does still occasionally fall asleep on the way home).

Another fun new thing he's doing is rocking back and forth from one foot to the other when he's excited, or when he wants something.  A great example is when he goes to the pantry, pulls out a box of crackers, and brings them over to you saying "uh?" which means "cracker please".  While you're opening the packaging he dances back and forth anticipating the cracker.  It's very funny.

And while we're on the subject of Miles taking things out of the pantry, there's one more funny story for this week's update.  Miles really loves to play in the pantry, and for the most part everything he can reach (right now at least) is safe, though Miles never fails to point out the things we missed.  Molly was cooking dinner the other night while Miles was busy taking jars and cans out of the pantry, and then Molly heard a new sound.  She looked and saw that Miles had lifted the lid off of one of the canisters and dropped it on the floor.  She was de-boning a fish and thought "that canister is probably empty, I'm sure it's fine" and she turned back to her work.  A few seconds later Miles was crying.  The pantry door blocked Molly's view so she ran over to see what the problem was.  Miles had scooped a handful of flour out of the canister and put it right into his mouth.  Apparently he didn't think this tasted very good, because he was quite unhappy.  Needless to say, there was flour everywhere, especially after Molly picked him up and carried him to the sink while scooping soggy flour out of Miles's mouth.  He was fine, and hopefully won't be interested in trying this trick again, though for the moment the flour canister is on the counter until we can find a better home for it.

8/18/04

Miles is continuing to work on his walking.  He's getting pretty fast, and he usually doesn't need to keep a hand in the air in order to make forward progress.  He's started experimenting with what things he can pick up and carry around with him.  We've entered the days of finding strange objects in strange parts of the house.  At least now Matt can't blame the disappearance of his things only on Molly.

We're having a lot of fun watching Miles's vocalizations change.  He finally nailed "e-i-e-i-o", though there's definitely a stretched out "y" sound in there that is unique to Miles.  He started saying "hello" in addition to "hi", though "hello" sounds more like "hi-yo".  While pulling Molly's hair the other day he said "ow".  Well, half the concept is there at any rate.  We've been working on using the words "ow" and "hurt" a lot when Miles hurts himself so that he'll start to understand why mommy says "ow" and that he can't do things that make other people hurt.  Which leads us to his next new accomplishment - one of our favorite (and most feared) new words is "no".  He stretches the "n" out and has a very funny pitch to his voice when he says it.  It's one of his more adorable words, even if it is going to become the bane or our existence in a year or so.  He already really enjoys practicing this one, in and out of context.  And he says "all done" now, though it comes out as "a doh".  He says it occasionally at the end of a meal, and almost always when you close a book. 

One game we like to play with him is to say "can you say <insert word here>?".  It's a good way to figure out for sure what words he definitely can say and which ones were accidents.  He says hi, uh oh, kitty, all done, hello, and tree without hesitation.  If you ask him to say "no", he points to his nose.  If you ask him to say "bye-bye", he waves.  If you ask him to say "more", he makes the sign for more.  It turns out he picked this up at daycare.  If you ask him to say "daddy", you'll get one of three responses.  He might say "da-eey".  He might just look at you like you're speaking another language.  Or he might think for a minute, look at you, and say "mom".  Boy did Molly like that one!  If you ask him to say "mommy", though, he just says "mmmm". 

He also likes to just make sounds.  Two of his favorites right now are "bi-da-bi-da-bi-da" (sometimes said while whispering) and "me-num-me-num-me-num".  He'll also make a motor sound while pushing cars or trucks around the house.

Mealtime is getting a little more interesting as Miles is showing more distinct preferences.  Sometimes all we can get him to eat his fruit and cheese, with the occasional vegetable mixed in.  He'll eat crackers pretty happily, but rejects most bread products we offer.  Meat is touch and go.  We've had occasional success with deli roast beef, but in general Gerber meat sticks (which are truly gross) are the only kind of meat he consistently eats.

As for play time, Miles has discovered the joys of playing Ring Around the Rosie with mommy and daddy, and he's figured out how to stack blocks to make towers.  We saw him build a tower of 5 blocks while Molly's friend Laura was here visiting which was pretty exciting.  You can see other fun things he's learned to do with his blocks in the pictures below.  He's also started playing a lot with a set of animals that his Nana sent to him.  And filling and emptying containers (of pretty much anything) just never gets old.  Oh, and Miles has started swinging back and forth in addition to bouncing up and down when he dances.  We still haven't figured out if he has any rhythm, though.

7/30/04

Miles is changing so fast right now we can hardly keep up.   The biggest news is that he's walking.  We first saw him walk across a room a few weeks ago, but he continued to only walk occasionally for the next few weeks.  This past weekend while we were visiting Molly's family in Chicago he truly started walking.  He can get into a standing position on his own without support, walk forwards (and occasionally sideways), and he can turn around to head the other direction.  He's still a little unsteady, and he keeps his right hand in the air for balance, but he gets where he wants to go!

Miles did great on our recent trip to Chicago.  He slept a bunch on both flights, and when he wasn't sleeping, he stayed amused by eating, reading books, and playing with the airplane phone.  We got compliments both times about how well he did, and we take that as a good sign.  Miles also got to ride on a bus (to get to the rental car) which was a huge hit.  And all the people in the airport to say "hi" to and smile at pretty much made his day.  We've decided he likes traveling.  He also enjoyed seeing grandma and grandpa and all his aunts, uncles, and cousins, and eventually even liked seeing Amy and Phil's dog Toby.  We're not sure who enjoyed the kisses more - Katie who kept asking for them (unless Miles had just eaten and had a messy face) or Miles who was glad to oblige her.  And one of the few words we heard Grandpa say this trip was "Hi" in response to Miles, who was more than happy to try out his favorite word on Grandpa.

Now that we're back home we've been working on getting Miles transitioned to the toddler room at daycare.  The transition began before we left town, and it finished this week now that we're back.  It was a little bumpy at first - Miles's separation anxiety is pretty intense right now.  We were very happy to find out that when he was so upset the first day he visited the new room for an hour, they put a sub in his old room so that his old teacher could be with him in the new room.  He sat on her lap for the whole hour, refusing to get off even to eat lunch (he did eventually eat lunch, he just stayed on his teacher's lap).  The next day he was able to go to the new room for a couple of hours on his own. Today was his first full day in his new room, and we're told he did great.  He played outside (with his new big boy shoes on), he slept for over 2 hours on a mat on the floor at nap time, and he ate at the table with all the other kids.  Our biggest problem now is the nap schedule.  Although he napped for 2 hours, he's accustomed to two naps a day, each about 1 1/2 hours.  The long stretches between sleeps and the shortened sleep time overall is taking its toll.  Hopefully we'll all adjust to the new schedule soon.

Thanks to our trip to Elmhurst, Miles has picked up a few new words.  He added "doggy" to his repertoire, and also "tree".  He learned definitively what an airplane sounds and looks like thanks to being so close to O'hare, and he'll happily point at every plane that flies by.  He also got to see an unbelievable number of trains up close when we walked near the tracks on our way to get ice cream one day.  He thought that was pretty cool, and now notices at home when he hears a train whistle in the distance.  He hasn't figured out how to say train yet.  He understands a lot more words, and will happily point to a bunch of body parts.  And if you sing "Old McDonald had a farm" to him, he will say "eyie-yieei", and sometimes he even says it at the right time in the song.  Never a dull moment here at the Rhoville household.

7/9/04

Our first news this week is that Miles had his first haircut.  He did great, and there are a bunch of pictures below so you can see for yourself.  We've been told by many people that he looks a lot older now.  He certainly looks less shaggy! 

As mentioned in the last website update, Miles likes to eat eggs.  It turns out he may not get to do this for a while, though, since we have reason to believe he's allergic to them.  Many many months ago he had an allergic reaction when he had birthday cake at daycare.  We thought it might have been the eggs, but he's eaten lots of foods with eggs in them since then without a problem (including mooching some scrambled eggs off of Matt's breakfast plate one morning a few weeks ago).  Apparently it makes a difference how firmly cooked the eggs are, because last weekend Molly made scrambled eggs and cheese to share with Miles, and sure enough Miles's face turned quite red a few minutes into the breakfast.  After doing some research on the web and then talking to a nurse we're pretty sure Miles has a very mild egg allergy.  We need to go see the doctor and an allergist to find our for sure.  Luckily most kids grow out of this allergy between the ages of 4 and 7 so hopefully it won't be a long-term thing.  In the interim we're not going to be feeding Miles any eggs!

Miles is as close to walking as a baby can be without actually walking.  When coaxed by mom or dad he will take 6-7 slow (and somewhat unsteady) steps to get to us (or to something we're holding that he really wants).  He really, really loves this game, but it's clear it makes him nervous as well.  Even so, he'll go back and forth between us many times getting more and more excited each time.  Occasionally when he's just playing on his own he'll let go of whatever is supporting him, take a few steps, and then he'll appear to suddenly realize he's not hanging on to anything and will drop to his hands and knees for safety for the rest of the journey.  It won't be long now.

He's also learning some other ways to be mobile.  The little boys who live next door gave Miles a little ride-around scooter that you sit on and push with your feet.  Miles now knows how to climb on, push it forward, and get off all by himself.  He can't steer yet, but we figure that will come with time.

7/1/04

Miles turned 1 year old this past weekend.  Nana and Granddad Rhoten came out for his birthday party.  We had a bunch of our friends over for a BBQ and to hang out in our backyard.  Since Miles is too young to know the difference we chose the birthday theme for him.  His cake, plates, and napkins all had a Hello Kitty theme.  Molly felt bad, though, that he might someday think that this was too girly, so the theme outside on the deck and in the backyard was a racing theme.  At least we tried, right?  His party was a lot of fun, and hopefully he won't remember getting dunked in the pool (oops), getting pegged by the sprinkler (hey, he's the one who crawled into it!), and almost choking on his fruit salad (sigh).  Miles had a great time seeing Nana and Granddad, opening his presents, playing in the pool at his birthday party, and eating birthday cake.  He wasn't so sure about the singing, though.  That was a little scary.  There are more pictures than you can imagine in the photo gallery below. 

A couple of days after his birthday he learned about the bad part of turning one - he got two shots at his doctor's visit.  For a little while there he wasn't too happy with any of us, but he survived (no ill effects from the shots either).  The doctor said he looks great, no worries at all.  He's 29 inches tall (25%), he weighs 21 lb, 15 oz (40%), and his head circumference is 48 cm (90%).

Now that Miles is one there are new foods we get to feed him.  It turns out that we jumped the gun on a bunch of them without really meaning to, but there are some others we successfully avoided.  In particular, he tried peanut butter this week for the first time.  He seemed to really like it.  We've also learned that he likes eggs a lot.  We already knew that he loved fruit, but he proved it to us again when he ate 4 bowls of fruit salad that was left over from his birthday party.  In general he just really likes to eat.  One of the things Nana was surprised by when she saw him was how much and what a wide variety of foods he eats.  Let's hope it lasts.  And this week he fed himself a whole bowl of tomato soup at daycare.  His teacher was pretty impressed that he was able to use the spoon that well.  He hasn't ever made it through a whole bowl by himself at home, but then we haven't given him soup, so he's been able to set the spoon aside and make faster progress with his fingers.

Miles isn't quite walking yet but he's getting closer and closer all the time.  Just this evening we got him to take a few steps by sending him back and forth between Mom and Dad.  At first he did great and was taking as many as 3 steps at a time to reach the other parent.  Then he got excited and started just leaning forward causing him to fall/stumble forward rather than actually walk.  He was having a grand time with this game, even if it wasn't quite what Mom and Dad intended.

And last but not least he continues to have lots of fun with his vocalizations.  He likes to say "hi" to anyone who will listen - the nurse at the doctor's office, the bagger at the grocery store, you name it.  He's definitely trying to say "up" when he wants you to pick him up.  Kitty has turned into "Keey", and Daddy has turned into "Deey".  Mommy is still "mumumum" (and still pretty rare).  As you can see in the pictures, he's started trying to make new interesting sounds when he's sticking his tongue out.  He has a new consonant that sounds like a cross between and "l" and a "y".  Very interesting.  He's also using head nods a lot more now to communicate what he does and doesn't want.  After he shook his head no at some sweet potatoes mommy was offering him, she asked him if he wanted more fruit (while still holding the spoon filled with sweet potatoes).  He hesitated for a second, looked at the spoon, and then slowly shook his head yes.  He delivered a great big smile when fruit did in fact arrive on his tray.  He's also making an "unh" sound whenever he nods his head yes.  And lucky for us, the world is so new and exciting to him right now, his default response if he doesn't know for sure what you're asking him is to nod yes.  It won't last long, but it's pretty nice for right now!

6/21/04

Our biggest news this week is that Miles caught hand-foot-mouth disease and then passed it on to both Matt and Molly.  We thought Miles was just teething (and he did sprout two new teeth) but the fussiness was more likely due to the fact that he felt really awful from the virus.  Luckily it was relatively short-lived and we're all feeling much better now.  Miles is celebrating his good health by walking (or rather crawling) around saying "hiiiii" to everyone and everything.  And when he's hungry he goes over to his high chair, says "uh, uh", and when we ask him if he wants "up" and to eat, he nods his head (or more accurately nods his whole body since he hasn't quite figured out the head-only nod yet).  He's working hard on figuring out "yes" and "no" right now - it's fun to give him lots of opportunities to test his theories on this concept.

6/12/04

As Miles approaches his first birthday it feels like we're keeping an eye out on a daily basis for new skills - suddenly he seems to be learning really quickly.  We keep expecting his daycare to tell us he took his first steps (though it hasn't happened yet), and we're always listening for words among all his chatter.  We also notice him doing other new things, like pointing at the switch on the wall instead of just at the fan when he wants us to turn it on, and turning his sippy cup the right direction to make the milk actually come out.  And although he's not walking we've noticed him pulling his push toy around the house rather than pushing it, indicating that he's not using it very much for support now, maybe just for a little balance now and then.  Every day it's fun to wake up with him (even if it is way too early) to see what new skill Miles will master that day.

Probably the thing we enjoy the most is watching him try so hard to communicate with us.  We're pretty sure now that there are a few words he can say.  "Uh oh" has been with us for a long time, but he's using it consistently now in the right context.  The next word (which is arguably a little more exciting) is daddy, or more accurately, "da-dee".  Although he will say "da da da da da" pretty excitedly when Molly comes into a room, he says "da-dee" when Matt comes into a room, and today he pointed at Matt and said "da-dee".  He always has a huge smile on his face when he says it, too, generally looking very, very proud of himself.  The only other word we're pretty sure he's actually saying is kitty, or more accurately, "diddy" or "giddy".  He's only said this 3 or 4 times but we're starting to be pretty sure he knows what he's saying.  Other than these 3 words there are lots of things we think he might be saying but it's really hard to tell.  His favorite syllable is "doh", and occasionally "doooo".  He says "doh" all the time when pointing at the fan, the phone, or anything else he's trying to get us to give him or do something with.  He also says it whenever we pass a door:  he points at the door and says "doh".  Hard to tell if this means anything, but sometimes we wonder if he's trying to say door.  And "dooo" comes out fairly often, but it's used consistently whenever he sees a toothbrush (again with a finger pointed at a toothbrush, one of his favorite "toys" these days).  Who knows. We've also noticed that he leaves off the "d" when he wants us to turn the fan "on" or "off", making an "o" sound (which varies a lot each time he says it as he tries to get the sound he wants). You can see we find this whole process very fascinating.  It's also very clear that Miles understands a whole bunch of words now.  This is a huge source of amusement also since we can ask him questions to figure out what he does and doesn't understand, and he makes a great quizzical expression when he doesn't know what we're saying.

Miles is still eating well in general, though this weekend has been pretty rough on that front since he seems to be getting some new teeth.  The top 2 middle teeth are trying to poke through, and Miles has been fussy all day, spending lots of time playing with his gums.  It's clear it hurts to eat because he'll take a bite of something and then start crying.  We went through a lot of food at dinner tonight trying to find something that wouldn't cause him too much pain.  Our biggest focus in general right now is getting him to drink formula out of a sippy cup.  He's working on weaning himself (which is just fine with Molly) and we'd prefer to wean him to a cup rather than a bottle.  Today we tried cow's milk rather than formula for the first time simply because we ran out of formula.  Suddenly his intake of milk from the sippy cup went way up so we may have solved this one.  As Ken and Heidi say, though, we can't call anything a success (or a failure for that matter) until it happens 3 days in a row :).  That philosophy got us through lots of sleep training so we'll stick with it now too.

5/28/04

We're all starting to settle into our new schedule now.  Miles is home with either Matt or Molly all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and at least half the day on Fridays.  Everyone is enjoying the extra time together and the pace of life seems just a little bit more sane now.

Miles is continuing to pick up new sounds.  Most recently he's started saying "ma ma ma ma" and "na na na na" a lot.  "Doh" is also a favorite right now, especially when he's pointing at something.  He's in the phase where he points at anything and everything, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes just to see what will happen.  He also waves at everything.  He does the backwards wave (waving at himself) and especially enjoys doing this when we walk by the top of the stairs since that's the place where you say good-bye.

A couple of nights ago Miles let go of what he was hanging on to and stood by himself for 7 or 8 seconds.  He was very, very pleased with himself after this accomplishment.  He's still pretty unsteady as a general rule, though.

Although he continues to eat very well, he's starting to express preferences a lot more clearly now, especially since he's figured out the whole pointing thing.  We have to be careful not to let him see any fruit we're going to give him (especially a banana) until after he's eaten his veggies and most of his other food.  Once he knows there's fruit to eat he points at it incessantly and won't eat anything else until we can prove that the fruit is all gone.  Yogurt and cottage cheese evoke the same reaction.  He also tends to really like bread of any sort, and meat is usually relatively popular.  Vegetables are the only real problem area, but he'll eat those well enough if we feed them to him at the beginning of the meal when he's still really hungry.

As time goes on he seems to be enjoying music more and more.  He loves any toy that makes music and always bounces up and down "dancing" while the music is playing.  It's especially popular if mom or dad also bounces up and down with him.  And like any other good 11-month-old he loves putting things into and taking things out of other things.  The fun never ends.

Our only other excitement is learning about the new things Miles can get into.  He loves to play with doors, which usually ends in him shutting himself into a bathroom unable to work the handle to get out again.  This is especially problematic given another new obsession:  playing in the toilets.  We used to be able to prevent this by keeping the lids shut but he's figured out how to left them now, and whenever he's quiet you can be sure he's discovered a toilet when we weren't looking.  Earlier today he combined two favorite past-times and put his teething ring in the toilet.  Nice.  He's also learned how to lift the lid of the trash can with one hand while reaching in with the other.  Time for the trash to go in a locked cabinet.  And the dishwasher is a perennial favorite, especially when the dishes are dirty and the door is open so he can climb right in to make as much of a mess as possible.  He's definitely keeping us on our toes.

5/16/04

Miles has been working a lot on his standing and walking.  He will occasionally stand unassisted for a second or two, though it's clear this scares him and he sits down pretty quickly.  In order to avoid having him rearrange our furniture all the time, we bought him a walking toy that he can push around the house.  He really likes it, but he also still really likes rearranging our furniture.  Oh well.

He's now repeating sounds we make, as long as they're sounds he knows well.  He'll say "uh oh", "ba", and "da" on command, as well as cough and stick his tongue out if you do it first.  If we listen hard enough we can make ourselves believe he's actually saying words and meaning them.  He tends to say "uh oh" immediately before throwing food off of his high chair tray.   And he makes a sound something like "dook" when he's playing with his books (or more accurately taking all of his books off of the shelves).  We're probably imagining that he knows what he's saying, but it's pretty fun to try to find real words amidst all the babble.

Miles took a spill yesterday while we were out running errands.  Although he will sit for a while in the cart and happily absorb all the noise and sights, he eventually insists on getting out and pushing the cart himself.  He was doing this at Fred Meyer the other day when he fell and hit his head on the corner of the cart.  He has a lump and bruise now that bother us a fair amount, though he didn't seem to notice once the shock of the initial pain wore off.  His day care teachers say he's a tough kid - he bumps his head all the time without making a peep.  He definitely made a peep for this one, but still managed to take it mostly in stride.

The funniest thing he did recently was at dinner last night.  Miles has been struggling against taking his third nap lately, and he usually only sleeps briefly on the way home from day care.  Yesterday he didn't get his 3rd nap at all, but we thought he would make it through to an early bedtime.  He proved us wrong when half way through dinner he squawked, put his thumb in his mouth, turned his head to the side and went to sleep.  Right there in the high chair.  We stared at him dumbfounded for a minute, and then put the high chair in a reclining position and went into the other room so we wouldn't disturb him.  45 minutes later we had to wake him up to finish dinner.

4/30/04

Miles is 10 months old - you can see this month's photo shoot in the gallery below.  It's only been a few days since our last update to the website, but we've done some fun things in those days.  We took one last walk around Green Lake with Sacha and Sylvan, and the babies got to try swinging for the first time.  Miles seemed to really love it.  He also got a chance to play with a water table at day care which he thought was pretty cool.  He's generally just full of smiles these days, and anxious to explore everything around him.

4/26/04

We're in the new house now (moving day was Apr 16) and both Miles and Captain Midnight seem to be adjusting very well.  The house is still full of moving boxes so we don't have any new house pictures yet, but hopefully we will soon.  In the meantime, we have a few new pictures of Miles and of his friends from PEPS (see below).

Miles is officially crawling now.  He still occasionally drops to his belly to scooch, but for the most part he sticks to hands and knees.  He's continuing to pull himself to a standing position at every opportunity.  He'll walk easily along furniture now, and occasionally even do this one-handed.  Unfortunately he's not as steady as he thinks he is so he tends to fall and bump his head fairly often. 

His vocalizations are changing all the time.  It's beginning to sound more and more like he's trying to tell us something, we just don't know what.  His favorite thing to say is "Uh oh", over and over again, though "ba" and "da" continue to rate high with him as well.  He has started pointing at (or at least holding his hand out in the general direction of) things that interest him, especially the fans in the new house.  And he waved good-bye to Ken, Heidi, and Harrison yesterday after they stopped by for a visit. 

As always Miles is eating everything we put in front of him.  We've started having him eat the lunches they serve at his day care, which means he's tried some pretty interesting things, including chicken nuggets, pizza, mashed potatoes, salmon, and Indian food (ok, we fed him the last two ourselves).  In general bananas and dairy products seem to be his favorites, but he'll eat pretty much anything we give him, especially if he can feed it to himself.

His favorite toys right now are the Leap Frog toys he received from all of his relatives.  They all sing and make noises which he seems to really like (he'll even occasionally start bouncing when he hears the music).  He also really likes blocks - banging them together and knocking over towers are the most fun.  As for books, he loves any book that is interactive, especially the ones that have textures he can touch.  He always turns the page for you as you read to him as long as you get it started for him.

4/5/04

We forgot to mention last week that Miles started clapping.  We have lots of pictures of him in the act this week to prove it.  We also discovered that Miles understands the word "clap".  We're very worried about how much else he understands of what we're saying.  Suddenly we're trying to be very, very careful about the words we use around him.  We also spend half our time with him trying to figure out what other words he knows.  We haven't had much success with this yet.

Miles turned nine months old last week, and we took his 9-month picture.  We also took him for his next pediatrician appointment.  He's 19 lbs 1oz (30%),  27 1/4 inches long (20%), and his head size is 46.5cm (85%).  He really has his daddy's head.  He only had to get one shot this time which was just fine with all of us.

Matt saw Miles crawl this past weekend, but only for a few feet.  It appeared that this was too slow for him so he dropped onto his tummy and scooched the rest of the way.  We haven't seen him crawl again, but we're watching.  He's also getting into pretty much everything now.  He's at that wonderful stage where every time you set him down he makes a beeline for the one thing in the room that he's not allowed to play with.  We need to move soon so that we can do a better job baby proofing at the new house!  Miles is also able to walk by holding on to furniture now.  He's still pretty unsteady, but he's getting better every day.

On the food front, Miles has started eating dairy and meat.  He likes both, but he really seems to love the dairy.  A slice of cheese is becoming a staple in his diet.  He even had his first macaroni and cheese this past week (pureed for right now).  Molly was so proud.

3/22/04

Miles is getting better at pulling himself into a standing position.  He can even occasionally bend down to pick up a toy he dropped and then get back up again.  He hasn't really figured out how to sit down yet, though, so sometimes he gets stuck standing up.  He doesn't really seem to mind, especially if there's a nice flat surface to bang on.  One of his favorite activities is standing up holding on to the side of the bathtub when one of us is showering, and then dropping toys down the slope into the tub.  Mommy and Daddy have been very willing (so far) to return the toy so that he can enjoy this game over and over.

He's still not really crawling yet, but he's getting so fast with his scooching we're not sure it matters all that much.  The other day he was in the office with Matt when Molly turned the shower on.  Miles heard the noise and scooched out of the office, down the hall, and used his head to push open the bathroom door so that he could pull up on the tub and throw toys in.  Imagine Molly's surprise when the door opened on its own, and instead of seeing Captain Midnight walk in she saw Miles!

We had a little excitement this past week when we discovered Miles has a food allergy.  We're not sure what caused it (yet) because he'd had too many new foods that day.  We've worked really hard to wait 3 days between introducing new foods like we're supposed to, but last Thursday Miles stole some food off of another child's high chair in day care, and then later that same day had a bite of birthday cake to celebrate one of his classmate's 1st birthday.  We think it was probably something in the cake, but we're not sure.  At any rate, he broke out in a rash on his face, and then later that night he was pretty fussy while eating and then he threw up most of his dinner.  Poor boy.  He seemed to feel much better right away, though, and has been totally fine ever since.  We're going to be nervous about introducing new foods for a while.

Miles is pretty focused on his mobility now, but he does have a few other fun tricks.  He likes to make double-B's when he talks (bba bba), he's started making a sound something like a 'p' with lots of wet bubbles associated with it, he really enjoys sucking in his upper lip (maybe to use his bottom teeth to rub against his upper gum?), and he has a new smile.  Check it out in the photo gallery below.

3/5/04

Miles is eight months old now!  The day before he turned 8 months old he sprouted 2 teeth (on the bottom in the middle).  He spends a lot of his day feeling his new teeth with his tongue.  About a week after he turned 8 months old he started pulling himself up to a standing position when hanging on to something.  We're expecting a fair number of bumps and falls from this new trick.  Miles is also making a number of new consonants.  Matt's favorite is the 'd' - in addition to "ba ba ba ba ba" Miles sometimes says "da da da da da" now and occasionally "ba da".  Almost!

The other new thing now is that Miles is insisting on feeding himself.  As the spoon approaches he grabs it and puts it in his mouth himself.  He's reasonably accurate, though for some reason he closes his mouth early when he feeds himself, so some amount of food ends up getting pushed back onto his hand and/or sliding down the side of his chin.  He's also not great about giving the spoon back once he has it in hand.  He prefers to throw it - preferably at someone when it still has some food on it.  This is going to be a challenge!  We're working hard on finding foods that he can pick up so we can get away from pureed foods which make more of a mess when thrown.

Nana Rhoten came to visit for Matt's birthday (though we're pretty sure she was secretly here to see Miles and used Matt's birthday as an excuse).  She had a bunch of fun watching Miles in swimming class, playing with all of the PEPS babies who came over on CPR class day, seeing our new house (pictures coming soon) and visiting Miles's day care.  It was a very full 3 days!  Miles loved having his Nana here to play with him - there are lots of smiles in the photo gallery this week.

2/22/04

Our biggest news this week is that Miles is scooching forward now (and not even using his head to do it :).  He uses his arms and one knee to slide forward on his tummy.  He needs the right enticement, but this morning Matt's shoe was all it took for him to scooch himself all the way across the living room.

This week was a very busy one for all of us.  On Tuesday night Sacha and Sylvan came over for dinner and Miles and Sylvan took a bath together (see pictures in the photo gallery).  On Wednesday night Miles  stayed with Nytasha and Dave (from our PEPS group) while we went to a chamber concert at UW.  On Thursday he stayed late at day care (and ate dinner there) while we had manicures in preparation for Alexandra and Mike's wedding.  His day care teacher Molly assured us that he definitely likes his food.  We already knew that :).  On Friday night he stayed with Ken, Heidi, and Harrison while we attended the rehearsal dinner (see pictures in the photo gallery).  On Saturday morning we took Miles to his 3rd swimming lesson.  He still really loves it as long as we don't put him on his back.  On Saturday he spent the afternoon and evening with Heather, Jessie, and Andrew while we were at Alexandra and Mike's wedding.  Heather and crew came to the Edgewater to watch Miles there so that he would be near Molly for easier feeding.  Since they were right by the Seattle Aquarium they took Miles and Andrew to see all the marine life.  Miles was apparently very fascinated by this - enough so that he didn't take a nap the whole afternoon!

Despite the hectic week Miles is doing great.  We're beginning to think he may like a lot of activity.  And we're very, very lucky to have so many good friends in Seattle to help us out like that.  Thanks everyone for taking such good care of Miles!

2/14/04

It's been a couple of weeks since we posted new pictures.  Everyone here has been recovering from colds and we helped host Alexandra's snow shower last weekend which took a lot of time.  We did manage to get some good pictures of Matt reading a touchable book (Miles's favorite) to Miles, and pictures of Miles finger painting in day care - see the photo gallery below.

Miles is doing lots of new things now.  He's started going down for naps and at bedtime without crying.  Although he never cried for very long it was hard to listen to none the less, so we're very happy that he's stopped doing it at all.  Coincidentally (or not?) he's also started sleeping on his tummy most nights.  We've tried turning him over but he just flips himself back to his tummy.  He knows what he likes.

He's rolling over a lot more in general now.  He still hasn't quite figured out how much traveling he's capable of doing (thank goodness), but he will flip onto his tummy and pivot around to get at anything he wants that's within a certain radius.  He's also started trying really hard to pull himself up onto things.  He's not at all successful with this, which frustrates him a fair amount, but that doesn't stop him from trying to climb all over us when we sit with him on the floor.  When he does manage to convince one of us to help him stand up he's started taking steps forward.  They're tentative and very unsteady steps, but he does travel forward - usually with a big smile as he walks towards mom or dad. 

Miles still loves to talk - a lot.  Mostly he just says "Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba", but occasionally it turns into "ma" or "wa".  He also still really loves getting objects in his mouth (our fingers, his rattle, a rubber ducky, our shoulders) and then making noise while he shakes his head back and forth across the object.  This causes a sort of motorboat effect which he seems to really love.  We thought it would be a phase, but it's been many, many months, and he's always discovering new objects he can do this with much to his amusement.  Using our shoulders is the latest, and he's started adding a head bob to it which causes him to essentially bang his mouth onto our shoulders while he's saying "aaaahhhhhhh".  He does it every chance he gets - strange boy.

Last but not least he's still really enjoying his food (even when he was sick).  He's had toast now, and a teething cracker, and a little rice, and mango/kiwi puree.  We also put a little apple juice in his cup of water today which was a huge hit.  One of these days he'll probably reject something we offer him, but not so far.

1/31/04

It's been a rough week at the Rhoville household!  Molly was sick at the beginning of the week, then Matt was sick, and on Wednesday Miles was sent home from day care with a low-grade fever which turned into a nasty cold with a cough.  He seemed better on Friday, but today Miles has started pulling at his ear which makes us think he's developed an ear infection.  We'll go to the doctor tomorrow to find out for sure.  We skipped our swim lesson today and stayed home all day in the hopes that everyone would start to feel better.

On a happier note, Miles turned 7 months old this week!  You can see his official 7-month picture (as well as the photo-shoot) below.  To celebrate this new milestone he has added nodding his head up and down to his repertoire of tricks.  It's a full-body nod that's pretty adorable, though it makes him a little unsteady!  He's continuing to enjoy banging one object on another, he likes turning things over and over to see the other side (especially his xylophone and books), and he's fascinated by anyone who is willing to make animal sounds for him.

1/24/04

Day care is continuing to go well.  Miles seems to be napping better despite the noisy environment, and he even got to go outside this week in one of the day care strollers (apparently in the past he screamed when they tried to put him in it).  The strollers hold 4 babies at a time and the kids seem to really enjoy the change of pace.

Miles is still eating well.  He added corn and prunes to his menu this week and he still really loves his cheerios.  He gets about 90% of them in his mouth himself now, usually by grabbing one (or as many as he can get at a time) with his fist and then putting his whole hand in his mouth and opening it.  Sometimes he "pincers" them with his index finger and the back (yes, the back) of this thumb.  He used to carefully swallow each cheerio before picking up another one, but not anymore.  He will put as many in his mouth as we put on the tray so we have to be careful to only put a few there at a time so that he has a chance to swallow in between.

Our other excitement this week was our first swim lesson.  All of the kids in our PEPS group signed up to take lessons together and we brought the camera along.  Miles seemed to like it, though he was a little on edge at first because the pool was very noisy (lots of kids there in addition to our class).  Just like in the bath he seems to like to put his face in the water.  It startles him, but he still does it.  Check out the pictures below.

1/16/04

It's been a busy couple of weeks for us.  Matt went back to work on Jan. 5 and Miles started in day care.  He's been there for 2 weeks now and we're beginning to settle into a routine.  It takes us about 2 hours to get out the door in the morning, but Miles gets up so early we still make it to day care and then to work at a reasonable hour.  Molly visits Miles every afternoon to feed him and to play for a bit.  We all head home together through the horrible traffic at the end of the day.  Although Miles was fussy at day care the first week, and his nose has been running pretty much constantly since he started, he seems to be adjusting pretty well.  His teachers tell us he's only fussy when he's bored, hungry or tired, or when one of the other kids starts crying or is especially loud.  They've been able to calm him down easily by holding him.  He's still pretty sensitive to loud noises so hanging out with 7 other children all day can take its toll.  He's always very happy to see us at the end of the day, though, and the teachers say they're getting lots of smiles out of him during the day now too. 

Miles also had his 6-month check-up on the 6th.  He weighed 18lb, 4oz (40%), he's 26 1/2 inches long (50%), and his head size is 44.9 cm (80%).  This confirms what you'll see in the latest pictures below - his head is still really big!  The pediatrician said he looks really good and she doesn't have any concerns.  He only had 2 shots this visit which was a relief for everyone.

We've continued to enhance Miles's diet with new foods.  We've added pears, squash, and potatoes to his menu.  He's drinking water quite well out of his cup as long as it's full enough to not require any tipping backwards.  And he's excellent at throwing his cup on the floor each time he takes a drink.  He's also managing to eat more cheerios himself now - mostly this happens because they stick to his little wet fingers, but occasionally he actually picks one up and gets it into his mouth successfully.  He seems to really enjoy those cheerios!

As for playtime, Miles is showing signs of more mobility.  We left him on the floor on his back the other day, and when we went back in the room a minute later, he was on his tummy.  Another minute after that he was on his back again, but he'd rolled the same direction both times causing himself to "travel" for the first time.  We don't think he realized what he did, but it made us pretty nervous!  He's started splashing in the bathtub and making quite a mess - we've increased the number of baths he gets each week just because he seems to enjoy it so much.  One of our favorite new behaviors are his "kisses".  In the morning when he gets up and when we pick him up from day care he shows his excitement to see us by planting a wide open, saliva-filled mouth on our chins or cheeks.  We've decided these are his version of kisses so we kiss him back which always makes him giggle.  It's pretty cute. 

1/3/04

Miles attended his first bridal shower this week, saw his first snow storm, and attended his second wedding (not bad for 6 months old).  His favorite activities this week are shaking his head no (of course he doesn't know what this means yet, but he loves doing it), chewing on the tags of all of his toys, and coughing just for the fun of it.  He also thinks bath time is one of the best times of day.  He's still trying new foods - we've recently added green beans, peas, and applesauce to his menu.  We haven't found anything yet that he won't eat.  He also rolled over from his tummy to his back this week, but it was early in the week and he hasn't done it again since.  He still hasn't quite mastered that skill yet.

12/27/03

We had an exciting week celebrating Christmas with Nana and Granddad.  Miles had lots of fun opening his presents, eating wrapping paper, and playing with all of his new toys.  Thanks to all the aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends who sent him gifts!  Miles also turned 6 months old this week. 

12/19/03

Miles is sitting up better than ever now.  He also rolls to the left and to the right to get from his back to his tummy (we've even found him on his tummy in his crib a couple of times).  He can't, however, roll from his tummy to his back, so he gets mad pretty quickly when this happens - he's still not a fan of tummy time.

Some of his favorite activities these days include grabbing our faces and feeling our teeth, playing with daddy's earrings, grabbing (and hopefully sucking on) any beverage we're drinking... he seems to really like teething on the bottom of glasses of ice water. 

His vocalizations are changing all the time.  He "sings" while making raspberries creating a very musical sound.  He's also started saying "ba ba ba ba ba" and occasionally "ma ma ma ma ma".  He hasn't, however, stopped making the high-pitched squeal we've grown to know and love.

At dinner time he's eating a wider variety of foods now.  In addition to the initial rice cereal, he's now eaten oat cereal, barley cereal, carrots, sweet potatoes, bananas, and the occasional cheerio. 

In addition to lots of new skills, Miles has had some exciting adventures in the past two weeks.  He helped find a Christmas Tree for Alexandra and Mike's living room and he had his picture taken for our Christmas card (see the photo gallery below).  He also visited his day care briefly this week.  The head of the day care suggested we bring him in so that he could get familiar with his room, meet his teachers, and generally get an introduction to the facility.  After taking him in this past Wednesday Matt and I figured out that it was really more for us than for Miles.  Although we're both still really uneasy about leaving him in day care all day, we feel better after meeting his teachers in person. 

12/5/03

We went to Elmhurst for Thanksgiving to visit with Molly's family.  We were there almost a week and took a ton of pictures (see the photo gallery below).  Miles did great on the plane rides and was full of smiles for all of his relatives once we arrived.  The week included lots of firsts for Miles.  He tried his first banana (and a little pumpkin pie if anyone's counting), he scooched forward on his tummy for the first time while visiting with Molly's high school friends, he took his first trip to the Zoo, and he spent much of the week trying to roll over and finally succeeded the afternoon we arrived back in Seattle (with a little help/leverage from Captain Midnight).  This last accomplishment is one of our favorites.  Although he has rolled accidentally from front to back in the past, this time he's able to repeat his new skill.  Pretty much every time we set him on his back he rolls to his right to get onto his tummy.  The problem is that he doesn't really like being on his tummy all that much, and he doesn't know how to roll back.  He'll probably figure that out soon, though.

While we were in town Miles also got to visit his Grandpa in the hospital.  Miles thought Grandpa was pretty fascinating, and Grandpa really enjoyed visiting with Miles.  He tickled Miles, made faces, and said his name.  It was great to see him respond so well to seeing a baby.

And last but not least, Miles turned 5 months old while we were in Elmhurst.  We had a little trouble getting a good picture for the "watch me grow" section, but we were eventually able to capture his smile and his oh-so-kissable cheeks.

11/22/03

It's hard to believe that Miles is almost 5 months old.  He's starting to sit up by himself now (if you balance him correctly and have lots of pillows around him for when he gets tired and falls over, that is).  His loud squealing noise is still with us, and he's now happily combining this sound with his old standby:  raspberries.

We've been feeding him a little rice cereal every day, and he either grabs the spoon so that he can stick it in his mouth and suck on it, or else he spits just as the spoon is approaching his mouth causing the cereal to spray all over him and us.  It's fun for the whole family.  We're managing to get more cereal to stay in than what comes out, though, so we're calling it a victory.

11/16/03

Nana and Grandad Rhoten came to visit this week, and Miles had rice cereal (his first solid food!).  He's getting better and better at holding on to objects and getting them into his mouth successfully.  He's also started squealing recently - so far it's really adorable, but we're worried it could get old quickly.

11/08/03

It's been relatively quiet here these last couple of weeks.  Miles had his 4-month check-up with the pediatrician where she declared him to be healthy and growing well.  He weighs 15lb 15oz (70%), he's 25 inches long (50%), and his head size is 43.1cm (75%).  He also had his next round of shots, which he handled very, very well.  He's happy to know that he's off the hook for another couple of months.

As for accomplishments, Miles rolled over again, but he's still not making a habit of it.  That's ok with us - we're not sure we're quite ready for him to start being mobile.  He's getting better and better at grabbing things (including Molly's hair and Matt's earrings) and as always, everything ends up in his mouth.  He loves to talk to us (check out this week's photo gallery and you can hear one of his latest noises) and he especially likes it when we sing to him.  His favorite songs right now are Skinnamarinkadinkadink and the alphabet song.

Our most exciting news is everyone's improved sleep schedule.  The pacifier stopped being a magic bullet for helping Miles get to sleep so we decided to stop using it at night.  For 5 days in a row now Miles has fallen asleep within 15 minutes of putting him down (it's a tough 15 minutes, but we all survive).  He's also putting himself back to sleep when he wakes up during the night (usually only once a night that we hear about) so everyone is sleeping much, much better.  Our fingers are crossed that this trend continues!

10/28/03

We've had a lot of excitement here in the last week.  Molly is back at work again, and Matt is home now during the day with Miles.  Everyone is beginning to adjust to their new roles without too many hiccups.  So far Matt is doing an excellent job as a househusband, and Molly had a great reception from her co-workers (including an office decorated with 20+ pictures of Miles!).  This arrangement will take us into January, and after that we'll need to put Miles in day care if both of us decide to continue to work.  Lucky for us we found out this week that there is a spot for us at our first choice day care - Bright Horizons.  Among the other things we liked about this day care, it is just down the block from Molly's office so she will be able to visit Miles and feed him during lunch.

To add to the excitement, we had lots of visitors this past weekend.  Matt's mom was in town for her birthday, and Wil and Erin (from Chicago) continued an annual tradition of coming to town for a Halloween party held by some mutual friends here in Seattle.  It was great to see everyone.

And last but not least, Miles is now 4 months old.  To celebrate this milestone he rolled over again from front to back this morning.  He likes to lie on his side and get help rolling both onto his tummy and onto his back.  He's also continuing to enjoy making sounds and raspberries and just generally be very vocal.  We can make him laugh out loud these days without too much effort.  Oh, and he loves to watch TV.  Sigh.

10/19/03

Miles hasn't rolled over again, but he's made a lot of progress on getting all of his fingers into his mouth at once.  He's drooling more than ever, and he's back to chewing on his lower lip again.  It's been a very oral week. 

Matt started his 3-month paternity leave this week so he was home (with Molly and Miles) and available to take lots of pictures.  Next week we may not have as many pictures since Molly will be back at work and Matt will be on his own with Miles.  Matt may be too busy to take pictures this week!