Frogs in my bed!

Mike here. Just wanted to document recent events for posterity.

Lately, Milo has been getting up in the middle night and coming to our room with a reoccurring nightmare. He says there are frogs in his bed. There has been a few times that we have heard him shriek in the middle of the night. Meg was telling me as I was starting my job in NC, Milo had a few of these similar nightmares in Toledo and he was inconsolable. Recently, he has been calmly walking into our room and informing us at 400am that there are frogs in his bed. We usually are able to scare the frogs away and put him back to bed.

It is sorta interesting because he is not inherently afraid of frogs themselves. Meg and Milo recently went to the natural history museum in Raleigh, and they had a reptile and amphibian display which included frogs. Milo apparently touched and handled every one of the animals they had on display. Also, our neighbors in Toledo had some concrete sculptures on their porch that were frogs doing human activities, such as reading a paper or smoking a pipe. Milo would often talk to the sculptures when he passed by them, and would offer them his favorite cars.

The other funny thing is the other day he woke up from a nap and told me there was fish in his bed. I asked which fish were in his bed, and he told me an anglerfish and a pufferfish was in his bed looking at him. I don't know if you have seen pictures of either, but both species are pretty freaky looking to me. I asked him if he was scared, but Milo told me they were friendly anglerfishes and pufferfishes, and they weren't bothering him.

Associations...

As mentioned in the last entry, Milo's getting pretty good at making connections with random things in his life. This morning he was in fine form...

We're back in the habit of going to the library for new books, and Milo picked a good one, called "Toot, toot, zoom" about a fox named Pierre who drives his little red car over a mountain to find a friend, and in the process picks up a goat, sheep, and bear who all end up being his friends. While I was dealing with my own mountain of dishes this morning, Milo had picked out a little red wooden car and was "toot, toot, zoom!"ing it around the kitchen floor. I turned and asked him what he was doing, and he said "it's the little red car like in "toot, toot, zoom!"

Then he went to his train table for a bit. One of his new favorite items is a suspension bridge, and after catching a little bit of a cartoon about the Golden Gate Bridge the other day, I asked him what his bridge looked like, and we talked about the Golden Gate Bridge on Little Einsteins. Little Einsteins is kinda hoity-toity for a cartoon, if you ask me, using classical music, famous art work, and landmarks from around the world, but after this conversation, I have new respect. I asked Milo if he knew where the Golden Gate Bridge was, and he said, "by Coit Tower." What? What's Coit Tower? "It's by the Golden Gate Bridge." Eh? Over to the computer, and as I'm sure any of you more familiar with San Francisco than me know, Coit Tower is a landmark in San Fran's Telegraph Hill neighborhood. You're right, buddy! Do you know where Coit Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge are? "By the redwood trees." Uh, yeah... Finally, I told him, all those things are in San Francisco. "Yeah! San Frisisco!" My kid's already reminding me of all the things I don't know.

Four generations...

We named Milo for Mike's dad's side of the family. Mike's grandpa is Milo Khan Schroeder, Mike's dad is Milo Lawrence Schroeder, and because he never liked his name as a kid, Mike's dad (Larry) named Mike, Michael Lawrence Schroeder, affectionately known as M. Lawrence the second by a couple of us McGrail women. Mike and I decided to go with family tradition, and when we asked Larry if this was okay that we name his grandson the name he never liked, and he simply said, "he can have it." We were lucky enough to grab this picture of all 4 generations of Milos and pseudo-Milos this summer...

In case I forget...

Loving how Milo's vocabulary is expanding all the time. And before I forget any more, wanted to jot down a few recent favorites.

"Hold Mommy and Daddy's hands?" as we're going for a walk. "We're all best friends!"

"Where's Santa?" Thanks to an entirely too generous family, our Christmas went on for well over a week, and now Milo doesn't understand where Santa has gone.

"I see a symbol!" What's the symbol, buddy? "It's a cross, it's a symbol for Jesus!" This one still gets me. We had a chat about crosses at church, now whenever he sees a cross on a steeple, this is our conversation. And now he's added, "What are the people doing in there? They're praying."

"I see those power lines! Just like in Hot Air Henry!" When we were in MN, there are significantly less trees surrounding the roads and you can see telephone lines and powers lines that much more. He was asking what they were, so I was trying in really simple terms to tell him about electricity getting to our houses by this lines, called power lines, and he goes, "oh, like in Hot Air Henry." So matter-of-factly. I forget that it just takes a good book reference and we're all good.

His new idiosyncrasy is plurals. He adds an additional "s" or "es" at the end of things that are already plural. Like "shoeses" or "coacheses" (what trains pull). Quirky.

Our ultrasound pictures of the new baby are on the fridge by the back door, and whenever we go outside he says "there's the baby in mommy's belly."

We've been praying before we go to sleep, and generally I ask who he wants to pray for, he goes through his list, and we pray. What I love about this is usually the front-runners are always the same, Grammie, TomTom, Nana, Booka, and Jake (guess cousin Jake needs a lot of prayer ;), but the others eb and flow more naturally. Maybe the simple mind of a 2yearold, maybe the moving of the spirit, but depending on who we've been talking about or seeing, or for no reason at all. Aunts and uncles and cousins often make the list several times a week, and tonight, without any natural reason I knew, Grandma Sue (my mom's mom) and Grandma Julie and Grandpa Milo (Mike's dad's parents).

EDIT: I forgot another great one the Mike reminded me of. One of Milo's new favorite movies is the new Winnie the Pooh, and while trying to open a couple of particularly well taped Christmas presents, Milo muttered under his breath, "oh stuff 'n' fluff." I love the he picked up on and used in the appropriate context the expletive of Pooh. Cracks me up.

And since I mentioned them above, I should probably post the ultrasound pics, huh? These were taken when I was about 21 weeks along. Mike knows the sex of the baby, but I'm still digging the surprise, so if you somehow find out through the grapevine, just don't tell me :) Everything's looking great, we're all good and healthy. Baby's due May 1st, but if I don't labor spontaneously before then, we'll have a scheduled c-section just to be careful since Milo was a c-section.