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 💜.