12/7/2009

Monthly Miles Memo #23

Filed under: — Aprille @ 11:25 am

Dear Miles,

Little Scoop, you’re almost 2.  This is your last month as a 1-year-old, and it’s about time, because you’ve been counting to 2 like a maniac lately.  Everything countable is “one, doo, one, doo, one doo.”  You’ve thrown on a “ee, oh” (“three, four”) a few times, but mostly you’re stuck on the 1-2 repeat.

You know all about the fact that your birthday is coming up, that you’re going to be two, and that you’ll have a cake with two candles and you’ll blow them out.   Last weekend we celebrated your Papa’s (Grandpa Denny’s) birthday, and you were pretty sure he was turning two as well.

It seems like every day you learn new things.  This month you mastered a lot of compound and two-syllable words, like eyeball, Corn Chex, snowman, cookie, Mubby, and boobie.  That last one started out as a mispronunciation of “bootie,” which has been hot in your vocabulary ever since Mubby brought you a pair of Elmo booties, but you took the opportunity to tell me you knew its other meaning as I changed into my exercise clothes the other day.

You also demonstrated that knowledge in a tactile manner on the swimsuit mannequins at the mall a few days ago:

Poke, poke. “Boobie!”  Poke, poke. “Boobie!”

This continued long after we left the sporting goods store.  Ah, Miles.  You’re nothing if not persistent.

Your dad and I have noted lately that ignoring you just doesn’t work.  We should have figured it out already; our early and earnest experiments with letting you “cry it out” were complete disasters.  I don’t want to go into the details again, because it makes me feel sick, but I honestly think you would scream until your vocal cords eroded their way out your throat.  You don’t scream a whole lot these days (though the recent forays into whining are their own special kind of grating), but if you want to talk about something while we want to talk about something else, forget it.  You will chant whatever is on your mind ceaselessly until we acknowledge you.

And often, that’s all it takes.  You just want to be heard.  You would rather be told no than ignored.

(Which is not to say you like being told no, but this is common among your contemporaries, I hear.)

We had a really fun Thanksgivsmas with the Clarke side of the family.  You’re a little shy around new people, especially kids, probably because they’re loud and unpredictable and get in your face.  Still, you thought your cousins Maxwell, Meredith, and Anna were just fascinating, and you do a great job naming them in pictures.  Meredith comes out more like Meh-deh, but it’s recognizable, and I appreciate your effort.

You could look at pictures and home videos all day long, which I don’t let you do, but we spend at least some time every day looking at family multimedia objects.  I had to stop letting you play with my iPhone (or, as you call it, Duck-Cuckoo, because of an animal sounds app I have) because you were getting obsessed with it.  You really got the hang of the touch-screen, the downside of which is the fact that you think my laptop screen is also a touch-screen, and now it’s fingerprintier than ever.

Gosh, you can do so much now.  You can play the recorder (just one note, and a squeaky one, but still).  You know every capital letter of the alphabet and a lot of the lower-case ones.  You can pick out your own clothes, which often involves a vest and gives me happy memories of your Uncle Tyler’s argyle vest phase.  You can gallop on a stick horse and make giant choo-choos out of Legos.  You can put together simple puzzles and, with help, more complicated ones.

Along with all the new words you’ve learned, you’ve started doing some complex communication units that incorporate nontraditional methods as well.  We saw two of your favorite people, Aunt Suzy (“Ah-ah”) and Uncle Joe, at Thanksgiving, and you love to talk about them.  It goes something like this:

Miles:  Unco Joe.
Mommy:  Yes, we saw Uncle Joe, didn’t we?
Miles:  Ba-boom!
Mommy:  That’s right, he fell off his bike.   [This happened the last time they visited my parents, and Miles won’t let it go.]  He’s all better now, though.
Miles:  Ah-ah [pucker-kiss noise]
Mommy:  Yes, Aunt Suzy gave him a kiss and made him feel better.

We repeat this sequence every time you think about Uncle Joe or when you see someone on a bike.  That’s one good thing about the cold weather setting in:  fewer cyclists to trigger your obsession with Joe’s bike accident.  Of course, that doesn’t address the dog on a bike on the inside cover of one of your favorite books.

Another example of your communication sequences:  a couple of weeks ago, your dad had to go out of town for several days, so Mubby and Skittergramps came to keep us company.  You were wearing a shirt with no onesie, and when you lifted it up, Mubby jovially threatened to tickle you.  You shook your head, puckered up, and made a kiss noise.  No tickling, you were telling her.  Just a tummy kiss, please.  You bet you got one.  You probably got twenty.

Enjoy your last month of one-dom, sweetheart.  I don’t know if they make onesies much bigger than the ones you’re wearing now.  This may be the last month your tummy goes mostly protected.  I don’t care if you’re a big-boy two-year-old.  That tummy is getting kisses.

Love,

Mommy

2 responses to “Monthly Miles Memo #23”

  1. Collette says:

    Love it – and almost 2 already?! That was fast. I’m so glad you do this every month. I wish I had been able to keep up better than I did with my own boys.

  2. mark says:

    Goodness, the shot of him in the hoodie with the tear in his eye literally sent a shiver through my heart when I scrolled upon it. Really nice. Also, the bootie thing reminds me of a funny story. I recently built a DIY beauty dish at home. A couple days later I was telling Ben L. about it. It wasn’t until I’d finished describing it that he thought I’d been talking about a “bootie dish,” which is an even better name for it. Ain’t language grand? It’s almost better when it happens by accident.

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