We’ve had an eventful few weeks (well, compared to what we usually do, which is nothing). Since my last post, we’ve taken Quinn to the mall, Philip and I went on an actual not-just-shopping-at-Sam’s-Club date, made the most of the last very warm day of the year by having a photoshoot at the park, I’ve had two doctors appointments, I finished the play room in the basement, and we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family. We were going to have dinner with Philip’s brother’s family yesterday but they have some sick kids, unfortunately. 

He looked like such a big boy walking through the mall 😊

Speaking of sick kids, Quinn has had a snotty nose for the past few days. He hasn’t had any other symptoms and has been in a pretty good mood despite it so I’m not too concerned. He went with me to see my PCP last week for my 6 month checkup. He was an angel while we were there. He wore his mask almost the entire time and enjoyed all of the attention he got from the staff. I went to see my OB the following day and he stayed with his Aunt Lulu (Lori). I asked both doctors their opinion on when I should get my COVID booster—now, or closer to delivery so that the baby may gain some protection. They both agreed that now is a good time to get it, as I’m past 6 months since my last shot. However, my OB said that when I’m around 28 weeks (I’ll be 25 on Tuesday), the baby’s immune system can start making antibodies, which would provide some protection to him once he’s born. She said she would back my decision either way and didn’t give me a definite answer to what I should do. After much thought, I’ve decided to wait another 3 weeks to get it and do my best to protect myself from getting COVID in the meantime. This is the only way I can offer any protection to the baby since a vaccine for infants is unlikely to be available anytime soon. 

Waiting with me to see my doctor 😊.

After I go back for my next appointment, I’ll begin going every two weeks, until February, when I’ll start going weekly. The third trimester is going to fly by! While I don’t know if I’m quite ready to meet baby #2 just yet, I am beyond ready to stop being pregnant 😂. I know there are people who love being pregnant; I am not one of them. I don’t remember Quinn being so active. It’s disturbing sometimes to just have this little creature karate kicking my pelvis from the inside. He seems to really like to assault me when I’m ready to sleep. I’m concerned that this baby will never sleep when he comes out 😳😩. 

While we were napping, Quinn laughed in his sleep and tooted. This caused the baby to move. I think they already had their first fight 🤪.

So, Philip and I went on a date to Pittsburgh to see the Immersive Van Gogh Art Exhibit. I bought tickets to the event in March, with hopes that COVID would be under control so that we could go. The original date was in October but it got pushed back to November due to a location issue. Anyway, we debated about even going. When you’ve stayed home for so long, going out of town and doing things just feels like SO. MUCH. WORK 😂. I was going to sell our tickets but Mimi insisted on us going and she would watch Quinn for the day 🥰. He had a great time at her house, drinking her carbonated water that he had to ensure was caffeine free 😆😆 (Sometimes I drink a pop in the afternoon if I’m super tired. He knows he isn’t allowed to drink mine because it has caffeine, so I buy him La Croix sparkling water, which is his “pop.” When Mimi offered hers to him, he asked her if it had caffeine 🤣🤣🤣), and stealing her very last piece of fudge out of her hand (Don’t worry, we made her some as a replacement 😉). While Quinn was enjoying his time with them, Philip and I had disappointment after disappointment on date that was mostly a failure 🤦🏻‍♀️😂. The art exhibit turned out to be a held in a big warehouse and the artworks were displayed on the walls of the building. This was kind of cool, however, if you didn’t pay for VIP tickets (we paid $140 and that was ~not~ VIP), you got to enjoy this show from a stadium cushion on a concrete floor. Concrete floors, cushions, and being 6 months pregnant is not exactly a great combination. Given my previous occupation (home visitor) and current lifestyle (stay at home mom to a toddler), I am accustomed to floor sitting. However, that’s not my idea of a $140 good time. Anyway, the ticket time said 12:00-1:30 so we assumed this was a timed event, our group starting at noon and we would go through the exhibit, taking close to an hour and a half. When we entered the show room at 11:50, the exhibit was already running so we found a seat on the floor. After about 15 minutes, the credits started rolling and the lights came on and everyone started getting up to leave. We thought this meant we would go to another room…nope, we exited to the overpriced gift shop. That was it! We were like, “Umm, is that all??” We weren’t late so I’m not sure how long the exhibit was running before we got there or if we should have stayed in the room and waited for the next showing to begin so that we could catch what we missed, if much of anything. I honestly don’t know how long it was supposed to last. There was no one giving any sort of directions like that. I can tell you that an hour and a half of sitting on the floor was not going to happen either way. So, while I love Van Gogh’s works, I was less than impressed with the execution of this show. The idea is pretty awesome though. Maybe we’re just uncultured swine who don’t know a good thing when they see it but I’m going to go with we just prefer “classic art” viewing. Or maybe we’re old 😝. 

His artwork is amazing though 🤩 

So, since we drove 2 hours for 15 minutes of culture, we decided to find something else to do while we were there. We love browsing through Ikea so we decided to eat first and then head there. We ate lunch at Olive Garden, the first time since before the pandemic started, and it was great; by far the best part of the trip 😂😂 🥗 . When we got to Ikea, we found a really cute dinosaur stuffed animal that we wanted to bring back for Q since that’s his new favorite thing. We picked up a few other things throughout the store, nothing we seriously needed, just some ‘nice to have’ items. When we got to the checkout, I’m not joking when I say there was no line with less than 20 people in it. There was no way we could justify waiting that long for ‘nice to have’ items and put them in a return bin and left empty-handed. Agh! 

With nothing left to do, we decided to head toward home to get Q. My dad had given me a gift card to Cold Stone Creamery for my birthday that we hadn’t been to the highlands to use, so we wanted to stop there on the way back and get some ice cream to take home and some for Mimi and Pap Brad, as a thank you for keeping Quinn. As we were driving, I got a text from Mimi laughing about how Quinn ate her last piece of fudge. Several years ago (apparently), Philip and I got some amazing fudge at Cabela’s, and since we were going to be right beside it, we decided to pop in there really quickly to grab some more fudge for Mimi. Wouldn’t you know it, Cabela’s no longer has a fudge shop 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️🤬. This was totally on par with how our day was going anyway. We left there empty-handed as well, and didn’t have high hopes that Cold Stone would be open/have any ice cream/accepting money that day 😂. Fortunately, they were open, had delicious ice cream, and even let me use my gift card 😊. 

When he went to Mimi’s, she had a surprise for him. This is a stuffed version of her dog, Chloe, who recently passed away. He played with her all evening when he got home and kept telling me, “I love Chloe” ❤️. 

I made Chloe a collar to match the ones on our stuffed girls that Kiki got for Q when he was a baby 😊.

Even though our date was a big, fat, failure, it was still nice getting away, just the two of us, with no worries about our boy. 

On the days we’ve been home, I’ve been cleaning and decluttering. I have 4 boxes of things to donate to the Parks and Rec giveaway event. The basement play room is finally finished and I really love the way it turned out. I think Q loves it, too. We spend at least an hour, sometimes more, playing there in the evenings when Philip gets off work. I made him some manipulatives to use in creative play from random craft supplies I already had (this is why it’s so hard for me to throw things away! I never know when something might be useful!). I made him a veggie garden, a chicken nest, and a hay trough for his horse and cow. About a month ago, he was all about farming but since then, his interests have turned to dinosaurs, thanks to discovering T-Rex Ranch on YouTube. We got him a stuffed dinosaur at the mall, Adam bought him one when he stayed at Mimi’s house for our date, and my friend Mandy gave him one that was her son’s. He loves them all and plays with them daily. I made a collar and leash for one of them so he takes it for a walk 😂. In our house, every dog we’ve ever had has the middle name of Lynn. I have no idea why, it just flows with each of their names. So Quinn hears us say Sansa Lynn and Sophie Lynn sometimes. He has now picked this up and given a middle name to his dinosaur, calling it Dinosaur Lynn 😆. He knows some of the actual names for the dinosaurs he has, like triceratops and T-Rex, so I’m waiting for more specific names with Lynn added. 

Thanks, Holly, for the tool center! Q loves playing with it!

Yes, there was a spot of purple paint on the wall before 🤦🏻‍♀️  That’s what color the walls were previously and the fish tank used to sit there so I wasn’t able to paint behind it until it got moved when the fish finally died. 

The fridge will be moved as soon as I can make room for it in another room. I’m keeping the smaller slide (Thanks, Lisa H.!) for the new baby but Quinn still likes playing with it, too 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Thanks to Mandy for the table! 😊

The kids broke in the play room at Thanksgiving. I think they had a good time playing there 😃. 

Feeding his cow some veggies. 

He kept trying to feed the eggs to the chicken and I told him that was wrong 😂. I talked to my friend, Chris, who has chickens and she informed me that her chickens actually love to eat eggs 😳. So I guess he knew more than I did.  

Another example of things I couldn’t throw away 🤦🏻‍♀️😂. I sorted through my craft supplies and stored my ribbon a different way so I had a ton of ribbon spools. Quinn found them, took them downstairs, and had a great time rolling them down his slide, stacking them up, and knocking them down. 

He made the dinosaur help do laundry 😂.

I didn’t know this about dinosaurs, but apparently they like belly rubs 🤷🏻‍♀️.

He said it was doing a wheelie 🤣

They also enjoy going for rides. Who knew?

It’s important to exercise your dinosaur every day. 

After walking him, he may need a nap. 

When he’s not watching T-Rex Ranch or Blippi, you should hear some of the things he asks about. Our YouTube search history is pretty ridiculous and includes things like: dinosaur drinking coffee, goat eating hay, horse taking a bath (although, what I actually heard Quinn ask Philip to find was horse in a bath tub 🤦🏻‍♀️), and horse jumping on bed. Quinn is obsessed with jumping right now, wanting to jump off of things and over things and says, “Watch me go,” before he does it. Why are boys like this?  🤦🏻‍♀️

Quinn’s attention span is getting so much longer and he attends to activities for longer stretches. When he discovers a new skill or rediscovers one that was previously too hard for him, it’s like he has to master it. He has child-safe scissors that he has access to in his play room. He spent nearly 30 minutes the other night trying to figure out how to manipulate them. Bath time takes forever now when he has soap paint to use. He’ll waste an entire bottle of paint, squirting it all out, using a paint brush I gave him to color the walls of the tub. Once he’s finished doing that, he wants me to fill the empty tube with bath water so he can squirt the paint off the walls. He enjoys the empty tubes nearly as much as the when they’re full of paint. Today I put some foam letters and shapes on the wall of the tub and had him squirt them down. He then wanted to stick them to my hand and squirt them off.  Another day, he used the empty tubes to fill the bath cup we use to rinse his hair. His water has bubbles from all of the soap paint so I think he was trying to squirt the bubbles out, however, that was impossible considering every new turn produced more bubbles 🤦🏻‍♀️. Sometimes it’s a fight to get him out of the tub, even when his water has gone cold! I usually have to bribe him with something else fun to do to get it done without a fight. He has lots of questions about his horn (penis) lately and takes any opportunity to talk about it. Once I finally get him out of the tub and dry him off, I put his diaper on. He’ll ask, “What Mama do,” and I’ll tell him I’m putting his diaper on, to which he responds, “To keep horn safe.” It’s not really question, more like a statement. I have never told him this and I don’t think Philip has either. When I was changing his diaper one day, he had a bink in his hand and he tried sticking it on his horn. I didn’t let him and told him not to do that, and it was gross. Another time, he tried the same thing with a toy he had in his hand. When I told him not to do that, he said, “Just put bink on horn.” I was like, “No, don’t put anything on your horn.” This boy wears me out! 

He did a pretty good job but needs more practice. 

Another skill he is trying to master—walking on the yoga blocks. Lincoln showed him this game at Thanksgiving and now he wants to practice every evening. Philip had to take it up a notch by stacking two together 🤦🏻‍♀️. He sits right beside it to catch him if he falls though. 

He has a backpack that is now his diaper bag and I usually just leave it in my car. It got brought in one day though and now he loves to play with the zipper. The first day it caught his interest, he probably zipped and unzipped that thing for 20 minutes straight. Now he likes to put things that don’t belong in it, like a plastic roast chicken. You never know what you’ll find in there. 

Quinn is very observant. Philip had to take an antibiotic for like 2 weeks after his dental surgery. When I was putting laundry away one day, I was trying to put Philip’s shirt on a hanger but Q insisted he wanted to wear it to look like Dada. I put it on him and he said, “I dada, I working. I take medicine” 😂😂. Philip also has frequent headaches that sometimes evolve into migraines. He takes headache medicine fairly often because of it. Quinn is always saying he also wants to take medicine when he sees Philip taking his. We’ve told him he can only take medicine when he’s sick and Philip has told Quinn that he’s taking it because his head hurts. Well, this lead to a conversation the other day while I was getting the trash ready to take outside:

Q: “I want medicine. My head hurt.” 

M: “I don’t know if your head does hurt.” 

Q: “Yeah. Head hurts.” 

Five seconds later, I opened the back door to sit the bag of trash outside, just opening the screen door and not going completely outside (it was freezing out). Quinn came up behind me and tried to shut the back door, but because I was standing in the doorway, the door hit me and then smacked him in the head. He started crying and saying again that he needed medicine. I believed him that time 😂.

I felt bad for him but it was, hopefully, a good lesson for him. He is always wanting to shut doors. Especially when someone is in a room that he can shut them in. It drives me %|&$@;?! crazy. So, of course, I used his accident as an opportunity to talk to him about why we shouldn’t shut the door behind people. He shut the back door one day and must have accidentally flipped the lock (I say accidentally because I don’t *think* he can do it on purpose yet. If he could, I think he’d do it more often 🙄), locking me outside. Lucky for him, he have a key pad so I was able to get back in. 

He really loves doing pretty much anything that would classify him as a little shit. He’ll take my phone and run off with it. Good thing I have an Apple Watch so I can ping it so it can’t be lost 🙄. He takes Philip’s water bottle all the time and says, “Stealing!” If you ask him to bring it back, he’ll make a senseless excuse for why he can’t, like saying, “Bink in.” Seriously 😂. We’ll be like, “Well, if your bink is keeping you from being able to bring it back, I guess you’ll have to take it out.” 🤷🏻‍♀️. He likes taking my other stuff, too, and running off with it. I’ve been working on some Christmas stuff that involves sewing and all of my supplies have been on the kitchen table. I usually know when he has snatched something but the other day, I lost my spool of thread and didn’t know where it was. I asked him if he took it and he said, “Yeah,” and giggled, but I honestly didn’t believe him since I didn’t see him do it. I asked where it was and he ran over to his chair in the living room, sat down, and laughed really hard. When I checked under his butt, sure enough, my thread was there! 🤦🏻‍♀️

There was thread under his butt….again 🤦🏻‍♀️  This was about the 4th time he took it and he still thought it was super funny. 

A few days ago, he was pretending to shop, pushing his grocery cart around the house, and then dumped his “groceries” on the kitchen floor by our shoes. When I saw him picking up my boot, I asked what he was doing. He said, “Putting food in Mama’s boots. I cleaning up. I doing a great job!” 🤦🏻‍♀️😂. His interest in pretend play is very dominant right now. He knows when he plays with certain things—pom pom balls, for example, he is not allowed to put them in his mouth or I will take them. I made him a sensory box with pom pom balls, bells, and a homemade magnet stick and threatened him before allowing him to use it. The very first thing he did was use the magnet wand to catch a bell and brought it up to his mouth. I started to chastise him but he said, “I wanna pretend,” and just mimed eating it 🙄. He’s so close to trouble some times and he knows it. 

He loves playing hide and seek, even though he’ll hide in the same spot continuously 😂. If we’re upstairs, he’ll run to the curtains and say, “Mama! Quinn where are you,” when he wants me to look for him 🤣🤣.

He’s really working on figuring out how language works and sometimes says things incorrectly or at incorrect times. One example is his use of a made up word called, “yester-time” 😆. He says it often and it makes me laugh. We’re working on teaching him about days, like he knows that the trash goes out on Monday. Every day he asks Philip, “Stay home with me?” Well, sometimes it’s a question and sometimes it’s a request. He says “Sometimes,” about things that don’t happen infrequently. He’ll use the word “probably” when the answer is definite, like when he takes my watch off the charger in the morning when he first wakes up, and then comes in the bathroom empty handed, to find me. I’ll ask him what he did with my watch and he’ll say, “Probably in bed.” Yeah, it ~probably~ is since that’s exactly where you just came from 🤦🏻‍♀️😂. Sometimes, he does make correct inferences though. Like when we actually went into Walmart to get groceries last week because we needed to get a turkey for thanksgiving and I wanted to pick it out (but then they didn’t have any turkeys in the entire store 🤬🤬🤬). I just said to Quinn, “Okay,” as I looked over our list one more time, and he said, “Probably go home now.” I laughed and told him he was right. 

He thinks saying, “Please,” means he’s going to get what he wants. He told me he wanted candy one evening when we were fixing dinner. I was busy so I didn’t respond right away so he kept saying, “I want candy. I want candy please.” When I told him he couldn’t have any right now, he told me, “I said please!” 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

When we tell him he can’t have something, he’s likely to come to the conclusion that it’s because he’s too little. He’ll say, “When Quinn get bigger.” Someone who lives a few blocks up from us has an old tractor in their yard. He sees it when we stop at the stop sign and always says he wants to ride it. I tell him he can’t because we don’t know whose tractor it is. That’s not a reasonable enough answer though because he always retorts, in an exasperated tone, “When Quinn get bigger” 😂. 

The last few days, the answer to most questions we ask him is either “I don’t know, Mom,” or “I don’t know, Dad” 🤦🏻‍♀️. He is so inquisitive and now asks about everythinggggggg, much to my annoyance sometimes. If I laugh at something: “What Mama do?” If I say, “Damn it,” or something to that effect: “What Mama do?” If I yell at Sophie: “What Sophie do?” I don’t want to give a play-by-play of my actions all day long. I do try to explain sometimes but I can’t say I don’t stifle some reactions now because I don’t want to have to talk about every happening 😂. 

Asking what everyone does also applies to animals. He constantly asks what a giraffe does, or what a dinosaur does, or what a wolf does. At first I was giving him facts about what they eat, where they live, etc. Now he’s usually satisfied with what noise they make, if they make one. However, he knows what sounds most of them make so it’s still annoying to be asked all of the time 🤦🏻‍♀️😝.

Seasoned parents, answer me this: at what age do kids become responsible for keeping track of their own shit?? I’ve been debating on the best time to wean Quinn off of his bink. He still likes to put things in his mouth (I’m pretty sure it’s just to annoy me some days 🙄), and he’s also cutting his 2 year molars, so now doesn’t (didn’t) feel like the right time. But I tell ya what, he’s either going to have to grow up real quick and become responsible for its whereabouts or lose it, one or the other 😂. Things I have literally said this past week:

“Don’t talk to me about your bink. I’m done with it.”

“I don’t know where your bink is (and then under my breath), I don’t care where your bink is.”

“I’m not looking for your bink. I’ve already found it for you 12 times this morning.”—he will seriously just plop it out of his mouth at any given moment, drop it on the floor to roll who knows where, and then expect me to find it 🤬. Saying this resulted in a meltdown that lasted 20 minutes but then he took a 3 hour nap so worth it? Yep. 🤪

❤️❤️❤️

All kidding aside, Thanksgiving just passed and I have to say how thankful I am for my child. He’s so funny and so smart and I just couldn’t love him more. He has changed my life completely and I’m so happy to be home with him, watching him grow and learn every day. None of which would be possible without my husband, who I’m also so, so grateful for. I couldn’t ask for a better partner in this life, before, and especially now as we’re on this parenting journey together. He is the best father for our son. He’s so patient and involved with him. He takes the time to teach him about anything he’s doing, from cooking to putting together a dresser. He’s really just fantastic and I couldn’t imagine life without him. We don’t get to spend nearly enough one on one time together though, and that’s the only thing I would change. 

❤️❤️❤️

I’m also really thankful for the other people who help make raising Quinn easier. They say it takes a village and I have a pretty good one, from our extended family to our chosen family. Mothering without a mother can be difficult at times. While I feel like I’m more confident in my parenting due to having him later in life and having learned a ton from my previous job, there are days (weeks) when life is hard and having my mom around would certainly make everything much easier. If you’ve never lost someone close to you, you wouldn’t understand how the void that is left when they are gone never goes away. The pain lessens, sure, but they can never be replaced. Since my mom died before I had kids, I now grieve for her and the role she would have played in their lives. I grew up with both of my grandmas living within walking distance and both were extremely involved in my childhood. I miss that for Quinn. However, thanks to Kim and Marsha, who have chosen to be involved in his life when they don’t have to be, he has two people that help fill that role for him. They love him and spend time with him and they will never know how much I appreciate that. Not to mention their friendship to me outside of that. 

I love how much Quinn’s cousins love him. I love that he gets to visit them and his Aunt Lulu almost every week. I appreciate the neighbors who make time to talk to him or to let him pet their dogs. I appreciate all of you, who take the time to read my semi bi-weekly ranting. I appreciate all of the comments of love and support on the pictures I post. 

Thank you, truly. Small gestures really do mean a lot and you may not even realize how much you can affect someone’s life.

I hope everyone reading this had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving with some people you love. 

One thing I can say about life with a two-year-old is that it is rarely boring. Or quiet. Unless he’s watching TV, in which case, you shouldn’t try to talk to him 🙄. If you do, you may get told to “go away.” Uh huh, very nice, right? That’s just one of the not so nice phrases Quinn has picked up lately. It probably grates on my nerves the most because it’s rude. When my oldest niece and nephew were little, there was someone involved in their lives who taught them to say, “Git,” and swat at people who came near them to say, give them a kiss or hug or something of that nature. I didn’t like it then and this is very reminiscent of that for me now. I know Quinn doesn’t understand rudeness yet, so I constantly tell him that telling people (and dogs 😉) to go away isn’t nice. Do you know how he responds to that? “Go away please.” 😆 While I appreciate the nicety at the end, that’s not better 🤦🏻‍♀️. His other bossy commands include: “Stop,” “Mama get it,” “Go do it,” and “Move.” Saying, “Stop,” is fine when he’s setting his boundaries, like when he’s being tickled, and he has had enough. I will always respect that. When it gets annoying is when you’ve stopped doing what he asked but he continues to say, “Stop,” repeatedly for the next five minutes 🙄. He tries the “Mama get it,” pretty often and sometimes I will if he adds a “please,” on the end. It’s funny when he tells me to get something and I say that I can’t because I’m busy and he decides to get it after all, confirming with a “Quinn get it.” Yep, that’s exactly what needs to happen 👍🏻😂. Sometimes he’ll throw in a “I can’t do it,” in the whiniest voice you’ve ever heard before deciding to give in though 🙄. Every once in a while, just to mix things up, he then decides that he can do everything himself and switches to “Let me do it!” 🤦🏻‍♀️.  “Go do it,” drives me straight insane and won’t get him anywhere without a rephrase. For example, he will say something like, “I want some milk,” and I’ll reply, “Okay, I’ll get it for you in a minute.” Quinn will then say, “Go do it.” Yeah, I don’t take orders from a two-year-old 😠. For some reason, he has decided that any spot that is currently occupied by another being is ~his~ spot, and he’ll try to make you move. This is especially true for anywhere the girls are sitting but he tries to pull this with Philip and me, too. Sometimes when I tell him not to do something, he’ll reply, “I already did it!” 🙄🤬 Yeah, I’m aware, kid. He even gets sassy with his toys, which cracks me up. There’s one in particular that gives directions, like, “Turn on the light, please,” and “Can you open the window?” I’ve heard him, on more than one occasion, tell it, “No, going to nap!” 😂.

Of all the things that Quinn says, the absolute most annoying thing to me is when he repeats himself a million times. He’ll tell me he wants to take a bath, or he wants to go outside, or anything, really. These requests always come when I’m in the middle of something and I’ll tell him that he can do whatever it is, when I’m finished doing what I’m doing. When he continues to ask, I ask him to repeat back to me what I said to him. Sometimes that works. Sometimes I have to tell him, “I heard you. Please stop asking me.” Philip nor I either one are yellers and don’t like yelling. Quinn woke up in a terrible mood one morning and wouldn’t stop yelling that he wanted this or that and I told him calmly, several times, to stop yelling and ask nicely. After a few minutes of this, Philip and I both yelled, as if on cue, “Stop yelling” at the same time. It felt a bit like the hypocritical situation of smacking a child for hitting, you know, sending that mixed message. However, while definitely not our preferred method, it did work to get him to stop yelling. Mostly because he became busy crying but…🤷🏻‍♀️

Quinn tries so hard to communicate effectively with us and I believe he does a great job, most of the time. Sometimes though, he uses the word “that” and expects us to know what he’s talking about. It can be especially frustrating when he wants you to turn on something on YouTube and there are three or more videos on the screen to choose from and to answer, “Which one?” he responds with, “That one” 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️.  I’ve started making him use other words to make a choice and will give him options like, “tractor, man in blue hat, or kids lawn mower?” The problem with making him be more specific is he will then sometimes tell me he wants to watch, “Spiderman excavator on a trailer.” I did not make that up, he really asked for that exact thing. When I told him I didn’t know if there was a video like that, he said, “Try.” Because that’s his response to everything I tell him I or he can’t do---

Q: “I want more toothpaste.”

M: “You can’t have more toothpaste; it will make you sick.”

Q: “Try.”

Q: “I want chocolate.”

M: “We don’t have any chocolate.”

Q: “Try.”

M: “We’re going to get ready and go trick or treating with Kate and Link.”

Q: “Dressed up.”

M: “Yep, they’ll be dressed up and lots of other kids will be, too.”

Q: “Greg dressed up.”

M: “No, I don’t think Greg will be dressed up.”

Q: “Try.” 

I gave Quinn the option to go trick or treating in our neighborhood with his friends, or go to my brother’s house and go with Kate and Link. He chose Kate and Link 🙃. 

Pretty good selection considering he quit about halfway through 😂.

Since we went to my brother’s neighborhood to go with his cousins, our neighbor, Tina, made Quinn a special treat bag and put it in our mailbox for him to find. He was so excited 😊. 

We had such a great time going trick or treating. This was the first year he was able to go and get candy. We walked with his cousins his first year but he was only 3 months old so obviously we didn’t get candy then. Last year I made him watch from inside due to Covid. He was awestruck with all of the kids in costumes and kept telling us about a kid in a football helmet when he got in front of us for a while. When we went to Walmart a few days later, he saw a baseball helmet in the clearance aisle and just had to have it. He called it a football helmet though 😂. It was only $6 so I bought it for him. He loves it. 

Two of Quinn’s other favorite phrases include: 

“Watch me do it” and “What Mama doing?” If I laugh at something or make an “oh no,” type comment, he always wants to know what’s going on 😄. He loves to ride his giraffe trike in the house , pretending it’s a motorcycle, and telling you to watch him ride it 😆.  He even takes his dog, whose named changed from Wicket (my brother’s cat’s name) to Clifford, after he saw the promos for the new movie coming out, for a ride. 

😂

He sometimes has to nap with us 🤦🏻‍♀️.

Sometimes he says completely ridiculous stuff and you can’t help but laugh--like this conversation:

Q: “Kiss Sophie.” 

M: “Aww that’s nice.” 

Q: “Lick Sophie.” 

M: “No, don’t lick Sophie. That’s gross.” 

Q: “Lick Sophie butt.” 

M: “No! Never, ever, ever do that! That’s disgusting and will make you sick.” 

Q: “Yummy butt,” as he laughs hysterically. 

M: 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

A few days later he grabbed Philip’s phone and was licking (🤮) the case. I told him to stop and that it was gross. I even said, “Dad takes his phone in the bathroom, so it probably has poop germs on it.” Quinn’s response? “Yummy poop germs,” as he again, laughed hysterically. I swear, sometimes I just can’t with this kid. He has recently become interested in pointing out heads and butts on animals, so I don’t know how to make him less fascinated with butts and more grossed out by poop 😩.  

With the Covid numbers finally decreasing significantly, we’ve started back to story hour at the library. Quinn says his favorite part is when we sing but you wouldn’t know it since he won’t get off my lap and participate 😂. Something I really don’t understand about toddlers is how they WANT to go somewhere but still run and make getting ready to leave extremely difficult 🙄. It’s worse when he doesn’t necessarily want to go somewhere, like to pick up groceries. Right now, when he doesn’t know better, I can pretend like I’m going to go without him and that usually persuades him to come. Eventually he’s going to realize that I can’t actually leave him home alone and then we’re going to have a worse problem. No matter what, I’m bigger than him and he’s coming, but I’d rather not wrangle him like a bag of snakes while I’m pregnant (or ever but especially now). 

He really liked the pumpkin tossing game Miss Tella set up 😊.

And the popcorn snack. He made an abstract turkey, too. I’m down with his interpretive art 😉.

When he’s not sassing and resisting, Quinn is a very sweet boy 😂. Philip had to have dental surgery done (and will be having more that includes a sinus lift—go ahead and Google that 😳😳😳) and he told Quinn he needed to be easy with Dad’s head because he had a boo boo. Quinn said he wanted to kiss Dad’s boo boo 🥺🥰. He also likes to pretend to feed us. I mean, sometimes it’s body parts or burgers with lemon on them but..🤷🏻‍♀️😂. He loves cooking with us, especially making hand pulled noodles with Philip that he calls “spicy noodles.” Philip typically seasons them with Szechuan peppercorns, hence the spicy part (well, numbing really), but Quinn still insists on eating them 🤷🏻‍♀️. We’ve been working on teaching him what different tastes are and he usually identifies sour food consistently. He gets confused on other foods and will eat something like sausage and call it sweet. Or take a bite of yogurt and call it salty 😆. 

Trying out his War Heads candy from Halloween 🤣. He ate almost the whole thing and then brought it me and said, “Mama eat it.” 
 
Making “spicy noooooodles,” as Quinn pronounces it, with Dada 

We took Quinn to a sit down restaurant for the first time since he was a baby. Considering his love of noodles, it was no surprise that Peking Buffet was a hit with him. He felt like such a big boy sitting in his high chair at first but then wanted to eat by Dada. It’s so fun to watch the wonder and excitement he has when he experiences things for the first time 😊. It’s also really nice to do things that are “normal” after avoiding them for so long. 

Speaking of doing “normal” things, last weekend I got to take my oldest niece and nephew to the mall and spend time with them. Q stayed home with Philip so I got to just be “Aunt Kim.” It was so nice hanging with them 😊. 

We’ve done a mini Christmas photo shoot recently and I’m excited to post our photos next month. I’ve been interested in photography for quite a while (28,000 photos in the cloud may speak to that 😂) but I’ve just started trying to really learn how to use my DSLR camera that I’ve had for like 5 years 🙄. I’m glad Quinn is usually such a willing participant to help me practice my craft ☺️. We also did a second fall shoot a few weeks ago that you may have seen pictures from on FB. We got to visit our friends, Mollie, John, and their new baby, Iris, along with Cooper and Dory (their dogs), and the baby cows 😊. Quinn loves visiting their farm and talks about them for weeks after each visit! 

A little blurry because he said, “cheese,” but then got scared of the cow behind him 😆.

Because he loves their farm so much, Quinn’s Mimi bought him a stuffed cow when she was on vacation. He loves it and plays with it often. 

He takes it for trike rides,

Skateboarding,

Feeds it hay (terrible quality pic. I took while he was FaceTiming Mimi after she dropped it off for him.)

And waters it 😃. He’s a good farmer. 


The day before we were planning to try that shoot on the farm, I was cutting Philip’s hair when Quinn decided to “buzz Quinn’s hair, too.” I was nervous he wouldn’t let me finish but he did pretty well. He wanted to take a bath afterwards but Philip was taking a shower so he got in with him. That started a whole ~thing~ and now I can’t bath or shower alone. The shower used to be my one refuge 😭😜. 

Quinn has recently started watching T-Rex Ranch and loves to run around the house, pretending to be chased by a dinosaur. He sometimes tells us, “Chase me,” immediately followed by, “Quinn, you get back here,” as he takes off 🤣🤣🤣. It cracks me every time he says it. That’s what Philip always says to him. I was worried that he may start having nightmares when he first started watching it from the dinosaur chasing, but so far so good. I’m especially happy that I have not dreamed about dinosaur chasing because I have enough weird ass pregnancy dreams 🤪. 

I’m in the ‘pee when I sneeze’ and nesting stage of my pregnancy. I’m sorting and organizing everything I get my hands on. I’m also working hard on our basement play room and hope to have it finished in the next couple of weeks. We just have too much crap in this house! 

I took Sansa to see the other veterinarian in town this week. She’s doing okay, she just had some lumps that I wanted to get checked out. Her regular vet is still not allowing pet parents to come inside and I felt like I wanted to have a more personal experience for this issue. We did have to wait in our vehicle until it was our turn, but honestly, I prefer that. It’s much easier than trying to keep her calm around other animals while waiting. When we went in, I gave the doctor her lump locations and medication info and he started asking why she was on her thyroid medicine. I told him about her history of skin infections and how this summer, she was put on medication for thyroid issues because of it. He told me that he believes it’s a food allergy and asked if I was interested in weaning her off of the medication and changing her diet. I said I absolutely wanted to do that if she didn’t need it so that’s what we’re trying. The lumps are just fat deposits because she’s ~SHOCKER~ overweight 🤷🏻‍♀️. Who knew? She’s actually down about 15 pounds since her last weigh in so we’re on a good path.  We’re gonna see how this goes and I’ll report back 😉. 

Soph is as exhausting as ever but I still loved her 😜. They were good models the other day 🙂.