Rylan

Our little man is now 2 1/2. He will tell you he is two and then show you his thumb and index finger as 2 fingers. We still haven't gotten the index and middle to stand up together but then again it isn't something he wants to do. He is content knowing that he has 2 "fingers" up and if he raises his middle as well he calls that 3, which is really true.



He just learned to pedal his bike on his own. He rode around last weekend pedaling and steering on his own. He even understands when and how to use the brakes. He rides his 3 wheel scooter to and from school (Ash's school) but also does well on the 2 wheel scooters. He loves to swing "high in the sky", run, jump, climb, dig in the garden, water the plants, kick the soccer ball, throw the football- in a perfect spiral no less, and jump off of things.

Rylan is still in speech therapy but we are now down to every other week because he isn't making improvements. He has a very large vocabulary, past age 3 actually, but his articulation isn't great. He slurs his words which is hard for us to understand when he uses his 10-12 word sentences. We are giving him some time and trying hard to focus on one or two clear words instead of a sentence. We think his lack of clarity comes from last winter when he had undetected fluid in his ears, failed his hearing tests, and heard everything like he was underwater. We are trying to retrain his speech, which is hard to do with a 2 year old.

Rylan is still a compliant and happy child. He still has a bo-bo at nap and night and twirls his hair around his finger when he is sleepy but during the past couple months has become attached to other objects as well. He carries these objects constantly (one at a time though) and trades them out rarely. This has proven to be a problem such as when we were playing at the school playground after pick up and he "buried motorcycle to keep safe" in the sand no less. We enlisted the other children to help us find motorcycle and luckily found it. He also carries his football-that gets thrown all over the house, tape measure- that he uses to measure everything and it all ends up being 8, or his tractor-a digger that makes driving sounds that are pretty annoying at night.



Ry does a great job of eating and sleeping. He tries all new foods and uses a fork or spoon perfectly. He cleans up his messes as soon as he spills and doesn't like to have food spills on the table, or his shirt. He is the spill alarm and lets us know when anything has spilled then he asks for a rag to clean it up. He still sleeps through the night unless he has to go potty. I only changed 3 or 4 stinky diapers in June/July and he has only wet at night a handful of times since then. He has only wet the bed when he has a cold but we keep him in a pull-up just in case. I can't remember the last time he wet his unders. He has done such an awesome job of potty training and is really proud of himself. He has been working on getting his pants off and on without help but he can't climb onto the toilet alone yet. Each morning he gets out the clothes he wants to wear and is very determined to wear what he wants, today it is shorts so I hope it will be warmer than 40 outside.



He is trying to be crafty like his big sister. He draws circles and cuts chunks out of paper. He knows some of his colors but loves to find things that are the same- size, shape, or color. He draws pictures and "write my name" in tiny little marks on the paper. He is great with the fine motor skills. He loves to make tape pictures and glue things together. He also does well taking the backing off the foam shapes and sticking them on paper to make a picture. Speaking of pictures, he loves to use the camera and take pictures of his siblings and other objects in the house then views them on the camera or computer.




He does a great job with his pre-reading skills. He sits nicely during reading time before bed and enjoys "reading" his own books. He tracks the words with his finger and makes up a story to go along with the pictures. He just looked at the scribbles he wrote on his paper and tracked "I love you, yes I do." He can count to 11 without thinking about it and understands one-to-one correspondence up to 4. In the morning he loves to count the hot air balloons in the sky and does a good job of keeping track of each of them until they land. "One, two, three, where number four? There it is number four is over there! Now where is one, two, three? Over there, over there! Now number two near number four...." This goes on for the whole walk to and from Ashton's school.