Mr. Independent

Lately Ryan is reminding me what a big boy he is. I can no longer carry him anywhere. If I try to carry him, for instance, in a crowded parking lot, he screams,"Down!" repeatedly until I give in and put him down. Running errands has become a total nightmare because Ryan does not want to ride in the basket anymore, he wants to walk. And, don't even think about putting him in the stroller! Last week I wanted to quickly browse the Nordstrom sale. I put Ryan in the stroller. As he screamed, I calmly tried to tell him I would let him out of the stroller in a few minutes and proceeded to walk toward the store. Ryan was screaming, crying, and thrashing about and even managed to take both arms out of the stroller seatbelt. I tried another pep talk before we entered the store. I did not want to be "that mom." I mean seriously, who takes a screaming kid into the mall to shop for themselves! How selfish can one be? For whatever reason he was calm enough for me to wheel him into the store. I pointed out every interesting color, shape and person I could find. This lasted about 5 minutes. Before I knew it, I was taking him out of the stroller and letting him walk.

Ryan is also very good at letting me know when he is ready to eat. He will now climb into his highchair unassisted. It is usually a race between the two of us. I am trying to stop him from climbing, and he is laughing and climbing as fast as he can before I can get to him. This scares me to death because I'm afraid the highchair will tip over, or that he will fall onto the hardwood floors.

In addition to being very independent, he has been talking up a storm. Here are some of his most recent funny phrases: Man running (when he saw 2 joggers), open door (when I put him in his room so I could throw some laundry in the wash), Thank you Daddy/Mommy (a million times a day he says this), Sorry Mommy/Daddy (after being in time out), help,help (whenever he feels like he can't do something on his own), pillow Caillou(when he wants to watch his favorite tv show and wants me to put the pillow at the end of my bed for him to lean against). He also now calls himself Ryan and not Ry Ry anymore, he can count to ten by himself, can name each body part, and is starting to tell me what colors things are. Although for a few weeks everything was yellow.
Me:"Ryan, what color is the bird?" Ryan:"Uh, yeyoh," Me: "No, silly, the bird is black, not yellow," Me: "Ryan, what color is the sky?" Ryan: "Uh, yeyoh," Me: No, silly, the sky is blue, not yellow," Please note that, yes, he says "Uh" as if he is thinking about it before he actually gives his response. He is getting a little better at recognizing colors, and not everything is yellow this week. It is crazy to think in 3 short months our little guy will be 2. Although everyday he is acting more and more like a 2 year old. Some days that is a good thing and some days it is not!