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 🙂.