Ryder as a 2 Year Old

Ever since Ryder’s Birthday we have been so consumed with all of this Constraint Therapy and casting.  So much has gone on aside from all of that, I feel like I need to do a major update just about Ryder as a big TWO year old now!

First of all, is it written somewhere that they turn two and the Terrible Two’s kick in immediately?!  I thought that at some points within this year we might be faced with some testing and tantrums that we would figure out when we got to that point, totally not expecting it to be literally the day he turned 2!  All of a sudden, we are fighting a battle over getting dressed and diaper changes.  It is not a logical battle where he has a legitimate reason to be fighting for his side.  His side is just “I dont want to” and ours is “well you have to” and this brings on a war that ends in spankings and tears and time-outs.  It is so unnecessary, but we are determined to win this battle because if he is testing us just in these 2 areas and we haven’t even gotten through the first month of the 2’s, then I don’t even want to know what would lie ahead if we lose this battle.  Part of this might be resulting from the fact that it’s not easy to get dressed/undressed with the cast on, but it’s ridiculous none-the-less.

Once he transforms back into his old Ryder self, he is still such a super sweetie to his Mommy & Daddy.  He has a new thing with wanting us to feel stuff all the time “Momma, feel dis!  Feel my big blankie, feel how soffy it is!”  He thinks that the greatest thing I could ever do for him is wash his blanket, he tells me numerous times throughout the day “Momma, stanks for washin’ my big blank! Momma, smell it, it smells sooooo good!”  He is very affectionate and will come find us just because “Daddy needs a kiss!”  He always cuddles up to us and just says “awww hey Mommy, hey Daddy, Ryder luzzz you”.  Sweet boy.

We’ve had our first few encounters with bad words and it is SO hard not to laugh when they come out of his cute little mouth, but we’re doing our best to teach him when things are not nice to say.  When you ask where he heard the bad words he always says “Uncle G”!  Throws him right under the bus!  So Mommy’s famous line now is “watch your mouth” when I realize that things are coming out that Ryder is obviously picking up on.  The first one was “Bullsh*t”.  He hasn’t said it again in a few days though so hopefully he forgot about that word.  But the other day he was walking across the door ledge and kept losing his balance and said “Dis Damn Stang!”  Stang = Thing.  We can’t blame it all on Uncle G though, we’re all guilty.  He has picked up “shut up” from Mommy, and the other day Alan ran in a gas station to use the bathroom, and while he was gone Ryder told me “Daddy’s in da bafroom takin’ a piss”.  Like I said, it’s so hard not to laugh because you don’t even realize the way you word things until they come out of an innocent mouth.  Oops!

His vocabulary grows every day and there really isn’t any situation where he can’t explain to you what is going on.  I’ve heard some pretty big words come out of his mouth though that shocked me…like orthotics, comfortable, delicious, excited, hasta minana!  He has such a good memory and uses it to memorize songs that he hears.  He now knows all the words to Jesus Loves the Little Children, Nick Nack Patty Whack, Happy Birthday, and I have seriously heard him sing his whole entire ABC’s song.  Of course singing songs is never one of those things I can get him to do on cue, I always just over hear him doing it, but one day I’ll catch him on video. 

He was doing SO well with potty training, but that has come to a complete stop!  I knew that as soon as he realized it was something we wanted him to do and wasn’t his idea all by himself that he would start to second guess the whole thing.  I don’t think having the cast on helped at all either, it was probably just way too much going on at once.  Actually, the night that he got the cast off he was in the bathtub and told me that he needed to go potty, so I took him out and put him on the potty, he went and then got back in the tub.  So hopefully that’s a sign that since the cast is off maybe he’ll start showing interest again.

I could go on and on, but I just wanted to update on some of the major things he is doing during this stage so that I never forget them.  He is so entertaining and I’m always asking him questions just to hear what answers he’ll come up with, or listening to him talking to himself over the monitor just to hear his little mind at work.  This is such a fun stage (trying at times!) that I wish I could just wrap his personality up in a box and open it whenever I need a good laugh for the rest of my life!