Leaning Tower of Legos

When Tyler plays with his Legos lately, he particularly likes building towers out of the smallest one and giggles when they fall over or when he knocks them over.

Big Talker

We are constantly amazed at how fast Tyler’s verbal skills are expanding:

• Sentences: These are becoming more frequent and getting longer. Just today or yesterday he had a five- or six-word sentence. Most of his sentences are very basic two- or three- word sentences.
• Verbs: Tyler is using more verbs and this is definitely exciting because he is starting to link people and things with actions.
• Animals: Tyler can identify the most common animals and knows what sounds they make. I’ll have to get a video of him saying “Oink! Oink!” because that is my favorite animal sound he makes. Tyler gets excited about some of the more exotic animals such as ostriches and peacocks probably because he seems to remember seeing them over the holidays.
• Counting: A few numbers are starting to show up in Tyler’s language. He has been trying to count to 3, but he says 3-2-3.
• Alphabet: We were singing the ABCs to Tyler earlier and he started singing along during certain parts. We were pretty impressed! I’m sure they have been working on this at daycare.
• Third Person: Tyler still doesn’t seem to understand “I”, “me”, and “you” very well. He talks about himself in the third person such as “Tyler shoot” (as in Tyler shoots the basketball) and when he points to himself in photos he says “Tyler!”
• Repeating: Frequently Tyler repeats back what he hears especially when you say something emphatically (like “Oh boy!”). It really makes you reconsider your word choice when you hear your words repeated back to you.

Photos

Tyler loves looking at photos of himself, friends, and family. He will point to my laptop (even when closed and sitting up high out of reach) and exclaim, “Pictures! Pictures!” until I open it the laptop and browse through photos with him. He is getting pretty good at recognizing people (and their dogs) and telling us their names. When I show Tyler baby photos of himself he does not understand that it is him. He will say “baby” and thinks it is someone else. He does recognize his blankets though in the photos with the “baby”.

Diving

Our little daredevil in action!

Under the Weather

Our poor little guy has been fighting a stomach bug the past few days. Tyler was fairly lethargic on Wednesday but has been more like his normal peppy self yesterday and today. He has definitely seen more cartoons in the past few days than in his first 2 years!

Open Cup

Now that Tyler is 2, he is in the Two-Year Old Class at daycare. This means he no longer gets sippy cups at daycare and must drink from an open cup! Apparently doctors also recommend ditching the sippy by age 2 because it can inhibit speech development. We are still weaning off the sippy at home because as you can see from the videos the use of the open cup is quite messy! But we are definitely helping Tyler work on this new skill.

Play!

Tyler loves to play! What kid doesn't? Tyler usually wants breakfast right after he gets up. Even on daycare days he still wants a waffle even though he gets breakfast at school! This morning was a first- Tyler did not want breakfast at all! He just kept saying "Play! Play!" So he played basketball while we finished getting ready. He did eventually drink some milk but playing was his top priority.

Tyler used to want a snack mid-afternoon but these days he is too busy playing. He eventually asks for a snack around 4:30 or 5, which is way too close to dinnertime and he is usually disappointed (and whines!) when we only give him a small snack.