Housekeeping at 27 Months

Dear Milo,
So, the funny thing about writing these entries is that I'm more aware of what you're no longer doing than I am of what you've just started doing. Maybe this is how life works.



For example, you used to stick close by, always underfoot, hanging out at knee-height next to Mama or Dad. But now you go off and play by yourself, sometimes even in a different room, sometimes for 20 minutes at a time, like a real person. I can call out, "Milo, where are you?" And you'll respond, "I'm in the playroom." Which is, like, what a regular person would say, so it's not that notable. Except that for you it's new.

We also don't get much anymore of "What that noise?" which you used to say all the time. Instead it's the more mundane "What is that sound?". And you also now have the ability to find things. Like, if I say "Where's your hat?" and you then leave the room, the odds are as high as 60% that you might actually come back with the hat.




You have started affixing long strings of words together in some strange ways. For example, all pasta is now referred to as "special tortellini from the dentist" because after you went to the dentist I soothed your residual tears with a bowl of buttery tortellini. Last night you gave us a cooking demonstration which involved the other thing you now love to do: explain how things are done, even if you don't know yourself. This usually sounds something like "So first you take this and then you take that and then you need the cheese and like that on Tuesday and and twenty-four and there you go, we're ALL done."

You've also got a wicked sense of humor, which sometimes involves sticking things onto your face:


You still have some funny mis-pronunciations: "dickerish" for licorice, "neminnems" for M&Ms, "dinosaurus" as a blanket word for any type of dinosaur, the lid to the wok which for some reason you insist is called a "dong" (Because, you explained, when you hit it it makes a sound like donnnn-gggg. True.) But alas we don't get to hear "longtime soup" for Won Ton soup anymore. Also a backpack is no longer a "packpack" and the cat is no longer "Ahkah," but the more mundane "Oscar."

In place of the toddler who caouldn't walk down the front steps alone we now have a child who can hang up his coat all by himself, who says things like "I want to do it myself," and who then sits down and draws a picture on the stoop. "Is that a dinosaurus?" I asked hopefully. "It's a triceratops," you replied.



Love,
Mama