One of Evie’s favorite things to play right now is chase the ball. She particularly loves this little Dora ball that goes with Kaelyn’s baseball bat set. Evie will chase it all around the house like she is a little puppy dog. In fact, the other day Kaelyn was running through the house trying to get Evie to crawl after her saying, “come on doggie.”

And a couple more pictures just for fun….

So, the other day I decided to up the ante so to speak by maneuvering our couch cushions such that they became a mouse hole, complete with a blanket as a door. She’d run to her mouse hole, get inside, and I would hide, then she’d start running out of the mouse hole and I’d jump out and get her.

Great fun for all involved. In fact, Leigh Ann decided she wanted to join in, so when we were in the other room, she snuck into the mouse hole and shut the blanket-door. When Kaelyn game back, she started trying to get in the mouse hole, but couldn’t since something seemed to be blocking it. All of a sudden, Leigh Ann popped her head out. Kaelyn just threw her arms back and had a look of sheer terror for a second before the fell straight backwards and landed flat on her back, crying hysterically. All she could say through her tears was how she wanted Mommy to run away and she didn’t calm down until Leigh Ann went upstairs.

Some other Kaelyn-isms that you may have seen on Facebook:

• One morning, right when Kaelyn woke up she told me, “My tummy growled…it said it wanted blueberries!”.
• On Sunday, I caught her randomly singing, “I’ll spin you right round, baby, right round” a couple of times. Hearing your 2-year-old singing 80s lyrics is kind of surreal.
• “I’m going to play Candyland and celebrate Jesus.”
• “Jesus is going to help Baby Evie walk.”

Then we hit another phase when Kaelyn lost all interest in the potty. She would scream “NO – DIAPER, DIAPER!” if I suggested the idea of wearing panties. I didn’t stress about it. We have no deadline, so I figured I would just wait until she was ready to start working on it again. There was no sense in stressing us both out.

Then this past weekend she seemed interested to go on the potty. I had been thinking that I would try working on it again right after the New Year, but since she showed interest I just went with it. That was Sunday and now she’s on her 4th day of wearing panties (except for sleep times)! Yippy!

She has had a few accidents, but really I think she is doing very well. At this point she still doesn’t usually tell me when she has to go – it’s more of me putting her on the potty every hour or so and getting her to go. But, over these past few days I think she has learned to control it and will hold it until I put her on the potty to go. She hasn’t had any pee pee accidents the past two days, only one poop accident each day.

Last weekend when we were talking about using the potty she told me she was “scared to have an accident.” I think that’s why she wanted to wear diapers because she knew she might have an accident in panties. I don’t know if she just didn’t like the feeling or if it embarrassed her, but clearly she didn’t want to have accidents. She even comments on one time a while back when one of her little friends was here and she had an accident in our play room. She clearly remembered that and didn’t like the thoughts of having one herself.

I started a little reward chart to help encourage her even more. I bought Thomas the Train stickers (which she LOVES) and then I found this train potty chart online. The chart is hanging on the bathroom door and every time she goes potty she gets a sticker to add to the chart (1 sticker for pee pee and 2 stickers for poo). When she reaches the end of the track she gets a sucker.

This morning she completed her first track and she was over joyed to get the sucker that she worked so hard for!

I think there has definitely been improvement everyday and I am looking forward to when this is more a natural part of her day. I have stressed about this in my mind for a long time, but she is doing a great job. Also I should mention that Evie is such a supportive little sister – she is always very content to play with toys while I spend a lot of time taking Kaelyn back and forth to the potty. I am so proud of both my girls!

Here is Kaelyn’s first potty chart which she worked so hard on completing:

Here is the new chart we started today with the new sucker she is working towards:

(2) I am wondering how such a tiny little thing like Evie can crawl all around the floor going after her sister and all the toys?? I am anxious to see how much she weighs at her 6-month check-up next week, but judging by my home scales she’s right around 14 pounds. 3-6 months clothes are still mostly baggy on her, but size doesn’t matter for her…this girl is definitely on the move!!

(3) I am wondering how I got so blessed by my sweet, sweet girls? Kaelyn is so caring and compassionate. On Monday she asked me over and over if we could make cupcakes so that we could share them with our friends. Monday night I bought the items we needed and on Tuesday we bakes cupcakes together. In a few minutes one of her friends is stopping by to eat cupcakes with us. Also, anytime baby Evie is in the floor Kaelyn will take the initiative by herself to bring Evie some toys to play with. And Kaelyn always shares her toys with her. She has such a loving and sensitive spirit!

Yesterday Kaelyn heard Evie just as she was waking from a nap. Kaelyn ran into Evie’s room and started playing peek-a-boo with her. I walked in to the sounds of massive giggling coming from both of them. How fun!

Evie so far has a very content and charming personality. She loves to love on people. She’s very good at keeping herself entertained as long as she has some toys to grab onto. She almost never fusses.

Both of my girls are so, so sweet!

(4) I am wondering how I caught myself that hard-working, intelligent man of mine?! He found out today that he got a promotion at work. I am so proud of his accomplishments in his career. And all that on top of him being the most wonderful father to our girls!!

(5) Finally, I am wondering how to use that new camera of ours?! My brother gave me a crash course on all the buttons and such, but I still have a long way to go and lots of practice to figure it all out. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some cool pictures in the near future.

Evie’s birth was actually very, very similar to my birth with Kaelyn. My pregnancy with Evie was pretty much the same too except I didn’t have anemia this time. The doctor figured I’d need to schedule another induction so we went ahead and picked the date of June 4th since it worked for everyone’s schedule. At first I didn’t really like the idea of picking the birth date like that based around schedules, but it all worked out really well in the end. It was helpful especially because our family could plan when to come to town so that they could take care of Kaelyn for us while I was in the hospital. (Just an FYI – my due date was originally June 6.)

So around 6:30am on Thursday, June 4th I headed to the hospital along with Matt and my mom. My dad and brother stayed at home to take care of Kaelyn. They started my pitocin around 8:00am and the contractions started kicking right in. It was about 2 hours later before I had dilated enough (I think to around a 2) for them to break my water. Doctor broke my water around 10:00am and said if I wanted an epidural I could go ahead and order that so I did. I knew after my birth experience with Kaelyn that I was definitely going to get the epidural. I spent all morning just getting up and down going to the bathroom. I think I had to go a lot because they were also pumping me with fluids and I remember that i just felt better to sit on the toilet than to lay in the bed. That pitocin really brings the contractions on fast!

Then around 11:00am the doctor came in to give me the epidural. It was good timing too because my contractions had just started to get more intense. I had to stay in bed after that and I felt totally relaxed so I just took it easy and kind of dozed in and out of sleep.

Around 1:30 I remember feeling a lot of pressure every time I had a contraction. It wasn’t really pain since I had the epidural, but there was definitely a lot of pressure. I told the nurse when she came in to check on me the next time. She didn’t seem to think much of it and said she would check me during her next visit in another 15 minutes or so. Right as she was about to leave the room I had another contraction and I told her again how much pressure there was and that I really felt like I needed to push. She decided to go ahead and check me and sure enough I was a 10 already!! This was around 2:00 or 2:15.

I think the nurse was totally shocked. Evie’s head was *right* there. She told me to hold on and not push while she scrambled to call the doctor and everyone else in. As soon as the doctor came in and let me push Evie popped out! It literally only took one big push and Evie was out at 2:27pm. She weighed 6lbs 15oz and was 20 inches long.

She was perfectly healthy and beautiful! My first words were, “She looks just like Kaelyn!” She was a little bit cold so they had to warm her up under the lights for a few minutes which she really seemed to enjoy. She had the same hair that Kaelyn had at birth and weighed just a few ounces less (probably due to the fact that Kaelyn was born over a week late). Both girls were delivered by the same doctor too which I was happy about.

(One major difference between this birth was that with Kaelyn my water seemed to gush the entire day every time I had a contraction. It didn’t do that at all this time which was so much nicer not to be soaking my bed linens every few minutes.)

Mom cut Evie’s umbilical cord just like she did with Kaelyn. Dad, Jared, and Kaelyn got to come in the room just a few minutes after Evie arrived to meet her for the first time.

I still had some tearing like I did the first time, but other than that it was a pretty easy experience as far as birthing babies go.

A couple of pictures from right after the birth…

PapPap has been here all week visiting and doing some work on his new business. On Friday we also picked up Nana from the airport who is visiting for a long weekend. We went straight to Cracker Barrel for a big breakfast to get fueled up for the NC State Fair. Then we spent the entire day at the fair!! We had a ton of fun!

They had a whole kiddie land with all kinds of rides just perfect for Kaelyn. I wasn’t sure what she would think, but she LOVED the rides – even the ones that were quiet daring for a 2-year-old. I think she must get this trait from me because I love all big rides. She rode the swings 3 times and this one fire truck ride at least 5 times as well as a whole bunch of others.

We had lots of yummy fair food and Matt and I rode a couple of the big rides together. We also saw, petted, and feed lots of animals including a camel! I think I had a permanent smile plastered on my face the entire day.

Today we had Kaelyn’s soccer class, lunch at chick-fil-a, and then the whole afternoon at a pumpkin farm. The farm was set-up so perfectly for kids. They had a huge tube slide, mountains of hay to climb, a corn box (like a sandbox except filled with dried corn kernels), a big corn maize, a kid size corn maize (made of hay bales), a “cow train” ride, hay rides, food/snacks, and rubber duck races. We all just loved every minute of it and Kaelyn didn’t want to leave.

Here are few pics from the weekend….

Feeding the Goats at the Fair

Playing in the Corn Box at the Farm

Everyone on the Hay Mountain at the Farm

A Recent Pic of the Girls Just Playing

And for comparison…one of these is Kaelyn and one is Evie…do you know which is which??

==========
Evie
==========
Baby Evie is almost 4 months old already!! She is a little mover and shaker. She is so curious about everything and always so wide eyed. If I put her down on the floor she will roll to the other side of the room in no time. She is much more active than Kaelyn was at this age. I think she is just anxious to keep up with big sister. She loves playing in the excersaucer or sitting in the Bumbo seat and watching Kaelyn play. She’s also grabbing onto everything in sight (especially my hair) and putting it in to her mouth. It’s fun to see her hand-eye coordination developing. I swear sometimes she even pushes up on her hands and knees. I think she will be crawling by Christmas…we’ll see if my prediction is true.

Overall she is a very happy, smiley baby and never gets too upset about anything. She is sleeping great at night – usually about 7:30-7:30 with one wake up time around 4:00am to eat and go right back to sleep.

We had her baby dedication during a very nice service at church last month and Momsie, Papa, Uncle Jared, and friends Dan and Ariel joined us for that.

At Evie's Baby Dedication

Uncle Eric and Aunt Lisa came down for Labor Day weekend to meet Evie for the first time and we all had lots of fun! Right after that we headed to the beach with Momsie, Papa, and Uncle Jared for Evie’s first ever family vacation. She decided that sleeping on the beach to the sound of the ocean waves was very relaxing.

Relaxing on the Beach

==========
Kaelyn
==========
Now for the biggie – Kaelyn turned TWO in August!! I can’t believe my first-born child is already 2 years old. She is not a baby anymore but her very own, independent little person. I always knew that babies changed a lot from age 0 to 1, but I think they change just as much or even more from age 1 to 2. At age one Kaelyn was only crawling and saying a few words. By her second birthday she was running everywhere and speaking in complete sentences (usually several complete sentences at a time)!

This year has been so amazing to really see her little personality develop and to be able to find out what is going on in that brain of hers. I know I’ve written it here before, but she really does amaze me every single day with the things that she says.

By 18-months she knew her alphabet and numbers up to 20. She knows all her colors and shapes, many songs, and can tell you what the opposite word is to probably about 30 different words. Her favorite thing at the moment is to point out every traffic light and stop sign along the road as we drive. She will describe the stop sign, “It’s an octagon shape, and it’s red, and it has the letters O, P, S, T.” She will describe all the lights on the traffic light, “Red means stop, green means go, yellow means slow-up.” Seriously, she amazes me.

I don’t mean to brag so much, but that’s what a mommy is supposed to do, right?

Kaelyn continues to be an awesome big sister who is so loving, kind, and caring towards baby Evie. She’s always wiping the spit-up off her face or sharing her toys. I think it says a lot about Kaelyn’s heart in general which I think is so very loving in all ways. She honestly cares about other people and wants them to be happy.

She’s now fully into two-year-old mode and we are just starting to work on potty training. She’s getting more and more independent and is always saying, “Do it by yourself.” (Meaning she wants to do it by herself.) She still enjoys reading books as much as ever, loves being outside and playing with friends, and she is already taking soccer classes with Daddy on the weekends.

Here’s a comparison for the past year:

WOW – I am so truly blessed! I LOVE both of my wonderful, beautiful little girls.

Kiva – Loans that change lives
(del.icio.us tags: business web2.0 microfinance)

The Extraordinaries | micro-volunteering
(del.icio.us tags: community volunteer)

shell-fu: top 25
(del.icio.us tags: linux shell bash tips)

To test this theory, the original video of Kaelyn shaking her sillies out:

And, the new version:

Thoughts?

She is so strong. She can already sit in the Bumbo seat and when she is in the bouncy seat she tries to sit up. It’s so cute – like she is doing little baby crunches. She can also roll from her back to her stomach. At first I thought it was an accident, but she has done it three times now.

Evie is still a great sleeper. She consistently has a 7 or 8 hour stretch of sleep at night, and a couple of nights ago she even went for 9 hours!! I feel so lucky because I know (from experience) that all babies don’t just naturally sleep so well.

She just has such a sweet and laid back personality. She very rarely even cries. She is definitely making it very easy on me to have two kids under two. While she is laid back and easy to care for, I do see a fierce curiosity in her that reminds me of Kaelyn – always looking, always learning.

Kaelyn has adjusted wonderfully as a big sister. She is such a great helper, very loving, and gentle with Evie. She will talk to Evie and tell her what she is doing, for example, “I’m eating cereal baby Evie.” She reads to her, shows her the toys, helps change her diaper or give her a paci. In return Evie just lights up and often smiles whenever she sees Kaelyn. She loves to be held so that she can see Kaelyn running around the room. I am loving seeing the interaction between my two beautiful little girls.

For comparison here is Evie with her dolly as a newborn and at two months. Look how she’s grown!!

Thanks for keeping me motivated Kaelyn!

Anyway, we were there today and Kaelyn was looking at the lizards. In one cage there were several lizards sitting on top of a big rock and Kaelyn said, “The lizards are doing tummy time!”. Hehehehe – I just love this girl!

Pretty impressive for a 22-month old!

Now she is enjoying a nice, red Dum-Dum.

I had a lot of help for the month with Matt’s parents here for a week, Matt home for a week, and my parents here for a week. My brother also came for a few days last week. I don’t know what I would have done without all that help. We also had lots of really nice friends bring us dinner which was very helpful.

Kaelyn seems to have transitioned to big-sisterhood really well. She had a few moments in the first couple of weeks, but those seem to have subsided and now all of her moments are just the normal two-year old tantrums. She continues to amaze me with her vocabulary and her mind everyday. She loves to sing now and will often just burst into singing the ABCs which she can sing entirely by herself. She mostly talks in complete sentences now and is surprisingly good at using pronouns which amazes me. In the car yesterday she said “Evie’s here, Daddy’s here, Mommy’s here – everybody’s here!”.

Kaelyn loves to help take care of baby Evie. She loves to hold her and shows her the toys and describes things for her. This morning us three girls were laying in bed together and Kaelyn was showing Evie the ceiling fan. It was definitely one of those moments that made my heart smile and I tried to take a mental picture to remember forever.

Evie is continuing to sleep well and grow! She is doing a great job of holding her head up already. If she isn’t sleeping or eating then she prefers to be held up on your shoulder so she can look out at everything with big, wide eyes. She has such a charming personality. I don’t know what it is exactly, but something about the way she cuddles up with you just makes it almost impossible for me to ever put her down. She has all of us wrapped around her finger already!

Kaelyn wanted to be swaddled like Evie…

Kaelyn doing tummy time with Evie…

More pictures here.

She loves feeding Evie the bottle.

A lot of times she just likes to hold her and say, “baby, baby, baby”.

One of the cute things Kaelyn did today was Evie was laying in her crib crying to Kaelyn walked over to the crib and said, “It’s OK, baby” and tried to give Evie her pacy.

One thing Evie does is what we call her shifty eyes. Where she’ll barely crack her eyes open and kind of look back and forth to decide whether it’s worth staying awake.

This always reminds me of that Simpsons episode with the shifty eyed dog.

She’s been out and about this week including her first doctor check-up, Target (twice), a birthday party, out to dinner at Red Robin, the swimming pool (twice) (not actually in the pool), and church! She pretty much slept through most of it all.

Kaelyn is a wonderful big sister! She loves to hold Evie and talk about her “teeny tiny hands” or her “nice hair”. Seriously, those are her own words that she came up with. She amazes me. She does all kinds of caring gestures like if she hears Evie crying she will bring a paci over for her and try to put it in her mouth. She’s had a couple of meltdown moments when she needed more attention from mommy than what I could give, but she seems to be doing better in that area already. I think it’s helped as I start to feel better and can do more things with her. Kaelyn also seems to be starting to cut her 2-year molars so that hasn’t been very fun the past couple of nights. Hopefully it doesn’t take until she’s actually 2 before they come in.

Nana and PapPap were here with us all this week. Boy oh boy did Kaelyn have fun with them! They played with the water table, went to the pool several times, went out for treats, went to the museum, and much more. Kaelyn was sad when they were gone today.

The other major event from the week was Thursday night when I all of a sudden started feeling really bad like I had the flu – major aches, chills, and a high fever. Matt called my doctor for me and the doctor told me to go straight to the emergency room. I guess fever + just given birth in the past week doesn’t make for a good combination. I was pretty upset that I had to go to the emergency room. I’ve never had to be in the hospital for anything other than giving birth and it was a little scary, plus I didn’t want to leave the girls, and I really didn’t want to be sick right now. Fortunately I had pumped some milk earlier for Evie and Kaelyn was already in bed so we left them behind with Nana and PapPap and Matt got to have the frantic drive to the hospital that we’ve never got to experience with either of my labors. We were there for about 4 hours and I was diagnosed with mastitis. After getting some antibiotics into my system I am feeling much, much better!

So far life with two beautiful daughters is wonderful! I haven’t had to be with both girls all day by myself yet so I’m sure things will get a little more difficult then, but I think I will be able to handle it with my sweet, sweet girls.

Just this afternoon Matt asked Kaelyn if she wanted to go to the swimming pool or to play with the water table. Normally she is begging to do either of those activities. But she actually said no, and what she really wanted to do was “hold baby Evie.” So we all sat on the couch while Kaelyn held Evie and Evie was actually awake for a few minutes and I could have just stayed in that moment forever.

• She’s really getting good at stringing together nouns and verbs to make some simple sentences. One of my favorites is sometimes when she sees a bug and then it crawls away, she’ll say, “I don’t see it. Where’d it go? I don’t know.” and throw her hands up. Unbelievably cute.
• Uncle Jared got this awesome video of her playing with a photobooth distortion:
  
   
• She loves laughing with PapPap:

  
   

• Who knew how much fun you could have with a house fly:

  
   

VMware/Player – Community Ubuntu Documentation
(del.icio.us tags: vmware ubuntu howto)

Installing VMware Tools with VMware Player
(del.icio.us tags: vmware tools linux howto ubuntu)

LyricWiki
(del.icio.us tags: lyrics music)

In the morning we decided to go strawberry picking. I was a little nervous that Kaelyn would just want to run right through the plants, be more interested in bugs, or try to eat all the strawberries. I explained everything to her on our way to the strawberry patch, and much to my delight she behaved perfectly! She loved helping us find the red strawberries and she would put them right in her little bucket. Unfortunately the crop hasn’t been too great this year so we didn’t get very many, but it was still a fun time. We came home and ate all of our strawberries – yum yum! Here are the pics.

After enjoying our strawberries we took Kaelyn to Snip-Its to get her first hair cut! Again, I wasn’t sure how she would handle the experience. She’s not a big fan of getting her nails trimmed and things like that so I was afraid she’d be very wiggly and upset. Again, she surprised me and did wonderfully!

I think she liked the atmosphere at Snip-Its – it is made for kids and so there were many things for her to look at. She got right up in the little kid sized chair. Her chair happened to be hot pink which was a bonus for her. She just held right on to the little handles and sat perfectly still. We had to make her look down for a bit while the lady cut the back of her hair. Matt used one of their magna-doodle things and drew letters and pictures for her and held it down low so she would look down at it. She never really smiled during the whole process, and a couple of times she gave these looks like “what the heck is going on here?” but she never got upset at all. I was so proud!

The hairdresser kept saying what a good job Kaelyn was doing. At the end Kaelyn got to go to the prize machine where you exchange a piece of your hair for a prize. I also gave her a sucker when we left as an extra special prize – it’s one of her favorite treats. Here are the pics.

Before with stringy, baby hair in back and long bangs in her eyes:

After with trimmed bangs and a cute little bob in the back:

In the afternoon I put Kaelyn down for her nap like normal in the pack-n-play. She crawls out of her big girl bed at nap time (but does great at night), so we have been using the pack-n-play for naps. I went to take a shower and as I’m standing there washing my hair in walks Kaelyn with this big grin on her face. I hollered for Matt who was downstairs at the time. I thought he must have gotten her out of bed for some reason, but nope, apparently she learned to climb out of her pack-n-play all by herself. AHHHHH!!! So now we are back to square one on getting her to take naps.

It is pretty amazing to us to that she can climb out of the pack-n-play. Matt put her in the pack-n-play so he could see how she climbed out. Apparently she holds onto the corner and kind of walks up the side and then she kicks her legs over and shimmeys down the outside. We should try to get a video of our little monkey.

=========================
In other news we got our new crib last week. We had to get a new one because the one we used for Kaelyn was recalled. It came in a really big box which Kaelyn and I turned into a super cool fort for a few days. Matt and I stayed up late one night last week taking the old crib down and putting the new one together.

New crib…

There are also some new Kaelyn pics added for April and for May.