Family Fun and Goat Tackling

Here's everyone at Deanna Rose (minus my mom who was taking the picture). Eve is there too, she's hiding in the stroller.

A couple weeks ago, my youngest sister Kelly had a week-long softball tournament here in Kansas City. So she, along with my parents, stayed in our apartment with us. They were very busy with the tournament, so we didn't see them during the day very much. There was one day, however, that Kelly only had one game. Jason also had the day off, so we took advantage, eating lunch with my great aunt in a fun family buffet complete with bumper cars and laser tag and then going to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead along with said aunt's granddaughter and her children. We all had lots of fun, except for my mom during laser tag. She hates being chased. I do not have pictures of our lunch/bumper cars/laser tag experience, but I do have lots of Deanna Rose:

Kylie and Johanna in the old schoolhouse







Kylie in the goat pen: at first all she wanted to do was run around in circles like the wild child that she is.


















Then a nice lady gave her a bottle to feed the baby goats. How fun!


















And here it is: the moment we've all been talking about (i.e. when Kylie decided to tackle this poor goat). Here she is putting him in a headlock before throwing him to the ground. The poor goat is so docile, he just got up and ran far away.















This goat is pretty smart and is trying to escape from Kylie Bear.

Same expression...

...but very different faces. I can't figure out if this is their serious, bored or annoyed with the camera look. Oh well, at least they are cute.

Kylie is 9 months in her picture, while Eve is 4 months in hers.

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.

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.