Use your Words!

Ryan is doing great with his speech! He's been using a lot more words, so that's awesome and fun. Some cute ones are: Abby (my favorite!), Girafee, El-fat (elephant), Sa-son-dog (Sampson dog), cheer-o (cheerio), Bad-lynn (his best buddy Madeleine)

And then in the last week or two, he finally started putting two words together. He does this with lots of words now, but here are some favorite phrases: Daddy Work, Kitty Up or Kitty Down (for up or down stairs), Dog Out (side), Ryan Eat, Dog Sit, Police Car (one of the current fav toys)

He also is very good at grouping:
Nana, Baba (Pop-Pop), Jed
Baba (Grandpa), MomMom (Grandma), Ry-Ry (Riley), Jake!
Ya-yee (Aunt Lolly), By-n (Uncle Brian), Dee-do (Diego)
Saa (Auntie Sarah), Back-um (Maxim), Ris-tian (Uncle Christian)

Once he gets going on a group, he has to name everyone in it several times and if you don't encourage and reinforce him, he gets very upset! Not sure what starts this, but it's quite common for him to be hanging out or sitting in his carseat just going through the whole family. And when we are on our way home, he repeats kitty & sa-son dog over and over. *And yes, Pop-Pop and Grandpa sound exactly the same, as do Mommy & Grandma. You just have to hear them in context!

Today he said his first three word phrase unprompted, yay! "Sa-son Dog Out" Although the way Sa-son and Dog run together, maybe that's only one word, thus only a two-word phrase. But I'm going to count it as three words :)

Another fun activity is watching the new digital picture frame. It was a Christmas present and honestly we'd never even thought about getting one and weren't sure what to think of it. But all of us love it now, esp Ryan. He will sit at the kitchen table and watch it scroll through pictures while naming everyone in them. "Ry, Daddy, Mom-mom, Back-um, Ry, Baba, etc."

He also freaks me out occasionally with his recognizing and random words. For example, after just one day of school, he pointed to it & "scool!" when we passed it. Also the other day, while pulling into Chick-fil-a, he announced "chicken!" without me having even told him where we were going - and it wasn't even the one by our house that we usually go to. He's crazy smart when he wants to be, but only when he wants it! I'm really loving all the talking! It's great to finally start understanding him. And words are a whole lot more fun and much less frustrating then points and grunts.

PS - Wanted to also mention Ryan's amazing "parroting" skills. He will repeat the last word of whatever you say! He can also repeat /count to 10 and repeat his abc's, although W is a little tricky :) If I had to pick I'd say his favorite letter is Q. I think that's because it looks funny and thus it's easy for him to pick out when he's looking at the whole alphabet.