Miles-blogging #23

   
Mr. Miles was twenty months old two days ago. He had a couple of weeks in England in March which he enjoyed very much, particularly a rally of thousands of Minis at Brooklands Aviation and Motor Museum in Weybridge. He wanted to get in the driving seat of every car in sight. He travels well by air and I think he now understands what's going on whenever he gets on a flight, as he loves to see planes and particularly helicopters passing over our house (there's an aviation training centre nearby). He's at his absolute cutest when he's pulling his Thomas the Tank Engine bag behind him when he gets on a 747, and he simply has to look out the window during take off and landing as it seems to fascinate him.

His language skills have developed a little more with an understanding of the most common plurals in English, ie. adding a simple 's' means more than one. We also try to get him to count to ten, although he doesn't actually ever think accurately in such high numbers and he takes a couple of shortcuts, usually "1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10". It's now possible to have a simple conversation, usually based around what he wants to do. As this involves toys or watching The Gruffalo DVD five times a day or reading a few of his dozens of books it's pretty straightforward for most of the day, until we get to the complex negotiations that involve getting him into the shower and to bed by around 8pm. There's some bargaining that has to be done and this seems to be providing him with an understanding of give and take. It's taken him a week to adjust back to local time with a six hour time change and this has meant he often hasn't gone to sleep until very late, although sometimes he surprises us by saying he want to go to bed before we're expecting it... then stays awake ’til midnight anyway. This leaves the two of us a bit frazzled in the evenings but at least we can then get up relatively late in the mornings.

Whatever. He's great fun and a lovely kid to look after, and not really any trouble at all unless he gets to empty my bookshelves – or the fridge – all over the floor without us looking.