Mom and Miles Dance

Miles and mommy love to dance together

Miles turns 2

Whew! It's been a whirlwind. Miles' birthday was a few weeks ago and I am only now getting it posted. Here are some highlights for a little boy's second birthday.


Grandma Jones came to visit for Miles' birthday. Here they are enjoying the aquarium

Miles with a few of his presents. For a few days after opening presents all he wanted to do was "play presents".

Here he is with his art studio. Thank you Ikea.

What's birthday without a cake? Here, Mom and Dad try to teach Miles how to blow out candles.

Digging In!!

Traveling with a Toddler

This weekend we went away for a night. Steve had a work thing to go to so the hotel room was free. I volunteered to spend the evening with Miles. The pictures above was Miles and I relaxing early in the evening before everything unraveled into chaos. "What a deal for me" I thought. Miles and I took a train in to town, walked around for a while until we found a place to eat and then came back to the hotel room. It was close to 8:00 pm so that was a great time to put Miles to bed. I was so excited to put him down and then lay in bed and read. I wouldn't have a cat jumping on me and I could spend the time completely alone.

What I got was a screaming toddler. I knew he would not like being put to bed in unfamiliar surroundings, but I was sure he would settle down after about an hour. That did not happen. He cried for an hour. I then picked him up and turned on the TV (Miles never gets to watch TV so it is very exciting for him when he does). Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to get to the TV so all I had was the free videos. I first picked a review of a childrens' movie. That lasted 5 minutes. I needed something that lasted longer. Next I chose a workout video (I didn't have many choices). The workout video was targeting abs and since I plan to get into a swim suit this summer I thought it would be a great learning opportunity. Well it turned out to be a pretty interesting 20 minute work out video so I thought I would give it a try. I put Miles back in his crib and watched it again, this time while participating. While I was working out, Miles was in his crib throwing everything out saying, "Kitty out. Giraffe out. Blankie out. Other blankie out. Miles out?" followed by him banging on the wall and opening and closing closet doors very loudly.

After finishing my workout, which was pretty intense, I moved the crib so Miles could not touch any walls. I then turned out all the lights so it was pitch black in the room. At this point, it was around 10:00 pm. Miles started screaming as loud as he could. I was tired and grumpy and did not last very long. I picked Miles up and again turned on the TV. This time, I found a free video called "Sleep" that showed calming images while playing calming music. We watched it three times before Miles finally fell asleep in my arms. At that point, it was 11:00 pm. I was exhausted, and Steve was on his way back to the hotel. I didn't get any quiet time to myself, I was all wound up and my muscles were aching so I didn't sleep well, then Miles wakes up promptly at 7:30 am.

Lessons learned, don't expect relaxation when traveling with toddlers and keep your expectations low when it comes to "me" time.

Jammie Dance

Don't you just love pajamas? They are so cozy, there's no buttons or zippers or anything constricting. If you have a good pair it's like wearing your favorite blanket. Growing up, my mom called them "jam jams" which, to me, made them so much more special. I have tried to instill that feeling in to my child.

At the request of a friend who stalks my blog, but never leaves comments I have posted a video of Miles getting excited for his jammies. It's the favorite time of day for everyone in the family.

Kids are cuter covered in food

As the title says, kids are so funny learning how to feed themselves. Here, Miles is figuring out spagetti and pudding.


Miles found the spagetti noodles as fun to play with as they were to eat

There's always room for play time

Chocolate is serioius business

HE WALKS!!!

Today, Miles' turns 14 months. Don't worry, we didn't celebrate, but I thought I would post a video of Miles trying to walk. The incessant squeeking you hear in the background are Miles' shoes. The shoes are designed to squeek whenever he steps so parents can keep tabs on where their kids are. The funny thing is, I put them on him about a week ago to encourage him to walk and and he kept looking for what was making the fun squeeking noise. I guess we all have to get used to new developments.

Learning to Walk

So Miles is 13 1/2 months old now and he still isn't walking with consistency. Wanting to have the most wonderful child ever who excels at everything, this is very perplexing. Anyway, we took this video about a week ago where I am trying to encourage Miles to start walking. Since this video was shot, he has made leaps and bounds in the walking department. It makes me realize that Miles has a little bit of my personality in him. When I saw him learning to crawl he attacked that task in the same way he is learning to walk. He studied it, watched others, learned all the steps individually, thought about it, and then feeling confident that he would succeed, he tries it. How do I know he does this, he has been pacing furniture since October, he has been practicing standing on his own for awhile, and he stood up with out the help of any furniture or people on Sunday. Next up will be a video of him walking on his own.

Miles' Birthday

Miles' first birthday was on Friday February 12th so we had a party for him on Saturday.

Miles plays with his friend Emilia

Miles opens presents. Among others, he got a tie for church and I made him a book of activities

Here is the cake. It was a simple yellow cake with chocolate frosting. A dinosaur candle topped it off. Miles loved all the attention he was getting.

We put a piece of cake in front of him, but he is always skeptical of new food so I needed to feed him a little bit before he decided to go for it.

The cake has been destroyed, but he is still going.

Happy Halloween!

Since it is Miles' first halloween, we thought we would make a big deal out of it. Actually, his school goes trick-or-treating every year to the local businesses and since we are first time parents, we took billions of pictures. Here are a few of the good ones.

One of Miles favorite teachers Nikki

Miles and Adriana (bat girl) check each other out.

Trick or treating at the four seasons

We loved the Elmo costume

Class photo

And here are some pumpkins we carved with friends one night after Miles went to bed.

Bubbles bring brothers together

Steve bought Miles some bubbles yesterday to play with and Scooter joined in on the fun. Watch the video of Miles and Scooter enjoying the bubbles together.