Ryan is 2 years old!

Our precious little boy is now a 2 year old! It is amazing to us all the changes looking back at his first birthday. He has grown, changed, and learned so much over the past year. We are so proud of our smart little boy. He constantly surprises us with new words & accomplishments. It is so fun to see his face light up when he realizes that he can communicate his needs/wants with us more clearly and we understand his request.  We still deal with tantrums from not getting our way or from a lack of communication, but overall I believe he is getting better. He is simply a dramatic, stubborn, and opinionated little boy. He is not very fond of change at this point in his life (that is definitely a family genetic passed down...) and if you do something one way the first time then that is how he expects it from here on out! Consistency is fairly easy with him as he expects it. He thrives on schedules and routines and staying busy with a task or activity.  Ryan has a very funny sense of humor and such a great laugh when he really gets tickled about something that he finds funny. He is extremely ticklish all over and he loves to laugh and make us laugh.

Stats from the Dr's office today are weight 29.6lbs (75th%), and height 36.25inches (90th%). I never remember the head circumference measurement, but he always measures 75th% on that too. He is wearing size 4 diapers, but I am about to switch to size 5. He wears 24month and 2T clothes and size 7 shoes, although I think he is closer to a 7.5 at this point. New to Ryan this past month was his first 2yr molar finally broke through in January, the bottom right. I believe I felt it around the 26th. He also had a double ear infection the week before his birthday with the tubes draining yucky stuff from his ears for about a week. This was a first for us and some of his pain over the past few weeks we've been unsure what is teeth and what is ears, but it all messed up our sleeping a little bit and we are still trying to get back to normal. Typical sleep is 7:45pm-7:00am, but we have had several 6am mornings and one or two 5:30am wake ups this past week. (YUCK!!) We still cherish nap time and though the past 2 weeks has dropped from one 2-3hr nap to 1-1.5hr we are holding out for it to get back to normal at least occasionally.

For awhile, Ryan has been counting some of his numbers when we count from 1-10. However, a week ago he counted in order all the way from 1-10 by himself which really surprised me! He for the longest time would always leave out 3 and 9. He still leaves out 9 most of the time. Here is what his counting sounds like "One, Two, Pree, Pour, Pive, Six, Teven, Eight, Nine, Ten"

Another surprising advance this month that I believe I attribute most to his "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" book that has quickly become a favorite is his alphabet recognition and speech.  He will now point out and say all of the letters of the alphabet except for "G, H, and Q".  He will occasionally say G or H if I ask him to repeat after me, but doesn't seem to recognize them when he sees them. I have never heard him even attempt Q. He is also working on the ABC song, which is rather adorable. With your help he can get through most of it, but on his own it generally just goes "A,B,C,D,E...MNOP....TUV...YZ" other times it's just repeating ABCD over and over in a precious singing voice. Also, the way he identifies the letters to me goes something like this, "Mommy Apple, A, Baby B, C Cat, Daddy D... etc" He always has a word that goes along with the letter. We do have other books that have the alphabet with various words starting with the letter and I believe that is why he started associating it that way. It's always "Mommy M, Nana N, Puppy P, and V Vivian" as well.

Ryan has started singing a lot more than usual and we always encourage it because we love to hear what he comes up with. He sings his "Jesus songs" from his CD and has favorites: Jesus Loves Me, Knock Knock, Zacchaeus, and Alright. He also sings the theme song from Elmo's World, and I've heard him chiming in on various parts of his Veggie Tales songs. Such sweet sounds to our ears!

Ryan has more words than I can begin to write this month as his speech has really taken off. He is quite the chatterbox. I did think of a few sentences that we are hearing from him most lately to share.
"Mommy, Bear timeout, no eat!"
"Bye bye park, love you"
"Daddy no work, yeah Daddy work"
"Help me Mommy"
"Daddy tiss (kiss), Mommy tiss (kiss)"
"Elmo party, morrow (tomorrow)"
"Elmo peas (please) Mommy?"
"Blue park Mommy, no green"
"Yellow class, Jesus"
"Toby, no Daddy's chair"
I am sure there are more, those are the only ones that I have written down.

Lastly, current favorite toys from the past week of new toys include: everything Elmo, PlayDoh (every day!), All his new Little People (Noah's Ark, Bus, and Zoo train), Letter blocks, and his Art Easel. We still watch an episode of Elmo's world every day after he wakes up and generally one "Bob" aka Veggie Tales in the afternoon at some point. Ryan still loves reading books and we read them throughout the day when he picks them for me to read and then again before bedtime every night.

Lastly, the day of Ryan's birthday we celebrated first with sausage kolaches, donut holes, and chocolate milk at the local donut shop. We played with playdoh, and visited our favorite "blue park". We then went to visit a home in our neighborhood that my sister Maggie and husband Phil are considering buying and then went to his favorite Chickfila for his "cow" lunch and more inside park time. After lunch he took a nap then we played with his new art easel: coloring with markers, crayons on paper, and chalk on the chalk board. We watched an episode of "Poppy's Bob" a specific Veggie Tales that he got for Christmas from Nanny and Poppy, then read our new books. Daddy brought home pizza for dinner which Ryan enjoyed with strawberries followed by ELMO cake made by Mommy and ice cream. After dinner Ryan played with Daddy before getting ready for bed. He had a very busy, but fun birthday and was spoiled to the extreme!

I am trying to keep this blog up to date with information about Ryan because I am realizing how quickly he is changing and how quickly we will forget some of the fun/cute things that he does. I hope to one day print this into a book for us to have to look back at and that he will get to read. Thanks for taking time out to read it. We love you Ryan Alexander! You are the cutest little two year old boy there ever was!!
Love, Mommy & Daddy