Today was a perfect day to be outside! After this last week with extreme heat, thunderstorms, and rain, I’ve been a little stir crazy. We spent a big part of the day cleaning up the overgrown yard and out of control garden. 

Even though he said he wanted to help, Quinn has a few new fears, like the lawn mower, weed eater, sweeper, thunderstorms, and letting me out of his sight for more than 10 seconds. This is normal for his age, of course, as he’s learning to deal with separation anxiety. He will often come and say, “Hug you,” to me or Philip when he needs some reassurance. This even continues in his sleep, all the time pulling me over if I’ve rolled away from him so that he can cuddle up into me. The other night, I was sleeping, facing him, and he rolled toward me and stuck his finger right inside my nose 😳🤦🏻‍♀️. I’m pretty sure it was an accident since he was asleep but that is definitely on my list of least favorite ways to be woken up 😒. Another, slightly less awkward but still weird, way I’ve been woken up is to Quinn blowing on my belly 🤦🏻‍♀️. Sleeping with him is sometimes a challenge now that he’s so talkative. He’ll get stuck on a random phrase and keep saying it, I think, to keep himself awake. The other day at naptime he started talking about my brother’s cat, Wicket. The conversation went as follows:

Q: “Wicket yeah. Wicket yeah. Wicket yeah. Wicket yeah.”

M: “Quinn, hush. It’s nap time.”

Q: *whispers* “Wicket yeah. Wicket yeah. Wicket yeah. Wicket…”

M: “Quinn, stop talking please.” 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Wicket.

One thing I do like that he says is, “More milk please.” He typically sleeps throughout the night and wakes around 5-6am and wants some milk. After he drinks it, he goes back to sleep until Philip’s alarm goes off for work. I usually get him half a cup of milk and sometimes that’s not enough, so he asks for more. I love that he uses manners at 5am, without prompting. It makes me smile every time. 

For someone who recently developed several fears, he sure likes to pretend to scare others 😆. I’ll walk into a room he’s in and he’ll say, “Skk, scared you,” and smile. He cracks himself up. He says, “Bless you,” when you sneeze, and oftentimes, “Thank you,” when you give him something. I love that he’s learning these niceties but sometimes he thinks he’s being polite when he’s not. For example, Sansa or Sophie will be laying somewhere, not in the way of anyone, and Quinn will just go over to them and be like, “Move please.” Philip and I are always telling him that they don’t have to move, which some may find ridiculous, but it feels like he’s just bullying the dogs and that’s not okay 😂.

I’ve said this before, but you really learn what you say to your kids all the time when they start saying it back to you. Quinn has now put both his dog and toy mower in time out for “Not listen to me,” and “Rock,” rock being something he got in trouble for the day before this happened. Hearing him tell me his toys didn’t listen to him made me realize that I need to be more clear with my messages when I put him in time out. That’s not really the reason he’s in trouble—he didn’t listen to me when I told him to do something. So, I should have said, “You’re in time for not cleaning up your toys,” etc. 

Mower in time out. 

His dog in time out. 

Cleaning up toys when he’s finished playing with them is an ongoing battle and while he’s not usually a fan of that, he loves to help do pretty much anything else 🤷🏻‍♀️. When we’re getting ready to go for a walk, he will bring me my shoes. He has recently started wanting to fill our water bottles from the water cooler. He doesn’t put much in them but says they’re full and brings them back. This is a pretty good strategy for allowing him to do it again quickly 😂. The water cooler stopped pumping a few days ago so Philip had to watch some videos and try to troubleshoot it. While he was sitting on the floor messing with it, Quinn went and got his toolbox and sat down beside him. I took a pic of them working on it together and when Quinn saw it later, he said, “Helping Dad” 🥰. He even fetched a cookie for Philip yesterday, so I think we had better capitalize on this helping stage because before long, he’s not going to want to do any of that 🤪. 

I couldn’t love this picture more 😍. 

Helping me reinstall the anti-tip device to his dresser. 

Helping Dad cut up potatoes. 

He has some new interests, such as climbing on and jumping off everything, tearing paper, and naming colors. Our bookcases in the living room look like graduated steps, and he noticed this one day. I was cleaning the bathroom and I heard him saying, “Hand!” When I went to see what he was doing, he had moved the toy that sits on the bottom “step,” climbed on it, and was waiting for me to lend him a hand to help him jump off 🤦🏻‍♀️. I discovered his newfound love for tearing when he pulled some parchment paper out of a drawer and shredded it. Since then, I’ve provided him with a tearing tub with paper that he’s allowed to rip. He went to my brother’s house this week while I was at the market and tore pages out of some magazines 😳. While I’m glad he didn’t ruin any books, I guess we still need to work on what’s okay to tear and what isn’t. His ability to name colors seriously just clicked one day almost two weeks ago. Philip and I are always pointing out and talking about colors, especially on our evening walk. Quinn already knew that Sansa is brown, and Sophie is white, the grass is green, and the sky is blue. I thought he had just memorized those though. We were playing with playdoh one morning and he suddenly started naming the colors correctly. Since then, he will just randomly be doing something and point out a color: like saying the plate he’s eating from is green, the car driving by is blue, etc. He also knows what the colors on traffic lights mean and has turned into a backseat driver 🙄. When the light is green, he yells, “Go!”

On our walks is when we do a lot of talking. Philip and I are usually catching up on how our day went and when Quinn gets tired of listening to us, he starts being obnoxious 🙄. He usually wants to sing Old McDonald and for us to turn our attention to him. He now understands how the song works, mostly, and will provide the animal’s name after I say, “On his farm, he had a _______.” He’ll then say the sound that animal makes a few seconds later. Now, the “sound” may be the animals’ name repeated, but whatever. He can sometimes go four rounds before he repeats an animal. I’ll tell him we already did that one and he’ll say, “Again!” 😆 We often also talk about body parts and their quantities. He knows he has one nose, one mouth, two ears, two eyes, one belly, two nipples, etc. 😂 When we get about a quarter mile away from home, we let him out of his stroller to walk the rest of the way home. He likes to walk “fast” and sometimes he even walks backwards (and up and down stairs without holding on when we’re at home and OMG make him stop 😳). He points to the houses on our block and can identify who lives there, mostly by the names of their dogs 😂. I make treats for the girls to take on our walk to help keep them in line when we pass other people and animals. I use flour, oats, baking powder, beef stock, eggs, peanut butter, and canned pumpkin. Does that sound like a good mixture? Apparently, it is because any chance Quinn gets to steal a treat out of the pouch and eat it, he does 🤦🏻‍♀️. I honestly don’t care because I make them and know they’re all edible ingredients, but I can’t imagine the looks we would get if someone saw him do this 🤣. We’ll be like, “Hey bud, do you know those are for the dogs?” He’ll say, “No, Quinn.” 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️.

He’s learning so much but there’s so much to teach him. He seems to be making so many connections right now. Yesterday morning we tried color matching for the first time and he nailed it right away. One skill I’m going to really drill into his head is how to look for things. I don’t want him to end up with “husband eyes,” as I like to lovingly call the way Philip looks for anything; he looks with his husband eyes, which is why he can never find anything, even when it’s right in front of him 🙄. Quinn is really into Hide and Seek so I started hiding his toy animals around the room and having him find them. He found his zebra earlier and I was picking so I told him to put it on Dad’s head. He did and said, “Eat.” When Philip asked him what he was eating, Quinn said, “Eat Dad’s hair.” You never know what he’s going to come up with. 

Another interest he is exploring is using the potty occasionally. He has peed on it a few times recently and most days at least sits on it. He will say he wants to use the potty, sit on it, attempt to go, and then say, “No pee,” or “No poop.” I tell that’s okay, and we put his diaper on. I’m not going to try to force anything on him; that’s when you get a power struggle and a much bigger issue. 

He really wants to be independent now and tries to dress himself (when he decides to wear clothes, which is becoming less and less frequent). Philip taught him how to sit down and put his shorts on so now he won’t let me do it and instead insists, “Quinn do it!” He’s gotten pretty good at putting his legs through the separate holes and just needs help pulling them up over his butt. The problem with him dressing himself means he also wants to pick out his own clothes 🤦🏻‍♀️. You guys know how much it irks me when he doesn’t match so sometimes this is a struggle within to allow him the freedom to do so. 

The outfit he picked out for our walk 🤦🏻‍♀️.

He put those shorts on mostly by himself, with just some help getting them over his butt. They’re backwards, crooked, and he looks like Steve Urkiel but I told him he did a great job 😉.

He came to me for help because he was stuck in the shirt he was trying to put on from the wrong end 😆. 

He told me it was cold outside and went and got his jacket. That was definitely the best choice to keep him warm 😉🤦🏻‍♀️.

Being a big boy and putting on some deodorant 😉.

He’s still attempting to assert his imagined dominance by telling me to do something, “Right now,” or to “Look!” when I tell him we don’t have something. We took my dad to an appointment and dropped him off last week and I told Quinn we would go get him when he was done. He insisted we go, “Get Pap right now!” He will sometimes request a snack or drink that I’m not sure we have so I’ll tell him that I’ll go look to see if we have it. That has led him to believe that if he wants something, all I need to do is go look for it and it will appear 🙄. But he’s two now so you know he has to try to control everything. He’ll be happily watching some pre-nap Blippi, like really into it, but the moment he notices me chillin’ and scrolling FB, he suddenly has the urge to look at pictures on my phone. I give him a bink at bedtime, but he wants the “other bink.” He has a meltdown over not being allowed to do something, so I offer to give him a hug and at first, he says no, but then he says, “Hug.” When I go to give him a hug, he says, “No hug!” Repeat. The fun never stops. These are all things that matter very little to me to give into though. Some might think it’s spoiling a child to give into their requests, but these little battles just help him gain the self-confidence to make decisions and increase autonomy. I save my energy for the big battles. 

Speaking of making decisions, do you ever get tired of it? What to eat, where to go, what to do, and in our current climate, what the risk is and if it’s worth it. Quinn wants to make all the decisions and I want to spend a day without having to make any. Even small things are exhausting. I went to pee one day and when I came back in the kitchen, Quinn had moved his stool over to the stove and was pretending to cook (he told me noodles in case you’re wondering what 😉). Thankfully, the stove hadn’t been used since early that morning, so it wasn’t hot. However, it’s a glass cooktop so should I let him keep going and risk it getting broken by a careless toddler? What if it is hot next time he does it and I’m not around again? Should I tell him he’s not allowed to do this at all to reduce the risk of injury? Will that squash his imagination a little bit? It’s kinda cool to see him imitate things we do, honestly. In the end, I told him he’s only allowed to “use” the stove with Mama or Dada. When he’s in his default, generally happy mood, he listens to rules like that. I’ll just have to keep a more careful eye on him when I know the stove is hot. But things like this pop up all the time. Just when I feel like we’ve settled in, figured out hazards, and safeguarded the house, Quinn finds something new to test 🤦🏻. 

That hug, no hug situation I mentioned has happened a few times now. It almost always ends in a hug, that’s how he calms down, and I love it. Emotions are hard. We were outside the first time it happened, and he was screaming because I didn’t want to help him skateboard (my back hurt and I do 90% of the work while he stands there). He refused to use his scooter, which is, ya know, a skateboard with handles. Anyway, this person in a truck had stopped at the stop sign across from our house and just stared at us for far too long. Did he think I was going to beat him? Did he think I should? Did he think I needed help? I don’t know any of those of answers but the longer he stayed, the more annoyed I got. Like, we’re good, go away Nosy McNoserface🙄. So, if you’re ever wondering if stopping and staring at a parent and child while the child is having a hard time is the helpful, it’s not.

Being a stay at home parent is exhausting and anyone who doesn’t think so has obviously never done it. I’m not saying it’s harder than being a working parent, it’s just also hard. Some days are so, so bad, but then some are so, so good. I’m really grateful for those good ones. They help make tolerating the bad ones a little easier. 

Obligatory pics of the girls, because they’re cute..

And goofy…

And sweet 💜. 

When I started thinking about writing this a few days ago, I planned to talk about how I was feeling pretty good about this mom thing right now. It was starting to feel like life with a toddler was getting easier and some of the battles I had worked hard to fight—putting Quinn in time out over and over again, for the same things—had started to sink in. Quinn went near the road one day and I told him to stop, and he did! Win for Mama! When we were playing in his room, he pointed to the chair I use for time out and said, “Time out.” I said, “Yep. Why do you have to go in time out?” He said, “Road.” Bingo! He understands that and we don’t fight about that anymore. When he was in the learning zone, I thought I was going to lose my mind though. I stayed consistent and he got it, eventually. But, if toddlers are good at anything, it’s definitely knocking the wind out of your sails and making you question everything you do. We had two days of pure non-stop-whining-and-demanding hell. He answered, “No,” to everything I told him to do. He would refuse to put on clothes but then when I said, “Fine, I don’t care if you wear clothes or not,” he would demand for them to be put on. He fussed about EVERYTHING.  It was exhausting. But then on the third morning, he woke up and wanted to watch Blippi for the majority and I was A-okay with it. Should I have felt bad about that? Maybe you think so. Do I? Not a chance. That was a much-needed reprieve and we both recharged and had a good day. 

While he rarely wants to wear his own clothes, he loves wearing ours 😆. I have a pic of him wearing my tank top that very much looks like a dress on him but I won’t post it. He may not appreciate me one day if I did. 

Wearing Dad’s socks…two different types, from two different pairs. 

We got him an apron for his birthday so that he could dress like Dada when he’s cooking 😉.

Quinn has been battling a cold, but I can’t even blame that for the two days of hell because those were days that he actually seemed to be feeling and sounding better. He’s still a little stuffy but not snoring or drooling like he was. I swear, the kid had so much saliva coming out of his mouth, it was like he forgot how to swallow! I thought that he may have been getting his two-year molars, but he let me feel his gums (without biting me, shockingly) and there’s no indication of them coming in. I couldn’t figure out why he would be drooling then but Kim told me her son did that when he young because he had a sore throat and swallowing was painful. That made perfect sense because the way he was snoring left no doubt that his throat was sore. I’m a pretty big whiner when I am sore or don’t feel good and I think having a sore throat is ranked up there with breaking an appendage (not really but I hate it a lot), however, I can’t imagine opting to just leak drool out of my face rather than bearing the pain of swallowing 😆. I don’t know though, maybe I’ll try that next time 🤤. Quinn really dislikes having his shirt get wet and wants it removed when he even thinks he has gotten wet so of course, there were many shirt changes during the days of his peak illness. He even drooled on my shirt when I was laying with him at bedtime. He kept saying, “Shirt off.” He had already taken his shirt off for the same reason and I told him it was already off. We went back and forth a few times and he finally said, “Mama shirt off!” 😂 I was like, “Ummm, no,” but I did put the blanket up over my chest so that he wouldn’t have to lay against it 😉. 

I’ve never seen a child get as excited as Quinn does when he takes his shirt or shorts off and squeals, “Naked!” It’s hilarious and he obviously doesn’t fully grasp what naked means. He has discovered his nipples and likes to point them out anytime he isn’t wearing a shirt. He did this to his cousin, Lincoln, the other day and we had to have a talk about boundaries. Lincoln was playing school with his sister and the two neighbor girls, and they were having nap time. Lincoln was laying, shirtless, under a blanket on the floor. Quinn came to get my hand and dragged me into the other room, just so he could show me Lincoln. He excitedly squealed, “Naked!” and pointed to Link. Link, who’s almost 6 and understands what naked means, was like, “I’m not naked!” I said, “I know you’re not. He just thinks you are because you don’t have a shirt on.” Quinn then proceeded to go over to Link and touch his nipple and proclaim its name 🤦🏻‍♀️. Link was, obviously, uncomfortable with this, and I made him stop. Good grief, this kid is curious 🤷🏻‍♀️. 

He’s really into hugging now, too. This also necessitated a chat about consent, but most kids are willing to give one back. During a pandemic isn’t exactly when I want him to pick up this habit, though 🤦🏻‍♀️. When we take our nightly walk, he will just randomly want one of us to give him a hug. I told him one night that I couldn’t give him a hug while walking but that he could hold my hand so now that has become a thing. Usually about halfway back on our trip, he’ll want to hold my finger. 

He also hugs the new neighbor’s dog 😂. This pic makes it seem as though Bear wasn’t particularly thrilled but he was cool with it. We wouldn’t let him hug on dogs who didn’t want it. 

I can’t believe the explosion that has happened in the last two weeks with his language. As far as vocabulary goes, he’s had a good grasp on many, many words for a while now. However, he was a bit late on the sentence train. He wasn’t putting very many words together, except for a few phrases here and there. Oh my, he’s saying so many things now, it’s unbelievable! He even said his first four-word sentence last week. This wouldn’t actually be one sentence if said properly, but he spat it all out in one demand: “Stop it go away!” This was said to the girls, who were both giving him kisses at the same time 😂😛. I had no idea he even knew those words, let alone how to use them. 

You never know what he’s going to say, especially first thing in the morning. I was woken up one morning with, “Cock, cock, cock!” I was like, “What did you say?” He repeated it and then said, “Peacock.” He thinks that’s what a peacock says 🤦🏻‍♀️. I blame his father, because he even though he didn’t teach him this particular sound, he did teach him that a giraffe says, “giraffe, giraffe” 🙄. So, if he doesn’t know what an animal says, apparently, he just makes up a sound relating to its name and peacocks have such a wonderful name for this trick 🤦🏻‍♀️. 

Today he gave us a few laughs with things he said:

*covers face while riding in the stroller*

Q: “Mama, find me!”

*points to goose poop on the trail*

Q: “Poop. Big.”

* grabs my hands and pulls me into the living room*

Q: “Mama, Dada horn. Get it.”

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤦🏻‍♀️

Quinn loves playing hide and seek, especially with the girls. They also love playing but only with me and Philip, because we give them a challenge. Quinn will throw a blanket over his head and yell for them incessantly—“Soph, come find me!” 

These are two of his other hiding spots 🤣🤣🤣

He randomly woke up from a nap one day and said, “Weird dada.” I was like, “Yep. Your dada is weird.” When I told Philip about this later that day, he replied with pretend indignation and “Hey! I’m not weird. Quinn’s weird.” Quinn retorts with, “Cool Quinn,” or “Cool Mama.” They go back and forth, and Quinn thinks it’s hilarious. He also loves to say, “Tickle feet,” anytime he discovers someone’s feet. The boy loves to make people laugh. He got my old work lunch box out of a cabinet the other day and was carrying it around. He showed it to Philip and they talked about it being empty. Philip asked Quinn was he was going to put in it and he said, “Head,” and stuck it on his head 🤣. 

When we were swimming in the hot (87 degrees so not actually hot) tub last week, Quinn climbed on my back. I asked if there was a bug on my back and he said, “No, monkey,” and made a noise like a monkey. Philip pulled me into the center of the hot tub with him and hugged me and Quinn was not having it. He climbed in between us. When Philip told him that he was sitting with Mama, Quinn said, “No, Quinn.” He sometimes doesn’t want to get out of the hot tub, so I use the same technique that is used at the pool; I whistle and tell him it’s time to get out. Now, when I even mention that it’s time to get out, he’ll say, “Whistle.” 😂

He really loves going to the big pool. 

Quinn has a lot of empathy and will apologize if you tell him that he hurt you. However, while he fully expects for me to kiss every one of his real and imagined boo boos, he will not kiss mine! I was putting dishes away out of the dishwasher one day and stepped across the open door while the bottom rack was pulled out and cut my knee on some silverware. It bled pretty good, and Quinn seemed to be a little concerned about it. He kept telling me, “Boo boo,” but when I asked if he would kiss it, he told me, “No. Dada.” He refused to kiss my scratch and wanted Philip to do it. Even though he won’t help my wounds heal, he will sometimes just randomly say, “Pretty,” and when I ask, “Who’s pretty?” he’ll say, “Mama.” That kid knows how to win hearts. 

He has also learned how to argue and that’s a skill he could’ve waited on 🙄. He eats dinner at the table with us but usually finishes first and gets down to play. However, he almost always wants one of us to do something with him during this time. 

M: “I will do _______, whenever I finish eating.” 

Q: “Quinn done.”

M: “Uh huh, I know Quinn’s done but Mama isn’t.” 

Q: “Yeah!”

On a day when he had taken a bath in the morning: 

*Comes into the bathroom when I’m getting out of the shower* (See, more bathroom stories?!)

Q: “Bath!”

M: “You already took a bath today.”

Q: “Again!”

He’s still demanding the impossible, or at least, the unreasonable:

*Finds the popsicle he left on the counter in a puddle in his bowl*

Q: “Fix it!”

M: “…well, I can but it’s gonna take a while.” 🤷🏻‍♀️

*Chews on his bink and creates holes in the nipple*

Q: “Fix it!” (and chucks it across the room 🙄).

*Intentionally pops a balloon that I warned him would have to be thrown away if he did so*

Q: “Fix it!”

🙄🙄🙄

Because Quinn gets so car sick, we decided to turn his seat forward since he turned two, and see if that helped on longer trips. It did seem to and even though I’m still very much of the mind set that being backwards is safest, not having him puke is okay, too. Now every time he I tell him we’re going somewhere in the car he asks, “Forward?” 😆 “Yes, bud, you can ride forward.”

Philip and I hadn’t been out to eat inside a restaurant in town since before Covid hit so we decided to go to Peking Buffet in celebration of our anniversary. (Thanks to Mimi for watching Quinn for us 😘.) It was as delicious as we remembered. While we were sitting there eating, a man I didn’t recognize came walking toward our table, staring at me. He apologized for interrupting and asked if I was the girl from Facebook 🤣. He said, “The one that does those videos?” And I said, “On the Farmers Market page? Yes.” He told me he knew he recognized me and wanted to tell me I do a great job with it 🥰. That was so sweet of him to take the time to say that! He told me I’m famous and I tell you what, it really did feel that way 😂😂😂. I can’t imagine how red my face was. 

I can’t believe August is here already and summer  will be ending shortly. The only good thing about impending cooler weather is the disappearance of all the damn irritating bugs. Why do ticks love me so much? Is it because of my unicorn blood? I bet it’s because of my unicorn blood. My sometimes positive, sometimes negative B blood type must be enticing because I find ticks on me more than the average person, I think. I hate them with a passion. And I’m not even a big bug hater, normally. Like, I’m the trap a spider and put it outside kind of person. But when it comes to ticks, I’ll gladly burn them with fire or gleefully flush them to their deaths. I also really hate flies but only because they bug me while we’re napping 🤣. I leave the sliding glass door open so the girls can go outside and flies come in. Quinn has learned that I smack them with the swatter so he’s always telling me when he sees one—“Mama! Fly!” 🤪. I have to go on a crusade before nap time so I can sleep undisturbed and he very much enjoys that. I do worry about what I’m teaching him though 😳. 

Speaking of bugs, poor Sansa really took one for the team last week when she got stung in the mouth 🥺. Quinn was sitting at the bottom of his slide and a bee kept buzzing around. Sansa saw it and immediately snapped at it. It definitely got her because she spit it out and went running inside with her tail tucked. I went to check on her and she seemed ok but I gave her some Benadryl anyway. It was close to nap time and I didn’t want her to swell up while I was asleep. She acted fine after we woke up 🤷🏻‍♀️.

I think she loves him a little bit 😍. And yes, I’ve told him, repeatedly, to close his mouth when she gives him kisses 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️. 

Here’s a pic of Soph, just because she’s pretty 😍.