☝🏻☝🏻☝🏻 This. I need to do more of this.
I spend so much time trying to catch up—on laundry, dishes, housework, yard work. I try to spend quality time with Quinn and occasionally teach him something new during the short stretches in the morning when Asher naps. When he’s awake, I shuffle Ash around between his bouncy seat and activity mat, hoping he’ll entertain himself for a few minutes so I can get something done. Eventually, he gets restless and I have to pick him up; still trying to get things done, only one handed. Things have to get done. Asher doesn’t require a ton of enrichment but he still needs to be talked to, and given tummy time and practice tracking or grasping. There aren’t enough hours in the day.
As Asher is approaching the 3 month mark (at the time of writing—he is 3 months old now), it’s really hitting me that I need to remember to take some time and soak in this phase. He’s my last baby. I won’t have another chance to just sit and savor baby cuddles. I remember rocking Quinn, long after he had fallen asleep, just because I didn’t want to put him down. It took me a little longer to get there with Ash, due to the stress of Sansa’s illness and passing, and my coping method of cleaning to abate my anxiety. It didn’t help that he was so fussy and wanted to be attached to me 24/7. Now that he can be put down for longer stretches, I want to hold him. How ironic.
Asher’s colic seems to be waning, with his fussiness only roaring it’s ugly head a few nights a week, and for only about an hour. That hour can be pretty stressful though. He also cries EVERY. TIME. HE’S. IN. THE. CAR. 😳 So, obviously, that’s fun. Quinn likes to sing The Wheels on the Bus to him to try to calm him. Sometimes it works but when it doesn’t, Quinn tries a different approach—yelling, “ASHER, CALM DOWN!” 🙄🤦🏻♀️. As you know, yelling at people makes them calm down 👍🏻👌🏻🙄.
Asher also does this thing where he rubs his face against you and it’s annoying as shit 😂. He’s becoming more aware of his hands so he constantly brings them to his mouth, knocking his bink out and then being mad that he knocked his bink out 🙄🤦🏻♀️. We play “put my bink back in my mouth” about 65 times every day at nap time. Feeding him now takes two hands—one to hold his hands down, and one to hold his bottle 🙄. This can be quite frustrating. However, sometimes he can’t contain his smile, so then his bink falls out of his mouth or he stops drinking his milk, and I can’t help but smile back. He’s trying very hard to communicate, making goo and gah sounds, and he’s holding his head up fairly well. He even makes sounds to get your attention if you’re not looking at him. Bonding isn’t always instantaneous, and that’s okay. I think because I wasn’t in a very good headspace for most of my pregnancy, along with being physically uncomfortable (thank you, gestational diabetes 🙄), it was hard to feel connected to the reason for my misery. I know that sounds awful but I’m just being honest. I wanted him; it was just a long, hard road getting him here. But now we’re growing an attachment based on mutual affection for each other and those smiles sure go a long way. I love him more every day.
Those hands 🤬, but that smile 😍.
Having Asher has been a much more challenging experience than it was with Quinn—because, ya know, I didn’t have another child to tend to then. However, even though he was a less frustrating baby, Quinn is sure making up for that now 🙄😂.
Quinn is in the “I do it myself” phase; the “I want it, no I don’t want it!” phase; the takes forever to tell you something phase; and the “why” phase is still raging on.
Q: *tries to pet Sophie while she’s sleeping. Sophie growls*
Q: “Mama, why Sophie being an asshole?”
Q: *trying to get a diced peach on his fork*
Q: “Mama, why peaches slippery little suckers?”
Okay, those ones were funny, but for real, I get extreme sensory overload from all of the questions. Especially when I’m trying to do something. One day I was giving both boys a bath—Quinn in the big tub, Ash in his. I had gotten Asher out and was drying him off when the bottle of lotion fell over and hit him in the eye 😭. Obviously, he started crying. So I was trying to calm him down when Quinn decided that was a good time to recount a made up memory of when this same situation happened to him:
Q: “ Mama, when I was a baby, you were drying me off and the bottle of lotion…..
M: “Quinn, please wait a minute. I can’t hear you with Ash crying.”
Q: “MAMA, WHEN I WAS A BABY….”
M: 🤦🏻♀️😭😭
*Ash finally settles*
Q: “Mama, why you hit Asher in the eye with the lotion?”
He lovessss telling other people’s story as his own. Philip once told him about how when he worked at Rent-A-Center, they used to keep the back door propped open and when he was on the phone with a customer, a pigeon flew in and landed on his head. That is a true story, by the way. I saw the bird later. It was a carrier pigeon that had gone astray. It had a number on it and Philip called and talked to its owner. Anyway, since we’ve been so invested in the saga of the baby birds hatching around our house, Quinn keeps telling that story as if it happened to him 🤦🏻♀️😂. Another time, Philip burned his hand while making coffee and Quinn told me all about how his own hand got burned, for days afterward.
Mama and baby ❤️
Baby came down for a visit.
A cardinal got stuck in our building for a few minutes. It was very confused about the window not being a way out. Philip says I’m officially old now because I like bird watching 😂.
Quinn got to practice being a bird parent with a fun sensory bin I made. I created a nest from twine and a paper coffee cup and he helped make baby birds from toilet paper rolls to put in it. We crushed up chocolate cereal to make dirt and hid pieces of pipe cleaners in it as worms. I glued popsicle sticks onto the sides of a clothespin and that served as the grown up bird mouth. He had to dig and find the worms, pick them up by pinching the popsicle sticks together, and then feed the babies by releasing the worms into their mouths.
Last weekend, it was almost 2am and Philip wasn’t in bed to act as a barrier, so Quinn had managed to roll to the edge of Philip’s side. I awoke from a deep sleep in a panic, as he screamed, “Mama! Help me!” I was sure that he had fallen off of the bed. I had Ash snugged up in the crook of my arm beside me, so I tried to quickly extricate myself from him without waking him up. Once I was free, I saw that Quinn wasn’t in any danger and just had his head barely hanging off the side of the bed 🤦🏻♀️🙄🙄. He was legitimately freaked out though so I “rescued” him, hugged him until he calmed down, and then laid him back in the middle of the bed. Thirty minutes later, he woke me up again to ask where his bink was. I’m like, “Listen kid, I’m not available to find your shit for you in the middle of the night.” 🤪😉😂
Quinn can be very observant, except, ya know, when he needs to find something that’s right in front of his face. Mother of girls, do you have this same problem? I know that it never goes away for men (apparently 🙄), but idk if toddler girls are just as bad? Let me know 😂. Anyway, he evidently saw how I propped the screen door open one day when I was carrying Asher’s bouncy seat back inside and decided to test out his newfound knowledge while I was in the bathtub. The last thing you want to hear when you’re naked is that the dog ran outside. Or, worse, that your door is stuck open 🤦🏻♀️. He immediately came and told me, “Mama, I can’t get the screen door closed and Sophie ran out!” Thankfully, she doesn’t really leave the yard, but that didn’t make it less panic inducing to know that the door was looking all inviting while I was in no position to fix it.
Quinn has been so moody lately. You can tell when he’s about to be extra whiny and non-compliant because he pushes his lips out as he exclaims, “but I don’t want to” 😩🙄. I can totally hear him saying it my head as I type this. Philip noticed this trend and now I can’t help but be instantly annoyed the moment I notice his lips pop. He has really been struggling with his emotions lately and as he learns to process his, I find myself reevaluating how I process mine and what triggers me: which is a lot, apparently. There are days that I ride that emotional roller coaster right along with him 🥺. I don’t want to be the “Because I said so” parent but damn it, sometimes, that’s the reason he needs to do things. I try really hard to treat him with respect and give him reasons for why we have to do things, most of the time. Sometimes though, he hits my last nerve and I have nothing left but threats and follow throughs. We’re knee deep into a consequences phase right now and I’m hoping I make it out on the other side 🤦🏻♀️. Quinn has to find everything out the hard way, it seems. I can tell him what’s going to happen if he doesn’t XYZ until I’m blue in the face, but he won’t comply until he experiences the consequence of continuing to do what he wants to do—several times, typically 🙄. On the up side, I have won at least one battle and that’s with shoes. He can take his own shoes off. He can even put his own shoes on, depending on the type, but we had to have a days long battle of screaming and crying and waiting each other out over taking them off. He would sit by the door and demand that I take his shoes off. I refused, of course. Now he does it and proudly tells me so, making sure to describe himself as a “big boy” 😉. I feel like we’re creating a stereotypical, people pleasing first born though because now he’s very concerned with whether or not we’re having a good day 😬. That stems from Philip and me saying to him, “We’re having a good day, let’s not start doing XYZ,” for whatever it is he’s about to do to piss us off 😂. He’ll now periodically ask, “Are we having a good day?,” and I’ll tell him either, yes, that’s he’s been a good boy, or no, and remind him about some things he has done that weren’t nice. I just hope this strategy doesn’t backfire into anxiety for him 😥.
There are times when I look at his little snot covered face and think about how I couldn’t love him more. Parenthood is wild. He runs to meet me at the door with an excited, “Hi, Mama!,” a smile, and a hug when I’ve been gone. He takes after me by putting things in Philip’s pockets, unnoticed (One day I couldn’t find his bink and he said it was in Dada’s shorts. I didn’t believe him because Philip said it wasn’t, but then Quinn went over and pulled it out 😂. I, too, think it’s fun to utilize his pockets-with or without his knowledge). He makes me laugh when he’s crafting some elaborate pretend play scenario that always involves some sort of issue—stuck in the mud, getting a boo boo, a tiger is coming, etc., and when I say, “Oh no!,” Quinn tells me, “Don’t worry, Mom, it’s just pretend.” And when he eats ice cream and tells me, “Mama, that ice cream made me pee” 😂. And when he starts a game where he calls Philip, Dad plus someone else’s name, but then progresses like the following over the course of an evening:
Q: Hello Dada-Sophie-Asher-Bear.
P: Hello Quinn-Sophie-Mama-Bear
***escalated to***
Q: Hello Dada-Sophie-Scarlett’s House-Bird-Fish
***continued to***
Q: Hello Dada-Asher Cole-Couch-Dog Toy-Book
P: Did you just call me dog toy??
😂😂😂😂
You never know what you’re going to get with that kid.
The other day he said, “Dad, smell my dinosaur. He smells like salad cuz he’s green. He smells good!”
Another day, Quinn took a drink of water and got choked on it. I was patting his back and asked if he was okay when he stopped coughing. He said, “I not okay, burp me again,” and because I laughed, he now says this at least once a day 🙄😂.
He may be a little shit sometimes but he sure is a good big brother. He’s always wanting to help with Ash or touch him. He randomly tells us that he loves Asher and we always reassure him that Asher loves him, too.
🥰
We were getting ready to go to the zoo, so I stuck Asher on Quinn’s bed for a minute and turned on the mobile to keep him entertained. I came back in to check on him and Quinn was sitting there. He told me, “I gonna sit here and make sure he doesn’t roll off.” Never mind that he can’t roll over yet 😅, that was still very sweet.
Philip told me he can guess my mood by the state of the kitchen when he comes up from work 😂. If the kitchen is a mess, that means I didn’t get anything done that day—likely because our children were being difficult—thus resulting in me being in a bad mood. And the opposite is true for a good mood. That’s a pretty accurate predictor. We’ve been eating out way too much lately. There are several reasons for this—meal planning takes time, cooking takes time, buying groceries takes time. I planned to make chicken Alfredo the other day but then Philip ended up doing it because I was tending to a baby fuss bucket. After we ate, we had the following conversation:
Me: “Thanks for cooking dinner, it was good.”
Philip: “Welcome. Thanks for coming up with an idea.”
Me: “Thanks for appreciating the mental energy it took to do that.” 😂
This is where we are now 😏🤷🏻♀️.
The next day, Philip cooked something again and Quinn said, “Dada, thanks for cooking for us” ❤️. Little ears are always listening.
Quinn is still refusing to use the potty and I have yet to figure out how to make it be his idea. I have hope though, because the last thing he was being stubborn about, wearing only pants and never shorts, has finally been cracked and it only took two 90 degree days to do it 😂. However, he reverted right back to pants when it cooled back down slightly, so we’ll see how the rest of this summer goes 🤦🏻♀️.
He has played with friends making and testing coffee filter parachutes,
In his playhouse,
In his dirt box,
And with his water table.
Quinn visits with Steele every chance he gets 🐶 🎾 ❤️.
Ash and his pal Carlowe had a snooze together during playgroup 😴.
Spider-Man Quinn played on a bouncy house with his cousins, whom he calls his friends 🥰.
We cooled off with some whipped kool-aid. Quinn thought it was super cool to have a fun drink in the hot tub 🙂.
🍉 
We went to the zoo again and got to pet goats and ride the new train.
Ash was not impressed by my attempts to make him smile.
Quinn helped me prepare our garden for planting.
And “cheesed” for a pic with his fairy garden 🧚♀️
Ash came to his first farmers market. Mollie and I were both pregnant at the end of last year’s market season. Iris and Asher will be great market babies 😉.
Asher was dressed for the occasion🥕🥦
We visited the root truck during playgroup and learned about soil conservation
And the different insects that live in the soil.
We baked dinosaur cookies to celebrate International Dino Day (June 1. Mark your calendars for next year if you missed it! 😉)
Quinn got to paint some Dinos using watered down paint in a spray bottle and a very large Amazon box.
We even got to see some life sized dinos at Jurassic Quest. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the best time because he was mostly scared 😬. He just wanted to eat snacks, like he does everywhere we go 🤦🏻♀️.
We saw a baby triceratops, too.
And he met a Utahraptor up close.
He did like the stupidly expensive brachiosaurus we bought for him, though. He named it Logan.
We played at the park.
Asher turned three months old on June 1. I took that pic in our rocking chair, which doubles as Quinn’s time out chair. Quinn saw me taking Asher’s picture and he said, “Mom, why’s Asher in time out?” 😂
We took our annual Mother’s Day picture by the tree I got for my first Mother’s Day from Mimi and Kiki ❤️. Eleven takes and this is the best pic we got 😜.
We visited a greenhouse on Mother’s Day and Quinn helped pick out flowers for us to plant.
He likes to help water them. I bought some flamingo drink stirrers to put in the pot for decorations but also strategically placed them as watering points so that I can assure the whole thing gets watered and not just one spot 😜.
My sister-in-law, Lori, who’s more sister than in-law, lost her mother a few weeks ago. I have so many thoughts about it, it’s hard to put everything into the right words. If you’ve never experienced a significant loss in your life, you may not know that grief is lifelong. Time helps scab the holes left behind but there are days and circumstances that can rip them right back open—birthdays, holidays, random Tuesdays when you catch a hint of her perfume on a stranger in a store. Commiserating with Lori’s loss reminds me of how important my mom was in my life and reignites the feelings of loss I sometimes have for the role she would have played in Asher’s and Quinn’s lives. Mostly though, my heart hurts for Lori and her siblings for the pain they’re feeling and will continue to feel, for the rest of their lives. As we grow up, our parents become the glue to a family (assuming you have a healthy relationship with them. I realize not everyone does), being the focus that brings everyone together. It’s easy to let people fade out of your life when you no longer have that bonding presence. We have worked hard to remain close—I have visited my brother’s house to see my nieces and nephews almost every week of their lives since my mom died. Prior to that, we all met at her house—but some people have been lost along the way. Relationships take work from both parties. Anyway, I just hope that they are able to prioritize each other even without their glue, and can make the best of holidays and times they spent together during this new life of “after.”
I was so touched by a story Lori told me about Loretta, her mom, before she passed. Lori had taken her kids to see her mom, knowing the end was near and that it could very well be the last time they saw each other (it was). Kate got hesitant at the last minute and wanted to give her grandmother another hug after they had gone outside. She went back in and hugged her but started crying and Loretta said, “Grandma’s going to be okay,” even though she knew she wouldn't be, because she knew that’s what Kate needed to hear. That’s the true meaning of a mothers love and so telling of Loretta’s character. She will certainly be missed ❤️.
I know Sophie misses her, too. She still leaves half of her food for Sansa every day 🥺. They would each eat half and then switch bowls. She eventually eats it all but not usually until later in the evening. It breaks my heart every time 💔.
We had to take Sophie to the vet to get vaccines one day. This is how she rode home 😂. So much for trying to keep my seat clean with that towel 🙄.
She’s finally starting to come out of her shell and wants to be outside with us some. If her dog friends venture over, she gets all zoomy and does some laps. She’s not as young as she used to be—28+ in human years—and is finding out what the rest of know about getting old: it’s exhausting 😉.
We take an evening walk most nights. Quinn loves walking Sophie. She does a really good job on a leash…when there aren’t any birds, or rabbits, or cats, or basically any other possible distraction 😜.
He loves even more for her to eat treats off of his stroller by his feet. He thinks that’s super funny.
I’d like to promise that I’ll get back to my two weeks schedule for posting but life is difficult right now, so that may be a lie. I’ll try my best though 😘.
