Eve is...

...dramatic:

... a daredevil:

... our little monkey:

... a great big sister tackler:

I love how Kylie is stopping to smile at the camera even though she is being tackled and ticked by her little sister. That is so not typical of her to try and take a good picture!

... an awesome maker of funny faces:

Jason says this picture itself is sufficient to describe Eve. Yes, this picture does say a lot about our silly girl. She loves attention and making this face gets it!

... the perfect Pebbles Flintstone:

Eve at 7 months. Her first Halloween

Eve's second halloween (19 months).

... absolutely no help at putting Christmas ornaments on the Christmas tree (but has a great throwing arm!)

... good at getting away with things like throwing ornaments because she's just so cute:

...a great counter. (She's been able to count into the teens for a while now. She counts all the way to 12 then says some random teens and then shouts 20 and claps for herself because she's very proud of herself. She can also count pretty accurately if you give her a small amount of objects and ask her how many are there.)

... a very happy child:

... but very good at giving the cutest and most intense mad looks when necessary (which Eve thinks is quite often.)

... without a doubt the cutest mess in the world:

... a tiny little munchkin. Here she is at 23 months wearing a dress that Kylie wore at 10 months and a 6-9 months sweater:

... such a cute little munchkin!

... getting so big, even for a little munchkin. Here she is for example swinging like a big girl (so sad!)

... a little fashionista. She loves clothes and shoes and plays dress up every day. She sometimes insists on sleeping in her tutu, and we let her if that's what it takes for her to go to bed without screaming her head off:

Sometimes she does silly things like wear her tutu up to her armpits. I tried to put it back around her waist for a picture, but she threw a huge fit. She is very headstrong when it comes to her fashion :)

This day she insisted on wearing her princess dress the library. Ignore her paci, this was back in the fall before we got rid of it. Notice how long the dress is, it's hard to find dress up clothes in Eve's size.

I love this one. She picked out all her accessories herself (and her one sock, that was a purposeful move for Eve.)

Someone's hat became Eve's treasure.

... so silly.

... very lovable.

... my baby.

The many expressions of my dimpled child

I took all of these pictures in less than a minute. Her many faces crack me up!

My little messes...

I was lucky with Kylie, she hated messes. She ate very carefully and when she didn't, she wasn't happy about it. Here she is at 15 months, unhappy about having carrots all over her face:

Now, Eve is a different story. Her middle name should have been "mess." Who else do you know manages to get chili all over their foot at dinner?

Here are just some more pictures of her eating chili that night. Keep in mind that this is typical. I only went to get the camera because of the chili on her foot. (Now THAT is a little atypical and I'm not sure how she did it.) Oh and I was actually happy this day because she didn't wipe her dirty hands all over her hair or pour any bowls of chili on her head. (But she did pour a cup of water in her lap. On purpose. While giggling.)

Ok, so maybe Kylie does like being messy every once in while. It's not often, because usually she needs to wipe up every little spec of food that she spills on the table. But every once in a while she loosens up. She has learned after many attempts that finger painting can be fun. She also likes digging in the dirt (but insists I clean her up before she does anything else.) But she can be a neat freak. Big time. She will sometimes pretend to go to the bathroom just so she can wash her hands.

There was this one time, back in August, when Jason and I were cleaning out our kitchen cabinets (we had to have them emptied out because the pest control was doing their scheduled spraying in our apartment) and as we were putting everything away, we turn around to see that the girls had found the food coloring in one of the boxes we were storing the cabinet goodies in:

Yikes! Thankfully the girls poured the green food coloring out on the table and it did come off since I cleaned it right away. I'm so glad they didn't dump this out on the carpet or couch. That would have been more of a disaster.

Kylie thought it was so funny at first!

Until she noticed how messy she really was.

Not so happy now about being a mess!

Musical tales from a car ride

On a long and boring car ride, Kylie decided that she was tired of listening to her Laurie Berkner CD. She and Eve normally listen to the CD at least once a day. It's their favorite and it's actually kids music that I don't mind listening to multiple times a day. In fact, I sing along.

A lot.

Moon Moon Moon, anyone?

Earlier in the car ride, I was singing along to "Fast and Slow" and Kylie told me to stop singing because the song was dangerous. I asked her why she thought so, and she replied because the song has poop in it. I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I know all of the words.

(We listen to it enough times.)

But after hearing the CD three times in a row, Kylie decided that it was time for some new music. So I decided to scan the radio (I really need to find some more kids music but I'm afraid they will love something I will not love as much as our dear friend Laurie Berkner.) Kylie hated everything except for the classical music. She was so excited to hear it and called it "Andy the deer music." I think it's because she is thinking of "Bambi" instead of "Andy". The movie Bambi has a lot of classical music. I know this because it used to terrify my younger sister, Rachel. Kylie hasn't seen the movie in over six months, but I really don't know what else she could be referring to.

It was so funny because she was noticing all the different instruments that were playing. So she decided to call the music "lots of instrument music" instead of "Andy the deer music." I was impressed when she correctly identified the trumpet and the piano. She also said she heard the drums when the cymbals played. I'm no musician (unless I'm singing to Laurie Berkner of course) so that was close enough to impress me. Plus, I know enough to tell you that they are both percussion and don't drum sets usually include the cymbals?

The classical song we were listening to magically then turned into an opera song. The singer had a deep voice, so Kylie asked me what the giant was singing about.

The whole time, Eve was very mad because she wanted her old music back. Every single time we get in the car, Eve asks "Song? Song?" and when good old Laurie starts singing, Eve exclaims "Yay! Song!" Of course if it's not a Laurie Berkner song, Eve gets mad and starts screaming and demanding "Song! Song!" But Kylie explained to Eve that "lots of instrument music" was good too and you could sing along to it with any song. So they tested the theory out and the rest of the car ride was filled with cute little voices singing "Row Row Row your Boat" and other classics accompanied by the likes of Beethoven and Chopin.

(Please don't ask me to tell you who the real composers were of the songs we listened to. I have no idea. I shouldn't have to remind you that music class was not my favorite.)

Meet Orange

Kylie had been wanting to build a snowman ever since the first snowfall this year. The first time we tried, the snow was too fluffy and it just wasn't packing. Yesterday, it was perfect snowman building weather. We finally finished our snowman which Kylie named "Orange." He is a Chicago Bears fan and enjoys shoveling. Kylie knew that snowman had carrot noses so we gave Orange the perfect one. On a whim, I colored his eyes, mouth and buttons in with sidewalk chalk and it worked wonderfully. Then we took a family library trip to borrow the Frosty the Snowman movie and watched it before bedtime. I love that the library lets you check out DVDs. Kylie and Eve picked out some books too of course, but that really isn't blog worthy as our library trips are always recurring. But yet, there I went and blogged about it anyways.

This is the first year in a long time that I have really enjoyed the snow. I don't like the cold and have seen the snow as a nuisance when I need to drive places. This time around, however, I have enjoyed watching my girls enjoy it. And I have enjoyed it as well. I especially love throwing snowballs at Jason. The last year I probably enjoyed it this much was 8th grade when we lived in Northern Indiana where the amount of snow each Winter is simply extraordinary. We lived right next door to our church's parking lot, which was ideal for fort building. This was no ordinary fort building either. We had multiple forts in the parking lot connected by secret snow tunnels. I also had a friend who had a lake in her backyard, which would get covered in ice and was perfect for us to act out scenes of the Titanic movie. But ever since that year, I have hated the snow until now. My only other fun snow memories was when we lived in France when it would *maybe* snow once per year and would melt by the next day. But it was just the right amount of time to enjoy the snow and then move on to other fun things.

Blast from the past

As we have been packing up at our old place, a copy of this picture surfaced. Kylie has been carrying it around and proudly reminding us that it is a picture of her as a baby with her beloved daddy. She was about a week old here. Someday, we will look back at this picture and comment on how young Jason looks. Even though that's down the road, I'm still amazed at how long ago this seems. I miss these "cuddly baby days." (I also miss Jason's long hair.)

Animal Science Book

 

Thanks Diego for giving Kylie the idea that she needs an animal science book! It's been a new project in our house and it's been a lot of fun. I gave each of the girls a spiral notebook, started working on animal fact sheets and coloring page and we have been hard at work learning about animals. With my biology background and organizational tendencies, it's been hard for me not to create a book organized by the class, order, family and genus within the animal kingdom (I don't care about the phylum, I hate dealing with phylums.) In fact, the animals Kylie picked out so far have been such a broad category (Frog for example). I managed to sneak in a spider monkey because it was bugging me that we didn't have any specific species in our oh so very scientific study (Technically, there are seven species of spider monkeys but we are getting less broad.) My girls are just one and three years old. They don't care. And I'm not in college anymore. I don't care either. We are talking about animals and making a book. It's cool enough. Plus, I don't have to stress about it. They don't know any better. That's nice too.

I'm hoping this project is an ongoing thing and that we have a finished product we can admire years down the road. Maybe not for scientific purposes, but just for the sake of cuteness.

Here's a peek inside Kylie's book:

This page is my favorite so far. I love how Kylie drew lines at the bottom and asked me to write "frog" on the first line and "bugs" on the second line. The bugs are for the frogs to eat of course.

 

I love the three humped camel!

 And here's a little peek inside Eve's book.

Oops, Kylie "helped" her little sister out with this page!

Five animals down! Can you tell my handwriting apart from Jason's?