Dear Milo,
A few weeks ago you turned three years old - you're such a big boy. You wake up in the morning now and get dressed all by yourself. The first week or so that you did this you would come into our room, all proud and glowing, with your shirt on inside out and your pants on backwards. Also there was the day you omitted underwear. And sometimes you show up in the same outfit all week -- I guess your thought process is, hey, this worked yesterday! To counter this problem I have started putting your clothing in the laundry basket more frequently. You also insist on wearing only "fluffy" pants. You also like everyone else to be in "fluffy" pants, for reasons I don't fully understand. Sometimes in order to get you to wear something other than sweatpants I try to convince you that your jeans are "fluffy." You buy it about 20 percent of the time.
You continue to be an endless stream of questions. Why is it night now? When will it be day? Why are there two Matthews in your class? Why not five Matthews? Why do different toilets make different flushing noises? Why do you have to eat breakfast when you wake up? Why can't you have Snack instead? Why do the leaves fall off the trees? Why don't I want to hang up every single piece of artwork you come home from school with? Why can't we listen to "Ob La Di Ob La Da" 47 times in a row?
You continue to have two main interests: music and trains. You still have some interest in cleaning, but it pales in comparison to trains and music. Recently you've started to become interested in puzzles and games, too, which is a lot of fun because it's something we can do together. You like to find all the nails and forklifts and cement in your Bob the Builder book, and this weekend you put together your farm puzzle about 15 times. We've also started playing Concentration, although we call it Flip Flop in honor of Charlie and Lola, and we play a sort of modified version where we just turn the cards over and try to find the matching pictures, but still, you're into it.
What you're not into is eating. Not to say that you don't like food, because you do. You demanded more baby octopus the other night when we had sushi, and munched away contentedly on its head; you devoured three slices of pig knuckle at a Chinese restaurant last week; and you will eat your weight in shrimp and calamari. But unless we're at a restaurant or something weird is being served, you tend to take a few bites of food and declare yourself done, although what you're really declaring yourself is bored, and ready to move on to the next activity.
So we've had to start insisting you take x number of bites before you leave the table. This has now turned into a sort of math game for you, where you take a couple of bites and then try to calculate how many bites you have left. Sometimes I just say, "finish half the sandwich" or whatever, and you will endlessly reply "How many bites" until I calculate how many bites are potentially in half a sandwich. You do like numbers, though. When we went to the farmers market last month you lined up and counted 19 pumpkins. But you don't always get it right. The other night I said you had 15 more minutes to play until it was time to get ready for bed."
"How about ten minutes," you said.
"Um, okay," I replied.
But overall, you are a joy and a pleasure. You charm everyone you meet -- all the kids in the 4's class at school yell hi to you by name, even though you don't know their names. You charmed a police officer into letting you into the engine car of an Amtrak train on your birthday. You have not one iota of shyness, and will talk to anyone anywhere anytime. I still don't get it, but it's fun to watch.
I love you, little chicken,
Mama
Labels: Housekeeping
