this never happens....

Taylie and I went out for the morning...back in Novmeber, to get our hair cut and make a run to the craft store. We were only gone for maybe 2 hours. When we got home, about 30 minutes later, we found her like this:

balloon in hand, holding her sippy cup and she was sound asleep! She had fallen asleep sitting up :)

and this is how tired she was:

Jake was able to pick her up and move her back to her bed without her waking up and she didn't budge when he put her down.

It must have been a Christmas Miracle!

war wounds part 2

I know that I am trying to catch up for a few months, so I am working from 3 months ago until now. This is what happened after Luke bit the hole in his lip.

He did it again. The day before his birthday.

He was, again, at Grandma and Grandpa's house and he fell, again, and bit a hole in his lip just a few days after we got his first set of stitches out.

This time he bit into the top of his lip and tore that little piece of skin that attaches your lip the gum. There was SO much more blood and swelling than the first accident. I happened, no joke, about 5 minutes before the close of office hours and it was about 2 hours before I could get him into the after hours clinic. I couldn't bear to show my face in the emergency room, again, with the same kid who had the same injury. Grandma Linda was nice enough to call a family friend who is an ER doc and he let us come up to his house and he checked him out and said that even though it was a HUGE gash it would heal on its own. I was pretty skeptical because this one was so much deeper and his was in so much more pain than the first time. I healed just fine.

The poor kid, Happy Birthday to you Luke!

Family Pictures 2009

Sorry that I didn't get out Christmas Cards this year. Here are the pictures you missed:

I know, I am WAY behind

So I know that I am about 3 months behind on blogging. Sorry. I will try to catch up on all of the recent events such as Luke's Birthday, Thanksgiving, Taylie's Birthday, Christmas and Luke's second hole that he bit in his lip amongst other things. I am working on it. I wouldn't check more than once a week if I were you...

war wounds

Good News: Luke is walking!
Bad News: Not well enough

With the humongous difference in personality between my two kids, I never thought that Lucas would need to get stitched up before Taylie. I am shocked that Taylie is not known by name in the E.R. with what an accident magnet she is...anyway. Lucas got up and was toddling along and he tripped, smacked his chin on a bar stool which lead to him biting a rather impressive gash into his lower lip. I wiped away the blood and expected it to stop, so when it kept gushing, I was a tad concerned. Of course it happened at 4:58pm so the doctor is gone and the after hours clinic doesn't see patients till after 6pm, and on this particular night they were booked till 7:10pm. Right at bedtime. *sigh* So my sweet brother drove Lucas and me to the ER to get his lip stitched up, without being numbed. It would have been 2 extra pokes plus the burn of the medicine, then we would have got to hold him down again for one stitch. I was told it would be less painful/traumatic that way. The poor boy was a trooper!

This is him that night after we got home:

This is as close as I could get with a wiggly baby and it is blurry...sorry.

The aftermath. Mine and Luke's clothes with blood all over them.

we were both in white of course! :(
...and this is him the next morning.
Happy as can be, fat lip and all. If you can enlarge this, it give a better look at the lip.

give a baby a sucker and this is what you get...

He bounced around like this for the rest of the night. Funny seeing as how it was sugar free...at least that is what Grandpa TOLD me. Hmmm?

Halloween 2009

First off, I promise that with the coming of winter will come more fully dressed children. Halloween was so much more fun this year now that Taylie can enjoy it! Luke is kind of a grumpy gus most of the time so he grumped the whole time he had to be in costume. This is pumpkin decorating Schlenker style:

Taylie said that the little pumpkin she made for Lucas.
She was extremely proud of her creations.

Here come many pictures of kids in costumes:

Lucas the Lion!

and Taylie the Tiger!
She told people that she was Sher-kan from the Jungle Book, and then growled at them.

Taylie is so cute with Luke. He was grumpy from being in his costumer and so she was making him feel better.

this is pumpkin carving Brooks' style, or old school I guess!

We had so much fun this year. Jacob and I enjoyed that my Mom wanted to take the kids trick-or-treating around her neighborhood and so we got 45 minutes of kid free quiet. Taylie loved it this year because Grandma S. gave her a bag and made sure that it was 3/4 of the way full before she brought her back. Needless to say, both kids were bouncing off the wall because they were so loaded with sugar! refer to the video of Lucas with a sucker...

:)

I don't care what anybody says....

nagging works.

the un-adventures of me

I know that ALL of my blog posts are about the kids, but I decided that I will interject a few posts here and there about my un-adventures of motherhood. They are nothing big and important, but they help put things into perspective for those of you who haven't raised young children in awhile.... this is my life. I will show you some of what I attempted to accomplish this weekend while I had Jacob home all to myself with no chance of him being called into work! It was great! I will cover two things: #1 being the big cleaning/organizing/simplifying project that has been stuffed in the corner of my room for far too long, and #2 being the task that popped into my head to distract me from #1.

TASK #1:

My junk moundSadly enough, the other half is out in the hallway.

Months ago, Jacob took everything we had stored under our stairs and told me I had to go through it and de-junk and re-organize. I loved the idea because he never is up for stuff like that. So I did, and we got rid of TONS of junk and made quite a contribution to DI of nice things that we just do not use. I was feeling pretty good until it came to l-a-t-e that night and I was tired. Everything that was left had to be gone through one by one and I had to really decide what to do with it and where to put it. I decided to put it into one huge pile that would bother me so much I would have finish up the next day. Come to find out, it didn't bother me that much. And so it sat and still sits.

(for this, look at the junk on the file cabinet covered with the sheet. ugh, messy.)

So I had finally had it and decided that with the first weekend Jacob is home I was going to clean up the mound, see, it keeps growing and growing like a weed the longer it is unattended. So, me being so smart, knew that if I piled it on my bed it would have to be cleaned up before I went to bed.

Hence:
The junk mound re-located
don't forget, the other half is still in the hallway...

Well, after clearing off the cedar chest that it was piled on, I opened it realizing that is where my missing photo albums have been. *Enter Taylie*
Taylie: "Wow! Cool mom...I see?"
Me: "Sure, you can see. Let's have a look"

45 minutes later:Yeah, all I accomplished to this point is what you see. It is cleared off and I managed to vacuum behind it and clean my baseboards. We looked at every album and picture frame that I had in there. So as I am sitting on a spare corner of my bed with Taylie on my lap contemplating my lack of progress and what in the world I was going to do with all that stuff. I looked at Taylie's hair and got an idea....

The Distraction...
Yes, we all know she is cute and a crack up, but I got the sudden idea to :

french braid her hair!


Now, for those of you who know me, you are probably laughing for 2 reasons: #1. I do not know how to do anything with hair. I barley pull off a respectable looking pony tail myself. The only reason you all think it is so great is because the color is quite nice. The distraction works well for me not knowing how to do a dang thing with it. and #2. I get distracted VERY easily when there is something I really do not want to do. I will find anything else to do!! Jacob was at a movie and Luke was sleeping while all this was going on and he came home took a look and the bedroom and then at Taylie's hair and giggled to himself and rolled his eyes at me. He did tell me how cute she looked though... :) Now, my favorite part of this story is that I have never ever french braided hair before. I don't know how and have never tried before. The urge just hit me and I went with it. I am not very good and it falls out quickly, but I have found a friend who said she would help me learn! Sweet.

So, my night/weekend ended with Jacob moving everything off the bed because I fell asleep on the couch. It has still not been cleaned/organized/simplified, but he stacked it much neater than I had. Go Weekends!!She sure is a cutie and so patient with me. It took 45 minutes to get them in. She told me her butt hurt and so she had to get up and take a break! She didn't even complain once :) What a sweetie!


Next Week: I am posting a picture of my laundry that I do every Friday night. I always say how much I do, but you really do not believe the pile till you see it!

the daily adventures of Taylie (...and Luke too)

I got to thinking the other day, what my photos would look like if I decided to follow Taylie around for a day. I will be honest, I only lasted a morning. It is far too exhausting to follow around a toddler all day, but I did learn many interesting things about my daughter and why my son tends to yell for help when he is with her. Here are some of the daily adventures of Taylie featuring Lucas as the victim...or uh, maybe sidekick is a better word.

The morning started with the donning of some Buzz Lightyear underpants (she picked them out all by herself...) and then seeing how many toys a standard size grocery bag can hold. Answer: quite a few actually, the only problem comes when she has to drag it because it is too heavy.

apparently while I was in time-out, she stole my sunglasses and decided that it was time for Elmo panties. The underwear...hmm, it is still a work in progress, lets just say that.

While wearing my sunglasses, she decided to teach her brother a new skill......

I am SO not pleased with this by the way! She was standing at the top of the stairs with food (look at this boy, does he look like he can resist a bribe like that??) and saying: "Here lukie, come here lukie, good boy buddy!" ARGH! So now, he climbs stairs with ease but does not get back down them quite so gracefully.


So then when he is bummed from falling down the stairs backwards (no, I didn't sit and watch it happen!) she decides that she needs to hold him and make him feel better:

so amongst the protests...he gets comforted whether he likes it or not.

Now when I say to Taylie: "Please play with your brother I will be right back." I understand why he yells, not cry, but Y-E-L-L. She feels as though it is her job to corral and barricade him into which ever area she has chosen to occupy at that moment. The yelling, I now know, is Luke's way of summoning me to rescue him from his bad fortune of being condemned to play with his sister. She does a very good job though. I gotta give her that!

...and again later during the day

the poor boy doesn't even have a chance with her around!

By this point I gave up to long ago and didn't capture the moments of her and Luke playing "hide" (a.k.a. hide and seek where they hide in the same spot and giggle with each other), "be a boat" (where she demands to be wrapped up in a blanket and lifted/swung/tossed around and whatever else you can do to a 2 year old in a blanket), and "make me a burrito" (where she likes to be wrapped up so tight in a blanket it risks cutting off circulation), giving Snoopy a bath and attempting to do her brothers make-up. Like I said, exhausting!

I did end with this bath picture where she has, so helpfully, offered to wash Luke's hair and face...against all protesting. Luke is not into anything that could be considered grooming. You would really think I am killing him when I clip his nail or comb his hair. The volume comes from daddy.

So there is a small glimpse into the life of my 2 babies who are so quickly growing up!! I will have to post more highlights and photos once my energy recovers. :)