First Day of Ski Season

Life goes on in the Faiola-Renoud household, despite fact that 50% of the household (unfortunately, the people in the house that are responsible for keeping the other 50% alive) are deliriously tired. Said adults have taken to going to sleep around 8 p.m. to try to get 6 hours of sleep before morning.

Jamisen has taken to getting up multiple times in a night and yelling at the top of his lungs "Blanket! I need my blanket put back on! Da-aaaaaaad! Blanket!" until someone stumbles into his room and tucks the blanket in just so. This is a new and exciting way to torture the humans above 3 feet tall in the house.

Interestingly enough, Jamisen slept through the first 2 nights of Lily's sleep training. Go figure. Kid wakes up if his blanket falls off but when there is shrieking and screaming in the bedroom next to his, he sleeps right through it.

Lily's sleep training is obviously going well. Day One versus Day Two shows clear improvement. And, I think Day Two would have been even better had she not been outgrowing her little bassinet and accidentally kicked it really hard when she was flailing about. The light blue lines are "restless" - this means I've gotten up but quickly made it back to bed. The pink lines are "awake! awake! awake" and mean that I will not make it to bed quickly or fall asleep easily. They correlate to having to comfort should-be-sleeping infants.

Chris is fully post-cold, post-headache and is on the upswing. It has been a wonderful thing to have him back in the swing of things. The entire family was proud of him for going skiing and taking some much needed solitude time to workout and get some fresh air.

I'm good, barely hanging in there. November is our busiest season for work and though we had projected growth, we got hit with a tsunami of awesome customer love this year with so many orders. We are a full week behind for shipping (despite hiring so many staff members that we needed to add a shift just to fit everyone in the building) and customer love has not been all that forthcoming. In fact, they're so irritated with us that they're doing little internet memes (see below).

That just inspired me to create one for them right back to answer them. Givember, for the non-soap-fanatics among us, is our version of 25 Days of Christmas with free tutorials, special coupons, gifts with purchase etc.... Customers LOVE it and crave it and this year, supported us fully by swamping us with orders.

It's been difficult to have a non-sleeping baby because normally, I'd be able to help out more in the evenings but this year, just keeping my own workload in check has been more than enough to keep me maxed for all the waking hours I can devote to work. These are all champagne and caviar problems though; how lucky and blessed are we that we are swamped with orders?

Jamisen has been fighting a little face rash due to excessive drooling (yes, 14 year old Jamisen reading this; we could not keep you from drooling all over yourself as a 2 year old) coupled with the cold outdoors.

This is Jamisen's reaction to Tic Tac Toe. Whoops ... only 2 and I've already broken his spirit.

Lily had her first play date this week, 9 week old Ewan AKA "Perfecto", the son of my former Assistant Kristen. Jamisen is clearly enamored by the little one and treated him so well - very gently and sweetly.

 We continue to grow into our family of four and love our children more and more every single day.