22 Months!

T-minus 2 months until Ryder's 2nd birthday - WOW! Time is flying! And the next 2 months are SUPER busy for us, so his birthday will be here before we know it. We keep talking about planning his party .... but so far we haven't done much.

This age is really fun! Aside from the 2 year old tantrums, of course. But sometimes those are just plain funny. It's amazing to watch his little personality growing all the time. He is one smart kid! He talks SO well for his age. His vocabulary is huge and always growing.

Ryder completely blew me away the other day by reciting almost the whole alphabet! I knew he knew a lot of letters because he will point to them and say them, but I had no idea he actually knew the order of the alphabet! I am pretty sure he learned it from his sign language DVD's. We have been singing him the alphabet since he was really little too (apparently that was the only song Rudy knew). Here is Ryder's version on the alphabet: "a,b,c,d,h,i,j,k,lmnop(said super fast), q,r,t,u,v,w,x,y,Z!! And he always finishes with, "Yay, Ryder!" He just needs to remember e,f,g and s and he will be set. He used to count to 15 all by himself, and to 20 with a little help but he has gotten bored with counting so he hasn't been doing that as much. I love to hear him say eleven though - "amemen."

Ryder finally has a bunch of teeth! He is working on his 12th one right now. He has the 4 top in the front, almost the 4 bottom front and all 4 of his first molars (which all came in at the same time and he hardly seemed to notice). Teething has been a breeze with him!

His feet are still itty bitty for his age. He wears a 5 or 6. He has funny little flintstone feet. He is so tall and skinny now. It's hard to believe how chunky he once was! He is still a super picky eater though. He eats the same things all the time - bread (or sandwiches), bananas, berries, oranges, applesauce, yogurt and just this week he decided he likes watermelon! Sometimes he will eat chicken nuggets or pizza and other times he won't. He won't touch macaroni and cheese and I think it's the weirdest thing! I thought all kids liked mac 'n' cheese! Oh he likes eggs still and every morning begs for a bowl of cheerios with milk. He also eats tomatoes, which he calls "potatoes." Hopefully he'll get over his picky eating at some point. I need to be better about offering him different things even when I know he won't eat it. I just get tired of throwing away food so a lot of days I just give him what I know he will eat.

One of Ryder's favorite places to hang out is on our bed. I have no idea why, but he loves to just play up there. He goes in there any chance he gets and will get really upset when we make him leave. He is still into his cars. Favorite toys, by far. Sometimes I think he is overly obsessed, but I guess he just knows what he likes. It becomes a problem when we are in a store and he sees one he wants and goes into a major fit when we don't give it to him. Many times when we are at the grocery store I have to take one out of the package and let him play with it while we shop and of course buy it. It's worth the $1 if it lets me get my shopping done more easily! But someday I have got to break that habit.

Ryder is really into play-dates now and really loves interacting with other kids. He especially enjoys little boys that are just a little older than him. He loves to copy things that they do. :) He especially thinks Trevor (who is almost 4) is hilarious. He always acts crazy around him! He of course loves Kayla too. They had their first kiss the other day and it was the cutest thing ever! They were over on Labor Day and all the kids had a blast ... of course I don't have a single picture from that day. They stopped by again the other day and Karina was holding Kayla. Ryder kept asking Kayla (who he was calling "Koala" - hilarious!!) to get down and then when she did, he offered her the car he was playing with, told her to take off her shoes and then grabbed her hand and led her over to his toys. ADORABLE!! I wish I would have gotten a video of that. And of course he slipped in another kiss too. :) We recently had a play-date with another little boy too, Coleman, who is about 6 months older than Ryder. We were at Coleman's house and he wasn't too thrilled with Ryder playing with his toys, so he kept taking things away from Ryder. Ryder always handles that like a champ! He just moves on to something else, no problem. I am sure someday that will change, but for now it's great that he is so easy-going (although it kind if breaks my heart when I see other kids be "mean" to him). It was funny because Coleman would take a toy and run away with it, crying and Ryder would just chase after him giggling, like he thought they were playing a game.

I don't know what else to say about this boy. He is just an awesome kid and we enjoy him so much. I can't believe he has been with us for 2 years already, but then again I can hardly remember what life was like before him! We are so looking to all the fun things that fall has in store for us!