OH friends. In case any of your were sitting around wondering what the most fun, cute, crazy thing in the world is, wonder no longer. It is Milo.
Say "Cheeeese!" School picture from Fall 2011. Note the fading forehead bruise.
I’ll be the first to admit that I might be a little biased here, but only because I get to spend more time with him than anyone else. No other reason.
He walks. And runs. And falls a lot. He talks. He babbles in English as well as some language I do not speak, but sounds like the gibberish equivalent of Spanglish. He screams and chortles and rawrs and whispers and gives really wonderful kisses and cuddles if you ask him to. He points at EVERYTHING and says “Whasat?” Alternately, he loves to point at things and have you name them. High on the list of wonderful things in his world are elephants, birds, cars, “cookies,” blueberries, hiding, throwing balls (or, as Milo says, “THROWM!), and drawing. He also likes to load up a little shopping cart/man purse/arms and transport materials around the house. He loves snow and when we are graced with the white stuff he stands by the window and just yells “SNOW” until you bundle him up and take him out. He loves coming home to a parent in the house, or being in the house when a parent comes home (pretty much anything that involved anticipating seeing a parent is SO EXCITING!). He thinks it is really fun to put food on the floor for the cats, but then does this big dramatic hand gesture and says “STOP” whenever they get close to the food. He is having a love/hate relationship with the blender because he hates the noise it makes it makes but loves smoothies. Like a moth to flame…
Or a butterfly to a finger..
Milo is now aware of the pantry and the fact that it holds “cookies.” I put that word in quotes because his standards for what counts as a cookie is very low. We just call everything that is small and crunchy a cookie, so this includes actual cookies, crackers, dehydrated fruit chips, etc. So god help you if you should open the pantry when he is around because all you will hear is this tiny adorable voice going, “cooookie? mah cooookie? mah coookie?” It is really hard to not just give him a “cookie” when this happens because Pat has taught Milo that anytime he gets a “cookie” he will get two (one for each hand), and then he must to the cookie dance upon receiving them. Teaching your child weird rituals is one of the many bonuses of parenting.
He knows what is hiding in the leaves...
Building with blocks is big activity these days. He is constantly taking out the big cardboard blocks and building little structure in which to “hide” his animals. Pat recently commented that Milo’s architectural philosophy can be summed up in one word, “Pie.” To translate, “pie” is what “up high” sounds like. It is awesome because when they are building towers with the blocks, Milo just constantly sticks more and more blocks on while yelling “PIE” and then eventually feeding Pat blocks to place higher than he can reach.
Building with blocks? Good. Building with blocks in a cape with no pants? Great.
Sleeping keeps getting better. Milo sleeps from about 7:30pm – 7:30am more nights than not. A couple times a month he will randomly have a series of wakeful nights that we can’t really explain. Sometimes he is stuffed up, and I think he sometimes has dreams now that wake him, but mostly I can’t tell you why he wakes up, just that he needs a little reassurance and generally goes right back to sleep. We are much more relaxed about it now too since it doesn’t feel like it will never end. Even on those bad nights, I rarely wake up in the morning feeling like I won’t be able to get through the day. The more I talk to parents of toddlers and kids, the more I realize that few children ALWAYS sleep through the night and most wake up now and then and we (parents at large) just deal with it. A couple awesome little sleep-related tidbits: Milo’s sleeps with a blanket over his head most of the night. He sleeps with his two little black kitties in his hands, and his puppy by his head, and occasionally his “baby” in the mix as well. Sometimes he will wake up at night, gather his puppy, kitties, and blanket all in his arms and then lay down on top of them. I love having a video monitor.
On the food front, I believe we have worked our way through all the stages of grief.
DENIAL: Little kids just eat like little birds, and lots of people struggle with eating issues – we’ll just keep using tricks to get him to eat and eventually he will just wake up one day and be a good eater.
ANGER: Dear child, you MUST EAT OR YOU WILL STARVE!
BARGAINING: Okay, eat this shred of chicken and I’ll give you a blueberry!
DEPRESSION: He is going to be 25 and still only eating bunny crackers, cheese, and blueberries and beans. Why are all these other kids hoovering their food? What is wrong with us?!
ACCEPTANCE: You can lead a Milo to the table, but you can’t make him eat. So just give him food and let him figure it out.
Since you aren't eating, you might as well practice your buffalo impression. TaTONKA!
Milo still nurses a couple times a day, and it is still working out for us just fine. He usually isn’t demanding, and it is clear that he still really loves that snugly time together. We always nurse in the mornings and it is part of what has become sort of a centering family ritual for us. Every morning when Milo wakes up, Pat goes to get him and brings Milo into our bed. Milo and I nurse and Pat lays back down and snoozes. Eventually Milo starts talking to us about birds or Honey (one of our cats), or asks to be “hiding” and we throw a blanket over his head and peek at him. Sometimes we’ll read a book from the night stand. Sometimes we’ll talk about the bears on his pajamas. It always ends with Milo crawling on my head and Pat leading him off to the kitchen for breakfast. I love it. It is so nice to be able to sort of check in all as a family in bed for 25 minutes every morning before we head off to our separate places.
We were fortunate to get to stay close to home this past fall, but did head down to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Milo did pretty well on the long drive and was so happy to see all his Illinois family. He loved running around Great Grandma and Grandma’s house and playing with his 2nd cousins (the only cousins he has 
) and ALL the dogs that were around that weekend. At Christmas, which I will address more fully in another post, he was so pleased to have a constant stream of book readers, block builders, chasers, and huggers at his disposal. I think he remembers Grandparents pretty well now. We went Winona over New Years and Milo and my dad spent a lot of quality time doing grandfatherly stuff (laying on the floor looking at the ceiling, practicing blowing their noses with a whole roll of toilet paper, throwing things down the laundry shoot and retrieving them 800 times, playing with tape measures), so during the trip pretty hard to saying “Grandpa” which comes out at “Boppa.” Every morning now when Milo wakes up (still, more than a week later!), he climbs into our bed and goes “Boppa? Boppa? Boppa?” It is adorable and makes my Dad want to run up to the cities every time we report on it. I love having a child who realizes he is part of a family beyond just Pat and I.
Grandpas make great perches
Throughout the holidays, we loved involving Milo in the things that Pat and I love about the season. In addition to getting to do all our normal stuff (go cut a tree, decorate the house, listen to A LOT of Christmas music, drink eggnog, bake cookies, etc), having a small child has given us the chance to get out in to the community and enjoy a few of the many things going on around the city. This exposure is such a nice perk of parenting! I love my hometown, but Pat and I were talking last night and decided that living in St. Paul is just the bees knees. We have easy access to so many wonderful things. I don’t remember going to the MN Zoo even once while I was growing up (granted, we were frequently visitors to the Winona Deer Park!), and Milo gets to go at least once a month. The museums and children’s theatre are year round options, but this winter we’ve taken in the Holidazzle Parade, the Macy’s 8th floor Elf Land, the St. Anthony Park neighborhood festivities (complete with reindeer and Santa!), and many other smaller holiday-type fun.
The picture quality isn't great, but the intention is so perfect!
All the these wonderful things around the cities have been made all the more wonderful by having really started to get comfortable with lots of “family” friends. Not like people my folks knew, but rather those friends of ours who have really turned out to be friends of ALL of ours. It has been freeing in a way that I haven’t felt since we left the world of free-ranging couples going out whenever/where ever we wanted. And now that Milo actually PLAYS with other kids instead of just sits around and watches, everyone has a great time. It is weird to imagine that someday he’ll have friends of his own that I don’t know well or, worse, don’t have a chance to screen based on their parents. 
With a new semester getting underway and the holiday break behind us, we are looking forward to watching Milo morph from a chirping bird (who spends an awful lot of time says “birdie, birdie, birdie!) to a full blown chatting two year old. Who is this little boy we love so much?!
Aaaand cut.
