The one about Reed spelling & Bryce sitting

Bryce is just growing up so fast and getting so big! I can tell just from holding him that his body is becoming more muscular.  He’s so firm now, not that squishy infant body anymore.  He has a very cute thing that he does when he’s trying to soothe himself. He reaches up to the top of his head and plays with his hair.  As his fingers pull thru his tiny strands, his eyes will close and his body relaxes. He does this after an especially fussy little fit when he’s falling asleep in the crib, or when he’s drinking a bottle after getting really worked up.  I guess I’m just too slow getting that bottle made sometimes!

Over the weekend he improved so much strength and is starting to sit independently. Not only that, but he also is making forward motion in preparation to start crawling. He buries his face into the rug and scrunches his body so his butt goes into the air, like an inchworm he moves forward just a little at a time. I keep wondering how much more he is soaking up from the world because he’s got Reed around to learn from. They always say the second one learns faster because of that, but it seems impossible since Reed is so advanced!

Recently Reed decided he wanted to learn to spell.  He has known his alphabet for months, so logically the next step is spelling, right?  He focuses best in the car while he’s strapped down and in a confined space, so that’s where we started.  
I said to him, “Reed, what letters spell milk?” 
And then he repeated after me, “M-I…L-K” 
Then he said, “Mommy, spell Reed.”
So I say, “Okay, Reed. Say R… E-E…D” 
It was back and forth, over and over, he requested, 
“Mommy, spell Milk?  Mommy, spell Reed? “Mommy, spell Milk?  Mommy, spell Reed? Mommy, spell Baby Duck”

Wha???

It was so random and so completely hilarious as a result.  Mike and I both cracked up.  I thought the next word might be something like: truck, bike, Daddy… any of his favorite words.  But, Baby Duck?? 
When I tried to get  back to Milk or Reed, he insisted! “Mommy, spell baby duck?!?”

Since then, and it’s been about two weeks, he occasionally goes through the same requests,  “Mommy, spell Milk?  Mommy, spell Reed? Mommy, spell Baby Duck” 
He’s hilarious.

He’s also started adding “Okay!” to his requests.  This is how it’s evolved. Let’s say he wants milk (because that’s about 90% of the time) after he learned the word he used to say, “Milk! Milk! Milk, pease!” Then it became “Milk, pease!? Yes?” (most likely because we would say, you want milk? Yes?) then we would say, “Okay! I’ll get you some milk!”  So now it’s, “Milk, pease? Yes? Okay! Milk!” He has a whole conversation with himself!  This also applies to “Outside play? Yes? Okay! Outside play!” Or “Watch news? Yes? Okay! Watch news!”  The best part is that the question part is a little whiny but when he gets to the “Okay!”, he perks right up!  He loves watching the news with his Daddy in the mornings.  He gets a cup of his milk and snuggles in. Life doesn’t get any better.  Besides, the news has all his favorite things- ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, helicopters…  He will decide he wants to watch the news at any given moment during the day.  Its quite problematic when the news isn’t on.  Try explaining that to a 22 month old.  Bryce is a little TV addict already.  It’s really tough to try to keep him faced away from it since Reed and Dad get to watch TV.  Reed wasn’t allowed to watch TV (with the exception of a little football on Sunday) until he was 15 months, and that was only because he was sick and we bought the movie Cars for him to watch while lying on the couch.  So here Bryce is, not even 6 months old and we’ve still got almost a year of trying to keep the TV either turned off around him or out of his line of sight.  Good luck with that, right?  

We’re supposed to try to enforce the same timing constraints on the second child as we did the first?  And so it begins.  The second child always gets earlier exposure, “adjusted” rules, and basically ends up growing up quicker.  Luckily, this early on, Reed will never know how unfair it all is!
Reed’s got all kinds of thoughtful sentences
Bryce is awake
Bryce is sleeping
Bryce is sad
Bryce is smiling
 Yesterday he took a diaper out to the garage and threw it away without me asking and when he came back he was beaming, “Reed threw diaper away, garbage!” There is always some mumbling in between his key words in a sentence.  He knows there are some connecter words and extra “fluff” that we adults add, so he tries to add it as well.  Its adorable. His brain is so logical.  He will talk to me for 20 minutes straight on the way to and from school about who he will play with and what he will do, or what he did do if it’s afternoon. 

 He told me last Friday that he “painted dinosaurs with Rylan.”  I asked what colors he used and he said, “Orange. And… blue.”

I wish you could see Bryce's face better- its the best!

He loves Bryce and one of my favorite things is watching them play in the backseat of the car.  Reed will peak at Bryce, who is obviously rear-facing, and Bryce will just light up at him- which cracks Reed right up! It’s clear how much Bryce already looks up to Reed.  He sees Reed’s face and immediately turns into the happiest boy in the world.  They are so lucky to have each other!