Height: 33.25 inches (20.47%)

Weight:  22 pounds (1.13%)

The pediatrician was impressed with Ryland's understanding of letters and sounds, and his demonstration of fine motor control.  In addition to the things the doctor observed, by Ryland's 2nd birthday, he was reading and spelling several words, including his name, some color words and farm animals, and his favorite word being "cake."  He also started "acting two" in the last couple of weeks before his birthday, insisting on doing more on his own (like climbing into and out of his highchair).

In addition to Christmas, December was a fun month.  We took a lot of pictures of Ryland playing with various nativity scenes (at one point, he was walking the wise men toward the manger when he stopped and twisted them around before laying them down...playing "Ring-around-the-rosie").  We enjoyed some outdoor Christmas activities: the MOPS Christmas party (where Ryland rode a tractor-pulled train) and Christmas at the Courthouse (where Ryland met the "Tootsie Roll Lady" and enjoyed all the Christmas lights).  He helped us decorate the Christmas tree, enjoyed making and eating his first gingerbread (graham cracker) house, and learning to do simple chores (sorting the silverware into the drawer when it comes out of the dishwasher).  We also dressed Ryland in a firefighter costume and had a little photo shoot outside with his ride-on firetruck (just for fun).

At 23 months, Ryland is starting to speak in sentences, but still uses 2-3 word phrases most of the time.  We think his first sentence was "I see bubbles." (He was watching the washing machine start to fill with water and soap).  He can almost always identify the first letter of a spoken word or picture, and loves to play with anything that has ABC's on it.   We love to listen to his sweet little voice singing a familiar song or "reading" a book:

In the following pictures from November, Ryland matches letter tiles to words in a book, helps Mommy stir brownies (and licks the spoon), plays the piano with Daddy, lines up rubber duckies on the tub, swings with cousins at Grandma & Grandpa's house on Thanksgiving, and more.

Peek-a-

boo!

This month, Ryland's vocabulary has grown and many of his cute "toddler" words are becoming more refined, so we thought we should do our best to record what his words sound like to us before we forget.  Some of the more common things include: "eebees" (means ABCs, as in he wants to watch his ABC video, play his ABC game, read his ABC book, or use his magnetic ABC letters); "yapes" (means shapes, same as ABCs...); "ominus" (means hippopotamus); "Duck! Duck!" (which could, indeed, mean duck, or maybe truck, but usually it means stuck...as in, he's "stuck" on the floor and can't get in his chair, or he's "stuck" in his chair and wants on the floor, or the puzzle he wants is "stuck" on the bottom of the stack, or the toy box is "stuck" on the shelf, or the door is "stuck" closed and he wants to go outside, etc. etc...we hear this a LOT).  When Ryland has more than one word to say, he tends to blend all the words together to sound like one word anyway, like "Nomyeebees, ying-i-me" (Now I know my ABC's, next time won't you sing with me).  He sings his ABC's so fast, it's hard to tell whether he's really saying every letter or not.  When we ask Ryland to do things, he's started responding with "O-tay" (unless it's something he doesn't want to do, then he says "no" and has to be "encouraged" to choose a better response).

Beyond his speech and language development, Ryland is also improving his academic skills.  Often, he will see a word (in a book or on a label, where a picture is present to identify the meaning for him) and he'll spell the word then read it (like he's competing in a spelling bee).  He counts things all the time, and his one-to-one correspondence is always getting better (he says one number for each object he counts) so that he's often able to count up to 12 items successfully.

For Farm Fair this year, we dressed as Ryland's favorite nursery rhyme, Hey Diddle Diddle.  Ryland practiced "jumping" over the moon for several days, and he still pulls the foam moon out and asks me to watch him "jump" over it.

Here are some other pictures from October:

A cute video of Ryland swinging with a fun laugh to make you smile:

One of Ryland's friends invited us to a pumpkin party.  We took a pumpkin to decorate, and Ryland had fun sticking on fall stickers and painting his pumpkin.  He played a candy corn relay game and had fun in the ball pit with the babies.  He really enjoyed the yummy snacks!

In this video, Ryland digs in the box of orange beans finding letters to spell the word orange: