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.

Faith 2 Years 4 Months

The extent to which Faith tries to keep up with her big brother is impressive. More and more she is wanting to do big kids things or do the same things Bryce is doing.

She wants to eat the same foods as he eats, which thoroughly frustrates Bryce. She wants to sit at the table without her booster seat; buckle her own seat belt; get dressed on her own; brush her teeth on her own; and the list keeps going. She has always been very independent when doing these things, but more and more she is getting adamant about it.

Her latest thing is telling us she wants privacy when she goes potty on the big potty. I have to stand outside the door until she tells me she is finished. I found this hysterical since I have to come in and wipe her when she is done. She has been doing really well using the potty. She no longer uses her little potty seat, but instead sits on the real toilet. She is doing almost all of her poop in the potty.

Faith is getting really into Veggie Tales. When given the choice she will choose a Veggie Tale movie over any other movie. Her favorite character is Bob the Tomato.

After spending the weekend in Tahoe earlier this month with the Husen's and Garcia's, Faith started carrying her babies around in her shirt or pj's trying to emulate Auntie Em carrying Ella in a Ergo Baby pack. She was stretching out her shirts and pj's trying to make the babies fit. At Nanny's suggestion I went on Amazon and found an Ergo Baby carrier specifically made for baby dolls. I immediately ordered it. Faith has spent entire days wearing her baby carrier. The only baby she puts in it is Ella. She has names most of her babies. She has Cole, Kira, Ella, and Ashley to name a few. All are named after babies she knows. If you call a baby doll by the incorrect name she immediately corrects you.

While she is still very attached to her pink lovey, she has started wanting all of them in her bed with her. She will tell you, "I want too many YaeYae's." I hope this means we can more easily distract her when it is time to wash the pink one.

Spokane

We had another wonderful trip to Spokane to visit Auntie Rachel, Uncle J, Samantha and Emily.

The kids and I flew out Wednesday morning, January 26th. Nathan joined us Friday night. We then all flew home together on Monday.

While we were there we did a lot of hanging out at the house so the kids could play. Samantha and Bryce got along wonderfully. Emily and Faith played well sometimes and at other times it was obvious they are both used to being the baby of the family. They had a tough time sharing and compromising.

Some of the fun things we did included tubing at Mt. Spokane, a drive to see the Bald Eagles, lunch out, Mobius (a discovery museum for kids), watching Samantha's ballet, tap and tumbling classes (Bryce participated in the tumbling class and had fun), and baking cookies.

Bryce 4 Years 7 Months

Bryce's artistic skills are improving dramatically. He is really amazing us. The other day he asked me to make a top hat with him out of paper. Not being very artistic, I wasn't sure how this was going to work out, but thankfully he had a plan. He instructed me step by step. While at first his directions didn't seem to make sense, I caught on to his plan and it worked great. He told me to cut a rectangle and then make it a circle. This meant to cut a rectangle then fold the two short ends together to make a cylinder. Then I was told to cut a large oval for the top and attach it to the circle. Next I had to cut two small ovals for the brim of the hat. While the two small ovals didn't make a "normal" brim, they looked correct from a 4 year old's view point of looking head on at something.

He continues drawing and writing letters on a regular basis. When he writes his name, the letters go from right to left, but they are in the correct order and legible.

It is so wonderful to watch this development occur.

For the past few weeks Bryce has been ultra sensitive. He cries easily over little things. If you ask him to do or not do something his reaction is sometimes to head upstairs because he thinks he is in trouble. I'm trying to be sensitive to his sensitivity, but he is really over the top right now.

Bryce went through a huge growth spurt this month. In a matter or two weeks his pants went from being too long to being high-waters. I had to pack up all his size 4 pants and get down the box of size 5 hand-me-downs. Thankfully there were plenty of pants and I didn't have to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe mid-season.

Bryce started staying through respite care (from 1-3) at school. I am hoping the extra hours help him to be better prepared for Kindergarten. He really likes it as it means a short quiet time and then more playtime outside with his friends.

We are still undecided on where to send him for school. We are applying for financial aid at Rincon Valley Christian and are touring Riebli in a few days. Hopefully after our tour we will have a better feeling one way or another.

Bryce has completely stopped having accidents at night. It has been over 6 weeks since he woke up with any wetness. Yea for not having to wash sheets as often or wake up to change him.

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.