Faith 2 Years 5 Months

Faith is officially potty-trained. We had been encouraging her to use the potty for several months. She would do most of her poops in the potty, but she preferred to go pee in her pull-up. About three weeks ago she refused to put a pull-up on in favor of wearing panties. She made it all day long, including going to Bible study and running errands without an accident. Since this day, she will not wear pull-ups unless she is napping (she wears panties over the pull-ups for nap - very funny) and bedtime. She has only had a couple of full-on accidents, all of which have been at home. The first few days of wearing panties she would suddenly freeze and say "A yittle drop in my panties" and run to the bathroom. Now she holds it for several hours. We are slowly weaning her from thinking she needs a jelly belly every time she goes potty.

Along with this new skills, she has become quite the tantrum queen. She has thrown some huge tantrums over the past month. When she decides to throw one of these fits nothing we say or do can get her to come out of it. We have resorted to putting her in her crib until she is done screaming, which can last upwards of 30 minutes. Last week she refused to get dressed and started screaming. I put her in her crib, and 30 minutes later she still wasn't ready to get dressed. I had to leave to take Bryce to school, so my mom and I had to pin her down, get her dressed and carry her to the car. Finally after 10 or so minutes in the car she calmed down. I hope she gets over this tantrum stage quick.

St. Patrick's Day - Daddy's Birthday

For Bryce's school lunch I made a rainbow of fruit, a four-leaf clover shaped sandwich, and green yogurt. When I picked him up, he had a big smile and told me he was the only kid with a special St. Patrick's Day lunch.

Faith celebrated at her My Gym class. She recently moved up to the Tots class (2 1/2 - 3 1/2 years) and loves it.

The kids each made Nathan a masterpiece for his birthday. The worked on them over a few day period, letting each coat of paint dry. Bryce did a picture of the ocean and an orange sunset sky with a steam boat.

Nathan opted to stay home and have a quiet family dinner rather than going out. It was a nice evening.

Bryce 4 Years 8 Months

Bryce went from a little boy that didn't like anything having to do with art to being an art junkie. He all of a sudden starting sketching and wanting to cutout everything in site.

A few days ago he asked me to draw a whale so he could cut it out. I gave it my best attempt, to which he replied, "Mommy, that is not a very good whale." After explaining that daddy was the artist in the family I had the idea of printing out sketches from the internet. What a hit. We've since printed out whales, dinosaurs, moose, bears, dolphins, boats, trains, elephants, hippos, Toy Story characters, Dinosaur Train characters, etc. and he has cut them out. He now has an entire folder with all of his cutouts. His attitude has also greatly improved when he makes a mistake. He still melts down occasionally, but not nearly as much as a few months ago.

He has also started to write his name. It is so interesting to watch him. Sometimes he writes his name exactly the write way, sometimes he write a perfect mirror image, somethings he uses all capital letters, and sometimes some letters face the correct direction and some do not. He doesn't seem to notice the difference when looking at the finished product. I'm told that this is a natural stage in a child's development and not to correct it. That to his eyes it really looks correct. In addition to writing his name he has started to work in Pre-K workbooks and is doing extremely well. He is spelling simple words, knows the sounds of each letter, recognizes A-Z in both lowercase and capital, and can tell you what letter most words start with by sounding them out slowly. Now to just get him to hold his pencil correctly...

One recent behavioral challenge that we've been dealing with is Bryce telling me to "Stop It" or yelling "No" when I try to correct his behavior. He has also said that "It sounds like you don't love/like your son" and "I'm a bad boy" and "I'm a bad son" when he is in trouble for something. All are devastating to hear, as this is most definitely not the case. He takes all constructive criticism and disciple so personal and doesn't want to hear it. He tends to just shut down. I'm trying very hard to be sensitive to this and tell him when he is doing the right thing or when he has a terrific attitude.