Spelling Bee

My Grandma Ginny was visiting last weekend. She and I were sitting around the dinner table eating and chatting. Kylie was also eating with us in her highchair. I was asking my Grandma if she would want to help me give baths to the girls after dinner. Jason was working, and I always enjoy extra help when it comes to bath time. Plus, my grandma loves anything that has to do with taking care of her great grandchildren. I was spelling out the word "bath" since Kylie would have refused to eat anymore and would have begged for a bath instead. Grandma started spelling words like "water" because she doesn't know which words Kylie gets excited about. Kylie was listening to us and heard us spell out all these words. She recognized that they were letters because she loves the alphabet song and even sings it with about 50% of the correct letters. Well, she didn't want to be left out because she looked at us and said in a normal conversation voice: E. I. E. I. O. as in from the "Old McDonald" song. So funny.

Two year anniversary

Life as boyfriend and girlfriend:

Wedding Day 06/22/07:

One year anniversary:

We had a small wedding, yet we wanted to be able to celebrate with friends and family. The solution: a reception one year later.

Two year anniversary:

Compared to our very busy one year anniversary, this one was very uneventful. We spent the day at home together with our two girls. Jason went to pick us up some Chipotle for dinner, which is our favorite. We wanted to take the girls somewhere fun, but the temperatures were just too hot and unsafe for them.

My mom took the following pictures the day before. She was in KC for Kelly's softball tournament.

All about Jason

As if you didn't already know, tomorrow is Father's Day. What you might not have known, or remembered, is that Monday, June 22nd, is our 2 year wedding anniversary. We have had two children during those two years, so it has been a chaotic/busy/fun/adventurous/exhausting/wonderful time. In light of Father's day and our anniversary, I would like to dedicate this blog post to my best friend, who just happens to be my husband and the father of my children.

TOP TEN REASONS JASON IS A GREAT DAD:

1. He is the one who picked out both of our daughters' names. I had about a hundred names picked out, but he vetoed every one. In frustration, I asked him to give me some names that he liked. He only gave me one, but as soon as he said it I knew it was our daughter's name. This happened both times I was pregnant.
2. We are pretty sure that we are done having children. Yet Jason is not at all disappointed that this means he will never have a son. He knew nothing about baby girls before he had his own, but he was never scared of it. He is so in love with his little girls and is always telling them how beautiful and special they are.
3. He wanted to hold both girls as soon as they were born. I won that battle, but I let him hold them soon after I did. He just walked around the hospital room, looking his new baby in the eyes, and telling her how much he loved her.
   
4. He was the only one who could get Kylie to giggle at first. Although I was jealous, I would love watching him tickle her neck or wave a blanket over her face just to hear that sweet sound.
   
5. We don't have very much money right now, but whenever he can he will buy some little gift for his girls instead of spending money on himself. Another example of this generosity is when he won a free DVD at target and he decided to get Kylie a Barney DVD (she LOVES Barney.) He is always doing things like this, which shows how much he thinks of his girls.
   
6. When Eve or Kylie are fussy, he is always able to calm them down. He doesn't pass the baby on to me when they cry, he just knows what to do to calm them down.
   
7. Jason grew up as an only child. He has a half sister and some step siblings, but he wasn't raised with them. He also had never been around very many babies. Yet this didn't stop him from learning as much as possible on how to care for our girls. He is involved in everything (including the diapers). I'm proud to say that he does a great job at everything he has learned to do from learning about tummy time to helping with those first steps.
   
8. Kylie had her nights and days mixed up her first month of life and he would stay up with her most of the time at night and only pass her off to me when she needed to eat. While there were some nights that I stayed up with her, I must give credit to Jason for doing it a lot more. When she did want to sleep at night, she wanted to be upright, so Jason spent lots of time sleeping on the recliner. We've been a lot luckier with Eve, she sleeps well at night, but I know he would do the same thing for her if he had to.
9. Eve is too young to really "play games" but when she is old enough, I know she will have a blast with her daddy. Jason always gets really into whatever game Kylie wants to play.
10. He gets so proud of everything his girls do, such as first smiles, first words, crawling... you name it, if the girls do it Jason is proud. (Unless it's something naughty). Kylie and Eve are so lucky that they have a dad who will always think everything about them is so special. I also think my girls are amazing, but it makes it so much sweeter to know that their dad thinks the same thing.

There are many other reasons why Jason is a great father. All you have to do is watch the interaction he has with Kylie and Eve to see for yourself how dedicated and proud he is. I'm so happy that I have him as my partner in raising these girls. This idea of partnership brings me to the next part of the post:

TOP TEN REASONS JASON IS A GREAT HUSBAND:

Jason is trying to learn a foreign language… can you guess which one? FRENCH! He has a Rosetta Stone CD and takes time during his busy schedule to try to learn it. He hasn’t gotten very far yet, but I think it’s so sweet that he is taking an interest to something that was a big part of my life before he was even in it. He really wants me to teach French to our daughters, but I’ll wait until they are a little bit older and play lots of French music and read lots of French stories to them. I do have reasons for waiting a couple years, but I won’t get into that unless someone is interested.

2. Jason is always interested in everything that goes on in my life, even if it mundane. He will always listen to me talk about my day, even if it consisted of me sitting around the house. We don’t share the same interests in everything, but he will always discuss anything that I find interesting. For example, he does not like the reality TV shows that I love. I will admit that they are dumb, but I’m so entertained by them. He will watch them with me and even join me in discussions about the characters. I know it’s not his favorite thing to discuss, but he does it for me.

3. He always finds little ways to touch me during the day. Whether he’s holding my hand in the car, cuddling up to me on the couch or hugging me as I walk by, he always finds a way to make contact with me. He also knows that I get smothered easily and knows what the right balance is. While that may seem weird, Jason will understand what I’m talking about.

4. Jason works very hard and is currently attending seminary. Yet when he’s home, he helps out so much. He has every right to be exhausted at times, yet he’s always helping me clean or just take care of our daughters. He even lets me take naps whenever our schedules work out for me to. I hope he realizes that I do not take him for granted!

5. He kills spiders for me, big or small. Actually it wasn’t until just recently that he finally took my fear of spiders seriously. He used to think that I would be able to kill spiders myself, because he didn’t understand just how much the little creatures and their many legs freak me out. Now, he will just kill them without any complaints.

6. He cares about my spiritual well-being as well as my physical and emotional well-being. We have big theological discussions. We pray together and read the Bible together. Jason always tells me things he learns in his classes. I love how he finds it important to share these things with me. We both have the same religious values and try to support each other in each other’s walk with Christ. I can imagine it would be very difficult to be married to someone who believed in different theology than you did.

7. Like I mentioned in point 6, we both have the same ideas when it comes to theology. Every once in a while, we might disagree on something small, but we both listen to each other and see if we can learn anything new. I like how he will listen to me, instead of just trying to prove that his point is right. He truly values my opinion, which I am thankful for.

8. He always makes me feel like I am the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. He always compliments me and I can honestly say I have never once noticed him checking out another woman, not even a quick glance. His compliments are always so sincere too.

9. There are times when I can go a little stir crazy staying home. Jason will do things like go with me to the grocery store so we can find ways to spend time together outside the house. Going to the grocery store is not his idea of fun, but he does it because he knows I enjoy it.

10. I’m not a huge fan of talking on the phone, especially if it’s someone I don’t know. Jason helps me out by making the calls to the insurance, the bank… all those errand-like phone calls that I can’t stand. I also hate doing the dishes, so Jason helps out a lot in that department too. It’s just simple things like this that show me how much he loves me!

Isn't she cute?

There are probably about 10 pianos scattered throughout our church. Kylie LOVES playing them. I never even had to teach her not to bang on the keys. She just knew to push the keys individually.

My parents made me take piano lessons as a child, I was NOT talented. So if she grows up to be a musician, she didn't inherit those genes from me. :)

Drama Queen

She wanted to go into my room and I wouldn't let her. So she tried some of her magic on me:

Thankfully, I'm now immuned to her "magic", so I was able to calm her down without giving in. Here she is five minutes later, telling me a story:

Someone please tell me that the terrible twos aren't going to be too much worse. I don't know how much more I can handle. It's a good thing I am completely in love with my drama queen.

Book Abuse

We no longer keep our DVD collection in our living room. We have learned that we needed to make the choice between hiding them from Kylie or having to pick up every single DVD that we own at the end of the day. We chose to hide them. We decided to fill our empty media shelves with books for Kylie. She loves to bring us books to read to her or just sit and read them to herself. She also loves to pull out every single book, which taught us another lesson: don't keep more books on the shelves than you want to pick up every day. The rest are hidden along with the DVDs.

We have tried to teach her how to treat books the right way. Yet, she has still managed to destroy many books, all of them being board books and brand new before Kylie got her hands on them. Here is a sample of the destruction she has caused:

This is the remains of "Gallop". We can still read the book, but we can no longer see the moving pictures.

The right page has been thoroughly dissected: the star is never to shine again.


This is the only flap that will open in this book. Simply because Kylie has torn out the rest. And these are not wimpy little flaps either.

Rolling Over

This is going to have to be a really quick post, but I wanted to make sure I posted something to remember this date down the line because... Eve rolled over today... twice! She is 2 and a half months old. I'm pretty sure Kylie didn't do this until she was 4 months old, but I could be wrong. Why didn't I document that somewhere? I do have a picture of Kylie rolling over at 4 months, I just don't remember if she ever did before then.

Good thing I won't forget for Eve, thanks to this blog!

She rolled over from her back to her tummy, just like her big sister did first. I know that they are supposed to be able to roll the other way first, but both girls aren't too fond of tummy time, so I'm not surprised.

Swimming

Jason really wants to teach Kylie to swim. I hope he doesn't have too high of hopes, because the chances of her learning how to swim anytime soon are slim to none. At least he is planning on having fun trying. We bought her a little swimming shirt with built in floaties. However, our apartment complex has STILL not opened up our pool. They told us when we signed our lease that they would have the pool open before memorial day... yeah right.

Thankfully, we had the chance to use her new floatie shirt this past weekend. We went down to Ozark, MO for a cousin's wedding and our hotel had a pool.

At first, she wasn't too sure. The water was a little cold.

She wanted to get out of the water...

... but soon enough, she was having a great time, especially when daddy made big splashes with his feet.

She ended up having a great time. Jason never once let go of her, and she really didn't do much but cling to him (thank goodness! This girl is way too independent sometimes, and being in the water can be dangerous even with the floatie. So I'm so glad she was clinging to her daddy the whole time and not trying to get away.) So it's pretty obvious that she isn't going to be swimming for a while (but I already knew that). Still, we are very anxious for our apartment pool to open.

My newest scooter

Eve arching her back and pushing down on her feet trying to scoot across a blanket outside on the gravel at the park. I love the look of concentration on her face, how cute!

Scooting all over the hotel bed. She went across the whole thing a couple times before wearing herself out. Those are Jason's legs; he had to move off the bed because Eve kept head butting him until he would move out of her way.

Check out her little tiny baby leg working hard to propel herself across the bed.

I can't remember when Kylie starting scooting on her back the way Eve is doing now. I remember it being hard to keep her on a blanket at a young age, but I didn't think it was a big deal. So, I really don't know exactly when she started doing this, since I didn't record it. I remember she was always so wiggly and trying to move any way she could. I do remember that she didn't start rolling over one way until she was 4 months and the other way when she was 5 months. Once she finally learned how, she stopped scooting and was rolling everywhere, causing her to be way more mobile. I wish I would have written down when she started back scooting. If I were to guess, I would guess that she was between 2 months and 3 months old. I don't know why I didn't think it was a big deal. I guess it never surprised me considering how wiggly and busy she was since birth.

I'm not making the same mistake with Eve. I'm posting this so I will remember that she started back scooting at 2 months (almost 2 and a half months). I was a lot more surprised, however, than I was with Kylie that she has started moving all over. Eve is a lot more content at just being held and she is not as active on the floor as Kylie was. So I thought she wouldn't even want to try to gain some mobility. But I was wrong! She's still more content than Kylie was when it comes to just playing on one spot on the blanket every once in a while. So she's not always scooting when I put her down. Kylie on the other hand NEVER wanted to stay in one place, so it was inevitable that I would always find her in a different spot, usually off the blanket, from where I put her down in the first place. Just another fun difference in their personalities!

She sleeps just like her mommy...

... on her tummy as stretched out as possible. Only I don't sleep with a "night night pig" stuffed animal like she does.