I never understood how kids would fall asleep while eating and seriously doubted that Quinn would ever do it.  I was wrong.

He didn’t do that head in the food thing, but it was still funny to watch.

One of Quinn’s Christmas presents was his very own mp3 player.  That’s right, my 15 month old has an mp3 player.  I’m glad I got an iPod for Christmas or Quinn would have been more tech savvy than me!  He loves it and carries it around everywhere.

It’s an instant dance party.

Quinn has had a full day and a half of Christmas festivities and is now exhausted.  In fact, he’s sound asleep next to me right now.  It started yesterday morning with presents at our house.  We didn’t want to haul everything with us, so we had Santa come early.  Quinn had fun opening and playing with all of his presents, including his new play kitchen.

We then went to my parents’ house and opened some more presents before heading off to my aunt and uncle’s house for dinner and even more presents.  Quinn was a pro at opening gifts by this point.  It didn’t hurt that his class had been practicing this skill at daycare for a few weeks leading up to Christmas.

This morning we got up at a very respectable 7:00 to, you guessed it, open more gifts!  Quinn made out like a bandit and has a slew of new toys to play with.  Ryan and I got to experience one of the joys of parenthood- trying to get the toys out of their very secure boxes and then putting together the 80 million pieces that make up most toys.  I think we did pretty well…

By the end of the action-packed morning, Quinn was having a love-hate relationship with his new train set.  The trains wouldn’t stay on the track and it was not a good scene.  Here you can see Ryan lovingly consoling his distraught son:

Which leads me to right now, with Quinn asleep, me still in my PJ’s and everyone else lounging and/or taking naps.  We have some family visits later in the day but it’s nice to relax and enjoy Christmas morning.

So from our family to yours- Merry Christmas!

T minus half a day until the holidays officially begin.  We’re cleaning, doing laundry, packing and putting together Quinn’s Christmas gift tonight so that tomorrow morning he can open his presents from us and Ryan’s family before we head out to my parent’s house.  I’m excited to watch him open presents and hope it’s as fun for him as I know it will be for us!  We’ve got some good gifts in store for him.

In case you didn’t receive a card in the mail (and I’m sorry if you didn’t…we only had a limited number to send out), here’s an online version: 

We wish you a holiday season that is filled with peace, joy and laughter!

This weekend we had a pre-holiday holiday weekend at my parent’s house complete with a pre-Christmas Christmas at my aunt and uncle’s house and followed by the yearly wine and cheese party at my other aunt and uncle’s house.  Unfortunately, our festivities were hampered by a few things, one of them being a cold/flu (me, Ryan and Quinn) and another being this:

Snow!  And ice!  Because my parent’s live at the top of a large hill, this can pose a problem.  So we arrived at their house on Saturday morning rather than Friday night and we stayed a few hours longer on Sunday than we were planning.  It ended up working out though because it allowed all of us to get a little extra sleep, which we needed.

I actually love the snow and was excited to get Quinn out in it.  We dressed him up a la the little brother on The Christmas Story, bear boots included.  He was not happy and some tears were shed but we managed to get him outside.  This was his reaction for the first 10 minutes or so:

It was not happiness.  But then we introduced him to sledding down a hill and he changed his mind.

After some really rosy cheeks, we had to call it quits even though Quinn was asking for more.  He walked back around the house and inside all on his own, proving that he can walk in his dreaded boots.  I’m hoping that with this winter wonderland experience, he won’t classify his boots as “dreaded” anymore!

Quinn’s other activity of the weekend was the “choo-choo”.  My parents set up our old train set around their Christmas tree, just for Quinn.  He was definitely excited about the idea of it.  He woke up talking about choo-choo, he walked around the house saying “choo-choo”, he told other people about the choo-choo…but when it came down to actually getting with 5 feet of the choo-choo, Quinn wasn’t having it.  He would shake his head no and stand firm if we tried to coax him toward it.  But as soon as we were done trying to persuade him to get closer, he would start talking about the choo-choo again.  As with Santa, this kid talks a big game!  We were finally able to get him to stand next to the train and once he did that he was fine with it.  He even played conductor.

Unfortunately his weekend went downhill from there.  When we got home, Quinn was crying and just wanted to cuddle- very not like Quinn.  So we took his temp and it was 102.  We gave him tylenol and spent the afternoon watching Thomas the train and football.  He seemed better after dinner until he did a face plant in the kitchen during one of his dance moves and ended up splitting his lip open.  Lots of snot and blood later, we were back downstairs watching Thomas and football again.  He’s in bed right now, hopefully dreaming about choo-choos and sleds.  I’m wondering how big his lip is going to be tomorrow.  The better to give snotty, wet kisses with, I guess!

Seems like it’s that time of year again…time for our elf family to come out and start dancing!

Check out our traditional dance.

And our country dance.

Our 4 elf names are Grumpy, Sneezy, Happy and Dopey.  Obviously, Fenway is Dopey and he continues to chase the reflections on the wall from the Christmas tree…genius as always!  I’m Sneezy because I’ve been home sick for the past 2 days with a nasty cold/flu- complete with a 102 temp and a body that feels like I’ve been run over by a bus.  Quinn is Grumpy.  I don’t know what’s going on with him but for the past 2 days he has been miserable.  We’re not sure if it’s teething or if he’s coming down with what I have, but whatever it is, it’s making him whine like he’s never whined before.  And that leaves poor Ryan as Happy.  He’s the one stuck taking care of this sorry group and doing a fabulous job of it.  So thanks, Ry, for taking such good care of Grumpy, Sneezy and Dopey!

We were hanging out in the kitchen tonight while making dinner and Ryan started beatboxing for Quinn.  I wish I had the video camera in the beginning because Quinn started dancing up a storm.  Well, I guess you would call those hand movements and leg thrusts dancing!  Here’s the tail end of it all:

We had a lovely weekend.  I don’t really use the word “lovely” very often, but that’s the perfect word for the past 3 days.  Ryan and I both took off on Friday and sent Quinn to daycare so we could paint our bedroom…finally.  After spending 8 months waking up to one red wall and 3 stark white walls with red trim, I couldn’t take it anymore.  Now our room is a much more soothing sage green with off-white trim.  Much, much better.  So while the actual painting wasn’t so lovely, the end result was worth it!

That night Ryan had band practice and Quinn had a dinner date with the bass guitarist’s daughter, who is a month younger than Quinn.  Of course, since this was a first date and they are a bit young, us moms chaperoned.  I think I cramped Quinn’s style- I guess it’s never cool to have your mom cut up your food on a date!

We started Saturday morning out with a visit to see Santa.  Quinn talks a big game about Santa but the minute he actually meets the man he’s been impersonating for weeks, he falls apart.  For the past few weeks, anytime someone said “Santa”, Quinn would start ho-ho-hoing.  And while we were waiting in line for Santa, he continued to ho-ho-ho.  But as soon as I tried to put him on Santa’s lap, the ho-ho-ho’s stopped.  And the cries started.   He wanted nothing to do with Santa.  So we have now have the kid crying on Santa’s lap picture.  It’s great and I plan to get it out every year!

trying on Ryan's shoe

The rest of the weekend was spent Christmas shopping, napping, having dinner with friends, some outdoor playtime/walks, lots of indoor playtime and our now usual Sunday afternoon football extravaganza.  It’s not much of an extravaganza- Quinn runs around shouting “football” while throwing around whatever ball he happens to have at the moment, Ryan tries to actually watch football but usually ends up playing with Quinn and I try my best to avoid watching any football.

I almost forgot our exciting news of the day: Quinn slept until 7:30 this morning!  It may not sound like late to most of you, but after months of getting up between 5 and 5:30, sleeping until 7:30 was pure bliss.  We’re doing sleep training to get him to sleep a little later and our goal is a wake-up time that is sometime after 6:30.  I’m sure Ryan never thought that he would ever consider 7:30 a late wake-up time!

All in all, I guess our weekend wasn’t very exciting, but it was fun, relaxing and…well…lovely!

I love our Christmas tree this year.  It’s the perfect shape, perfect size, perfect width.  Quinn’s a big fan as well.  Whenever I turn it on, he runs into the room and as soon as the lights come on he screams.  Wait till he learns that there are toys for him under the tree- he’s not going to be able to contain his excitement!

dapper Quinn ready for his show

Quinn had his much anticipated daycare holiday show last night.  And what a show it was!  Quinn did pretty much what I expected him to do…not much!  I think he was a little shell-shocked when he got on stage.  So while he didn’t wow the crowd with his scarf dancing and bell ringing skills, he did look awfully cute.  Here’s a l’il video of the Tony award winning performance.

backstage before the show

practicing his skillz

in the spotlight

the finger in the mouths was part of the choreography

bell ringing time- ring, baby, ring!

an exhausted star on the ride home