About Miles

Miles is currently 2.5 years old.

His favorite thing in the world right now are "bongs", his word for "robots".

We have several robots but his two favorite are our Roomba and our Scooba. Miles will literally wake up in the morning and his first words will be "Bongs. Where they go?"

These robots come with "virtual walls" that you can position to confine the robot to a particular area within your house while they clean. Miles only needed to see me use them once and now he completely understands them. He will, on his own, go into our laundry room and push out both robots, go back and get the virtual walls, put them in roughly the right position for cleaning the dining room area, turn on both robots, and stand back and watch both robots quite intently. (He sometimes dances while watching the robots.)

Sometimes when the robots are done, he'll help me put them away. I tell him they need to "rest" but most of the time he cries and cries and won't be happy until I leave them be and allow him to push them around the house until he decides that he's ready to do something else.

I have seen Miles play with the two robots for easily two hours in a row with no let up in intensity or enjoyment on his part. I have a feeling that Robots will always be a big part of his life!

Other things about Miles:

He received cars of various shapes and sizes for xmas along with a Thomas the Train duplo set, he loves all of them plus a scooter he received for his last birthday, so in addition to robots, he's really into vehicles right now.

He also loves the moon and if he happens to catch sight of the actual moon, he will break your eardrum yelling "MOOON!" and pointing to it. This usually happens in the car where he can attempt to break the eardrums of all of his family members at once.

He calls Lilja "La La" and calls Max "Da Da". We're not sure why he calls Max that but he came up with it all on his own. He calls me "Pa Pa" so he's doesn't know that "Da Da" is another way that kids say "Dad"; no, to him, "Da Da" means Max. His word for airplane is "hum"; a word he devised, I think, based on the sound they make as they go by in the sky. When we are outside, Miles is super attentive and will yell "HUMMM!!!!" as loud as he can at the first hint that there's a plane in the air. Miles's generic word for animals is "ga ga". He recently learned to assign the word "cow" to actual cows and so they are now "cows" and not "ga gas". But any new animal that he encounters is called a "ga ga". When he wants something, Miles says "I want to"... that phrase is clearly a chunk that means "I want" because he'll say things like "I want to bongs" to indicate that he wants to play with our robots.

Miles understands many more words than he speaks. Unlike his sister, who was saying short sentences at 18 months and repeated every word ever spoken to her as a toddler, Miles is reluctant to say new words and when I ask him to say a word that he isn't one hundred percent confident on, he'll instead wave at the object (if present) and just say "hi". So, earlier today, he pointed at something and said "What's That?" and I responded "That's a chair; can you say 'chair'?" And he just waved and said "hi" to the chair.

He realized just recently that he can use chairs to get up to places that he normally can't reach. We've had to become extra vigilant during this "phase", as its easy for him to get to rather precarious positions if left unattended for more than five minutes!

I read to Miles every night before he goes to bed and now I am no longer able to finish the story. Instead of passively listening, he is now very active pointing at everything and asking "What's that?". His favorite book is easily Good Night Moon, because Max loves the moon and he loves loves loves to look for the mouse that hides on every color page of that book.

Miles has been rolling along with the holidays this year without really understanding what's going on. "Oh, there's a tree in our house now! Ok!" "Oh, there are strange looking boxes under the tree. Ok!" "Oh, we are suddenly tearing the strange boxes open this morning. Ok!" I suspect he'll be in the game next year fully understanding what's going on with the help of his older siblings.

All in all, Miles is an inquisitive, happy boy who always smiles (except in pictures) and is also unbelievably cute, although, if pressed, I will admit to some bias on the matter. And, now I think I've captured a snapshot of what he's like at the age of 2.5!

Ken