Adventures in the life of the Schofields...

Here's some random adventures over the last month or so...

Mark had gone to play basketball in the morning, and I was doing my best to sleep in - that is until I heard a loud crash followed by screaming coming from the kids room... This is what I found when I ran in. Shelly was under the top drawer or two and was able to get out on her own, thankfully, so I left the mess for someone stronger to help clean up. Mark is awesome!!

Here's Shelly enjoying a rare ice cream sandwich. Mom brought some back from somewhere, and Shelly quite enjoyed helping finish them off...

I had been worried this day would come - and that it would be one of my kids fault. Despite my best efforts, the kids love to draw on the window with chalk [this includes banging]. I'm pretty sure they weakened the window quite a bit, and if it hadn't been one of Doug's friends, one of the kids would have done it soon. I figure I actually owe the guy a favor for saving the kids from broken glass falling on top of them... [in case you can't tell, the window shattered, from the inside and all the glass is on the ground outside]

Grandpa to the rescue! He cleaned up all the glass outside and took out the leftover pieces of window. What an awesome guy!

I bought a Santa Potato Head around Christmas, but apparently I forgot about it. I found it the other day and Shelly wanted to show me what Santa says... I had to tape it! It was pretty much required.

Playing with Daddy

Mark came home unexpectedly early last night and was able to see the kids just before bed time. They needed it too! I woke up super tired and it quickly turned into a TV day - all day. [This it not normal - I'm typically against having the kids watch tons of TV, but lately it's been happening more and more. Thankfully, since I've gotten better, I've been able to get back to not quite so much TV again - who knows, maybe I'll even get to none someday! Oh the ideals I had before I had kids!!] I did feel better later, but not better enough to switch the routine - and then it was Jason's nap time and Shelly and I couldn't leave the house to go to the park like I had planned... Oh well. They got some good rough housing in with Daddy in the evening.

Both on Daddy's back for a piggy back ride!

Again!!

Not quite sure how this one started, but everyone was laughing, so it's all good!

Playing in the rain

We had a freak storm (or bunch of storms) hit for almost 3 weeks. It hasn't hardly rained during the day since we moved here 2 years ago - so it was fun to let the kids run and play in the rain. I had fun trying to teach them how water and gravity and floating things can be fun. They didn't quite care about the technical 'how-things-work' lesson, but they did agree that it was fun!

They were finding leaves and throwing them in the running water in the gutter to watch them float down to the drain

They got tired of leaf following and wanted a more hands on approach (or should I say 'feet on')

That jacket was a bit too big. He didn't seem to mind...

At some point, Jason figured out that he can short cut the 'leaves floating down the gutter and into the drain' thing and just throw them down the drain...

Disneyland!

It had been a while since we had gone to Disneyland. I hadn't been feeling good, our passes had expired, Shelly turned 3 and we now needed a ticket for her - I think the last time I took the kids had been sometime in early December. We finally got a chance where Mark, Shelly and I could all go and get our passes renewed at the same time and spend time with family! Turned out to be quite fun. My cousins were there for a funeral (yup - they went to Disneyland while they were visiting for a funeral - aren't they awesome!) and we got to go with them for a few hours in the morning. Doug was also performing with Entertainers. They've gone with an all Disney song package this year, so it was even more fun to see it for the first time at Disneyland! And it was pouring rain all morning. Good times.

Jason staring at a random pole while we waited for Doug's performance to start

Most of the crowd! Seth is sitting on Laurie's lap (all we get to see is her hair), Aunt Grandma, Grammy, Katie, Brea, Spencer (with Conner on his lap) and Shelly standing in the front

There's one shot of the group - Doug is the one whose cummerbund fell off... He seems to have wardrobe malfunctions whenever we watch him - not sure if it's us or him yet :-)

Jason was super into it!

Connor and Brea on the Rockets!

Jason and Katie - Not sure if Katie is excited or scared, but pretty sure Jason is bored. He was way excited to see the thing go 'roun a roun' and make huge circles with his hand. It must have worn him out...

Shelly and Mark - looks like they had fun!

Katie on the phone in the rain in line for Small World (they re-did it and have tons of Disney characters in the ride now - I'll spare you all the photos I took of every one we saw - Katie helped point them out for me)

Apparently Katie started a trend - suddenly everyone wanted to be on the phone in the rain in line for Small World!

Shelly was trying to keep dry and pose for a photo - this was her compromise

In the ride

Wet and excited to not be in the rain - even if it was temporary!

Time to go home - and bribe the kids with cookies!

Painting

I've been avoiding letting the kids paint. I couldn't handle the idea of the set up and clean up that would be involved. It made me tired just thinking about it. I finally broke down and let them do it one day while Mark was home just in case it really was as bad and I was thinking it would be. Thankfully, my horrible nightmares about it were just that. It turned out to be quite fun and we've let them paint a few times since - once or twice by myself even! [It's amazing how much energy the right meds can give you!]

Just getting started

We put some of our old t-shirts on them as 'painting shirts'

We've learned to give them each their own water cup...

On the paper Jason... No wonder his face is a mess!!

It took us a while to figure out why Shelly's paintings were all the same color all over the page... She dips her brush in every color, every time she goes for paint...

And the finished product! Ta-Da!!

Shelly and the Curly Hair Monster

It took a while for Shelly's hair to grow in. She was practically bald (or had fine baby hair) for at least the first year. Once it finally started to grow in more it would curl a tiny bit around her ears and her 'mullet' started to show signs of a curl. Now that's she's 3 it's quite past that point - almost to the out-of-control stage! Most people [us included] don't look at her and think her hair is all that long, but we are often shocked at bath time when we take the time to look at how long her hair really is! I decided to share the excitement that only parents can feel (meaning: you won't get much out of this, but hopefully it's still semi-entertaining)

Freshly washed and brushed, all the way down to the bottom of her ribs - a bit longer if I could have gotten those bottom few curls to stay put! In the bath when she tilts her hair back for rinsing it's almost to her bum

A few seconds later - after I stopped trying to make it straight (I also scrunched it a tiny bit, but really, only a very little - more ran my hands through it than anything)

Dried and several hours later (I forgot to get one sooner)

She found some sticks on our walk and decided they would be fun to have in her hair... She didn't get that from me. ;)

It's about time.... Or sleeping - one of the two

I figure it's about time for my daily update [read: every-other-monthly] :-)

I've been exhausted being pregnant and was so grateful to finally have the blood-work to prove it! I try to tell the doctors that I've been super tired lately, and they just say 'pregnancy will do that to you!' Not the most helpful answer when at times I'm so weak I can't even make it up the stairs and several times a day I don't have enough energy to lift my hand to my mouth to feed myself (I'm not kidding here. I could make it to the table, barely, with help from Mark - but then I couldn't do anything more than stare at the plate - that is if I could even continue sitting up) This didn't happen all the time. Mostly I was fairly normal (just generally tired) but about 3-4 times a day I would 'crash' and couldn't do a thing. Sometimes sitting was too hard for me and I'd literally fall down to laying on the couch and couldn't do a thing to stop myself or even get comfortable. I'd just .. fall. These episodes would last for about 1/2 hour to 45 minutes and then I would be fine again... So, thankfully my blood-work showed that I was low on my thyroid dose and they upped it enough that now I'm just tired and I only 'crash' about 1-2 times a week instead of about 3-4 times a day! Much better!! And that's even getting better! I was also a bit anemic so I take an iron pill (along with my thyroid pill and my prenatal vitamin. All three have to be taken a few hours apart - I swear I don't think of myself as quite the old and decrepit person that I normally think of when I picture people taking tons of pills at various intervals during the day). Life is good now that I can function again!! So, back to updating (don't expect too much though - I'm still the lazy bum who's always been here, now I just have more energy to be lazy)

For a while now I've been wanting to do a 'Shelly's funny sleeping places' post, but she's decided to only sleep in one place now. She must have gone through every possible spot she could think of and found her favorite and now she's done experimenting. She would sleep on her bed, in the crib (before we moved Jason in there), on the window seat, on the floor, on the other side of the floor, on the chair and similar type places in the office where she would nap so we could have her and Jason nap in separate rooms (they sleep better during the day when they're apart, and better at night when they're together - strange...). Shelly settled on sleeping mostly on the chair at about the same time I realized I should be taking pictures of her asleep in all these funny places. Oh well. I did manage to get a few fun ones anyways.

In the famous chair

Yes, she's under the bed

Again in the chair

If you can't tell that's the floor - I'm not sure how to help you...

Ok, I know Shelly isn't the one asleep - but it's close enough. This is Mark's way of trying to put the kids down for a nap - by falling asleep (I know Jason looks asleep too, but he's not, he's just blinking)

Another victim of our 'Sleep Documentary'

Here's Jason's first night on a big bed - it happened on accident. I didn't think he's really fall asleep there! He's back to the crib again - this was a one time thing...

It is almost impossible to keep soft sleep-on-able things organized in that room! Blankets, pillows, clothes, stuffed animals... It's all fair game!

Reading by osmosis :-)

Jason with his feet through the bars and his belly on the pillow - not his head...

I just took this one a few minutes ago, but I had the computer on my lap and couldn't get a good angle. Yes, that's a sucker in her mouth - I'm a slacker of a Mom. I didn't even know she was asleep in here. Don't worry - Mark finished the project that banished us to the playroom and came upstairs and took the sucker out of her mouth - me? I was too busy trying to get this blog updated - I do have priorities!