Faith 2 Years 3 Months

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Faith has once again stopped sleeping through the night. Ever since our Tahoe trip she has been waking up 2-4 times screaming for me. Thankfully all I have to do is give her back her binky and lovey and tuck her in. The bad thing is that while it only takes me a couple of minutes to settle her down, it sometimes takes me over an hour to fall back to sleep. I feel like I have a newborn sometimes with the amount of sleep I'm loosing.

Faith has gone through a growth spurt over the last few weeks. She has gotten taller. Many of her pants no longer fit. I think she is finally in a 24 month or 2T size. The only issue is that her winter wardrobe is all 18-24 month. I really don't want to have to buy a bunch of new clothes. I'm hoping to find enough to fit that we can't wait until Spring for a new wardrobe.

Faith has been using words like "similar", saying "that _______ is similar to ________." She is also saying things like actually, except, and many more words that most 2 year old can't even pronounce let alone use correctly. The only words she consistently misprounces are words that begin with "sp" or "sn" like snow is "no" or spanking is "panking." She can say her "s" sound with many words that begin with "s" and if the "s" is in the middle of the word. Her language skills really are amazing. We are so often astonished at what comes out of her mouth.

We are trying to bribe her with a big girl bed (toddler bed) if she starts to keep her pull-up dry. In the last few weeks she has only gone poop in her pull-up a couple of times during nap, but it is almost always wet. So far she tells us that she wants a big girl bed, but keeps peeing in her pull-up.

Tahoe

Our fifth annual New Year's trip to Tahoe was a lot of fun.

Our drive up was uneventful. We were afraid of getting stuck on 80 since snow was in the forecast. Thankfully the snow was very light going over the pass and the roads remained clear. Since we feared getting stuck or having to turn back around due to road closures we left early Sunday morning and rushed through lunch. Consequently we arrived in Tahoe a couple of hours before our house was ready. We spent those hours going to Safeway to buy all the food we didn't pack with us, walking around Tahoe City and getting hot chocolate and muffins for the kids for snack.

Monday - We woke up early and headed to Northstar for a day of skiing. Nanny stayed at the cabin with Mandy and Faith. I was so impressed with Bryce. Nathan and I started him off right away on a green run. At first Nathan had him skiing between his legs. When he feel he didn't cry or whine, but got up ready to try again. After going down with him for a couple of hours we took a short break to use the bathroom and have a quick snack. Bryce didn't want to sit in the lodge long as he wanted to be back out skiing. After another couple of runs, we met up with the Buccellato's. Juli then took over teaching Bryce. He made great progress with her. She had him hold her poles and skied down beside him. We did Village run numerous times and by the end Bryce was started to turn and would let go of the poles. While we did Village run, Nathan and Clay went up to the top of the mountain for some more difficult skiing. We meet up again for snacks around 2:30. By this time the boys were getting tired. Since I enjoy skiing the least out of the adults I took them back to the car to warm up, watch a movie and wait for the other adults to get a few more runs in. The only time Bryce whined the entire day was on the long walk back to the car. He was such a trooper, had a ton of self confidence, and tried his best. He loved it.

Tuesday - Nathan, Juli, Clay and Trey spent another day at Northstar. Nanny, the girls and I stayed home. We played games, including Faith's new Zingo game, watched movies, took a walk, read stories, and had quiet/nap time. It was a relaxing day for those of us that stayed home, and a fun day of skiing for the others.

Wednesday - Nathan and I went in the hot tub after breakfast with the kids. After that we went to the same sledding park we had been to the previous two years. The snow was perfect and there were no other sledders there. Faith and Bryce were both fearless, loving the bumps and going fast. After a couple hours of sledding everyone was getting hungry so we went back to the cabin for lunch. That afternoon we went to Northstar to ice skate and make smores. Bryce was so fun to watch on skates. Even though he hadn't skated since last year, he got right out on the ice, didn't hold the wall, and figured it out all by himself. After just a few times around the rink he was trying to do tricks (skating on one leg, going backwards, turning, etc.). He was so proud of himself. Mandy had taken a couple sessions of skating lessons last summer, but she was very unsure of herself and didn't want to let go of Juli's hands. This gave Bryce a boost of confidence. When he fell he got right up and kept on going. Faith also enjoyed the ice. Nathan helped her around the ice several times. After skating we made smores and rested then went back on the ice for a while. We decided to call it quits for the night when Bryce started getting upset when he fell because his bottom hurt and we were all getting hungry. We went to CBs Pizza for dinner and then home for the night.

Thursday - We had a lazy day around the cabin. We played games, watched movies, played with the kids, built a snowman (our best one yet), took a walk down to the lake, read our books. It was a very nice way to spend a vacation day.

Friday - We had a repeat of Wednesday. We went sledding in the morning and once again we had the hill to ourselves. Bryce was even more daring this time, wanting to go over the biggest jumps. One time he hit the jump a little hard, flew off the sled and hit his face hard enough to make his nose bleed and cut his lip. I thought for sure we were done for the day, but after a few hugs and tears he was going again, although not over the same jump. Faith also continued to enjoy sledding. Her favorite person to go down the hill with was E.T. Juli. That afternoon we went back to Northstar for more ice skating and smores. Bryce didn't have as good of an experience as he had previously. Mandy decided that she didn't need to hold onto Juli's hand and decided to go around the rink as fast as she could. Since she had toe-picks on her skates and lessons under her belt she was faster than Bryce at running around the rink. This greatly upset Bryce because he wanted to be faster than her. Mandy didn't help the situation as she taunted him every time she passed him. After a few fits and a smore, Bryce began to understand that Mandy had more experience with skating and that it didn't matter who was faster. We also pointed out that he could do tricks, which Mandy wasn't doing. This helped improve his attitude and he started to enjoy himself. Faith only went around the rink a few times and then was finished. While she enjoyed it, she was content to sit with Nanny and watch.

Saturday - We had another lazy day around the cabin on Saturday. We had intended to go to Jake's on the Lake for lunch, but the adults were feeling tired and lazy, and Faith was sick with a nasty cold. Instead we stayed home, read, played lots of games, watched movies, and relaxed. It was a nice way to spend our final full day of vacation.

Sunday - Our drive home was uneventful. We left at 9:30 am and were home by 2:30. This included stopping for gas and lunch in Auburn. The kids were well behaved for the majority of the ride. We were sure Faith would take a good nap since she hadn't slept well for the past two nights because of her cold. However she proved us wrong.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was watching Bryce blossom. Often times he is afraid to try new things and can be a little cautious. This was not the case. He tackled skiing, sledding, and ice skating with confidence, determination, and enthusiasm. It was wonderful to see this. Also, for the most part he wasn't too hard on himself when he fell or was not perfect.

I also loved watching tiny Faith fly down the sledding hill in her pink and purple snow outfit. She had so much spunk and did her best to keep up with the big kids.

I also loved watching Nathan teach Bryce to ski and helping Faith to ice skate. He is such a wonderful dad.

I feel so blessed to be able to spend such quality time with my family.

Bryce 4 1/2 Years Old

Bryce has suddenly become interested in drawing. It started when we were out to dinner for my birthday. He was given crayons and paper and drew something other than just scribbles. He isn't holding the crayon correctly, but he is now able to draw things that truly look like the object he is trying to create. He is very hard on himself when they don't turn out just right, but he is still enjoying it.

He has also started to get more into art projects in general. He had to make a star badge for his Star Person Week at school, which takes place the second week in January. He glued all sorts of sequence, little pom-poms, beads, and feathers onto the star. He has also been enjoying cutting projects and other artsy things.

Bryce had his first soccer scrimmage a few weeks ago. Only three goals were scored the entire scrimmage. He scored his team's only two goals, and the other team scored one goal. He was very impressed with himself. I was happy to see this since the previous week he was very upset during his class because he had a new teacher, their class was on a new part of the field, and things were just different since he had moved up a level. The next week he scored three goals. He is not afraid to get right in the middle of things, tries to get the ball back from the other team, and loves to score goals. We bought him shin-guards, which he wore for an entire day so that people everywhere we went could see them. He was so cute showing and telling people about them and his soccer class.