My little Miles,

I had to count on my fingers to figure out how many months old you are.  I guess that means you’re officially not a baby, when it’s easier and nearly as accurate to describe your age in half-year increments.

I’m a little late on this installment (again), and (again) I have a pretty good excuse.  We just got back from a really fun trip to Colorado.  Daddy’s friend got married near Denver, so we took a couple of days off work and made a mini-vacation out of it.  Traveling with you was great—you were such a good boy on our flights, and in the rental car, and during all our activities.  Besides the actual wedding, I think our favorite part was our day-trip to Boulder.  Boulder is a lot like a bigger Iowa City, so we felt right home.  You scrambled around on some real boulders, played in a fountain, and got very close to a squirrel.

We also hit the Children’s Museum of Denver, which you loved, especially the bubble exhibit and the real fire truck.  You weren’t quite so enthused about the natural splendor of Garden of the Gods in Colorado Spring, so we didn’t spend as much time there as we’d hoped.  You didn’t want to listen to your dad when he told you that wearing your sunglasses would keep the blowing dirt out of your eyes.

One of the things you’ve been doing really well lately, on our trip and otherwise, is reciting passages from your favorite bedtime books.  Your current top author is Robert Munsch, and you know almost the entire stories verbatim of Smelly Socks and Something Good.  You’ve also been wanting to hear Beanie stories lately, which are your dad’s fictional accounts of your Beaniesitter’s adventures.  One time she went swimming with her hamster, who was wearing an innertube.

I’ve noticed your speech really improving, too.  You’re getting better about saying I when you mean I (rather than you), and you’re mastering some of the trickier letters.  We’ve been doing a lot of Fee Fi Fo Fum so you can practice your f sounds, and you did some excellent sixes and sevens at the dinner table today.  You still drop the sounds sometimes, though you’re getting good at explaining what you want when someone doesn’t understand you.  For example:

M:  I want a story ’bout a itch.

A:  An itch?  Like when your skin itches?

M:  No, itch.

A:  A witch?  Like a Halloween witch?

M:  No, like Skittergramps’ gold-gold-itch.

Goldfish, that is.

The guys you draw with your markers and on your Magnadoodle now have recognizable eyes, noses, mouths, and Bart Simpson hair.  You’re beginning to do a little writing, too.  A couple of weeks ago, you told me you’d drawn a small i and a capital I on your Magnadoodle, and when you showed it to me, I thought your dad must have done it earlier in the day.  But no—it was all you.  You’re working on writing your name, though for the time being you don’t get much further than the M (which also looks a lot like Bart Simpson hair) and some additional decorative lines.  But I’m impressed that you took it upon yourself to do it.  Maybe all those times I helped you “sign” cards by holding your hand and guiding the pen into the letters of your name paid off.

You’ve been dudju (aka pillow) crazy for a while now too.  When we got to our hotel room in Denver, the first thing you did was gape at the bed and say “SO MANY DUDJUS!”  They were soon a fort on the floor.  You’ve also helped me make several dudjus now, two for the living room couch and one for your own bed.  One day you announced that you needed an orange dudju, and we still had plenty of stuffing left from the couch dudju project, so off we went to the fabric store.  You picked out some nice orange fabric as well as some fabric with cool, bright-colored dot formations.  We made the body of the dudju out of the orange and a dudju jacket (regular people would call this a pillowcase) out of the dotted fabric.

You’ve really been enjoying that dudju.  I don’t know if it helps you sleep better, but you do often drag it with you when you show up in our bed in the middle of the night, so there’s that.  Lest the casual reader think you are a 100% perfect specimen of humanity, I should, in the interest of full disclosure, note that you’re still not sleeping through the night on any consistent basis.  You have done it, and I don’t doubt that you will do it again at some point before your high school graduation, but most nights you still wake up and wander into our room.  It’s not so bad, since I usually don’t have to get out of bed.  I just haul you into the middle position and try to stake out a portion of the bed approximately equal to my own width.

Sometimes I have to settle for sideways width.

Sometimes I put a dudju on the end table and hope for the best.

We’re probably going to have to implement some changes if/when another kiddo joins the family (Skittergramps calls this fictional human “Milesetta”; you call him/her “Darth Vader”).  But for the time being, we’re a pretty solid little triad.  As you like to say, holding up your shirt and expose your little torso, we are Mommy (right nipple), Daddy (left nipple), and Miles (bellybutton).

You’re the best little innie ever.

Love,

Mommy