Early reader

Miles has been able to recognize signs on stores for at least a year or more now. He knows when we are at Fresh and Easy, Costco, Home Depot, Smiths etc by the logos and locations more than actually being able to read. But yesterday he actually read his first sign at a building. We were going in the rear entrance we never go into at the movie theater at Aliante to see Puss in Boots. He looks up above the door and starts to sound out the one word posted large. Cuh, cuh, sssss, sssss, eheheh, no, no, no. CASINO!! "mommy, that sign says Casino". And it did. Not a logo or anything, just some letters making a word over the door.
I don't know whether to be proud or shame.

Miles turns 4!!

Wow! I'm lying in bed with insomnia and realizing that at it's 5:12am PT and at 8:32ET Miles, you were born a whole four years ago already. You are safely asleep in your bedroom and ieagerly anticipating your birthday party later today.
You have been counting down the days before your party on your fingers and saying "ok, so, 1,2,3,4 ok, 4 more sleeps till my birthday". So last night before you went to bed you were SUPER excited. You also promised me you wpuld take a nap beforr your party today.
I was lucky to be able to spend the whole day with you yesterday and you were very helpful in getting everythung ready for the party. You worked at blowing up balloons, sweeping the back porch, cleaning out your playhoise, packing up toys, filling the pinata, baking your chocolate cake from scratch and carving pumpkins for decorations!! Yes, even as a small boy you were able to set aside fun and do the work to prepare for even bigger things tomorrow.
You have a cool Spiderman costume and I already had your birthday CD made for weeks now so you know the words to the Spiderman song and a good bit of the others. It is a highlight of my day to sing with you in the car on the way to and from school.
So what have you accomplished in your 3 rd year? You love school. Prefer it to just staying home! You learned to ride a bike without training wheels in May 2011 in Germany with your Uncle Duane and Eva and their kids, you travelled to Europe TWICE this year. Spent 2 weeks in Germany in May then 7 weeks in Suffolk England from July 20-Sept 11. Your best friend is Lorelei Lott and she has already told her mom that she is going to marry you. She tried to marry you a month ago but you didn't want to because she only had a butterfly ring and you really wanted a green one because that is your favorite color.
You are around 105cm and weigh 41 pounds. You love to dress in your Addidas Tracksuit, your Spiderman hoodie that talks when you push a button ( it says "it's web swingin time!"), you love wearing "fast running shoes". You proclaim that you are "the worlds best backward walker" - and you havent fallen yet. You made an amazing painting of a duck floating on water with blue sky last week at school after a long time of showing no interest in drawing or paint or art of any kind. Your teacher Mrs Stevenson said it was very advanced work for your age.
You are very well liked at school and at home. Your personality is a combination of happy and competitive. You love sports and are taking lessons for swimming, gymnastics and toddler ninjas. You also love riding your bike.
You are a bit vain. You love checking yourself out in the mirror and smiling at yourself and also practicing making an intimidating face. You are currently trying to figure out what things are funny. So you will tell knock knock jokes. You also will watch a sitcom with me that you totally dont understand like Big Bang Theory and laugh along hysterically with the laugh track which makes me laugh hysterically too till we are both laughing along at whatever the laugh track says is funny, its so fun watching TV with you!
Is there any downside to being Milesy Boy? So far I cant see any. Your future is bright my son and I am so curious to see how your life unfolds and I will be there with you to guide and protect you however I can. Love always, Mom. P.s it's now 8:51 ET, you are 4 years and 19 minutes. Happy Birthday!!!

Lakenheath England

We are visiting England as Norris has a TDY here. Miles and I took a Virgin Airways flight and landed in Gatwick on July 21. We are here until September 11, 2011.
I feel terrible that I never even blogged my trip to India in February with my parents. And also never blogged about Miles and I going to Hamburg, Germany to visit my brother Duane and his sweet wife and kids in May for 2 weeks for my birthday.
We have been loving England despite initial hardships in housing. Now we have a nice 1 bedroom apartment and feel very settled and in a nice routine. Miles is taking swimming lessons 5 days a week and that is great because it's in the morning and once it's done we head out to explore some little village for the day.
We will go to visit my brother Duane in Germany again end of this month and are trying to spend lots of family time together.

5x7 Folded Card

Happy Day Cocoa Father's Day 5x7 folded card

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Gratitude

I found this blog while reading the NYT's Motherlode. Its http://dearmissaudrey.blogspot.com/. I got immersed im it and felt so much sadness for that family. The dad died when the little girl was only 24 months. It made me clear out any thoughts of self- pity or complaimimg that I tend to have. I have everything. Maslow's hierarchy of needs talks about basic survival as a start and it all goes up from there. I think Self-actualization is the place where I am always out of reach of and making myself miserable over. The idea of needing to lose weight and have a more successful career are true things but I make myself too unhappy over them and don't even put enough work into making happen.
In Miles news, he started taking the violin this month. His class is only 5 minutes from our house and he likes the teacher quite a bit. I was really ambivalent about signing him up for this. I'm excited for him to develop the ability to practice daily on something and feel the pride of achievement and learn the disciplime of persevering through difficult or boring things to reach a big goal. I'm concerned that I myself lack this skill and will have to learn it with him if he will be successful. I'm concerned that I'm turning into one of those underachieving mothers who put everything into their child to have them achieve what I could not. I'm trying to be aware of it.
He loves school and I feel proud of myself for letting him go and encouraging his independence and self-reliance. I often worry that his school is too play based and he is not "learning". But there are a lot of changes in his personality that I do admire. For example, his ability to express himself verbally quite charmingly and convincingly without pitching a fit. He already knows how to build a case for his request before you even know where he's going. He practically corners you into giving him his way.
For example, we have a veggie tales CD in my car that's not in Norris'. He named my car Hansitafam and Norris' car American Flag. I picked him up from school in my car which is an SUV, clearly different from Norris' sedan. I strap him in and we drive off. He asks me in his sweetest voice "mommy, is this your car Hansitafam or is this Daddy's car what we are driving in?". I think to myself 'why is he asking this, he knows its hansy, but I answer " we are driving in Hansitafam". He says "ok then, can I listen to my Veggie Tales CD because I know it is in this car". In the sweetest little voice ever. And I realize how I've been lawyered by a 3 year old.
I think often about how different Miles' upbringing is different from mine and am curious about how this will shape him. For one I had a large family of 6 and endless cousins and neighbors who to this day are still living in Trinidad exactly where I left them for the most part. I spent tons of time at church, never had a babysitter and even lived with the most consistent sunlight patterns ever. Sunup at 6 sundown at 6. I never experienced serious racism or being a minority as a child and knew people both wealthy and poor. I guess all these things are considered ideal conditions to raise a child. Miles has no extended family that live nearby. No church affiliation, no close family friends. Military life makes it hard to know people for any length of time. My guess is whenever we leave Las Vegas we won't know the people here or keep in touch with them 5 years out. But I remain grateful for the opportunity to be here and hopefully travel the world and have him experience other cultures. I think when he is older he may mourn not having some of the things I had which society says make an "ideal" childhood. And I'll help him cross that bridge when we get to it. But I think the biggest thing I can do to help him is to focus on gratitude and what we do have. And hope that Norris and I are around for a long time to get him on his way in life.