So, now that the guest room moved into the basement we had an entire empty room to set up as new baby room. (More on the brand new nursery soon in a separate post.) Instead of keeping Milo’s room as a nursery and moving him into the new room, we decided that it would be better for him to stay in his old room for various reasons. First, there will be enough changes coming up for the poor little spoiled only-child. Secondly, he has grown to really love the tree I painted on the wall for him and says good night to it every evening. Thirdly, I just wanted to do something completely new for our new addition.

This is what Milo’s room looked like until now:

One change that was going to be inevitable for Milo has occurred a little sooner than expected. Since he figured out how to climb out of his crib a few weeks ago, we already had to move him to a real bed. Well, a real mattress that is. Until he becomes a less active sleeper we are keeping his new twin size mattress on the floor for safety reasons. He already tumbled out of it once, but was only startled, not hurt. Which is better than a fall from out of a crib.

The transition to his new bed went unexpectedly smoothly. Milo had already been wanting to lay down on the little pad in his play tent for the last couple of weeks, so all we had to do was slide the mattress right into the tent and he never wanted to go back to his crib. For the first couple of nights we kept the crib in his room – just in case. The good thing is that when Milo is tired, he really just wants to sleep. So all we have to tell him is to go to sleep and he will stay put on his mattress. That is still with the help of paci and blanki of course, but we will give him some more time with them. One step at a time.

Another change you might notice is that I did indeed take down the other way-to-high-therefore-useless shelf that came with Milo’s room. It has been unused and collecting dust for almost a year now, so there is my justification to get rid of it once and for all. Now the wall above his bed is kind of bland and definitely needs some nice art or other decoration bolted to it. I am thinking about a kite, bird or sun to go with his outdoor camping theme. Or I will build a bigger tent to span over his entire new bed.

Oh, and on an equally happy note I gotta tell you that the previously reported severe tantrum phase only lasted about a week or two. These days Milo is actually pretty happy and only occasionally gets upset when he can’t have an iPhone or paci. He seems to understand better what we explain to him and why he can’t do certain things. This probably goes together with his talking improving day by day and him being able to express himself better and better. I guess it still takes a lot of parental intuition and imagination, as well as English AND German knowledge to make sense out of what he says sometimes, but he just keeps happily chatting away and explaining the world to us.

Yesterday Milo and I went for our routine walk to the fire station where we usually have to wait for the fire trucks to come back. This time the fire trucks where there, but Milo still pointed to the bench and said: “Sit down wait”. Later when he wanted the neighbor’s boy to come play cars with him he said: “P(l)ay car Zach down”. Or he points at the elephant in his book and says: “Bfffff water” with a gesture of water spraying out of the elephants trunk. It’s sooooo cool to get to this stage where you can have almost real conversations and you get to actually hear what is going on in this little kid’s mind.

If I ever said before that Milo was becoming a big boy I was lying. Because he is a big boy now! I mean, look at this kid. He is not even 18 months old and totally keeping up with all his older buddies. He is running, climbing, jumping, doing forward rolls, singing, dancing, and talking non stop. While I am writing this I absolutely realize that it is pointless describing all of these cool things when I could just post some self-explanatory videos instead.

Unfortunately it isn’t quite that easy, cause that kid has a serious iPhone addiction and as soon as you pull the phone out to shoot a video Milo just drops whatever he is doing and there is no way captioning anything but a kid running towards the camera with both arms reaching for the magical device. Of course it is our fault that this mini person has the iPhone completely figured out by 17.5 months of age. It’s the curse of the clever telephone. Instead of reading a newspaper, we read the news on it. Instead of calling up friends at unsuitable times, we just post something on Facebook. Instead of getting a book at the library for advice, we google the heck out of the phone. So there we are – a really bad role model for Milo showing him that phones are the most desirable toy in the world.

Anyway, we still limit Milo’s phone usage to half an hour of videos and half an hour of games a day and so far it doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on him (except for his addiction problem). He is still developing ahead of his age group, has way more fun playing with older kids and talking the days away. Lately his words have become more defined. Instead of just doubling up the first syllable of every word (wa-wa for water, ba-ba for bath), he is now very clearly saying “water”, “juice”, “car”, etc. He understands pretty much everything we say in any of the three languages and communicates clearly what he wants. I gotta admit that I am guilty of letting him go through with things I should probably say no to, just because I find it so cute how he communicates them.

So, tomorrow I will attempt another video shoot of all those fun things he does and then hopefully update with some footage here.

Cheers!

Over the first few days of December Milo has totally gotten into the Christmas spirit. Or at least he appreciates all the extra fun things that were put up around the house. He is practicing his lungs by trying to blow out the advent wreath candles from a 4 foot distance. He runs towards the advent calendar first thing in the morning, hoping to find some sweet treats to replace his breakfast. So far he has gotten a few packs of raisins, one piece of chocolate (mega drool!), and some stickers. And one new car that he thought was very nicely parked behind the small door, so he put it right back.

On the morning of the 6th Milo got some bigger toys in his boots from St. Nicholas. He got lucky St. Nicholas was so generous because usually only good kids get something and recently Milo is going through this phase where he wakes us up a few times per night, hits his mom, and acts up for no good reason. Let’s take these toys as some motivation to be good from now on.

Do you remember the first time you got sick after moving out from home? How much it sucked not to have mama around anymore who could bring you tea to the bed, rub your back, cook some soup? Just when you don’t feel like doing anything at all, you have to lift your own butt out of bed and take care of your miserable sick self. Now this kind of misery gets taken to a whole other level when you add a young toddler to the equation. When not only you have to take care of yourself, but also make sure that kid’s diapers still get changed, he is fed, and somewhat entertained.

After a minor scare when Milo couldn’t breathe well through his swollen throat last Friday, had his highest fever so far, and had to be taken to the urgent care clinic at night (diagnosed with strep throat and croup and a cold), he recovered really quickly and left it to his parents to fight the virus for the rest of the week. Pretty much as soon as his temperature went down to normal two days later, the kid was up and about and happily chatting with his hoarse voice. Believe me, it was a big relief to see him happy and getting better again. But then my throat started to feel like sandpaper, my sinuses were swollen shut, and that overall body ache made me feel like more like crap than a functional human being.

At first I was still trying to go to work and at least make money with half of the brain function that I had left, but after two days I had to give up that idea as well. And I also had to give up the idea of being a fully functional mom for a few days. Usually I like to read books to my son, take him for walks, explain the world, sing songs, come up with games played with household items just to make sure that he learns as much as he possibly can. Only when my voice almost completely left me, I finally gave up that ideal for a day. Milo watched as much TV in a day as he could stand. He had to come up with games himself, find things to play with, while I was just passively watching him. He ate the same chicken noodle soup for lunch and dinner two days in a row. And guess what, he was fine with it.

One thing we are all looking forward to is getting out of the house again. I never knew how isolating it is to have a sick child / friends with children who you don’t want to get sick as well. We miss our friends, play dates, and the fresh air outside. Thanks to everyone who sent us well wishes.

Oh, and since Milo’s nose-blowing-rate went down to once per hour and mine down to every 30 minutes, I think that we can declare this virus to be defeated now! Weekend, here we come!

Who knew that parenthood could be so much fun? Just when you thought that your baby smiling, laughing, crawling, babbling is sooo awesome, it gets even better. It’s just so much fun seeing this little guy growing up that I still can’t get over it and catch myself frequently staring at him in awe or laughing out loud over one of the funny things that he does.

As we all know, Milo is not so much of a sit-n-looker, but a hyperactive doer. He still barely ever sits still. Now that he is walking probably less than ever. He just started walking at 11 months and now he is already running and chasing us through the house. He climbs up and down the couch, dances, jumps without lifting the feet, and would walk/fall down the stairs forward if we let him.

If I had to take a wild guess at what Milo could do as a job later, I would probably say something handy. His fine motor skills are super precise. The morning cereal gets scooped up with the spoon and into the mouth almost without spills. The screws in the play work bench get unscrewed with the play screw driver like no big deal. And have I mentioned before that my 14 month old boy knows how to use the iPhone to a point where it gets dangerously close to sending emails to work contacts?

And he learns processes so quickly. These days you can’t do anything without fearing that Milo will copy it immediately. Yes, fearing. Like don’t let him see how to turn on the gas stove. Or how to push buttons on the dishwasher. But yes, let him see how we swipe the floor and how to wipe the table with a rag. The broom is his best friend right now. The other day we went to the animal farm where I put a quarter in the food machine, got some grains out on the bottom, and held them up in my hand for the sheep to eat. After watching this whole process just once, guess what Milo was doing for the next half hour: Feeding imaginary food to the sheep.

With all this alertness going on I shouldn’t be surprised that Milo is already using a bunch of “words” consistently and understands a lot of what we say. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Considering that he has to process 3 languages on a daily basis. My brain has a 2 language maximum at any given time.

Milo understands the words for daily activities like eat, brush teeth, change diaper, put on shoes, turn off light, etc. in both english and german. And sometimes he will even follow those requests. The language coming out of his mouth is still mostly gibberish except for a few words that he uses consistently in the correct context in one or the other language. His first word was “Hi!” and he still uses it very frequently. Another favorite is “Ja” – German for yes. He will answer it to almost any question you ask him that he is okay with. If he doesn’t want he will not give any answer. If he doesn’t want something at all, he will say “no, no, no”! He also says “maaa” which means more/mehr and works in both languages. His latest word is short, but very useful for Mister Engineer: “A!” – short for “an” (means on) which he uses whenever he wants something that makes sounds, lights, etc. turned on.

See for yourself:

August 12, 2011. The day of Milo’s first birthday ever! It started with Milo waking up screaming at 5 AM and then me melting down because I just couldn’t take those 5 AM wake times anymore. Afterwards we both went back to bed and at least Milo was happy when he woke up the second time. I think this is the only memory I have from my little one’s actual birthday.

But luckily we got another chance the next day. We both got plenty of sleep and had a great party. The weather was a little unstable, but who cares. We just moved the whole shebang indoors. Yay for our house which fits approximately 15 kids and 15 adults and still has some room for everyone to run around like crazy. Milo had a blast and it seemed like everyone else had as well. Thanks everyone for coming and bringing so much joy to our little boy’s life! Milo loves all the toys he got and every morning he has a hard time deciding what to play with first. Peace and Love, The Trans.