Miles zipped his jacket today. First time ever by himself.
A year ago he called this part of his jacket a yipper. Today he called it a sippah.
Proud. Both of us.

Why Christmas is only one day?
I struggle with the same question every year.
I did my best to be direct with my four-and-a-half-year-old.
I told Miles that winter is the name of the entire cold weather season, but Christmas is the celebration of Jesus's birthday.
Who's Jesus?
God's son?
You mean God got married to a girl, a beautiful girl? I didn't know dat. Are you laughing or crying?
Both, Miles. You are so delicious.

 

This year, more than ever.

"We play Tonka, I mean honka?"
I had just picked him up from nursery school. I assumed Miles wanted me to play a truck game with him, and I was not enthused. Fortunately, I asked my son to explain the rules.
"Tonight, we light a candle, give a tiny present and then the second night, we light another candle, and give another tiny present, and then..."
Hanukkah!! Yes of course, Miles, I'd love to.

"We shop at Toys Near Us, please?"

Ma! I just touched Charlie's pimples!
Nipples, Miles. Although they look like pimples.

You have sparkles on your face in summer! See in this picture of you!
Say it again, Miles?
Um, sprinkles? Brown spots?
Do you mean freckles?
Yes!

On our travels through Massachusetts today,
we stopped and stocked up on groceries
at Trader Joe's.
While pushing his kiddy-size shopping cart,
Miles invoked the name of one of my dearest friends.
"Is the name of this store Mary Jo's?"

Miles of Bed Time Stories

I was in bed, writing in my journal, when Miles approached me and requested,
"Can you write about what I not did today?"
I took dictation as fast as I could.

I go fishing, I fell on a rock and I got my head like a boo-boo.
I went on a hike with Angela. I saw a bear and I runned.
A shark tried to kill me and he got me. Somebody like a fisherman hit me in the face. Then a swordfish got me in the butt.
I fell in the ocean and I drowned and drowned, then some lobsters fly me in the sky and I called the seagulls and they ate the lobsters. Then other lobsters catch me and take me safe to shore.
Then a dinosaur, a T-rex, shot fire at me and hit me in the eye, YIKES.
Then a dragon bit off my arm. A baby dragon tried to pull his mommy dragon off me.
Then the baby said, "Live with me" and we happy after end.

We saw a guy on TV who had some serious body art on his biceps.
Miles said, "I like that man's stamp-toos."

Miles and I watched The Chronicles of Narnia last night. I should have waited ten years.
We cried though the last 30 minutes. This morning Miles asked to never rent such a sad movie again.
But he also asked what kidnapping was. (In the film, the faun Tumnus tells Lucy he's kidnapping her.)
Once I defined child abduction, I told my four-year-old if anyone stole him or his brother, that I'd look for them forever and I'd never give up my search until I found my boys.
"You know what I'd do if someone tidnapped me? I'd tick him in the penis."
Oh, I told my son, I remember when I tried to kick someone in the penis. I was in fourth grade and my target was my good-natured classmate Tommie Smith. Tommie was prepared for my attack. With ease he grabbed my leg mid-kick and threw me off balance.
You gotta think twice about the crotch kick, I warned Miles.
"Well then you know what I'd do? I'd throw the tidnapper in the swimming pool and I would tick his mother in the penis. And then, I'd pick up the swimming pool and turn it upside-down so all the water would splash down on their heads..." My boy became unintelligible as his speech dissolved in his laughter.
I like plowing through tough topics with my kids while they still have cute lisps.

We had a playdate this afternoon with friends who speak with British accents.
While at their house, in their kitchen, the mom spotted some to-mah-to sauce on her youngest son's cheek. I made no comment about my friend Angela's pronunciation. She and her husband bandy a lot of words rarely heard stateside. They also carry a tradition that I thought had met extinction: their kids request to be excused from the table after a meal.
Back at our batcave, one minute ago, Miles looked out our kitchen window and asked,
"When we wake up to-mah-to morning, will the snow be sticky?"
And a few minutes before that, when Miles finished dinner, he asked "May I please be mis-tused?"

"Careful," I warned Miles as he was about to spoon some shredded Asiago cheese into his baby brother's mouth, "this cheese might be too sharp for a 15-month-old."
Miles examined the cheese shreds.
"Yeah, they do look pointy."

Are we in New Hampster?
We traveled to Jefferson, New Hampshire, last month to visit Santa's Village. We had such a good time that New Hampster is the new destination of choice.

What's more beautiful to you, tree leaves or the mustang car?
Leaves. You?
I choose mustang. Cause it's a race car.
I started to defend my answer. I chatted up leaves' role in helping us breathe, their great shapes, the beauty in their colorful death, their veiny parts, their crunch under our shoes.
Wait no I change my answer. Both are beautiful, right mom?
Then I thought about the shape of Mustang fenders. I contemplated the complexity of car engines, auto plant production lines, and how many humans and robots put together a car. And I said Yes, you are right son.

This week's five toughest questions:

Why tant I read?
Who made me?
Who made you?
Why is the moon following us?
Where is Long England?

Food Thoughts

"The special tonight is salmon," our waitress told us.
"Sammon," Miles repeated. "Like sammon says touch your head, sammon says, hop on one foot?"

There is a river that we pass on the way to the beach. We note its state all year round: frozen in winter, crackly in spring, and now marshy in summer. "How it turn ice?" Miles asked the other morning. I know little about the molecular structure of things so I tried to keep it simple. "When it gets so cold out, the water turns solid."
Salad? Miles questioned.

After a long day at the shore, we tromped by a family getting out of a car with Quebec plates. Miles and Charlie were sucking on watermelon slices. "C'est bon?" asked the matriarch, inquiring about the fruit or maybe our day in the surf. "Oui-oui-oui," I called to her.

As I dusted the sand off Miles' feet, he asked,
"Why dat lady speaking spinach?"

"This is the hottest day in the whole wide!"

I had to agree, today did feel like the hottest day in the whole wide. I waded to my waist in the frigid Maine Atlantic today, and the water felt warmish.

Miles was soon climbing the jetty. I was wearing flip-flops and would not follow. I had Charlie in my arms. Miles begged to guide me to the grass on top of the barnacled rocks. "I tant believe there's gwass up here!" he shouted to me. I wouldn't budge.

"If I had Crocs like yours, with the ankle strap, I'd go with you," I explained. Then I teased him. "If you lend me your shoes..."

He stopped short and kicked off one red sandal. "It's o-tay, you have them," he said, about to kick off the other.

I assured him I was joking. He looked at me, squinted, and asked, "How much weight do you cost?"

"You mean, how much do I weigh?" I tried to decipher.

"Yeah! How much?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I tarry you?"

I was touched. "What about Charlie? Who will carry him?"

"I tarry him too."

Oh my son. I wanted to bask in and prolong Miles's enthusiasm for family beach time. A Greenhead fly landed on my forearm before I had a chance to respond to my four-year-old's request.

Green fly! I cried, over-reacting. Miles had no idea green flies are carnivorous, but my voice probably explained everything. He swiped a few blades of spiky grass before racing me to the blanket. Evidence he reached his destination. Rocks from the moon.

Later he extended his hand to me. "I got these for you," he said, in the same voice he uses when he gives me a fistful of dandelions.

Geography Blues

"I am the happiest boy in the whole wide -- in China," Miles told me last night before he fell asleep. He was gazing lovingly at his brand new Dinoco Blue tractor trailer toy. He earned the truck for being a great sharer of toys this month.

"China," my four-year-old tried to educate me, "is where dinosaurs and Indians live."

Before I had a chance to ask where he was getting his information, he added, "That's where my Mommy died."

"Which Mommy is that?" I asked without alarm. Miles gives daily reports on the ongoings of his other mommies, daddies, pappas and pets. For instance, according to Miles, he has several pappas who live and work in a pie store located somewhere off I-95 and who keep foxes for pets.

"My other Mommy Teresa," he continued, incorporating my name into his story, "Her dies and lives in China. Her has blue hair and blue eyebrows and blue legs and arms and is very pretty." Miles raises his eyebrows and nods absently four times when he delivers information of this nature. When he sees my face twist to hide my grin, he adds solemnly, "It's truef."

Miles requested Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer tonight as his Saturday night video.
We own it. We watch it every couple of months.

I happened by the TV when Hermey was just about to get canned for failing to meet productivity standards.

What's happening? I asked Miles.

"The big elf, the teacher, said 'Finish the toys or you're on fire!' "

"Oh," I corrected, "You're fired."

What means fired? Miles asked. I told him it meant it was time for Hermey to find a job he likes. Perhaps he'd be happier as a dentist, I suggested.

"A dancer," Miles corrected me. "Hermey wants to be a dancer."

Multiple One Liners

"I am soaking hot."
We are at day seven of 100% humidity.

"Can we have brownies for zert?"
My New York accent has trained his ear to hear da Zert (like da Bronx) instead of dessert.

"God doesn't live in Maine. Maybe in Connecticut and Vermont."
We don't get very far with God conversations. He's not buying my bumbling explanations about divinity.

"Maybe I can make a letter to Drammie that says I love you, you died."
Conversations about dead grandparents, aunts, and pets arise weekly now that he's four.

"Can I feel your boobs one more time?"
I can't dignify this one. But twice this week I've had to remove Miles's hand from the front of my shirt.

We have watched the movie Black Beauty three times in the past two weeks.

One segment shows Black being born. The scene is rich with fluids and orifices.

While watching the birth, I heard in my mind's ear the voice of my sister Eileen, guiding me to be clear about the role of the uterus. When she was a new mom, she neglected to tell her son that only females can carry babies inside their bodies. When her boy Andrew discovered at age 3 that he'd never be a mother, he wept.

My two deliveries have been C-sections, so I've been thinking that I was covered, or at least I'd be found not guilty, for telling Miles that he and Charlie came out of my belly. Done. Me and my vagina dialogs had been curtailed due to irrelevancy.

Yesterday I said something as we watched Black Beauty make his entrance into the world. I described how and from where Black was exiting his mom and I used anatomically correct language. I told my son that only female horses can carry babies inside, just like only female humans can get pregnant. Miles nodded. He was more interested in tracking how fast Black Beauty changes from a gooey blob-in-a-sac into a wobbly walking horse.

This morning as we drove to return the video to the library, Miles asked if we could renew the film again.

"You know what my favorite, favorite, most favorite part is?" he posed from the back seat of the car. I knew it was something to do with Ginger, Black Beauty's best horse friend whose death in the movie brought my boy to tears. Ginger, Ginger, Ginger, it's all I ever hear.

"The toolest part," he started (the ability to pronounce a hard C still eludes him), "the most toolest, toolest part is when the horsie tumms out of his mommy's puh-china, it's so, so, so toooool."

Will my son one day be an obstetrician? A veterinarian? A key grip or gaffer for an Animal Planet series? Any or all would make me proud.

But for now, my next goal for my boy is to master the hard C.