21 months

Dear Milo,

What the what. How did you get to be 21 months old? No really. So much of the past 21 months has been a blur. I'm already starting to think about your second birthday party.

This last month has been especially crazy. You have made such advances in your behavior and your language skills. And you have such a cute and funny personality.

You've suddenly become quite social with other kids. You play really well with other little boys. Today, at the grocery store you wanted to climb out of the cart to go play with another boy about your age. He tried to climb out too. His mommy and I had to strap you boys down. It was very cute.

You finally got to play later today with one of your friends from The Little Gym, and the two of you had a laugh riot playing together. You got a shiny new haircut during our play date today too. Afterwards, you were standing across the room. I called to you to get a better look at your hair. You turned toward me, and, with your new haircut, you suddenly looked a lot like your Uncle Jim when he was little.

Uncle Jim and Uncle Joe

Unfortunately, you were wore out from playing all afternoon and didn't want to pose for a good picture. But I am seeing a lot more of me and my family features in your little face. It's pretty cool and you're still really cute. So it's OK for you to look like anybody. As long as you're still you.

Can you see the resemblance?

Our second Christmas together was a ton of fun. You really got into opening presents. You really liked your new Meowsic kitty keyboard and your wooden train set.

The train was more fun out of the box.

You had your first (and hopefully not last) white Christmas. You love the snow and still want to play in the dirty piles that linger for a long time around here. (I don't let you!)

Trying to make a snow angel on Christmas Day

You've started mimicking words and sounds more and more so I've told Daddy he needs to work on cleaning up his language. One of our favorite games right now is what does the animal say. I ask, "What does the monkey say?" And you answer, "Oh oh ah." I ask, "What does the dinosaur say?" and you reply, "Rawr!" You have a pretty large repertoire now, including chicken, dog, cat, elephant and train conductor. It's awesome. And so are you.

Every day, even when I'm exhausted, even when I'm frustrated because you're frustrated, even when you don't do exactly what I ask of you, you make me laugh and smile. You make me proud to be your mom. You make me so happy.

I love you, baby. (Even if you aren't a baby any more.)

Love,
Mama

Daddy Talk: Plans and procrastination

Ambition without direction is nothing, or at least it has been that way with me. I have been trying to figure out what to do with my life for the last since forever. I jump from self-help thing to self-help thing but pretty much half ass it because I really can't dedicate my time indefinitely. I think I figure if I get the right one I get to be rich, right? 

I was reviewing what I have done to this point in my life, one thing that bubbles up is not really sticking to things as much as I would like. I do a lot of things but master none. That's all things not Milo. When I look at him I have at least an 18-year plan for the little guy. He has college money coming, we will move to the good side of town for his education, I have plans for his first car -- all sorts of plans for the guy that I move forward on. I am not sure what the difference is with planning for him and planning for myself. With him, I just do. Mostly.

I look at my life and think that I have time to get my things accomplished but when I look at my son I know that to hit those milestones, I have to be prepared. I don't know why it doesn't work so much the other way. I know that my parents didn't really plan things out for me. Any choices they made seemed to mostly go with the flow, as it were. They just dealt with things as they came. I know that it left a lot up to me, and I really didn't handle it well. Even though they pushed me to get good grades they didn't help prepare me for what happened after the good grades.

I want to give Milo that and more. So much more.