Standing (well more like bearing weight on little baby legs)

Eve at 2 months

Eve has been holding her head up very well lately. It seems she has been "blessed" with a long giraffe neck like her mom. I use the term "blessed" very loosely. Let's just hope that she can pull it off better than I can, because it sometimes gives me an awkward appearance in pictures. The long neck also seems to make it a little more difficult to hold her head up, but she is doing very good. A little wobbly at times, but I'm still very proud of her.

Kylie was holding her head up rather early and was always looking for that next challenge. Here she is at 2 and a half months very proud of herself for being able to stand up. She was so proud, all I had to do was hold on to her arms and she would pull herself up and grin like this every time:

Kylie at 2 and a half months

Lately, I've been practicing with Eve trying to get her to do the same. She doesn't have the balance that Kylie does and she has the tiniest little legs. I imagine the size of her legs makes it quite difficult or her to bear any weight. Thankfully, she is a very easy going baby and puts up with me when I make her "practice." Standing up or any other challenge was fun for Kylie, for Eve it's just work. Yet, she lets me do these awful "workouts" and "exercises" to her. She is such a sweetheart. It's so much fun to be able to notice these differences in their personalities already.

These workouts are hard on such tiny little legs!


Eve at 2 months and a week old. Look she's also holding on to her paci, she's getting so big already!

Jumping

Kylie has discovered a new hobby: jumping. She learned how to jump up and down at 16 months and she is still obsessed with it at 17 months. I think it started when she played in a moon walk and was surprised when she discovered she was capable of being airborne for a split second. Ever since the moonwalk she has been trying to perfect her newfound skill. She gets really excited and falls down a lot, but it's really cute. Her obsession is slowly dying down now, since it is no longer a huge challenge, but thankfully I took a couple pictures and video clips while she was learning how to jump. Sadly, I didn't have my camera at the moonwalk, but I do have the memory of Kylie without any fear whatsoever jumping as high as she could, falling down every two seconds in the middle of much bigger children. Jason was there too and he can testify to how crazy she was.

Here she is playing "jump jump" in our living room:

We had some friends spend the night, and we moved our toddler bed out to the living room for their little boy to sleep on. Kylie was very excited to see the bed out there the next day, she played "jump jump" on it for a long time:

Kylie is taking jumping to next level by leaping onto the couch in mid-jump. This girl makes me laugh.

Pictures/updates from the past month

It's been too long since I updated last. I am very sorry. However, I have been good about putting pictures on facebook. So I'll share those in this post to make it easier to see what's been going on the past month.

Click here to see general pictures of Kylie as a 16 month old and Eve as a one month old. Some of them have already been posted to this blog a while ago, but some are new.

Click here to see pictures of our trip to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead. My mom and I took the girls here. It's a fun little farm/petting zoo in Overland Park, KS and it's free. It was a lot of fun!

The only other significant thing that has happened this month is our new van! We bought a 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan with only 23K miles. The best part about it is the stow-and-go seating. Now we can actually take the double stroller with us when we travel!

Car accident 4/30

If I would have written this blog post a couple of days ago, it would have read: “I was in an accident, my sister Rachel and my two babies were in the car, everyone seems to be ok, I don’t want to talk about it.”

So I decided to wait until I was ready to talk about it before writing this post. At the time, I had told the story too many times and I was too emotional to discuss it anymore. I had told the story already to police officers, drivers that stopped to help, my parents, Jason, the ambulance driver, the EMT in the ambulance, the doctor in the hospital, several hospital nurses, my daughters’ pediatrician, my insurance agent and several other people who had heard the story from someone else. Talking about it was emotionally exhausting, it was the worst thing that I’ve ever had to go through, and I hated reliving it.

I’m still having a hard time with it, but I am finally ready to tell the story. It helps that the outcome of the story is positive: everyone who was in the car is unharmed. I’m sorry that I ruined the ending of the story, but I was in so much agony waiting for the ending myself, that I don’t want anyone else to have to worry like I was.

My sister Rachel babysat for me on Thursday so I could take a subbing job while Jason was also working. Usually, we can work it out so that only one of us is working at the same time, but it was difficult to do so this week. So I was driving Rachel to Topeka where my mom was picking her up and driving her back to Manhattan. When we left Kansas City, the road conditions were great; there was no sign of rain or anything of that nature. Jason had to go to class, so we brought Kylie and Eve with us. It started to rain about the time we reached Lawrence, so much so that I almost hydroplaned. That freaked me out, so I slowed down a lot and turned off the radio, so I could concentrate on driving. I was going about 50 mph, and cars were passing me going extremely fast. It was making me nervous, I could barely see in front of me and all these cars seemed to still be driving over the 70 mph speed limit. Well just as I was thinking “man, those drivers need to be way more cautious in these conditions,” it happened: my car hydroplaned, spun completely around on the interstate and the passenger side crashed into the concrete median.

I was completely in a daze at first. I had been praying the entire time we were spinning, and I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or not once the car had crashed. Hearing both my babies scream their heads off made me realize it was real and I noticed Rachel about to get them out of their seats to check them out. She had reacted a lot faster than I had, but we have known for a long time now that she is the most motherly sister out of the four of us Toll girls, so that wasn’t too surprising. I yelled at her NOT to take them out of their seats, I was scared that another car was going to come spinning from the same spot and hit us. Plus, visibility was very low and our WHITE car was barely sticking out onto the highway. I was afraid of what was going to happen next. Rachel called 911 while I frantically checked out my babies. Some nice people stopped and we left the car to sit in someone else’s black SUV which WASN’T sticking out in the highway, so it seemed safer. Rachel and I were still freaking out because Eve seemed to have a bump on the side of her head. She’s only 7 weeks old, so we did not know how damaging it was. Kylie seemed to be ok, she had no marks on her, and she didn’t seem to be in pain anywhere. The cop came, and then the ambulance came and took us to the hospital. The doctor in the hospital checked out my baby. By now there was no bump or swelling on Eve’s head. She seemed very alert and had even given the EMT some big smiles. She nursed really well and was very interested in all the lights and people in the hospital. The doctor said there was no indication that she had any head trauma and that extra tests would not be necessary. Kylie meanwhile was climbing and running all over the place, laughing her head off as if nothing had happened. The doctor couldn’t find any injuries on her either, and told us that my girls were going to be just fine. He gave us a list of things to look out for that might indicate a head injury. He also suggested I visit my pediatrician in case I was still worried. Of course I was still worried; we visited the doctor the next day. He also reported to me that both girls were healthy.

Our ford focus ended up being totaled. We are still waiting to see how much we are going to get for it and hoping that we will have some extra money once we pay off what we owe. That is a big prayer request right now. We should hear tomorrow what the insurance company is going to offer for it. Our next step is to see if we can afford a van. We could really use the extra space to travel. Meanwhile, we are down to one car: my little 2000 Chevy Cavalier that I bought my senior year of high school. I’ve had that car all this time! I’m going to miss our Ford Focus. Jason and I bought it a week before getting married. Here is a picture of us about to take it on its very first trip with us: our honeymoon.


I’m so thankful to God that my girls, Rachel and I are all unharmed (except for the inevitable whiplash). It is a good reminder that God is always in control in our lives. Even though it seemed that I was taking all the necessary precautions on the highway, I really wasn’t in control of the situation, God was.