Ryder Talking

Ryder has lots to say.  But most of it isn't in any language that I can understand.  Right before his 2-year check up, Craig and I tried to count all his words.  And we couldn't make it to ten.  (His doctor has recommended he be evaluated for speech therapy.  My plan is to get around to that some time after Christmas...  Mostly I'm just hoping that by then Ryder will have blossomed into a talking fool and I won't have to bother at all.)

The funny thing is, for all that he doesn't say, the words he can say keep changing!  He used to just say, "Yah!"  (He sort of sounded German, actually.  Or possibly Russian?  Except with more joyous enthusiasm than I picture emanating from either of those cultures...)  Then it morphed into "Yep!" (still enthusiastic).  And now it's turned into "Yesh!"  So can I count those as three words?  My favorite was the other morning when I gave him his morning bottle of warm milk and tucked him back into his crib for a few more minutes of sleepy time.  I kissed his forehead, whispered, "I love you, Ryder," and he heartily responded, "Ah, yesh!"

Ah, yes, of course you love me, mommy!  I love the confidence.

Of course he can say Mommy and Daddy, although he likes to call me other things that I don't really understand, like I think he calls me Abba sometimes or something.  "Rara" can refer to Kendra or Bentley and I think possibly himself, too.  He also says doggy, although that sounds suspiciously like Daddy...  And seeing pretty much any grown man makes him miss Daddy and start yelling for him.  That, or else he has really bad vision, because he thinks pretty much every male cast member of Glee looks like Daddy...  Despite this limited vocabulary, he manages to express a lot.  My favorite is when he'll walk into a room, raise his hands up questioningly and wonder, "Daddeee...?"  It gets the message across just as well as a "Where is" would have!  He even would sing a song that consisted of crooning, "Momma, Dadda, Dadda, Momma."  And it was really sweet.

Just recently he added his first adjective to his vocabulary, and that word is: cool.

And it only applies to cars.  And only certain cars, at that.  He will empty my diaper bag searching for "Coo coo cars" and the ones that don't meet this criteria get tossed aside.

So now the Momma Dadda song has been replaced by a Coo Coo Car song.

Naturally.

He's also recently started adding "f" sounds to the ends of words.  So "car" has become "carf," which-- when you can't say "r's," just sounds like "cough."  And "no" has become "nofe."  I have no idea why.

I guess he's just figuring things out in that head of his.  Some day I'll hear all about it, I'm sure!  But in the meantime, I'm glad we have such cool cool cars for him to play with!