Quinn’s shoes for Zach’s wedding were just delivered and they are too cute not to share. He’s ready to party!

Quinn's dancin' shoes

We were told today that Quinn was a poster child.  For what, you might ask?  Well it could certainly be for being the cutest baby in the universe but unfortunately, it was for being a candidate for ear tubes.  We went to see the ENT this morning and Quinn was great- very cooperative and happy.  The Dr. said that Quinn was a poster child for getting tubes because he basically has had fluid in his middle ear for months.  We scheduled his surgery appointment for August 27.  The whole procedure takes less than 15 minutes and supposedly Quinn will be himself again a few hours later.  So if all goes as it should,  Quinn will be chasing Fenway around the kitchen that same morning.

dirty feet

These seem to go hand in hand. Quinn is now standing up from a sitting position without holding on to anything. He picks up a toy, throws it, then bends down to pick it up again. Repeat about 20 times in a row and you’ve got his new favorite activity (second only to trying to poke Fenway in the eye). He also is walking around holding onto furniture. And apparently our floor is not that clean because his feet are dirty. In defense of my cleaning skills, I will say that he was standing outside on the sidewalk and on the blacktop so his feet look especially dirty! Looks like Quinn’s days of being a shoeless baby are gone- I’m on the search for some spiffy new shoes for him!

pick up toy...

throw and repeat...

On to the fat lips…Quinn is a boy. He’s curious and active and not afraid of much. This equals 3 fat, bloody lips in the past 2 weeks. Luckily he gets over it quickly and he’s right back to his adventures.

On to some sad-for-us news (but happy for them), our good friends are moving to Dubai tomorrow and we had dinner with them last night for the last time until next summer. Quinn wanted to show them how much we’d miss them…

I’ve also started a Picasa Web Album due to my previous technical difficulties. I seriously have thousands of pictures of Quinn since Day 1 and my hope is to eventually weed through them all and have the good ones edited and uploaded to this album. So check it out here.

Just thought I’d leave you with a picture of one sad baby. I want to clarify that I was not neglecting him by taking his picture while he was crying. I was actually trying to cheer him up by getting the camera out, which usually makes him smile. Not this time…

(And no, his lips aren’t swollen in this picture- they are just big!)

The site where my pictures are kept is down…and has been for the past 2 days. I called to see when it would be back up and they said to check back in 5-7 hours. That was early this morning and obviously 5-7 hours didn’t change anything. But never fear, I’ll get those glamour shots of Quinn up as soon as I can!

I admit, I’ve been neglectful. I have not posted in 5 whole days and even that post wasn’t a real one because it didn’t have a picture in it. I have no real excuse other than Life. It’s been busy. We had our first official BBQ this weekend at our new house so there was lots to prepare for that. Plus we had some fabulous, wonderful, always welcome houseguests who came for a visit. And this week is already half over- I don’t know how that happened! I’m very excited for this weekend because we have NOTHING planned. Nothing. We haven’t had nothing planned on a weekend in months! Our CSA is having an open farm day on Saturday and we can pick our own flowers and herbs so I think we’ll head up there for a little outing but that’s the extent of it. Should be great! OK, enough about us, I know you want to hear about the real reason you keep coming back to this blog- the mighty Quinn.

He is growing, growing, growing. I really can’t believe that he is 10.5 months old. When I picked him up at daycare today he had an egg growing on his forehead and a brushburn on his cheek. Add that to the bruise under his chin and he looks like he was in a pretty burly bar fight! These bruises are the result of him being part monkey. He climbs on everything, even the other kids at daycare. His newest trick is to stand for a few seconds by himself and then when we put our arms out to encourage him to take a step towards us, he lifts up his hands, starts giggling and just free falls forward. He breaks into a laughing fit and then gets back up to do it again. It’s resulted in a few face-plants but he always comes up laughing!

The daycare newsletter came out today. Quinn’s entry says, “Quinn is furniture walking now. He is walking all over the room and letting go of one thing and grabbing a hold of another. We have voted him class clown of our room- look out Mom and Dad!” Look out is right!

Quinn is getting good at eating finger food. His favorite continues to be spinach pancakes. Because of his penchant for spinach (he’s also a big fan of the spinach and carrot baby food mix), Ryan has been doubting his paternity. He figured his child certainly can’t have the penchant for spinach that Quinn is showing. But then I remind him of Quinn’s monkey toes and his obsession with computers and he feels reassured that Quinn is most certainly his child!

Here is Quinn’s new favorite kitchen activity- it’s called “open and close the door of the pantry 50 times and then take everything that is on the first two shelves out and scatter them across the kitchen”. Luckily the bottom shelf is all his food and we soon learned to stock the second shelf with nonbreakable items. But today he was reaching for that third shelf…

So blog, I’m sorry that I’ve not been around and I hope this post, complete with pictures, made up for my absence. I promise to be more on the ball and not let this silly thing called Life get in the way of my blogging!

We’ve been suspecting that Quinn has been saying “dog” and “dada” for a few weeks now but couldn’t be sure because his babbles sound very similar to those words.  But this morning, I’m pretty sure he said “dog”.  I’ll paint the scene for you:

6:30 in the morning, Quinn has just finished his bottle and is hanging out with us in our bed while Ryan and I try to muster up a quarter of the energy that Quinn has.  Enter Fenway, who runs over to my side of the bed because he sees movement and hopes that one of us will let him out for the fourth time in 15 minutes.  Quinn’s eyes get wide because he hears the jangle of Fenway’s color, he stands up on the bed, smiles, points to Fenway and says “DOD”.  I say, “that’s right, it’s Dog” and Quinn again points and says “dod”.  (I’ll just add that in the past few months, poor Fenway has lost his name and is now referred to as just DOG in hopes that Quinn will pick up on this.) 

Some kids say mama or dada first, Quinn says dog, which just goes to show who is his favorite playmate!  So I guess it’s official- we have a first word!!!  Now if he could just learn to say mom…

Our trip to NH is coming to a close- we leave to go home tomorrow morning. We had a fun trip and Quinn was certainly busy. Yesterday we went to the aquarium in Boston. Quinn was very into the fish- he pointed at all of them, laughed every time the huge turtle swam by and loved looking at the sea lions. We saw a lot of “dahs”- that’s Quinn’s name for every single fish that swam by.

checking out the sea lions

pointing at the dahs

We took another trip to the beach today in hopes that Quinn would change his mind and like the sand. Not so much. He was fine on the blanket but the minute his toe touched the sand he had a fit. He actually crawled up on Ryan’s back and stayed up there for a few minutes because it was the farthest place from the sand. So we spent the majority of our trip to the beach at the playground.

happy on the swings

Quinn’s schedule always is off when we are busy during the day, mostly because he won’t sleep anywhere but his crib and sometimes his carseat. He was so tired at the playground, he fell asleep on the swing.

snoozing on the swing!

He went to bed super early tonight and I hope he’s back on track for tomorrow. He was pretty grumpy at dinner and ended up throwing a cheerio in his Meme’s wine!

We made it up to New Hampshire today with no problems, other than the fact we got up at 4:30 in the morning in order to be on the road by 5:00. That’s damn early, even for a self-proclaimed morning person. But the trip was uneventful- no traffic, Quinn slept most of the way and we only had to stop one time. Granted, the stop was probably 45 minutes but those rest stops in Connecticut are quite scenic and Quinn had a great time staring up at the trees instead of eating his breakfast. So we were in NH by noon and we made a quick trip to the beach before dinner. I was so excited to see how Quinn would react and couldn’t wait to get some cute pictures of him playing in the sand. This is how Quinn liked the beach:

He didn’t. He was miserable from the minute his feet touched the sand. We had to carry him the entire time and if we even thought about putting him down on the blanket, he would scream. He was mesmerized by the waves and cheered up a bit when we watched some dogs go swimming in the ocean but other than that, it was a bust. He did let Ryan dip his feet into the water, which I thought was pretty impressive given the temperature of the water. If you’ve never been to the beach in New England- the ocean water is freezing. Like cold to the point where it makes your feet cramp up when it splashes them and then if they are submerged in water for more than 2 seconds, they go numb. So maybe Quinn’s feet were numb and that’s why he let Ryan dip them in the water, but at least he wasn’t screaming!

This evening started out like yesterday- one tired and grumpy baby who did not want to be put down and one exasperated mom who didn’t know how to make her baby less grumpy. For our first hour home, we walked around the house and Quinn pointed to EVERYthing and said “dah?” so, of course, I had to answer him by naming the object he was pointing to. Let’s just say that game gets old. But his mood perked up after eating a spinach pancake and then became even happier when we shared part of our rice dinner with him. Top off that fabulous meal with a bit of vanilla ice cream, and he was back to our old, smiling Quinn. We went outside for a bit and he just laughed and laughed at his red bouncy ball. I think his belly laugh is my favorite sound- I could listen to it all day!

Quinn says, “No more pictures, mom!”

We’re heading up to NH early Thursday morning for a visit with Ryan’s family. We’re looking forward to a trip to the beach, Quinn’s first visit to Boston and some relaxation. Wish us luck on the 8 hour car ride up there!

Happy 10 months, mighty Quinn! We didn’t even attempt the month picture today because Quinn turned into Mr. Whineybutt for the evening. I attribute it to only taking one little nap today. He fell asleep at bedtime without making a peep (or in his case a “dah”), which means he was absolutely exhausted. Here is my big 10 month old off in dreamland:

I love watching him sleep. He looks so cute – it makes me forget about the 4 hours of whining I just put up with!