growing up fast

Mary Jane did the cutest thing last night. She put her baby bears into her highchair, then put the bib on them, and proceeded to pretend feed them with her spoon. It was so cute! She is growing up so fast. She amazes us everyday with new words and phrases, like "come on, lets go" and "that tastes good." She seems to be saying more complex phrases, but not very many understandable words. She talks constantly but we can't understand what she is saying most of the time. I think her brain is saying stuff, but her mouth hasn't quite caught up yet.

On another note, a didn't ride the train today into work. Since I will only be here for a few hours, I hope. It was really fun! Don't get me wrong, I love riding the train because I can sleep, read, surf the web, do homework, or whatever. But today I got to sing along to my ipod. So, I am a horrible singer, so the only time I can sing, and no one can hear me, is in the car. It was fun!

whole new world

Life has drastically changed at the Schoenwolf house. Mary Jane can now climb out of her crib. She has only done it once so far, but now we are having a dilemma about what to do. We decided it is probably best to convert her crib to the day bed by removing the front rail. However, when we tried to put MJ to bed Saturday night in her "big girl bed" she, of course, got out of bed and ended up getting disoriented in her dark room while asking, "Mom wherjago?" She got scared and started crying. Greg and I immediately rescued her and decided that she is just too little to understand what's going on. Now, we are taking our chances with her climbing out of the crib. We can no longer put her in her crib to go take a shower or shovel the driveway, its no longer a safe place. Like I said, its a whole new world at our house now.

Christmas decorating

Last year while tirelessly winding the lights onto the tree, I decided that I wanted to buy a new tree that would stay pre-lit so I wouldn't have to put the lights on every year (its the worst part of decorating). Greg said that when we bought a house we could then get a new pre-lit tree. Well, we bought our house in April, so this Thanksgiving weekend we were on the hunt for the perfect pre-lit tree. One of the criteria was that the lights be LEDs, so we could save tons of energy. Well, come to find out, most places don't have pre-lit LED trees, and if they do, they are really expensive. So we decided that we would buy a plain tree and pre-light it ourselves with LEDs. The best price we found for LEDs was about $8 for a strand with 60 lights. So looking at how many lights were on the other pre-lit trees we estimated that we needed about 7 strands to light our tree.

Well we got home and started wrapping the lights on, and we figured out that in order to be able to fold the tree back up and keep the lights on we needed to string the lights up and down every branch. We only made it half way up the tree with our 7 strands. Off we went to buy 7 more, and of course the store we bought the first set at didn't have anymore so we had to drive to the farther store to find them. We get back home, its now pretty late, and MJ is hungry, cranky and sleepy, so off to bed she goes. Meanwhile, Greg is diligently string the rest of the lights on the tree and he gets to the end, and we need ONE more strand. We didn't get the final strand until the next day, but after 15 total strands, 900 lights total, (keep in mind that LEDs only take about 4.6 watts per strand, so you can string together 43 strands and not overload the circuit), we have a super bright, sparkly, pre-lit LED Christmas tree. Note the beam of light projected onto the ceiling. The picture doesn't quite do it justice and when we crack the curtains, a beam of light spills out of the front of the house. It's awesome!

hair loss, part II

After Greg cut his hair, I, of course, couldn't stop thinking about cutting mine. I know its time for a change when I pull it back into a ponytail for a month straight. I decided to go with a style that I haven't done in a long time, since elementary in fact. Bangs! I haven't had bangs since elementary, simply I didn't like slicking them back for ballet recitals, so I grew them out. They're back. I don't know how long I will be able to stand them, they are a little annoying. Overall, its different and I like it.

hair loss

After a little more than 3 years, Greg has decided to cut his long hippy hair off. He is tired of taking care of his long locks. Here are some pics of the new clean cut Greg.
Greg is still coping with the new change, he doesn't really like it, but on a happy note he donated his hair to Locks for Love, so at least it isn't going to waste.

MJ video

This video was taken with my cell phone, so the sound is really quiet, you might have to turn up the volume all the way to hear it. MJ is bobbing her head to the beat of a Beastie Boys song. I thought it was pretty cute!

Halloween!

Here is my cute MJ as a turtle for Halloween! She loved her costume.

That's me in the background as a little German girl. The dress is an authentic German dirndl and its my mom's. I was going to wear laderhosen, but they were too short for work. Here she is with her trick or treat bag, she didn't actually go trick or treating but maybe next year.The little tongue is my favorite part.

She was helping with the candy, we only had two kids come to our house, so we have a lot of leftovers!