Craig's Blog: Milo! (at 11 years old)

Milo Month 141: This Tastes Weird

A few days a week, Cora and Charlie has some pre-school activities, which means that Milo has some time to kill. He has taken to building Kapla block creations at school, just like he used to do when he was little. But his abilities have grown a lot since then, as have his artistic sensibilities. It's hard for me to imagine that my kids won't always be exactly the way they are now, but every so often I get a reminder!

In contrast, Milo's diet has stayed exactly the same for a while, but it's starting to have more and more exceptions, where a putatively good piece of food is rejected because it "tastes weird". Avocado? Tastes weird. Steak? Tastes weird. Peanut butter? Weird. Milk? Like you even have to ask. They all taste fine to us grownups. I don't know if Milo just has a more sensitive palate than the rest of us, or is just naturally suspicious of new flavors.

On the technical side, Milo's interests are staying the same but cycling. He has his projects he's interested in doing: writing a chess engine, downloading and organizing his anime videos, learning the Rust programming language. For each one, he works on it for a while until he gets discouraged by how frustrating it is, and then gives it up for the next project on the list. (To be fair, each of these projects does have a large share of potential frustrations.) Earlier this week he was all-in on Rust, but now he's back to the video downloads. May this be the time he breaks through!

Milo Month 140: Amusement Parks Are Exhausting

We went to Disney World for February break, and I was worried that our kids do not experience amusement parks the same way. Charlie wants to go to our local amusement park, Great America, every weekend, and will close the place down. Milo, on the other hand, has been known to say, "Do I have to go to Great America?" And indeed, Milo timed out at Disney halfway through the day. "I just want to go back to the room and relax," he said.

I used to think that it was the parks themselves that wore Milo down: the crowds, the noise, the lines. But he was the same way when we were at Grandma's house right before Disney, and there were no crowds or noise or lines then. So I've come around to the theory that the real driver is Milo's introversion: he needs some time away from other people to recharge. This may also explain why, after I take him home from school, he disappears into his room and I don't see him again until dinnertime.

Cora and Charlie do their best to invade Milo's relaxing-bubble. Cora especially loves to come into his room and steal his crocs from off his feet, or start chewing on his jacket. This is especially pronounced during bedtime. Milo is very patient with this. I guess no matter how annoying it is still have your shoes stolen, it's still not as annoying as being at Great America.

Milo Month 139: The Boba Adventure

Last month's potato adventure was such a success that Milo signed up to do it again! He told us about this the night before, as we were turning off the lights for bedtime. "I figured we could just do something easy like go to the store and pick up potato chips," he said. "But then I forgot to tell you until now." Which made it...not easy. Mary had to run around the house finding enough loose potato chip packages to feed the entire class.

This is not the only recent food adventure Milo signed up for where Mary was the one doing the scrambling. Here is what happened: Milo got the lucky bean in his Spanish class's new years celebration. "By tradition," said the teacher, "you're now supposed to bring everybody tamales." "I can do that!" said Milo. "Except, instead of tamales, I'll bring boba." "Um," said the teacher, "that's not quite so traditional, but I'm not goint to say no to boba tea."

To be fair, Milo then did a bunch of work: he picked out a boba place that was on DoorDash, got everyone's orders, which required a lot of nagging over multiple days, and even prepared to pay for the whole thing out of his allowance. But when he went online the night before to place the order, the website said that the store was out of a bunch of flavors, including most of the ones his classmates had asked for. "Oh, that probably just means they're out for the day. I'll just have to place the order tomorrow morning before school." "Are you sure?" said Mary. "Because if not you're going to be in trouble." "I'm 100% sure," said Milo. "1000% sure. Infinity sure."

The next morning -- you can see where this is going -- they were still out of stock. So while Milo was at school, Mary was running around trying to fulfill the boba orders somewhere else. She had to call three places, and never did find one that delivered, so she ended up being the delivery-person herself. In the end, she got the order there about halfway through Spanish class, which was close enough to the desired time to call it a success.

"What lesson did you learn from this?" I asked Milo. "Well," said Milo. "Getting people to commit to a flavor is hard." Maybe next time he'll stick with tamales.

Milo Month 138: Happy at School

At the beginning of the year, we were a bit worried because Milo's best friends were all in a different homeroom than him. But he's turned out to love his homeroom. They have a tradition of bringing in potato treats every Tuesday, and for Milo's turn he wanted to fry up some homemade latkes. We misjudged the quantity so badly that he invited over a whole other homeroom class to eat the leftovers. I'd call that a success.

In addition to homeroom, Milo is enjoying Performing Arts. "In fifth grade, they don't make you sing!" Milo told his siblings with great excitement. (Even though they still make him dress up.) For the winter concert, he was part of a xylophone orchestra. I'd like to think he was Principal Xylophonist since he was right in the middle, but I don't think that's a thing in fifth grade. I was proud of him for actually paying attention to the teacher during tech rehearsal.

The classes we weren't worried about, on the other hand, have had some disappointments. Milo was really exited that Cognitive Science involved some C programming (to interface with some sort of brainwave-reading device). But then he learned that this was only a tiny portion of the class, and most of the class actually focused on the science of cognition. "I guess that's interesting too," he allowed.

Milo Month 137: Skibidy Rizz

Milo is super-into programming these days. He has been working on a chess program for months now, and lately he has decided to write a programming language for the Desmos graphing-calculator app. He even co-founded a Coding Club lunch-group at school. Their big end-of-semester project was for everyone to write a game -- of course -- which Milo and his co-founder would judge. Milo had to practice all his skills: not just reading code, but tact, and also judgement, because more than one person cheated and just took a game from off the internet. If it were me, those kids would have been in outsville, but Milo is giving them another chance. He's a better teacher than I am.

He is also organizing a group writing assignment in his class. This is not a sanctioned writing assignment, mind you. ("We do it when we're supposed to be paying attention in class," he said.) Lots of his classmates contribute, and Milo edits it all. As far as I can tell, the document is just a collection of Gen Alpha slang: "skibidy rizz", "edgelord", "sigma", "ohio". But Milo is really sweating over the grammar and the story flow.

In addition to his programming skills and editing skills, Milo is working on his marketing skills. He made some lemonade for Thanksgiving, and wanted people to know how (relatively) healthy it was. So he made a big sign. I have to say it worked: the lemonade dispenser was empty by the end of the night!

Milo Month 136: Dutch Children

On a trip last summer, the kids discovered Dutch Babies, which are a pancake/popover hybrid. Some friends, who are also fans, invited us over for a big Dutch Baby party. (Charlie even got to help make the batter.) Milo is now very taken by the idea of eating Dutch babies. For his D&D class he's started next weekend, they asked if there was any particular scenario he wanted to see included. "Yes," he said. "I want my character to eat Dutch children." They ixnayed that idea. ("What?" Milo said to me. "They don't like cannibalism?")

It's heartening to see Milo enough into D&D -- well mostly his friends, who he's doing it with -- that he wanted to participate. Getting him to go to any activity has historically been a struggle. But he's been really positive about a lot of activities recently. He is telling me how much he is enjoying his project in Spanish class, where he's setting up a Spanish-language store. And he is really proud of his cross-country. They did the final mile run yesterday, and compared his time to the first mile run back in September. He was over a minute faster! "I ran the whole way this time," he said. "Like, really ran. I didn't even jog." His conditioning has come a long way.

Milo also had his final meet of the year. He told me about it afterwards. "Today I decided to run at the front. I discovered, from their breathing, that those in the front aren't much better physically than me. They just push themselves more." "Interesting," I said. "What did you learn from that?" He said, "Not to be so hard on myself." I guess that's one possible lesson.

Milo Month 135: Playing Along

Good news! Milo's hurting foot is no more. We never even had to go to the doctor. I guess he's gotten used to the running. Though not that used to it; every time he runs he's like, "that was the worst run I've ever done." They had a meet, and the course had hills, and it was a revelation to Milo how difficult it is to run on hills. "The downhill is even harder than the uphill!" He is heartened by the fact they are not scheduled to run another race on that course again this year.

Milo is sticking with the cross country even though it's not his favorite; I guess he's not fully a teenager yet. In fact, he's still willing to do stuff that his parents organize. To wit: Mary organized a speed jigsaw competition as a fundraiser at Milo's school. Mary asked Milo to go, and he said yes! He even participated on a team. At the end he allowed, "that was kinda fun."

What Milo finds the most fun these days is programming. He was into playing chess for a while, but now he's like, "I feel like my skills are atrophying, because I don't really feel like doing that anymore. I just want to write a chess program." He's gotten it so it prints the board, and now he's working on letting the pieces move the right way. It's slow going, because Milo is -- how shall I put this -- still learning how to write maintainable code. "You know," he said a few weeks in, "I should put in some comments so I can remember what's going on." When your variables are named "i", "ii", and "iii", that's not a bad idea. ("I need comments because I can't remember if "i" is rows and "ii" is columns, or the other way around." Showing great restraint, I just nod and keep my thoughts to myself.) But he's doing it all by himself, and making steady progress! When he's done, I'm sure he'll whoop me, atrophied skills or no.

Milo Month 134: Milo Is Not Forrest Gump

Milo is in middle school now! His school starts middle school in 5th grade. He was eager, as a sign of his new maturity, to pack his own lunch, which consisted of: corn chips, a fig newton, 4 thin mints, and a coke. We're back to making lunch for him.

Milo's lunches have gotten more intricate because he has braces! Well, invisalign, which is 100 times better than the braces I had when I was a kid. He doesn't have to wear a headgear (yet?) or anything. Not to kvell, but he's been so good about wearing his invisalign that the doctor sped up his treatment, moving to a new mold every 1 week instead of 2. He has taken it in stride.

Another sign of Milo's increasing maturity: I get less news than every about his life. His school has a middle school overnight camp the second week of school. He semi-packed it himself. Milo really wanted to just have to carry one bag, so I did my best to attach the sleeping bag to his backpack. When he came back, I asked him how the overnight was, and he said, "tiring." I still haven't gotten any other details out of him.

Also as part of middle school, Milo had to pick a sport. His main criterion was he didn't want a team sport, so nobody would get mad at him if he messed up. So he's doing cross-country. He started running over the summer with Mary, to prepare. The first day of training at school, he ran for 0.8 miles and his left foot hurt so much he had a limp for days. I called the doctor and they said they need to see it live so I guess we're going to have to make him do it again and then go to the urgent care. That doesn't seem the best way to do medical care but what do I know.

Milo Month 133: Battlebots ... Denied!

Milo's visit to Vegas was a success. We hardly got accosted by any half-naked people ("We'll do PG-rated photos for the kiddos!"), mostly because we were hardly ever outside, mostly because it was over 110 degrees out. And Milo insisted on wearing his heavyweight, long-sleeped pajamas as a shirt. This worked well enough inside: using the interior walkways, we wandered around the Strip, and Milo distinguished the fancy hotels from the cheap ones by the quality of their LED strips. He was flummoxed by the magicians -- I still don't know how the mentalist could have possibly guessed a number Milo was thinking of and didn't tell to anyone -- and inordinately amused by the Harry Potter parody. Milo tried a lot of new food; the gyros and the pork belly were a hit, the cactus tacos and wonton soup were a miss. The virtual reality was fun at first but got old, which left us having run out of things to do, so we went home a day early.

And just in time too, since the next day Milo came down with COVID. He missed the whole week of Battlebot Camp, which he had been really looking forward to. Instead he was holed up in his room ( guarded by an air filter!) which to be fair he looked forward to as well. The isolation worked: not only did none of the rest of us get COVID, but Milo was actually excited to hang out with us again after we released him from solitary. He got better just in time for our family reunion trip.

Now Milo is off at hist first-ever sleepaway camp! After, you know, chillin' in Vegas with the guys for a few days. Additionally, he's as tall as Mary. All sure signs that he's growing up.

Milo Month 132: Vegas, Baby!

Last year we were in Europe for Milo's birthday, and Milo made us promise promise promise that this year we could celebrate his birthday at home, so he could invite all his friends. So we were home all June, except Milo wasn't committing to a birthday plan. "Maybe we'll all go to the arcade," he said. "But I don't like the pizza there." Eventually the dithering made the decision easy, and we had a birthday at home. It still included all his friends. (He's old enough now he doesn't have to invite his whole class, thank goodness.) We got pizza Milo does like for lunch, then they played video games all afternoon, then they had sushi for dinner. It was just the party Milo wanted!

Which is why I'm kind of nervous about Vegas. Vegas's party scene is ... rowdier than Milo's preference. I'm hoping the heat wave -- we're expecting a high of 118 degrees every day we're there -- will keep people away. Or at least inside in the casino areas, where we won't be going.

But I should take a step back. This summer I'm taking each of my kids on a 1-on-1 adventure. Figuring out where to go with Charlie and Cora was easy; they had clear visions of what they wanted to do. But not Milo. "I don't really want to do anything," he said. When pressed: "Maybe some programming." I pushed for something more travel-friendly, and he was like, "I dunno, maybe try some new foods?" This suggested a lot of cities, but the one he settled on was: Las Vegas. It is true that a single hotel on the Strip has like 9 different types of cuisine. And he was interested in the Virtual Reality mall, and in some of the shows. So that tipped the scales for him. And if it's too hot to even leave our hotel room, hey, he can always do some programming.