Rye said his first word today! Grandma picked up his little blue shoe to hand to him, and Rye said out of the blue, "Shoes."
He also has said "side," ("siiigh") as in, "Other side, please," and "more" ("mohh") while nursing, but that usually is after Mommy already has said the word.
Here's a quick movie of Rye trying to put on some shoes, and a photo from the Kidspace play museum.
Ninety-six degrees, and when you're feeling crummy and maybe feverish, too hot to play outside. So after the cool bath didn't hold him over, we set Rye up with some cool water at the sink. He loves being almost as tall as Mommy!
Rye's standing-and-splatting game has evolved into a standing-run-into-splatting game. So, he's basically figuring out walking! He had a few good steps before the camera was running, and now here are some clips. The whole thing is making him excited and a little hyper. Then shortly after the camera stopped, he took a lunge for Mommy, who wasn't quite ready, and he dove right into an open door. He has quite the souvenir goose egg over his eye, ouch. He had a quick recovery—Daddy still had to do the calming walk to convince him to get to sleep tonight.
We think it's pretty incredible that he's basically nailed the concept over three days or so. He now wants to stand anywhere; the more heart-stopping for Mommy, the better: on the edge of the bed, in the bathtub, on the tile floor, next to the wall, near a door. With a tremendous grin each time.
Rye has been standing occasionally over the last week or so, but he didn't always know he was doing it. Today, something clicked! He spent about 10 full minutes standing up, grinning with pride, then falling dramatically on top of Daddy, over and over and over again. He was so excited about it he wouldn't go to sleep and kept standing up next to Mommy on the bed during story time.
He's also been practicing with his walker, which he seems to like more and more. His pal Jack has one, too, so we took the two of them to the local community center so they could play. Here's some video. And apologies for the spots on the lens.
A personality all his own. Those black Crocs aren't shoes he's ever worn, by the way; he has somehow figured out they can go on his feet...or...someone's feet.... No still photos, sorry.
We had the second most mellow Labor Day on record (last year's was possibly less-planned), and spent the weekend hanging out and doing house projects. We also stopped by Grandma and Grandpa's place to catch up with them. Rye loves peek-a-boo at Grandma and Grandpa's house.
We rode one of the mini trains in the park, but Rye was pretty out of it. We'll try again some time when he's not ready to keel over for a big nap.
We have really limited Rye's toys to the open-ended ones that require imagination to make sounds and do cool things. This keeps him calm and stokes his creativity (and keeps us from going out of our minds). Grandma's therapy tools include a dollhouse with a few interesting pieces, however, and Rye discovered on his own (or maybe his older cousins taught him how!) that the car "stereo" plays music. He had quite a long DIY dance party. He also spent the day practicing flipping his tongue upside down (Why? We don't know.), which is clear in the dance video as well.
