A Few Ryder-isms

Ryder is learning new words every day and it's been awfully fun to get a better idea of what's going through that head of his!  Unfortunately, he's also getting more opinionated, now that he can express himself in terms that I actually understand.  So when I tell him it's time to eat, it's fairly common for him to protest, "Play!" and when I tell him it's time to nap (or, in his words, "mop"), he'll shoot back with, "Eat!"  I had no idea he was so contradictory!  Except not really-- his protests are mostly just shouting the word, and then he'll go along with whatever I say it's time to do.  Not like most 2-year-olds at all...

Yesterday he woke up with one eye all crusted over, so I took him in to the doctor right away.  (That was nice having my sister and Mom here for it-- Tracy took Bentley to school, I took Ryder to the doctor, and Mom stayed home with Kendra!  Every household should have a 1:1 child-to-adult ratio!)  While at the doctor's, Ryder apparently picked up on the term "pinkeye" except he calls it "dark eye."  Which isn't an entirely bad description of it, when you think about it.

We have to put drops in his eyes every few hours and he has amazed me by not putting up much of a fuss about it.  Sure, he'll squeeze his eyes shut tight (but who wouldn't, given the circumstances?), but once I pry an eyelid open and get a drop in, he'll invariably burst out giggling and laugh about the whole thing.  He's got to be the only 2-year-old in the world who finds eye drops funny rather than a method of torture!  And since I'm feeling a little short on patience right now (3 days overdue and counting), I have to say that this feels very much like a tender mercy to me.

Other phrases he's picked up on include that the eye drops go in his eyes, "no mouf," and that today "Mommy gas car."*  He's also still talking about how he got to go "Up high!" when we took the kids to a bounce house for Kendra's birthday.  He really did-- by the end of the hour, he could climb up the biggest slide-- about 20 feet up-- without any help.  But then he'll clarify, "Daddy up high!" because at first, he needed Daddy's help to get there.  And of course, when Craig plays his favorite game of trying to eat him, Ryder will now shout (between giggles), "No eat me!"  But he says it totally funny-- like he's a robot who's just putting random words together or something-- so it sounds more like, "No.  Eat.  Me!"  If you can imagine.  (Picture when those voice-activated things read your phone number to you and how they never sound quite right.  That's how Ryder sounds.  Except a lot cuter.)

I know that as soon as this baby comes, my mind will suddenly flip Ryder into Big Boy territory.  So while we're playing the waiting game on little Colton, I'm trying to enjoy Ryder's last days as my baby.  Because he really has been about the sweetest little baby boy ever...



*That's a phrase from my own family-- we always say that we gassed the car.  Apparently the rest of the world has other ways of saying that, but I find this way the simplest and everyone always seems to understand me, so I haven't bothered correcting myself.  And now I get to pass my weird grammar-age on to my kids!  The joys of being a mother!