We’re getting everything ready to make the trek up to New Hampshire tonight.  We’ll have Thanksgiving with Ryan’s family and visit with some friends over the long weekend.  Ryan has his high school reunion on Friday night, which should be good preparation for mine over Christmas.  Last night I was trying to figure out what to wear to it and tried on what I thought was a cute outfit.  I asked Ryan what he thought and after much coaxing to tell me the truth, he said “Well, it’s nice.  But maybe you could wear something not so…frumpy.”  And then he proceeded to tell me that frumpy wasn’t a bad term and actually was used to describe Hasidic Jews.  As if that made me feel better!  He continued to gag himself with his foot later on in the evening by showing me the definition of “frumpy” online.  It said “dull, unfashionable, dowdy, drab”.  I really don’t know how he thought frumpy didn’t have a negative connotation.  So now, just to spite him, I might wear a mumu.

Since I’m not sure if I’ll get to post tomorrow, I wanted to do a Thanksgiving post about what I am thankful for.  Obviously, I am more than thankful for these two amazing guys:

It seems that especially this year, with all of the stories about families losing everything, I am counting my blessings that I have a roof over my head, food on my table and such a wonderful family to share everything with.  I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving filled with love and laughter!

Quinn’s note on his daycare slip today said “Quinn is quite the dancer!!!  Have you been working with him at home?”  Maybe if his teacher saw this picture of Ryan doing his signature split, she’d understand that his dancing skills are inherited.  Which means he’ll soon be tearing up the dance floor with some of the cheesiest moves you’ve ever seen!

I’ve been holding off on acknowledging that the holidays are upon us.  Not because I don’t like the holidays- I love them!  It’s just that somedays things already seem so hectic and adding the word “holidays” to our life somehow makes things even busier.  But it also brings lots of fun things- things that are even more exciting and meaningful now that we get to share them with Quinn.  So after weeks of turning off Christmas carols on the radio, avoiding holiday displays at the mall, and refusing to let Quinn get his picture taken with Santa…I’ve caved.  I not only bought new wrapping paper and ribbon, attended the Holiday Party planning committee at work and started to think seriously about our Christmas cards; but today we did one of the big activities of our holiday season – we cut down our Christmas tree!

In case you didn’t know, I’m very serious about my Christmas tree.  *very* serious.  It has to be as tall as our ceilings will possibly allow.  It has to be skinny with just the right number of gaps in the tree to allow for ornament displays.  And it must be cut down by us.  It’s just not the same if we buy it at a tree stand.  Oh, and the farm we go to has to have the right feel to it.

Ryan learned not to mess with my Christmas tree experience a few years ago when, after picking a dinky little farm with horrible trees, he insisted we get one there so we wouldn’t have to go somewhere else.  I tried to explain the importance of finding the perfect Christmas tree, but he was too busy wrestling with a vine that had taken over the tree he thought was good enough for us.  He got the vine off, cut the tree down, and we drove home silently.  We put the tree up later that night.  I took one look at it and started crying.  The whole experience had been awful and the tree was awful as well.  Ryan still didn’t see what my deal was- it was just a tree.  Well someone in the universe has a great sense of humor because that night, Ryan woke up itching.  And couldn’t stop itching.  It turns out that the vine he had pulled off the tree was poison sumac and he had a horribly itchy case of it.  I, of course, thought it was pretty funny and the perfect revenge for ruining my important tradition.  So now, every year when we talk about getting a tree, we talk about that year and laugh.  And then Ryan backs off and lets me decide what farm we’ll go to and what tree we’ll get!  I guess the memory of the itch taught him not to mess with me and my Christmas tree.

Luckily, we found a place around here that is perfect- a great atmosphere, pretty scenery and tons of trees.  We decided to go today because, if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to get one until mid-December.  So we bundled Quinn up and headed out.  Or tried to head out.  Quinn was a little overwhelmed by his cold weather gear that he decided he needed to lay down to figure things out.

Once he figured out that his gear only added another two pounds max, rather than the 20 pounds that he seemed to think it added, he was ready to go.  We even listened to Christmas carols in the car on the way there!

Because we went so early in the season, we were the only ones on the whole farm.  Quinn liked running around and there was even some snow on the ground.

And we got a beautiful tree.

After that, we came home and all took naps.  The perfect afternoon!

Later on, Quinn demonstrated a new trick just in time for the holidays.

I’m not quite sure why he jumps up and down when he says “ho ho ho” but he does it every time.  I guess maybe we shake a little when we give our hearty ho ho ho’s, like Santa would!

So I guess this weekend was the official start to my holiday season.  Next stop on the Pudloski holiday express, trying to get Fenway to wear the awesome reindeer antlers I bought him!

I walked into daycare to pick Quinn up this afternoon and saw the dreaded incident report sitting in his cubby.  I grabbed it and immediately checked to see if he caused the incident (biting) or if he was the incident.  Turns out he was the incident.  Apparently he wanted to be the first out of the room to go to the playground and took a bit of a tumble.  This is the result:

A big scrape on his head.  Add that to the scratch on his eyebrow, the bruise on his cheek and the other bruise on his chin, and he’s looking quite burly!  But still cute.

And yet another picture of Quinn being a total boy.  Holding the remote, captivated with the tv.  Little does he know that the remote has no batteries.  I do the same thing to Ryan so I can watch my reality tv shows without him interfering!

Quinn’s a big fan of taking a bath, especially when he has cool bath toys to play with!

our best attempt at a faux-hawk

(And I just went back and re-read this…to clarify, the bath toys I’m referring to are the stickable roads and trucks- not the bath toy that every guy has and loves to play with- as Quinn is clearly demonstrating!) 

Our night tonight consisted of the turtle, somersaults (which he learned how to do in the gym class on Saturday and now he’s all about them) and running.  I had the video camera out tonight and figured I’d post a video to show what a normal night with Quinn is.  Busy.  And noisy.  And full of kisses and laughs!

I really don’t know why daycare said he is a loud little boy?!?

Despite the weather being rainy and dreary, Quinn had quite the exciting weekend.  Lots of firsts…

1.  First gym class. A neighbor and I went to My Gym with Quinn and her daughter.  It’s basically a gym made just for little kids.  Quinn sang songs, stretched, climbed, played ball and jumped on the trampoline.  He loved it and it tired him out, which means I loved it, too.

2. First bad haircut. For his first professional haircut, I wanted to take him to a salon that caters to kids, in case he gave them a hard time.  I figured they were used to cutting wiggly kids’ hair.  Apparently, they’re not used to cutting hair, period.  Quinn did awesome, only cried when the stylist sprayed freezing cold water all over him.  He stayed still, cooperated, did great.  The stylist, on the other hand, did not do so great.  So now Quinn has an uneven haircut.  Oh well, it’ll grow, right?  And it can’t be any worse than my second grade haircut, which consisted of one side way shorter than the other (because the hairdresser said it was “in” and my mom thought it’d be a good idea).

3.  First car accident. We could have gone without this first, but luckily we’re both fine.  We were on our way home from our disastrous haircut when we were rear-ended.  The car that hit us wasn’t going too fast and I managed to keep my foot on the brake so as not to hit the person in front of us.  Quinn cried at first from the initial shock but calmed down right away and was flirting with the woman who hit us.  I was probably more shaken then Quinn was and spent the rest of the car ride home looking at him in the rearview mirror to make sure he was OK.  I’m fine, too, just a sore neck and back today.

4.  First Thanksbirthmakah dinner. 2 years ago we hosted a Thanksmakah dinner for about 20 friends (combo of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hannukah).  3 days later I found out I was pregnant.  So I guess technically Quinn was there… Anyway, our entertaining has slowed down quite a bit since then.  I’m finding it’s hard to make a dinner and clean a house with a one year old and all of the toys that accompany him.  So we cut it down this year to only 9 people and added in a birthday celebration.  And made it a Mexican fiesta.  It was a lot of fun catching up with everyone and Quinn thoroughly enjoyed being the entertainment.

Todd was double fisting…

Everyone was touching Preggo Meggo’s belly.  Baby B. was showing his love for Thanksbirthmakah with some kicks!

Jill used a hanging needle on a thread to predict everyone’s number of pregnancies and the babies’ genders.  It was all in fun and I had flashbacks to playing the ouija board in middle school, but apparently the needle has never been wrong for all of the women in her family.  Basically, she holds the thread with the needle above our wrist and if it goes in a circle, that means girl, and if it goes back and forth, that means boy.  And then it stops in between and will start up again, depending on the number of kids you are supposed to have.

The needle predicted 3 kids for me- the first being a boy (and that obviously is correct) and the next two are girls.  I guess only time will tell!

Quinn took advantage of everyone and gave his best “please” so people would read him books.  Combine that with his charming smile and the book he shoves in your face, and it’s hard to say no!

5.  First discovery of Timmy the Tortoise. Ryan has a pet tortoise that he has had since he was 6 years old.  Which makes Timmy at least 23 years old, most likely a little older.  Because he’s a tortoise, he lives on land rather than in water, so we keep him in a tank in my office or in the bathroom downstairs.  Quinn has always been fascinated by the tank but yesterday realized that there was a moving object in there.  Now he’s in love with Timmy and all weekend we heard Quinn chanting “turtle” while pointing up the stairs to where Timmy lives.  We finally brought him down to roam the living room when our friends were over so Quinn would have something to occupy him.  He spent about half the night running from the living room to the kitchen to tell us there was a turtle in the other room.  I think in a way he is slightly scared of him because he won’t touch him, he’ll just sit down about a foot from where Timmy is and look at him.  And then squeals when he moves.

We’re all a little tired from the weekend so this evening was filled with cartoons and football.  It is cold out today so Quinn and I cuddled up on the couch.  I don’t even like football but if it will keep Quinn snuggled up next to me, I’ll watch it for hours!

Fenway also joined in on the lazy-fest.  We can always count on him for that.  After all, he, too, has to recover from his long weekend of laying on the couch!

Quinn had his school pictures taken last month.  We got the proofs yesterday.  Anyone else find it funny that a one year old has “school” pictures?  We’re going to be bad parents and not buy any pictures because we figure we have at least 18 more years to buy his school pictures! 

We have slowly been making our way into the world of kids’ shows and cartoons.  And they most definitely aren’t what they used to be.  Some of the shows are OK…I’ll admit that I actually like a few of them.  Others I find so obnoxious that I can’t even stand watching for 2 seconds.  And then there’s Yo Gabba Gabba.  Entertaining?  Yes.  Good messages?  Yes.  Good music?  Yes.  Are the creators on some crazy psychotropic drugs?  Most definitely YES.  I mean, just watch the DJ in the beginning!

 

I was happy to note that Sesame Street has remained pretty normal…as normal as you get for a big yellow bird and a red furry monkey, I guess.

Quinn wanted the silk bathrobe…I said no…so we settled on the terry cloth bathrobe with a dinosaur on it.  Very pimp.

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