Rye, 16m

Superstar in a Hollywood-adjacent grocery store.

Daddy told Rye a joke the other night that made him laugh: He was whiiiining at the dinner table, so Greg showed Rye the sign for "sirens." Rye said, "Sounz (sirens)," made the sign, then looked at Greg and started laughing. And he didn't whine any more.

When you make even the slightest suggestion to check his diaper, he takes off running, giggling all the way. And he's getting fast. Recently, when Mommy asked Rye whether his diaper was poopy, he grinned, took off running to the couch in the den, put his head down, and started making snoring sounds like he was sleeping.

We read Rye's favorite book the other night, and he pointed out and said: duck, cat ("mmm-ow!"), dog (and gave the sign for dog), helicopter (sign), bus, truck, dump truck ("dop"), and bird ("tweet tweet").

New words Rye says repeatedly: dots, church, moose, dark, stew! banana ("bama"), trash, hot ("ot"), boots, hat. When you say that something is cold, he clenches his fists by his chin and says, "Brrrr!" Greg taught him that "The moose is loose in the caboose," so sometimes he wanders around saying, " 'boose."

He likes the word moose so much, that when a chipmunk scurried across the yard, he pointed at it and said, "moose." Then again, the toy moose he has that we spend a lot of time with, is about the size of a chipmunk. Looks like it may be time for a trip to Yellowstone.

The other night Rye made a naked getaway while mommy's fingers were covered with sticky, white diaper cream, which then flew all over the place. In frustration, Mommy said, "GOSH!" and it's a lucky thing she picked that word (and not one of the myriad others you know she might ordinarily have used), because Rye spent the rest of the evening chanting, " 'osh....'osh..."

Oftentimes if you ask him a question that he doesn't know the answer to, he just throws his hands up in the air and looks at you, to say, "I dunno!"

He tries to brush his own hair, but usually in the back, where he can barely reach, and often with the backside of the brush.

Rye loves playing with crayons and markers. He likes to draw a little bit, but mostly he likes to manipulate the colored sticks and take the caps off of the markers. Rye puts Duplo Legos together and flies it around the room making airplane sounds. He can grasp things well with his thumb and forefingers to, for example, open the velcro tie on the shoes he doesn't want to wear. Rye also is pretty good at unscrewing the lids from jars, and the knob from the dresser.

He's into wrapping things around his neck or shoulders now, like necklaces and scarves. We actually got him to wear some shoes for about 10 minutes last week. They were Crocs, but hey, it's a start.

He likes to give big hugs, saying Squeeze! ("Seeeez!")

Jammin' in music class.

Rye tries to endorse Daisy the hamster.

This is what total relaxation looks like. In case you were wondering.