It’s officially Fall, my favorite season! Even though I love it, I like to wait for it to come. I can’t decorate July 5th just because Walmart decided summer is over 🙄. Apparently, according to them, it’s Christmas time already. I hope no one buys any of their shit and they have to sell it all for 75% off clearance 🤪. What’s wrong with just enjoying the moment we’re in and not rushing to the next thing? Geez.
Anyway, cooler temps mean more outside time (I’m a baby with the heat, I ain’t doin it) and less bugs 🙌🏻, truly the best part of Fall 😂. I’ve never seen so many mosquitoes as I did this summer. Poor Asher gets taken advantage of, they prey on his inability to swat them. I think he must have my unicorn blood type, since they love me, too. Another great advantage of Fall is getting to wear clothes that help make those last 10 pounds of baby weight that I am less than motivated to lose, feel less uncomfortable.
Asher is 7 months old already! Month six passed the fastest yet, by far. He loves jumping in his jumper and getting his teeth brushed. Mr. Toothbrush Jr. (Philip’s nightly alter ego) fascinates him 😆. He has been rolling for a while now, but he recently graduated out of his changing table because he instantly rolls over the moment he is laid down. It’s not safe wrestling him on an elevated surface anymore. Life gets harder when you place your baby on the floor and they no longer stay put. Nothing within his reach does either. We can’t even take a drink while holding him without fighting him for the cup. He especially loves Philip’s water bottle, for some reason. Quinn has to fend him off during walks in the double stroller because Ash tries to steal his snacks 😂. When he decides he wants something, he just goes for it, regardless of distance. He spotted me across the kitchen one day while Philip was holding him, and he lunged for me. He’s gaining more control with his hands, and he used one to smack Quinn the other day when he got up in his face. Philip and I laughed hysterically because Quinn was so put out by it. His smack made a resounding noise, even, so it was a good one 😂. Obviously, when he gets bigger, that won’t be allowed, but for now it seems like a good natural consequence for the big brother who needs to learn about personal space 🤪. That hand control is, well, handy, because he can now put his bink back in all by himself 🙌🏻. He’s not super attached to his bink (thankfully!), but he does like it when he’s sleepy. I’m hoping we can ditch it in a reasonable amount of time and not have the same issues we had with Quinn’s.
7 months!
He loves that bike
Trying to take Quinn’s water bottle 😂.
Asher went to his six month well check and he’s measuring in the 82nd percentile for weight and the 73rd for height. He has outgrown his 6 month clothes and is in 9 or 12 months already. Even in the bigger sizes, stuffing his chunky butt into pants is a challenge 😂. I used to get sad when Quinn would outgrow a size range but he stayed in the same one for longer, at least. Ash didn’t even get to wear some of the outfits I loved seeing on Quinn 😔.
I forgot to button his onesie and had already put his pants on. No way was I wrestling those back off and then on again 😂
Being able to move around so much more means baths have to take place in his baby tub, in the big tub. He thrashes around like an orca whale doing tricks at Sea World. I used to try to bath him just on the floor of the bathroom, while also supervising Quinn’s bath (back before I banished Quinn to the deck. It’s too bad it’s too cold for that now). He splashed water clear into the hallway the last time I tried that, which concluded his floor baths. It was way more productive doing both at once, but Quinn was more likely to press his luck with splashing when I was preoccupied with Ash, so it’s probably for the best to do them separately anyway.
Even though he is a constant wiggle worm, Asher is the best cuddler ever, and I wish some days that I could just sit and hold him for hours. When he gets sleepy, he likes to play a game called Am I Going To Take A Nap Or Do I Just Want To Cuddle? Rock Me And See. There’s a 50-50 chance he’ll actually fall asleep. He’s still having some belly issues adjusting to solid food, but for the most part, he’s a smiley, happy baby (and if he’s not, me singing, The Wheels on the Bus, seems to have some sort of magical calming power over him. It just sucks when he starts fussing the moment I get in the shower and I have to spend 10 minutes repeating verses 🤦🏻♀️). His smile is contagious, and he’s just so damn cute ☺️. When I was pregnant, I worried about connecting with him and loving another child as much as I love Quinn. It really is so easy though. He perfectly completes our family ❤️.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
💙💙
Quinn is getting to experience what it’s like to have to share his toys, and it’s sometimes a struggle. He was doing well with Philip and me, pre-Asher, but he often gets upset when we let Asher play with something that is/was his. Most things he’ll just have to deal with, but I did buy Ash his own doll when he started numming on Damon (Quinn’s doll). Quinn says that he’s Damon’s dad, and Damon is a toy that Quinn is particularly fond of, which means he doesn’t have to share it. When Asher’s doll arrived, Quinn kept calling it, “Asher’s Damon” 🤦🏻♀️. I insisted we pick a different name for him and we settled on Logan, the name that Quinn was determined was going to be Asher’s. 🌟Just a reminder for anyone who needs it: ALL toys are for ALL kids. You know what will happen to boys who play with dolls? They’ll grow up to be involved fathers, or caring teachers, or compassionate doctors, or any other profession they want. You know what won’t happen because they played with dolls? Anything else.
We’ve had a mixed bag of good and bad days with our volatile three year old. It feels as though ever since we had Covid in July, the boys seem to catch another bug every few weeks. We’ve all had more than one cold, I’ve had a chronic sore throat, and I’m just really over it all. When Quinn gets congested, I have a hard time understanding what he’s saying (and we all know he has a future career in competitive talking, so, to say we’re both frustrated from repeating and misunderstanding is an understatement). To top that, he sometimes just asks me non-sensical questions and when I tell him that I don’t know what that means, he gets annoyed and asks me again, only louder, as if that will enhance my ability to comprehend 🙄🤦🏻♀️. Worse yet, is when he asks me questions he already knows the answer to: where we’re going, Asher’s name, why we can’t cut up a watermelon while on our nightly walk 🙄. He even asks me, “Why did I do that?,” as if I’m privy to all the inner workings of his little brain 🤦🏻♀️. He has learned when I’ve had enough and all I have to do is say his name and he’ll stop. Sometimes. I want my children to be good communicators because I feel like that is one of the most important skills a person should have. So many people have problems in their lives stemming from an inability to effectively communicate with others. It’s annoying enough to encounter adults who talk too much; you endure a one sided conversation and then move along. But when you live with someone who never. stops. talking, it’s on a whole other level. Sometimes I literally just can’t answer anymore questions. I can’t do it.
We’ve been working with Quinn, trying to teach him to wait his turn while others are talking. He isn’t the biggest fan of our nightly walks because that’s the first chance that Philip and I get to talk to each other. Once we’ve caught up on how the other’s day went, Quinn will often say, “Dad, can you talk to me now?” 😂
Quinn is also into arguing and being a backseat driver. He will argue over whether or not I said, “I love you,” to him, even when I said it first 🙄. The trick, I’ve learned, is to always say it back, regardless, whenever he says it. He tells us we run red lights because he looks at the wrong light, and then doesn’t believe us when we tell him we didn’t. While he complies more often than before, he still loves a good power struggle every few days. We had a ridiculous blowup one day when I was trying to get the boys ready to take some Fall photos. We were just going to the field below our house, but I had a ton of props to take, so I loaded them into the car to drive them and us down there. Quinn was adamant that we were going to walk. I explained about 19 times why we were going to drive instead, but he wouldn’t let it go. He had a meltdown over it and I was like, “You know what, it seems like now isn’t a good time to do photos. Let’s do something else.” Well that was the wrong thing to say because then he got even more upset 🙄. He insisted he wanted to do them, so we ended up going, but by the time I finished, Quinn was sitting in the car while I got a few last pics of just Ash. He wouldn’t stop messing with my camera and he threw dirt on Asher. I got some cute ones but I was beyond frustrated with him. We’ve also had tantrums over which stroller we were taking for a walk and who was going to get his shoe that was 3 feet in front of him (spoiler: it was him). If I could have an outer body experience with a calm, rational brain looking in, I could clearly see these episodes for what they are: his attempt at controlling a world that is very often out of his control. It’s even relatable, given that so much of our lives revolve around keeping things in our control. When I’m in a better parenting frame of mind, I’m mindful of offering Quinn choices, even when he is forced to do something. Like if we’re going to the store (non-negotiable), I’ll ask, “Do you want to wear your blue shoes or your Paw Patrol ones?” Those types of options help him to feel autonomous and don’t require any give on my part.
Anddddd I got one last one without a goofy face before he went to the car:
At least Ash still cooperates 🤪. He’s easy, just pretend to sneeze and he’ll give you a big smile 😉
Understandable or not, it doesn’t make any of it easy to navigate, and Quinn has sure had some big feelings lately. I don’t know if it has been primarily due to not feeling the best, or just, ya know, being three. The weekend before last, I wanted to get out of the house but Philip had a migraine, so I told him I would take Quinn down to the Marble Fest, and since Ash was about to nap (or so I thought), he stayed home with Philip. They had inflatables and a park at the festival, so I thought Quinn would enjoy going. What actually happened was I just took him somewhere else to whine. Fun. 🙄. He didn’t want any other kids to jump on the inflatables with him—obviously, not his call—and he just wanted to keep going back and forth between them and the park. It was annoying. We went home and he took an almost 4 hour nap 😳. Ash was fussy while we were gone, but as soon as I came home and nursed him, he fell right to sleep, too.
We had been having issues at nap time with Quinn being disruptive to Ash, so I’ve started putting Ash down first (threatening Quinn to stay out of the room until he was asleep and I come back out). I let Quinn watch tv while I’m doing that and tell him he is only allowed to come in the bedroom if he’s ready to go to sleep. I come back out when Ash is asleep and check on him. At first, I tried sitting with him for a few minutes, and then telling him I was going to lay down, too, and I showed him which button to press on the Apple TV remote to turn the tv off when he was ready to come in. This strategy worked really well for a few days. He liked being given the freedom to choose, so he only stayed in the living room for a few minutes after I had gone to lay down, and then he turned the tv off and came in. About the third time, I actually fell asleep waiting on him, and when I woke up a half hour later, I found him asleep on the couch. The fourth time is when things went south. I fell asleep. He didn’t. He didn’t nap at all. He was the biggest crank ass ever, all night. So that’s when things got modified yet again. I gave him about ten minutes to himself to decide to come in, and when he didn’t, I went and got him and told him he had to lay down. He didn’t fight me and passed right out. So I don’t know if we’re any closer to a fix now or not, but at least he hasn’t been pulling all of the shit he was before. So far anyway. Waking Asher up, doing flips, touching my face, etc, are all offenses that will get him removed to his own room for nap time—a consequence he does not like. At all. It’s possible he has learned his lesson in that regard but I’m not holding my breath.
He wasn’t tired. Nope. No way.
You know how when babies get tired of holding things, they just let them go, letting them fall wherever they may be at that moment? Yeah, so, when does that end? It’s not three, I can tell you that. There is just random shit all over the floor ALL. OF. THE. TIME 🤬. Quinn will go get some legos, bring them into the kitchen, sit them on the floor, and walk away. AND WALK AWAY! Not play with them. Just leave them there so that I can bitch about them being there 5 minutes later and make him come get them. I’ve said many times before that repetition is the key to learning, but I sure wish I knew what the upper limit was on telling him not to just leave things all over the floor. I’ve told him about 36,000 times and it hasn’t stuck yet. The items aren’t limited to toys, either. If he wants some cheez-its, he’ll get the container of them out of the pantry, carry it into the living room, grab a few, and then sit it on the floor 🤯. Why?! Why would anyone do that?! Why would someone put a turkey baster in my car? I don’t know, but Quinn did. I found some very large rocks in there the other day. I have no idea where they came from or when he did it. He drives me absolutely insane. If I asked him, it’s likely his explanation would be this: “The other Quinn did it.” I was recently made aware that Quinn has an alter ego who makes messes, takes other people’s things, and loses anything not attached to him. Sometimes I tell him to clean up something on the floor and he’ll tell me, “The Other Quinn’s gotta do it. He got them out.” I counter with, “I don’t care which Quinn cleans them up, but one of you had better put them in your room.”
🙄🤦🏻♀️.
The other day, I was nursing Ash before his nap and Quinn came into the bedroom carrying a Reese cup. He whisper-asked me to open it for him. I asked him how he got it, because the Reese cups are put up in a cabinet. He said, “I just got it.” I told him he isn’t allowed to climb on the counter and then opened it for him. He left the bedroom, eating it. Once I got Ash settled, I went to the living room but found his Reese wrapper on the floor in the hallway 🤬🤬🤯. I told him to go pick it up and put it in the trash. He said, “What happens if I don’t?” I said, “I won’t give you anymore Reese cups, ever.” He said, “We don’t have anymore,” and stayed right where he was, hesitantly. I told him that I could get more at the store, but I won’t if he doesn’t throw his trash away. That convinced him to do it, but I tell ya what, it’s exhausting having everything questioned 🙄. I really should cut him off from those though, because he thinks Junk is just another meal of the day. He’ll say, “Mom, I’m hungry, what can I have for junk?” He asked one morning if he could have some ice cream. I told him no, that he hadn’t even had breakfast yet. So he asked, “Can I have it for Junk?” 🙄🤦🏻♀️.
He sure comes up with some interesting ideas sometimes. He doesn’t like getting his face cleaned, but it’s often dirty (from food, markers, or actual dirt) so I have to sneak attack him to wipe it off. I got him one day as we were headed to the school playground, and he was so mad. He said, “Mom! Farmers don’t get their faces wiped!” I didn’t know that was a consideration but I confirmed with our farmer friend, Mollie, that Farmer John does, in fact, wipe his face 😂.
Thanks to two aggressive strangers in Walmart who had a spat in front of us, Quinn learned to threaten, “I’ll smack your face off!,” 🙄. That wasn’t exactly what was said, it was more like, “I’ll smack that stupid f@!?:&% look off your face.” So, I’ll take Quinn’s version, I guess 🤦🏻♀️.
He’s starting to take more notice of the people around us in public and we had a semi embarrassing encounter at Stalder’s Creamery a few weeks ago. Two men came in while we were eating our ice cream and were looking at the sign, deciding on their order. Quinn said, “Look at that guy’s hair! Dad, can you get your hair cut like that?!” The man did not have a unique haircut, he was afflicted by male pattern baldness. Quinn genuinely liked it though. Philip and I couldn’t keep a straight face. Neither could the girl working at the shop. I was able to kinda shush him between my fits of laughter. I don’t believe the man heard him, luckily. I explained to him when we were out of earshot that it’s not nice to comment on others’ appearance.
Quinn’s imagination has been running full speed lately. He’s obsessed with werewolves and loves watching shows with someone dressed up as one, with kids hunting them with Nerf guns. When we were walking one night, he said, “I have a feeling a werewolf might come sneaking out of those woods.” Philip and I had a good laugh at his use of the phrase, “I have a feeling.” Also in the post’s section of phrases Quinn has picked up is, “Listen, child!” He told Philip that the other day and I have no idea where he got that from………🤭😉. I made a note that Quinn said, “I’m assuming,” and it was about the Finger Family song, but I honestly have no idea what that means 😂. I take notes about things I want to remember to write about when the boys do/say something funny or interesting, but I needed more context for that one! Whoops 🤷🏻♀️.
He often feels as though dinosaurs may make an appearance at any given time. It’s okay though because if I say that I’m scared of them coming, Quinn says, “No worries, Mom, I roared at them.” Thank goodness I have him to keep me safe 🤪.
I should’ve known he would be a good protector because he practices fighting pretend fires just about every day. He reminds me all of the time that, “Firefighters are so brave.” The other day he burst into the bathroom while I showered to present me with firehouse trivia, such as, “Hey Mom, did you know firefighters have a kitchen so they can cook healthy foods?!” He has seen the episode where Blippi visits a fire station about a million times, and was watching it again that day. That’s what fueled his desire to enlighten me. Granted, I have also seen that episode a million times, but I don’t suppose that matters.
Wolfie, his pretend dog, is still around, and if you ask him, Quinn will show you pictures of him on his non-existent ‘phone.’ He holds his hand up and cradled as though there is actually one in it, and then ‘scrolls’ through his pictures 😂. He showed me one of Wolfie getting candy at a parade the other day. Or so he said 🤷🏻♀️.
One of his favorite scenarios to play right now is cops and robbers. He always wants to go play at “the blue park,” as he calls the school playground, but he often just wants one of us to chase him around and pretend to put him in jail so that he can break out again. That may be preferable to actually playing on the equipment though. We tell him that the rule is, if there are other kids at the park, grownups aren’t allowed to come up there 😂. We always hope there are other kids 🤞🏻. He played with two older boys the other day. I would guess they were around 9/10 years old. They were so good with him, allowing him to chase them and knock them down. He had a blast. When they had to leave, Quinn came over and told us, “I did a really good job beating those kids up.” 😂😂😂 If we hadn’t witnessed them playing, I may have been concerned.
That’s the “jail.”
At the pre-k playground there is a sand box. We were there one day with a couple other families and all of the kids were interested in the sand. The other moms were like, “[child’s name], don’t get IN the sand box!,” etc. Philip said, “We need to get sand for under Quinn’s playhouse on his swing set.” I was like, “I was just thinking the same thing. We are not normal parents.” 😂
😃
Quinn is preoccupied with the idea of winning any time that there’s a chance we may be able to do so. He likes to race in the driveway, but he also likes to race people that don’t even know we’re racing. We saw our neighbors at the school playground one day and Quinn wanted to know if we won. They were there first. So, obviously, he doesn’t quite understand which situations enable winning. Another day we had eaten lunch with our friends, Megan, Mandy, and Mandy’s son, Lawson, at Wendy’s. When Mandy and Lawson went to leave, they were going right and we were going left but Quinn wanted to know if we were going to win 😆. I explained that we couldn’t race because we weren’t going to the same place, but gave in and told him that, yes, we won, because we made it to our house before they made it to theirs, when he wouldn’t stop asking 🤦🏻♀️.
We went to Autumn Fest this weekend, where Quinn conquered his fear of inflatables. He was iffy about them at first, but once he went down the big slide, he was hooked. He even went through an obstacle course one, the same kind that he freaked out on and refused to go through 2 weekends ago at Marble Fest. There was a piece of material on the slide of the obstacle course one that covered the seam, and Quinn just had to see what was under it. The guy working the course remarked about how curious he was 🤦🏻♀️. Which was a nice way of saying nosy 😂. I thought to myself, “You have no idea.” His curiosity got the best of him a few days ago and he got in trouble. We had bought him a squishy ball that was filled with something similar to kinetic sand. I knew before it happened that the outcome was just a matter of time, but Quinn kept asking what was inside and what would happen if he popped it. We told him it was sand and that it would have to be thrown away if he popped it. Surely enough, a few days after getting it, Quinn put his newly acquired scissor skills to use and cut a hole in the ball. It made a mess all over the couch in his room, which I made him clean up. The ball was thrown away but his curiosity was satisfied, I suppose 🙄🙄🙄. He won’t get another one.
We’ve done some fun and some not so fun activities these past few weeks. I find lots of inspiration on Pinterest, and sometimes I replicate activities, and sometimes I modify them to suit us. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t at all 😂.
Case in point:
There was this very simple video that showed a setup like this—apples drawn with dry erase marker on a clear baking dish. They poured water into the dish, and the apples floated off. I made a disclaimer to Quinn before we started that I didn’t know if it was going to work or not, but that we were going to experiment. We tried room temperature, hot, and cold water and none of them worked 😂. He was disappointed by it, as evidenced by his telling his Aunt Lulu (Lori) all about it a few days later.
Luckily, some activities are foolproof 🤪. I made “ghost cubes” by mixing a little milk with water and adding googly eyes to an ice cube tray. Quinn liked melting them with warm water. Of course, I had to provide their commentary with phrases like, “Noooo! Don’t melt me!” I guess it’s more fun to torture them that way 😜.
We used magnet wands to find bells in a tub of black beans.
I made a game with candy pumpkins and candy corn, googly eyes, and spiders. I printed off pics of the items and numbers 1-5. Quinn turned over an item card and a number card, and then used the skeleton hand tongs to pick up the quantity of those items.
I repurposed some empty food coloring bottles (because we go through sooo much food coloring in this house 😅) into paint squirt bottles. I had to water the paint down just a bit. Q used them to do drip process on a foam pumpkin.
It turned out pretty 🤩.
Quinn did a ghost blow painting. He used a pippette to drop white paint on black paper, and then used a straw to blow the paint into a ghost. Once it dried, we glued googly eyes to it.
👻
We played a matching game using the Fall themed cards we got from the library last year. Thanks, Miss Tella! 🙂
We practiced mixing colors to paint a pumpkin in a bag. Q, of course, got his feet, as well as 27 different tools involved to get the job done 🤪. Ash even got to squish it.
We went on a nature hunt at Lewis Wetzel park. We have been there before, but Quinn didn’t remember it.
Big brother helping push our little ❤️.
He was excited when the ducks made an appearance right before we left.
We explored all of the materials we found. We used pine needles as paint brushes, made leaf prints, and painted acorns.
We played and sang The Itsy Bitsy Spider, washing plastic spiders down a piece of gutter. Water play is always a hit at our house.
We made pumpkin volcanoes. I put a different color food coloring in each one and then covered it with baking soda so it would be a surprise what color was in it when Q squirted the vinegar on it. It was almost a fail because the small syringe and pipette, neither one, had enough vinegar to make it erupt over the edge of the pumpkin. I bought some bigger syringes (I think the packaging said they’re drink shots) for this purpose, however, and that kicked the fun right up! That’s marker on his arm, by the way 🙄. He colored himself while I was bathing Ash. He said he made himself into Spider-Man 🤦🏻♀️
We made Fall tree handprint crafts with his cousins and a friend ❤️🧡💛
We made another (much larger) scarecrow.
I made Q a cardboard police car and he helped paint it.
It’s far from perfect but he likes it 🙂. You know what I love about homemade toys? They don’t last. So when he’s over it (which happens in lightening fast speed), I can recycle it and not have another friggin toy taking up space in our house 😃.
I made him an official police badge to go with it.
We didn’t decorate this one, but I made Q a robot box 😂.
I made Ash a homemade toy, too: a ball drop.
Quinn practiced his scissor skills on something other than destroying a ball. He gave Damon a haircut 😂.
He rolled play doh “logs” and I stuck them between the rings on his stacker so that they would hold them. He then practiced cutting the logs. We’re still working on proper scissor hold 🙈.
We acted out the Three Little Pigs story by building houses and having the wolf blow them down.
We cleaned out some of the garden beds (I need to finish the last two 😬) and found a friend.
Our friend left us a present: a nest full of babies that will hatch next spring! I had no idea what this was but I have the hookup with our local WVU extension agent 😉. Mollie informed me it was a preying mantis nest and not a piece of male anatomy, which is what I thought it looked like 🤣😉😜.
We spent this weekend at Atumnfest and had a great time. Quinn loved jumping on the inflatables, got to take a train ride, and decorate a cookie. There was a climbing wall and a mechanical bull, the Bubble Wagon, and Mr. Danny brought stilts that Philip and I both had to try out 😂. It was a very nice festival and has come a long way over the years. It’s amazing that they offer it for free to the community!
Our littlest pumpkin at the pumpkin patch ❤️.
Sophie Pupdate:
Sophie is taking a page out of Quinn’s book and has been working on her communication. In this photo, she was letting us know that the pancake on the counter was still there. Message received.
She lays in uncomfortable positions.
She been getting lots of lovin’. Ash has even started petting her 💜.
One last thing I did recently was take some soccer photos for my niece, Haleigh. She wanted some different poses than what was taken through the school.
She’s so pretty, I can’t take it 🥺🥺🥺.
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