It's getting harder to keep up with Ryder's "month birthday", but as I've said before, I just want to keep a record of all of Ryder's achievements for our own record. I was in a hurry this morning to get Ryder dressed and ready for daycare, myself dressed and ready for the gym, and to make sure that I remembered a baggie of cheerios to bring with us so that he didn't have a meltdown upon arriving to his class and see that the other kids at the table had cheerios and not him, like we experienced yesterday morning.
Age: 26 Months!
Height: Not sure exactly, but you have definitely hit a growth spurt this past month, as you have been eating a ton and seem to want more for breakfast than usual. Your pants also seem to be fitting much better!
Weight: 32 lbs
Clothes: Still wearing mostly 2T shirts and pants but the 2T pants are still a little big in the waist depending on the brand so we have to put a belt on you. I have found this to be the case with most things from Childrens Place, and am now wondering if we really jumped the gun when we bought a pair of 3T jeans at Christmas!
Diaper Size: Still in a size 5, and we are hoping to have you potty trained by the spring!
Dr Appointments: No Dr appointments this month, and probably won't be anymore "well-visits" for another year, which is crazy to think! We thought we were going to have to take Ryder last week, but luckily he seems to be feeling better and recovering from the croup.
Favorite Foods: What would we do without Nutrigrain blueberry waffles and cheerios with milk! These seem to be staples to your everyday diet. Among other things like pretzels, oranges, rice, olives, and cheese, but we have a hard time getting you to eat any protein. I tend to sneak things into your lunch or breakfast if I make a smoothie for you, but I think you have caught on. I will also put a piece of fruit behind your cut up pieces of waffle and that seems to work too. You now know how to open all doors, including the pantry, and will stand there and grab what you want which is cute, but sometimes very frustrating when I am just trying to get you to eat. You also like to go in the pantry and close the door behind you to hide! A Toddler Trait you seem to be going through is throwing your food on the floor and laughing. This gets you into timeout, but we are working with you. The worst was the spaghetti O's at the dinner table that pretty much hit every surface within reach. You are also training to drink from a cup with no lid and seem to be doing pretty good so far, but we only put a little in the cup in case you get a wild hair to throw it everywhere! I do have to say that you tried goat cheese on New Years Eve and LOVED it and kept asking for more more- ha, if only you knew that it wasn't cream cheese!
Sleep Habits: Oh. My. Word. I knew that I would lose sleep once Ryder was born, and we had to adjust the first few days, but we are going on two years and he still wakes up! Apparantly he is going through yet another phase, which happens to be nightmares. Having him upstairs, and our master bedroom downstairs isn't the ideal floor plan, but at the time when we bought our home, we weren't really thinking of staying here as long as we have, which meant we wouldn't have planned to have our children in this home either. We have a gate at the top of the stairs, but now that Ryder is getting much better about going up and down them by himself, we are starting to think it may be soon that we take down the gate so he can come down the stairs to get us if he has a bad dream rather than propelling all of his things in his room, exept his bed, down the stairs.
Words/Mannerisms: "Mommy, are you??" when he gets worried where one of us is. "Ryders peasants" apparantly having a birthday in November, Christmas in December, and various visits baring gifts in between caused for some confusion that Ryder gets presents all the time- ha! We have also noticed Ryder getting angry more now, and have experienced a LOT of tantrums. When this happens, he usually yells "Enough!" and it's so funny Scot and I have a hard time not laughing. I will say this past month has been the worst as far as tantrums go, and we did everything we could think of besides sending him away to camp! We chalked it up to the fact that just maybe he wasn't feeling very good and his actions were out of sickness, not being his normal self. Throwing toys seems to be a bad habit lately, and with a lot of Time Outs, we are hoping to break this bad habit!
Playtime: Best thing my parents ever did was to buy the train table and track for Ryder for Christmas! It has been a lifesaver many a time when we just needed a breather and it will occupy Ryder for a few minutes by himself at least before asking for one of us to come "Pay Thomas". How can you resist that sweet voice?
TV Shows: I don't know what we would have done without Disney's Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and Toy Story 3. We watch them on every tv in our house and we could have just finished one of them and Ryder asks for Buzz again. The boy loves him some Buzz! Thank goodness we have all three to get a change once in awhile! Besides Toy Story, he has really been into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse a lot too and always seems to ask for "Mick a Mouse". We also watch Cars on a regular basis and you just LOVE "Keen" (Lightning McQueen) and "Maner" (Mator).
Big Achievements: GIVING UP THE PACI!!! Yay Ryder!! This was a HUGE achievement, as if you couldn't tell by the way that I am putting all of the words in CAPITAL LETTERS- ha! We wanted to try to be done with the paci a year ago, but that just wasn't the case between all of the sleep habit changes, and teething issues, and ear infections, so it just seemed that the paci was what soothed Ryder sleeping. That all changed over a week ago when Ryder was recovering from the croup and his last two paci's had seen better days. He kept spitting them out and saying "paci broken" so we did what we knew best, we told him it was time to throw paci out. He didn't want to do it, so we did the dirty work for him and he has really only asked about where the paci is once or twice, before remembering that it was broken. This happened officially on 1/6/11 and you fussed all night, but by the next night you slept through the night without it. Along with giving up the paci, you moved to the BIG BOY 2 year old house on 12/30/10 and have been doing great ever since! You walked down the stairs all by yourself and came down to the living room when you were supposed to be sleeping on 1/2/11 and scared mommy to death ha! On 12/31/10 we took you to the playground by our house and you proved what a big boy you were by going up and down the steps and sliding by yourself, and then you and daddy rolled down a big hill and you had the time of your life! This was the first time you had ever done that and you LOVED it! We took a road trip to New Hampshire back in December for the unfortunate funeral of Daddy's cousin, and you did SO good the entire trip there and back. I attribute that to God for looking out for us, but I still gave you the praise for riding over 15 hours and not fussing! We are so proud of you my little goose and I can't wait to see what the coming spring and summer bring for you. We are looking forward to potty training and being able to take off the baby gate at the top of the stairs, but we know that in time these things will happen. You are so smart and funny, and have the sweetest heart of any little boy that I know!
Love,
Mommy
Love this post and I love how you have it all written out. I need to do one on both of my babies!!
ReplyDeleteLincoln has been eating much more now lately too... he usually eats a cereal bar for breakfast and when he finishes he is asking for another one or crackers or something else to eat.