Wednesday, February 1, 2012

2 Years and 4 months

Ryan's imagination and story-telling have flourished this month. It is entertaining to ask him all sorts of questions to see what his whirring mind will come up with. I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he decided "no" on teacher, but wanted to be a baby horse "when I get old-ler." I asked if he wanted to be a farmer and he started listing all the things that will be on his farm: "Horses, chickens, tractor, dinosaurs, dragons--nice dragons not angry dragons, and Batman." He loves listing things in a sing-song voice, like what he was looking forward to eating at Pizza Ranch: "Pizza, mashed potatoes, corn, beans, cheese stix, dessert, and ice cream!" He did manage to cross most of those things off his "list" on our recent visit, too!

He still loves playing basketball, soccer, farm and K'Nex. Recently he's gotten into legos, building forts, hide & seek, and using his toy drill to put together his Take-Apart Crane truck. He also loves running races, tackling, and making funny faces.

Potty-training has been a focus of the past month, but we don't seem to be there yet. He did well for a few weeks and still does pretty well telling us when he has to go #1 and has tackled both other people's houses and public restrooms. However, he refuses to go #2 on the potty so we're still working on that and still wearing pull-ups when outside of the house to prevent major mishaps.

Although he's still pretty good about going to bed, he rarely will just lay down and go to sleep. An hour later we can sometimes still catch him looking at books in his bed. He's decided that sleeping with his head on the pillow is not cool, so we find him in all sorts of positions, usually facing the opposite way in the bed. This picture even has his legs hanging off the edge! Pardon the pj's too--he picked out which shirt to wear with those bottoms.

Another funny thing he does is try to "hide" his "my" (pacifier) when he knows he isn't supposed to have it. It's supposed to only be in his bed for when he is sleeping, but he'll come walking out into the hallway with a pillow, blanket, or towel over his head to hide it.  He's even come crawling down the hallway stealth-like with a blanket covering him up after he's supposed to be in bed. If we say anything, he'll freeze and lay down flat, then when he thinks we're not paying attention anymore, he'll start creeping again. Cracks us up!

Ryan loves to be the center of attention, as do most 2-year-olds, and has mommy-attachment this month but he's been doing okay going to different babysitters and after a few parking-lot meltdowns actually did fine going to nursery at church.  He loves to be helpful and will pull up a chair whenever we are preparing food at the counter. He also asks things like, "Mommy, you all done eating? You come play wif me?" Unfortunately, the best way to wake up from a nap is not a head in your face yelling, "Mommy, you all done sleeping?"

Ryan is really loving Curious George books and I'm grateful our library has a good collection. We also get new CDs from the library to listen to at night, one of which is always some sort of "Bob & Larry" Vegetals collection. He likes to watch cartoons on public television on weekend mornings which include Curious George, The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That, and Super Why and will sing along or participate in their actions.

We love watching Ryan grow in skills, intelligence, curiosity, and personality. He's such a blessing in our lives!



No comments: