A Day of Play

So, you can see that the kids are outside playing. . . what you may not notice is their "chosen" clothing choices. It is currently about 73 degrees and a little overcast - not that hot, but not chilly either. Grace came downstairs wearing the seen outfit with brown suede dress shoes - she was told that she needed something different. Sam picked out a sweatshirt, put it on himself (backwards) and is wearing corduroy pants with tennis shoes. I did explain the weather before they picked out their ensembles, but I was too lazy to make them change. After all, it is 1:30 in the afternoon and everyone but me is now dressed!

My Stay at the Hospital

I only wanted to be held, and my mommy always gives in!

Entertainment in room 16! Poppy played the princess game with Grace and looked so pretty doing so.

I would rather drink my oxygen than have this rubber thing in my nose again.

Just hanging out in my bed.

Don't think that we just left him in his bed all the time, but do you see the hoses and cords dangling from the railing? We were tethered to the wall and could only go from the bed to the recliner next to the bed.

It saddens me that the only time I can get a picture of the three kids together is in the bathtub! Not sure what we ate for dinner that night, but no wonder Sam is always asking for a snack, most of his meal is on his body instead of in his belly!

I am just trying to update the blog with some more recent pictures of our children. Hopefully, this will work out for me the way I intended it to! O.K., so I don't think the picture is showing on this page, but if you click on the blank box with the red X, where there is supposed to be a picture, a slideshow of Nate should show up!

Next Calvin Klein model?

I'm not sure what got into me on Tuesday, but I decided today was the day I was going to potty train Sam. Not sure what was special about today, hadn't even planned to do so on this day. All I had really hoped for is to pick up the house and be a good mom to the kids. I got some wild hair idea that he was finally going to do it (not that I had been trying - that would have involved too much work!). Mind you, he has been pooping on the toilet for about a month now, I know, backwards from what we all read and experience for most kids, but this is Sam, remember. I have to admit, I was a little nervous about peeing. After we had three pairs of wet big boy underwear that morning, I think something finally clicked with him. He was accident free the remainder of the day! I decided to go cold turkey from diapers to underwear as I did with Grace. My opinion is that Pull-ups are pretty much overpriced diapers anyway. Wednesday, we had many errands to run while Grace was at preschool, and I didn't want to chance an accident, so we opted for the diaper for public appearances. That afternoon, no accidents the rest of the day. He pottied Wednesday night before bed, got up and went Thursday morning and his diaper from the night was bone dry! Thursday we had plans to go to gymnastics and I decided to take my chances and go for the underwear in public. Much to my surprise, he did wonderfully and had no

Can you believe that I can write so much about going to the bathroom? I had to take the pictures above, because he is so proud of his new garments. We will of course see how the rest of the weeks to come play out, but I have been pleasantly surprised. By the way, I ditched the potty chair for Sam -- it grosses me out too much and I figure that he can just learn one pot and take it from there.

Probably more than anyone cared to know, but this is my life!

Nate is Crawling

Boy have we come a long way in the last couple of months! Nate has now mastered crawling and is pulling up on everything. He sure is fast, and plays a game with me similar to hide and seek, I am always the seeker! He is up the stairs in no time flat and thinks he is hot stuff. After he started crawling, he said his first word, mama. Did this ever melt my heart or what -- he is the only one who hasn't said dada first. He is developing such personality and loves to interact with Grace and Sam. They are so good with him and often "compete" for his attention. As you can see from the video of him crawling, he still has no hair -- no surprise there, as none of the others had much of it either.

See my teeth

I'm a big boy now

2007 Christmas Letter

So, this is my third attempt at writing our annual Christmas letter! I have started the letter twice with the intent of recapping the past year of the Tohill lives, but it is just too painful to approach it that way, so I am just going to give everyone the latest update on each individual of our family.

I must mention first, that most of you know the detailed story of the birth of Nathan and Noah, but I usually wrote very little about Grace and Sam during that time. May I tell you that these are two really great kids. With all of the events that happened, they were troopers through it all. They are not usually left very often, and when things got hairy, they were so flexible, willing to go with anyone and everyone who volunteered to watch them. Their lives were pretty much chaos for a period of time, as I tried very hard to keep things "normal" for them.

Ed is still working at Burns and McDonnell in the Infrastructure Division. He pretty much has been working on projects locally and does not have to travel (we all love that). His work has been awesome at allowing him the time off that he needed to have in the beginning of the year. He amazes me at how he can juggle work, family, household chores and projects and occasionally squeezes in a round of golf. He is a great dad and much help to me.

I am still staying home with the kids and trying to keep my sanity! I gave up running the playgroup with our church but we still attend and are involved. I have given myself the title of Chief Family Organizer which includes lining up doctor visits, therapy, running kids to activities, etc. For the most part, we keep busy. I am still working on getting through the obstacles we were faced with, there are some days when I'm not sure that I want to get out of bed, but I am hopeful that with time, my heart will continue to heal.

Grace is growing up very quickly, she turned 4 in May. She participated in the Dance Ministry through our church and took ballet classes. It is so adorable to see the girls in their little leotards performing! She played soccer for the first time this fall. It was a shaky start, mostly jumping around cheering for her teammates, but she showed a lot of improvement and soon was scoring goals. She also started Preschool three days a week, which has been really good for her. It is hard to believe how much she has grown up and will soon be in shool full time.



Sam has become a real boy this year! Don't get me wrong, he still loves to put on the plastic princess high heels and push his lawn mower around! He is such an easy-going boy, but he found a very renewable source of energy in the last six months or so. He wears me out, but I wouldn't have it any other way. We worried for a while that his verbal skills seemed to be lacking, but not to worry. . .one day he woke up and began talking and hasn't stopped. For those of you who haven't seen him in a while, well, let's just say that he is Eddie Junior! He is cooperative for the most part and has learned how to manipulate his mom really well.



Nate. Where do I start? Well, let's just say that we are maching free (since August) and he has remained pretty healthy so far. He receives therapy about once a week through Missouri First Steps and visits the developmental pediatrician every so often, but other than that, he is just a regular baby. Most of his milestones are calculated according to his due date and so mostly he is considered around 8 months old. He is sitting up now and is showing signs of crawling. He is eating well and will eat about anything we throw his way. He has gained significant ground with his weight and now weighs about 15 pounds. Not bad for starting at 1! He is a great baby, sleeps well through the night, happy and never cries. He is our miracle. We know how blessed we are for his outstanding health, and realize that he could of very well had numerous complications. We are still very cautious with him as far as keeping him healthy throughout this winter season. Hopefully, by next year, we won't have to worry to much. One last thing about Nate, can you believe that he will be 1 year old in just a few weeks??


Once again, we can't say enough thanks to each and everyone of you for all the support and encouragement over this last year. It was amazing to us how God uses each one of you to touch our lives. We love you all.

Wishing you a blessed Christmas season!

Nate is always smiling, when he's not sleeping!

Grace and Sam pretending to love each other!

Sorry that I have let time get away from me. Things get sort of busy at times. We are busy gearing up for Halloween with parties, parades, trunk-or-treating, etc. Grace has decided she wants to be Hello Kitty this year and Sam is going as a firefighter. Nate, well we will see which costume we own will fit! Grace is enjoying her first year at preschool, and is making new friends. I thought preschool would give me a small break to do errands with only two kids, but I was wrong! Just taking her to and from school, we end up loading and unloading the car 8 times! These carseats sure are safe, but they also are a pain. Grace has also been playing soccer for the first time and she is really enjoying the snack tickets at the end of each game - and also scoring goals! She is also participating in children's choir at church and is starting to come out of her shell just a little. We recently attended a Princess Party which is where these pictures were taken.

Sam is getting very boylike! He is keeping me busy always. He has changed so much over the last 6 months, it is scaring me. He took forever to talk, but now he will not quit. We are looking forward to the time when he can participate in a few more physical activities, as he needs a good outlet for all his energy.

Nate is growing and now has his first tooth! He looks more and more like Sam every day. He is such a good baby, I'm not sure what I did to deserve this (not that Grace and Sam were bad)! I am confident that he will be sitting on his own within the next month or so. He still struggles to eat as much as we would like, but he is also growing steadily so we cannot complain. With winter approaching, we are all scheduled to get our flu shots and trying to keep as healthy as we can. It has been stressed to us that this winter is extremely critical to Nate's overall health and for future lung issues. We will pray that we all stay in good health and that we will have a mild winter!

I recently took the kids to Hallmark, where they had a casting call for child models (thanks to Debi S.). While I was trying to get them ready to go, I decided to lay Nate in his crib while I corraled the others out of the bath and shower. At some point, Grace and Sam wanted to join Nate in his bed and I couldn't resist the picture.

Just Starting

Hello. I am just trying to figure out how all of this electronic stuff works. I am in the process of trying to create digital scrapbooks of our pictures of the kids. I hope this will be an easy way to share our experiences and pictures with you. Thanks for visiting.

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