We did it!

I'm hoping that you never again have to see a picture like this:

Or like this:

Or like this one:

Yes, she is shoving food in her mouth while refusing to spit out her pacifier.

Or even like this one:

Instead, I'm hoping that you only see pictures like the following one:

Or like this one:

Yes, I'm even hoping that you see pictures like this one (crazy hair and all):

Did you notice the difference? Or rather what was missing in the latter pictures? That's right: Ya-ee is gone! Oh, you don't speak Evish. Ya-ee was Eve's name for her beloved pacis. And they are gone. She was so attached to them, I was dreading the day we would have to separate her from her one true love. I can't even tell you how many embarrassing remarks compliments we received on Eve's abilities to eat/cry/scream/talk/giggle/sleep all night while never removing her paci from her mouth. But it was time. It ended up being easier than I thought it would be. We had slowly been weaning her off and she had it mostly during naps and bedtime. Finally, during a visit to my mom's house, Jason and I informed her that we left Ya-ee back at our house. (Yes, Ya-ee is a proper name. The thing was practically family.) Eve just said "ok" and laid down and took a nap without it. She whimpered a little more than usual before falling asleep, but she hasn't asked for it since. It wasn't even a lie: We did forget to bring it on our trip. I was tempted to go buy a new one, but I decided I was not going to buy a pacifier for a 21 month old. So we told her the truth and she was ok with it. She didn't even ask for it when we returned home a couple days later. We have been Ya-ee free for over 2 weeks now. I'm so relieved.

And wasn't it a shame the silly thing covered her face in so many pictures? What a sweet face she has without it:

A couple things...

... I forgot to mention in my post about Kylie right before her third birthday:
- She is 100% potty trained, day and night. Actually, it's been months since she's had any type of accident, which is why I forgot to mention it in the previous blog. Her being potty trained has been a part of our lives since she was about 2.5 years old, so it didn't occur to me to put it in the list.
- She loves shots. The last shot she had, she was really excited about and after the fact she just said "ow", got over it and bragged about it the rest of the day. The last couple times that we have gone to the doctor, Eve has had to have shots and this has made Kylie very jealous. Seriously, she might be the only child who has cried during a doctor's appointment because she hasn't had to have shots. Silly girl.

Three Candles

Happy Birthday sweet Kylie Bear!

She got to blow out three candles twice this year. The first cake was from her birthday party with all her little friends. She requested a chocolate circle cake with green frosting with white polkanuts (=polkadots.) So, I baked and decorated the second cake I ever made in my entire life:

For her actual birthday, she helped her daddy bake a pumpkin pie. Aren't they cute baking together? Pumpkin pie is one of Kylie's favorite foods so I thought it would be a good idea to have it for her birthday. Personally, I don't care for it.

Three candles... I never thought she would get this old. I was just getting used to her being two.

Not quite three...

I only have a few hours before Kylie turns three years old. That's right: THREE years old. How absolutely crazy. I remember the day she was born like it was yesterday. You can read about those memories here but in this post I'm going to focus about what an amazing year it has been since her last birthday.

Kylie has grown up so much in the past year. Well, I take that back. She has actually maybe only grown an inch since turning two. She is almost the exact same size that she was this time last year. But if we aren't talking about her physical body, then it's true that she has grown up a lot. The conversations we have are just so much more grown up. She asks a lot of "why" questions and has to know how everything works. She reasons so well, which also means I'm hearing the phrase "but mo-om" quite frequently. She makes up her own stories which have become increasingly more creative. Yesterday she told me a story about windows in a castle that were too high for her or Eve to reach. Speaking of Eve, she is also starting to "talk" for her little sister: "Mom, Eve says that she's hungry. [...] Mom, Eve doesn't want to eat a sandwich for lunch, she wants cheese." You get the idea. Eve has been talking a lot more too recently, yet Kylie still thinks that I need her to translate for her. It's very sweet.

Some other Kylie facts at not quite three years of age:

- She hates baths. I also have started to dread bath time just because I know what a battle it will be to wash Kylie's hair.

- She hates messes. If she spills a tiny drop of something, she insists on forcing me to clean it up immediately. And I do mean immediately. A funny story about Kylie at about the time she turned 2.5: We were walking in Target and there was some mud on the floor. Kylie exclaimed in a very loud voice: "Mom! It's dirty in here! Someone needs to clean this up right now!" I'm sure some associates gave us a bothered look.

- She will throw a fit if she asks someone a question and someone else answers it. We really have to listen in our house when Kylie asks a question. It seems to anger her when the wrong person answers, so we have been trying to teach her that sometimes people will join in a conversation. She does have some control issues and I'm trying to figure out if it's a first born thing or a personality thing. I'm a first born myself, so I can relate to wanting to control everything.

- Her favorite games right now: duck duck goose, hide and seek, finding hidden toys in the room and "mackio" (Mario on the Wii with her daddy). She also made up a game a couple months ago that she called "practice walking." We had to walk around the room and randomly fall down on purpose. When someone fell down, the other people had to ask him/her if they were ok. When you answered that you were ok, you could get up and practice walking again. She made up the game and the rules all on her own, but hasn't wanted to play it in a little while.

- She has gotten a case of the sillies. I love it! We recently borrowed the book Pickle Things from the library. She thought it was hilarious and will randomly say things like "pickle nose" to me or just sometimes shout out the word "pickle" and giggle hysterically. She has learned that randomness is funny, so she will just sometimes yell out random words and laugh about it. It cracks me up too.

- She is a chatterbox. Seriously. She gives commentaries during movies, tells me all her thoughts throughout the day and asks a billion questions. But I wouldn't have it any other way; I love hearing her talk.

- Her favorite music right now is Laurie Berkner. If you have young children, I would highly recommend buying some of her music. Kylie's favorite song is I Know a Chicken. I love hearing her belt it out!

- She prays the same prayer every time she prays: "Dear God, thank you for this day. Amen." We've tried to teach her to personalize her prayers and that at dinnertime to say thanks for the food, but she has never said it any differently.

- She is very good with numbers. She can recognize how many objects she has by sight (from 0-5 or so) and can count until up in the teens. She has made it to 20 every so often, but is not consistent with that. She can also recognize most of the letters of the alphabet and knows all her colors and shapes (but I'm pretty sure she was doing that by her second birthday.)

- She can draw people now with all the main body parts and even some fun bonus ones like "eyebrows." I need to take some pictures of the drawings she has done because I'm always impressed.

- She is very social and loves playing with other kids. When we go to the park, she always makes new friends or at least tries to. She has amazing little church buddies that she talks about all the time. She just light up when she is with other kids her age.

She is such a sweet little girl and I am so lucky to be her mom. I'm sad she is growing up, but excited to see what the next year holds. I'm happy to say that the twos were not terrible at all!

Happy Birthday Jason!

Jason turned 28 a couple days ago! The above picture is us celebrating with some sparkling grape juice after the girls went to bed (Mainly because we were selfish and didn't want to share.)

I am so thankful to have him as my husband. It is nice to know that wherever this crazy life takes me in the future, I will always have my best friend with me.

On the day of his birthday, we threw Kylie a birthday party. It was a costume birthday party so Jason and I dressed up as well. Here is a picture of us in our costumes:

And a few more pictures of us on his birthday:

Birthday Party Coming Up

I'm just now starting to plan my oldest munchkin's third birthday party. I can't believe I only have one more month with her as a two year old. Kylie and I decided that a costume party would be really fun. It's a good thing I have the tutu my grandma made me for Eve's party. My costume will be easy. I'm getting very excited. I haven't had a party to plan since Everz turned one last March!

Mini Pizzas: A quick and easy lunch

Sometimes, I'm the mom that makes homemade pizza dough. But other times, I'm the mom who needs to make a quick meal. I love the following recipe. The girls love it two because they get to use the rolling pin. They even have their own cute little toy rolling pin in their kitchen set. You can see Kylie using it in the first picture.

All you have to do for this easy lunch is roll out jumbo biscuit dough (from the cans) with some flour. Place them on a baking sheet, add pizza sauce, cheese and toppings and cook at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes, or so. That's it. Then I just take our kitchen scissors to cut them into tiny little slices.

I only took a before picture of the pizzas. I'm sure you can figure out what they would look like when they came out of the oven. The bottom three are pretty traditional: spaghetti sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella. Yes, I use spaghetti sauce instead of pizza sauce. Then I can use the leftover sauce for spaghetti in the next couple days. It's much cheaper than buying actual pizza sauce. The girls eat pepperoni like candy, so it's one of those things that can usually be found in our fridge, so I usually always have those ingredients on hand.

But the top three are taco pizzas because I had to use up our leftover taco meat and black beans from the night before. They are: taco sauce instead of spaghetti sauce, taco meat, black beans and mexican blend cheese. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I was very pleased with the results.

It's one of those meals that both girls actually finish everything on their plate:



Yes, Kylie is eating pizza with a fork. She doesn't like eating without some sort of silverware.



And here's Kylie helping with the dishes afterwards. She insisted that she wash her own rolling pin herself. I'll take whatever help I can get :).

By the way, those pictures were taken in August, hence the Summer clothes.

There was a boat in my living room

What? That doesn't look like a boat to you? You must not have much experience with two year olds. Watch out if you come visit, there are alligators on the floor, err I mean water. They like to bite and if they get you, you will turn into an alligator yourself.

Trick or Treat

Enjoy these pictures of the girls going trick or treating for the very first time EVER. I don't have a lot of trick or treating experience myself, so it was mostly new to me too. They had fun of course, but who wouldn't when you get to fill a bucket with candy?

Mom, how did Eve do that to that ball?

I love the dollar bins at Target. Today I found a package of glittery christmas ornaments and I couldn't resist them. This is actually going to be the first year we will have a tree. We waited until after Christmas last year to buy one so it would be on clearance. Sad, I know, but I finally feel like the girls are old enough anyways. Now that we don't have any toddling or cruising babies, it should be easier to have one (I hope!)





But back to the dollar bin Christmas ornaments. We got them home and I thought they were put away. I wasn't too worried about them anyways. Then Kylie came up to me and handed me the ball in the following picture:

Nope, it's definitely not supposed to look like that. I didn't realize the glitter would come off so easily. But I guess that's what I get for buying them out of the dollar bin, so no big deal. The funny part is what happened next. Kylie looked at me and said: "Mom, how did Eve do that to that ball?" It doesn't sound too far stretched; Eve loves putting things in her mouth, she's still only 1 year old. The problem though is that Kylie's face looked like this:And Eve's didn't.

And Kylie's hands looked like this:

And Eve's didn't.

Little stinkerpot.

I asked Kylie how she thought Eve would have done it and she said: "Her probably put it in her mouth."

Uh-huh.

I showed her the pictures and showed her the glitter on her face. She knows I figured it out. She's a pretty smart cookie. And usually very sweet, I hope this isn't the start of something. It's a good thing I love this little girl. Very much.

Dairy Farm Trip

This trip was so much fun! We got to taste delicious milk, visit the factory where the milk is bottled and milk a cow. I am not a milk drinker so when I heard we would be sampling milk, I wasn't very excited. But I was brave and tasted the samples and I was so surprised. It was delicious. Their milk flavors included banana, orange and root beer. They were all good. I bought some of their cheese as well. I love cheese.


Kylie and Eve were also happy because we went with some of their loved church friends. We have been blessed to make some good friends in our short time here in Kansas City; it's going to be sad when we leave.