Great Thaw Weekend

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm done with winter. Finally, I live in a place with a real winter and I'm delighted, of course. But something about a bad stomach flu followed almost immediately by a head cold (both affecting the whole family, by the way) within three weeks makes me over-eager for Spring. Or at least for a temporary respite. Happily, we got to soak up some Vitamin D this weekend! It was in the 50s and low 60s! And I was not, this time, enraged but humbly grateful.

We started Saturday with a walk to Price House, one of my favorite Blacksburg finds. We documented our trip with the Nickoloffs in November, but this place has become so important to us I'll share a few more shots:

Number one current Miles obsession: COLORING!!!! But an adult has to help or he gets kind of emotional. It's very curious.

I did a small puppet show for him, much to his delight.

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Price House is expanding its collection of live animals (as well as the taxidermied you see pictured). Two new turtles! We both found it soothing to watch them punch each other with their webby little arms.

Coloring is serious business.

So much art to make, so little time!

Click on the picture and see if that doesn't look like an appealing place to run around! Miles gets so excited anytime we go anywhere that's less cluttered than it is at home and he can really get up a run.

Back amongst the clutter, Miles pursues another favorite occupation: cornering and harassing the cat.

Grendel's fuze is getting low.

Unfortunately, none of us realized how low. Grendel went on to punch Miles and hiss at him quite alarmingly later. That's the first time he's behaved aggressively toward Miles, and the latter was devastated. We had a long cuddle session and a talk about Giving Cats Space and how Kitty Still Loves You and Kitty Doesn't Know Better. By evening, though, Miles was up to the same tricks. We're watching a bit more closely now, though, don't worry.

Rogue cat contemplates his next act of evil.

Sunday it got to 61 DEGREES! REALLY! NO LIE!

So naturally, we went to the duck pond.

The noise a duck makes according to Miles underwent some serious evolution while we were there.

Oh NOW I get it! Quack QUACK! It all just clicked!

Half of the pond looks like this...

...While the other half is still frozen. It was still January, after all.

On the agricultural studies part of campus. Experiments are run on these cows.

Ask me sometime what I've been learning in Animal Nutrition. Just make sure you haven't eaten recently.

Miles has been growing by leaps and bounds. Next post should contain "18 month Stats" (though visit is occurring at nearly 19 months because we kept having to cancel due to illnesses and work schedules). Here, however, is a short list of skills Miles has acquired:

-Knowing almost all alphabet letters (darn you, Q and C!)

-Singing along with selected words of songs, almost matching pitch

-Beginning to identify the colors of things. Yellow is his favorite.

-Put words together, at times "More 'Nana, Peez!" "Wabbit, peez!" "Papa weed! (read)" etc.

-Calling friends and family by name. He can name his caretakers at daycare and several/most of the children there, and does decently well remembering who is Mamaw (Grandma) and TaTa (Tita, Auntie Mic) etc. His own name is still MaMa. We're working on this.

-Naming his lovies: Woworm, Wabbit, Eer (Eeyore), and Burr (Bear) and requesting them

-Building stacks of blocks

-Kicking balls

-Putting puzzles together

And more. It seriously seems to be more every day.

Sometime I'll post about the tantrums, though. ;-)