Our Christmas, plus updates on the kids

We were lucky enough to have two Christmases this past year...one in Tacoma in the middle of December, and one in Germany during our two weeks there.  Miriam has gotten old enough that she really loves Christmas and all of its meaning and traditions.  (She also loves to open presents and help Mathias open his; luckily, he is still young enough that he doesn't mind!)  Our Christmases in both places were filled with family, love, laughter, and lots of good times.

Our trip to Germany was wonderful, although a 10 hour plane ride with a 1 year old is not the most relaxing endeavor.  Miriam was wonderful on the plane rides, but Mathias just wanted to do what he does best...walk, climb, bounce, and be busy.  Mario did a great job of corralling him for most of the trip, and we tried to let him run around in the airports to get out as much energy as possible.

When we were in Germany, we got about 4" of snow, and the kids had a blast sledding in it and playing outside.  Mathias seems to be the more adventurous spirit of our two kids; he fearlessly went sledding down the (small) hill and would sign "more" as soon as he got to the bottom.  He also loved crawling through the snow (even after his gloves came off) and tried to run in the snow...he couldn't stop laughing and giggling.  Miriam loved playing in the snow as well, and she was willing to try sledding after watching how much fun Mathias had with it.  She also loved to run around in the snow, throw snowballs (she especially loved when we pretended to fall over after she hit us with a snowball), and build snowmen.

I'll post some Christmas pictures in a different post, but first I'd like to update about both kids, since it has been a while.

Mathias is just over 14 months old, and is such a joy.  He's walking and climbing all over the place now (and even walks backwards and in circles), and his brain is such a little sponge.  He follows our directions ("Go get your coat!"), copies what Miriam does, knocks on doors when he wants to get to the other side, dances to music and spins around in circles, and plays peek-a-boo.  He goes and gets his coat and shoes anytime he wants to go somewhere, signs "more" and "please" when he wants to eat, and has started to show an interest in drawing (scribbling) and coloring.  He laughs and giggles at us all day, gives us huge smiles, and loves to walk around the house dragging things (shopping bags, toys, his coat) behind him.

Miriam will be 4 in a couple months, if you can believe it!  She is full of imagination these days...she loves to make up pretend games, and can make a game out of anything we are doing.  (Case in point...last week, she said she wanted to play the "put my hands in your hands and sing part of a song and then stop when I pull my hands out game.")  Miriam is also quite the budding artist; she's got an entire art cart full of supplies (mostly things I brought home from my classroom when I switched jobs), and she can paint/color/glue/sticker/stamp by herself happily for quite a while.  She loves to read books, dance around, play outside, and help me bake in the kitchen.  And the conversations we have with her these days are so funny; she is always asking "why" and "what is that"?  The other day, she was asking what "in charge" meant (we were talking about taking snack to preschool) and she said "What are I in charge of at home?"  I kept telling her things she was in charge of at home, and she seemed so happy to be in charge of things...I told her she would start official chores when she turned 4.  She seemed excited! :)