Miles and the Donkey Whisperer

Those of you who have the privilege of knowing our little Miles realize how utterly obsessed he can get with certain things. He can stand at the sink for hours and dump water from on cup to another. As long as he is plied with ice to make it more fun. He opens his mouth like a baby bird for bits of food not able to avert his eyes from the stream of water or put his cup down long enough to pop a goldfish in his mouth.

Right before Christmas, he became obsessed with horses and dinosaurs. This obsession is a long time in coming as he visits Ebenezer the donkey on Saturdays and feeds him carrots.

He has been having a horrid time going to sleep lately and we decided we’d surf through youtube.com and find some horse videos. He could watch a few and it might calm him down. We found some great horse video with actual cool music and he loved it. He’d bangs his poor head trying to make the “horse” sign and we’d watch the videos and he’d actually go to sleep! Accidentally, in a horrible series of youtube searches, I found a donkey video that I thought he might like. He immediately started making the sound for donkey. This can’t be described in language. This video is of a donkey braying loudly at a man that is filming him with a hearty laugh. The donkey’s name is Honkey.

Every time Honkey comes onto the screen, Miles excitedly waves ‘hello’ to Honkey and talks to Honkey in his donkey voice. He won’t watch horse videos any more. Long gone are the cool videos made by teenage girls extolling the virtues of horse jumping and pop music. We now have to watch Honkey between 15 or 20 times a day.

It still makes me laugh every time and I love that he can ask for something instead of only signing.

Click here to watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg5zJ580Wo0