Another awesome month with my little guy! I’m sure this will come as no surprise, but I am so proud of him and in awe at all of his skills and comprehension.

Sleeping Through The Night

This will probably come as a complete SHOCK, but Milo is (more or less) sleeping through the night. After obsessing about this for so long, several months ago I resigned myself to believing that he wouldn’t sleep through the night until he was 5 and just made peace with it.

What was happening:

Milo always wanted to drink a ton of milk before bed. And I let him because I assumed he was hungry. And then he would wake up every 2 hours all night long wanting more milk. And I continued to let him drink milk all night long because I assumed that his body needed it. After all, he’s kind of fallen off his growth chart and I didn’t want to take away a source of nutrition for him.

In my mind, I’ve become increasingly worried about his teeth and drinking milk all night long and it was driving me crazy thinking about all of the possible tooth decay that I was allowing to happen. At the same time, I was worried that taking away the nighttime milk would be AWFUL and a huge battle. So, I kept procrastinating.

And then, it occurred to me that we’re going to be taking a trip to visit Josh’s family in Arkansas mid-May and that it would be great if Milo didn’t need to drink milk all night long during the trip. Once that thought occurred to me, I decided to stop the milk then and there.

That night, I explained he could drink milk before getting ready for bed, but that after we brushed his teeth, there would be no more milk until the morning and that he could have water if he was thirsty. Milo seemed to be ignoring me while I was explaining this. But when he woke up at his normal time wanting milk, I reminded him that there was no more milk at night, and he just went back to sleep and that was that.  He’s stopped waking up throughout the night, and basically just sleeps. It’s amazing.

It was absolutely the easiest transition we’ve made with Milo on anything. I have tried reducing his nightime feeds in the past, and was completely unsuccessful. So the fact that this was so easy suggests to me that he was finally just ready.

Words, Words, Words

Milo’s verbal expression continues to expand, though he is not very talkative.

Some of his new words this month include: goose, bear, egg, and go! He’s also saying “bee!” to refer to any insect.

Here’s a video of his One, Two, Three, Go! game. This is a thing they do at his school to get wiggles out inside when the weather prevents them from going outside.

Puzzles, Matching Shapes

This month, Milo suddenly is skilled at correctly assembling peg puzzles (both one-piece, and multi-piece jigsaw puzzles) as well as the shape-insertion toys. He’s been able to match shapes for a while, but actually getting them to line up so that they fit together has eluded him until recently.

Imaginative Play

He’s also doing imaginative play a lot more. There was a huge ‘kids consignment sale’ thing a few weeks ago and I bought Milo a brand new (but crazy cheap) toy kitchen set and he LOVES working in his kitchen. I also found a really cool Little People race track that he loves racing all of his different Hot Wheels down. And, we’ve been collecting realistic animal toys and he loves doing imaginative play with them. In particular, he likes to walk them around in groups (ie, all of the elephants together) and giving them drinks of water.

Potty Awareness

Another cool development is his increasing awareness of his biological functions. He is now aware of when he needs to poop and he always comes and tells me – – he points at his bum and says “poop.” He also knows how to pee – – at bathtime, the first thing he does when I place him into the bath, is to intentionally pee and watch in fascination. He’s had many moments during bathtime (before, during, or after bathtime) when he’s noticed himself peeing and now he’s figured out how to do it on purpose. I’m really glad he doesn’t have this same fascination with pooping; at least pee is relatively clean (especially compared to poop).

Sickness

Of course, it hasn’t all been rainbows and lollipops this month. Several weeks ago, Milo brought home a stomach flu and he was horribly sick with it for a full week. Amazingly, Josh didn’t get sick at all, but I sure did.

Treefort / Kidfort

As for the fun activities we’ve done, this past month featured the annual Treefort Music Festival (which is kind of a big deal) and we went to the ‘Kidfort’ portion of it. A guy had brought in a TON of cardboard boxes for kids to make forts with.

The photo below accurately captures Milo’s attitude during this adventure. He was really cranky and grumpy. In hindsight, this was exactly two days before his first vomiting session, so he was probably not feeling well. Poor guy!

He didn’t build a fort but he enjoyed going into the other forts. This particular fort he loved.

He had a lot of fun using chalk and coloring the walls of the fort.

Another successful fun moment was when a woman started waving a bubble wand around and several kiddos were joyfully chasing the bubbles.

However, our experience with the main reason for our being there was not successful. A ‘kindie’ rock band (indie rock for kids = kindie rock) was going to play a free show for kids and I was super excited for us to see them. I had visions of Milo dancing at the front with all the other kiddos, and just in general having an awesome time. Instead, we had to leave in the middle of the second song.

Bruneau Sand Dunes

Two weekends ago, we had an AWESOME family adventure to Bruneau Sand Dunes. This is the second time we’ve taken Milo here and it was even more fun than the first time. We went this past summer, around his first birthday when Grandma was in town, and Milo could toddle and crawl around well enough, but now that he’s older and more skilled at walking it was so much fun!

We also went to a different part of the dunes, one that was more kid-friendly and found a great spot to hang out. It was right next to one of the smaller dunes and we could easily hike up and sled down.

When we sledded down with Milo, we just went to the halfway point. But on our own, we would hike to the very top and could get going REALLY fast. At one point, Josh was sledding down so fast that he actually tore the sled in half.

The sand dunes are great, in part, because Milo loves playing in the sand. Josh dug a big hole and Milo had fun playing in it.

Just another shot of that.

I like this shot of me because I was truly just standing there being normal, and I look like a super mom.

Another shot of Milo having fun playing in the sand. The sand is SO SOFT and we could just run around in our bare feet.

Also, you’ll notice Milo’s fair skin…. I’ve been really struggling with getting him to wear a sunhat and sunglasses. When he was a baby, I always had him in a hat outside, but now I cannot get him to wear a hat at all. Rest assured that he was covered in a thick layer of sunscreen, but I’m still working on the hat/sunglasses issue.

Walking around in bare feet, exploring.

We even flew a kite! It was so windy that getting it to fly without just slamming into the dune was a challenge.

Easter

And Easter happened. The first photo in this post is at the Easter Egg Hunt they hosted a Milo’s school. They apparently did some explaining to the kids about hunting for Easter eggs, because they all knew exactly what they were doing.

Here’s a video from his school’s Easter Egg Hunt.

And then on Easter Sunday, we hosted an Easter Egg Hunt with some friends. It was awesome how SERIOUS Milo was about finding as many eggs as he could.

It was really a fun gathering we had. Here is Milo and his friend Leif playing in our sensory table.

And here is a video of Milo throwing water on the ground and saying ‘no.’

Josh crawled through the tunnel and Milo was very amused.

I went bananas creating a fun space for the kids to play.

Other Funz

We also had a fun playdate with our moms & tots group. In the photo below, Milo had been pushing this girl (June) around in the car and it was so adorable. Of course, he stopped doing that right as I took a photo, but whatever.

And here’s Milo playing in my carrot bed. I have a video of him that I will post on my upcoming garden update.

The sandbox that I got for free from a neighbor has been a big hit.

We even had a warm enough weekend this month to bring the pool out. I just put about a 2 inch depth of water in it. And since I cannot get Milo to wear a sunhat, I strategically placed this umbrella to shade him.

And on one of our after work & school playtimes, we went to a park and there was a dump truck and an excavator that we got to look at.

Another after work & school playground experience.

Celebration & Steam Train

Yesterday, we had an awesome ‘Mommy Saturday.’ In the morning, we went to a free ‘Kids Celebration’ event at the Botanical Gardens (which are within walking distance of our house) as part of National Child Abuse Awareness Month.

Milo got to see an ambulance up close.

And even got to go inside and explore the ambulance.

There were a TON of fun activities and educational things for kids, and I only took a very small number of photos. We spent most of our time here, where there were fun things to crawl on.

Also, notice how in the next two photos, Milo is wearing a sunhat! I was able to get him to wear it for almost an entire hour!

It was a lot of fun for both of us. After we were done with the activities, I pushed Milo around in the stroller and we did a nice tour of the gardens. He seemed to really enjoy looking at all of the different garden spaces. In particular, there is a really nice high desert landscape space that winds up into the foothills that is so peaceful. I’m thinking of getting a membership to the Botanical Gardens because it’s such a nice place to wander around. We’ve taken Milo to many events there, and members get in free, and I think it would be nice to go there and just enjoy the gardens without all of the crowds.

After his afternoon nap, we went to the train depot and got to watch as an historic steam train came into town. As the train was coming in, I had Milo on my shoulders so he could see the train better, while trying to take a video. And it was much louder than I had anticipated, so I had to cut the video short so that I could cover Milo’s ears.

But it was really cool. Here is a photo with the train behind us. As you can see, Milo LOVES being in big crowds.