Tonight was trick or treat night in our neighborhood.  Quinn didn’t go trick or treating but he did help us hand out candy in his monkey costume.  And he was the best candy-handing-out-monkey ever.

Our neighbor brought her kids over and they have a son who is 3 days younger than Quinn.  Toddlers in costumes are so darn cute!

Monkey Quinn ended the night with a little Goodnight Moon.

Quinn was exhausted from his trick or treat activities and fell asleep right away.  It also helped that he didn’t have any candy so there was no sugar high to fight.  Me, on the other hand- well, I had about 2 pounds of candy and right now I feel like I should walk around like Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory chanting “I’m full of chocolate.”  I guess that’s the sign of a good trick or treat night!

Quinn learned a new skill.  From Ryan.

It looks even more attractive since he has tomato sauce all over his face.

I’m one proud mama!

Ryan and I got ourselves Halloween-ready tonight.  We assembled our costumes, carved our pumpkins and drank Octoberfest.  I’m pretty proud of our pumpkins this year!

Who needs political signs in your yard when you can have a political pumpkin?!?

These pictures just gives me warm fuzzies everytime I look at them. The looks on Quinn’s face are so sweet- pure happiness.

If only leaves remained as magical to grown-ups as they are to children. Now I just see them as yet another chore to do. Hopefully some of Quinn’s wonderment will rub off on me!

And once again, I find myself blogging on Sunday night about our fun weekend and wishing weekends were just a bit longer.  Like forever longer!  We went to my parents this weekend and had lots of fun with some favorite fall activities and lots of family visits.  Yesterday we celebrated my grandfather’s 80th birthday with a Pennsylvania Dutch feast- string beans and ham, hot bacon dressing, apple pie.  Yum.  Happy birthday Pop Jack!

Quinn was amped up for the entire evening and spent most of it running around in a big circle.  At some point, Zach tied a balloon to his pants so all you could see was this balloon being pulled all around the room.

Today we went to a corn maze/hayride/pumpkin patch combo. The weather was perfect and this outing reminded me why I love fall so much!

Here’s the pumpkin we picked out.

Quinn tried his hardest to pick up the heavy pumpkins…

Quinn looks a little annoyed on the hayride- I think it’s because we made him pick a small pumpkin rather than the ones that weighed more than him.  Stupid parents!

Then we went back to my parents’ house to play outside before heading home.  Quinn loved the wagon that Zach and I used to play with.

And he got to experience one of my favorite childhood fall memories- playing in the leaves.  It was so fun to see him loving it as much as I remember loving it!

And then we had a little photo shoot by the pumpkins, since I have no fall decor at our house.  You’d think for someone who talks about loving fall so much, I’d at least have a few decorations.  Well I don’t, unless you count some dying mums as fall decoration.

I can’t believe Halloween is the week.  Quinn did some test runs in his costume this weekend and still maintains his title as world’s cutest monkey-boy!  I think he’ll be the reigning champion forever.

Quinn got into an altercation last night…with the windowsill.  He was running to hide behind the curtains so he could jump out and yell “boo” and he tripped over his own feet (he obviously has his mom’s grace).  His poor little nose made contact with the windowsill.  We knew it was bad when he did the silent cry for the first few seconds- the longer the silent cry, the worse it is.  This one was about 5 seconds long, which would be a 6 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the worst).  But, in typical mighty Quinn fashion, he was up and running around again after a few minutes of some good hugs and a tickle or two.  He has a nice bruise on the bridge of his nose to show off at daycare-  ya know, to impress the ladies with!

Things around here are busy.  Weekends away always set us a little behind when it comes to our household chores.  This weekend was no exception.  I can usually tell the state of the house by 2 things:  1) where my hairbrush is; and 2) how many packs of crackers and granola bars are at the bottom of the stairs and scattered throughout the kitchen.  Sounds weird, I know.  But Quinn loves to try to brush his hair with my hairbrush and ends up carrying it somewhere.  He also loves to take out each pack of crackers and each granola bar from their large Costco-size boxes and either throw them down the stairs one at a time or put them in an obscure location in the kitchen.  When we’re caught up on our chores, my hairbrush is in the correct drawer and all snack items are put away.  Even when we’re not too caught up, my hairbrush is at least somewhere in the bathroom and the snacks are somewhere in the pantry, maybe not in the right place but at least the right vicinity.  When we’re lagging way behind…well, let’s just say I found my hairbrush on the floor of Quinn’s room, underneath a huge pile of books and stuffed animals.  And I found about 12 packs of crackers and 10 granola bars at the bottom of the stairs and some more crackers and granola bars on the seat of Quinn’s highchair.  And a pack of crackers in the refridgerator.  So to say that our house is in a sad state of affairs is a bit of an understatement.  But I guess it will just have to wait, because after working a long 11 hour day, all I wanted to do was come home and play with Quinn and then go to bed.  I guess it all comes down to priorities, but it’s very easy to pick my top priorities when I’ve got the cutest kid in the universe giving me hugs and yelling with excitement just for walking in the door!

I picked Quinn up at daycare today and had 2 incident reports waiting for me.  Apparently he is the class biter.  And he bites his unsuspecting friends.  Actually, he seems to be in quite the bad mood today.  Something about the Red Sox losing the ALCS…  Or maybe his partying this weekend has caught up to him.  Can’t say I blame him- Mondays are good days to be grumpy!  He did have his class pictures today so hopefully those went well- I’m sure they did since he’s such a cheeseball when the camera comes out!  Now I’m off to go outside with Quinn- he’s been asking to go “ow-dy” since the minute we walked in the door.

On this day 29 years ago, the world became a better (and funnier) place because- Ryan was born!

Here’s the birthday boy on our way home today, drinking his birthday coffee.  Quinn gave him an awesome card that said “Happy birthday to the world’s best farter (oops, I mean father)”.  I’d say both titles are true!    After opening his gifts, we went for his birthday dinner to our favorite sushi restaurant.  Quinn had his first chopsticks experience and I was able to capture it on Ryan’s phone.  He wanted to be just like daddy!

Happy birthday, Ryan!

I’m happy to say that Quinn is much better- his eyes and his ear have cleared up.  The doctor confirmed my suspicions and prescribed drops for both.  Talk about mission: impossible.  You try putting 2 drops in each eye and 5 drops in an ear of a one year old.  You’d think we were torturing him- I have to hold his body and hands down and Ryan is in charge of administering the drops.  But they are working and we only have a few more days of them, so we’ll all survive!

We had a great weekend, filled with celebrations.  We went down to the D.C. area to attend my friend’s baby shower.  Meghan is due in mid-December and Quinn is really excited to meet his new playmate.  We taught him to point to Meghan’s belly and say “baby”, which is really cute, but now we’re worried that he’ll do that to anyone who has a big belly- pregnant or not.  It could get us into some trouble!  Quinn got to hang out with the guys while the girls were at the shower- he seemed to enjoy his male bonding time and the dad-to-be got to practice his baby skills.

Donnie (future dad) and Quinn

And because she’ll absolutely kill me for posting a picture of her, here’s a picture of the beautiful mom-to-be, Meghan.  She has the most perfect basketball belly!

Quinn really likes being the center of attention and was quite the ham.  When he’s in front of new people, he’s shy for about 5 minutes and then gets progressively sillier.  By the end of the night on Saturday he was running around the house in his diaper, playing fetch with himself and yelling.  He was the star of the show, although he had some tough competition with the Red Sox game!  He was exhausted on our car ride home.

And then he woke up when we were 30 minutes from home and decided he didn’t want to be in the car anymore- so he yelled the rest of the ride home.  We were all glad to be home- this kid’s got some pipes on him!

We also had another celebration, but I think it deserves it’s own post.  (And no, it’s not about the Sox’s amazing comeback…but let’s hope it continues.  They’re playing right now and are up 1-0.  We would love a Red Sox-Phillies World Series…it might cause some division in my family, though!)