A day out with grandma and nohno

My mom is a lifetime member of the aquarium near us so the Friday after Christmas she took Quinn and I and Dan's mom to the aquarium.

Life doesn't get any better than having your grandmas all to yourself.

He's looking at a big skate on the bottom just to the left of the middle of the tank. Which of course you can only see by laying on your stomach.

Touch tank. I don't think he ended up touching anything.

Then Saturday we did Christmas at my dads.

Here's Quinn playing under the table.

Here's one of Tia and Quinn playing the piano. Too bad I didn't get one of Grandpa on the floor drawing with Quinn.

It was a very nice dinner, thanks Dad and Jean.

Happy Holidays!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, so another marathon post from the mama. Hopefully now that I'm on vacation for a little while I can update more often.

Lets start with today. Quinn got an awesome Thomas the train from Auntie Kristin, Uncle Joe, and Mary. Quinn is totally into trains right now.

Daddy got him some cool Winnie the poo bath toys that we played with for 45 min in the bathtub tonight.

Miss Mary got a princess puppy from Uncle Dan

And a pink wig. Mary LOVES to play dress up.

Grandma came over in the morning and brought some great stuff. A couple of books and.....

a dinosaur bag. He is also into dinosaurs lately. Way to go grandma, good choice.

Here we are making Christmas cookies with Auntie this past weekend.

Quinn really liked using the cookie cutters, although he didn't quite get the fact that you're supposed to push the cutter all the way through the dough. It was too cute. There is a video at the end of this post showing him using the cutters. It's really long though so I don't expect people to really watch it.

He did well with the icing. He decorates cookies the same way he paints, he likes to keep all the color in the same spot.

Quinn Cookies.

Mommy cookies. Yes I'm very proud of myself for being able to decorate cookies better then a two year old.

The kid in a bag thing never gets old does it??

My little boy all ready for a hard days work!!! Although the shoes may be a safety hazard.

Finger paints anyone?

He loves them and I love the fact that they are washable.

So this is what it looked like by 3:30p the day that I took my last final.

Thank goodness it was an 8a final.

OK, so here's the really long cookie cutting video. Please forgive the humming. I never thought I was going to post this video. Happy holidays everyone. We wish you a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season. We are thinking of you all and sending our love.

Way to go Steph on your exams

I'd like to congratulate my wife for finishing her first semester of exams. She stayed at school to study and wasn't getting home until after 9pm each night of the week for about a month. Lots of sacrifice and she succeeded in doing very well on her exams. Way to go momma. Now she has a whole month off with no classes. YES! Our house gets magically cleaner whenever shes at home for long. Anyone ever move into a house and not really unpack for months? Live on half the dishes and clothes you own cause the rest are still in stored away boxes?

Anyway for most of the past few weeks, her long hours meant I had lots of time with just my boy and I. Picking him up after work was something to look forward to all day. I never expected him to like daycare this much. They keep him busy each day with arts and crafts and outdoor games.

He's saying cheese here.

Quinn is the smallest and youngest child at the daycare. And I'm glad to hear that all the other kids love him. Each day I pick him up I have to coerce him into leaving all his friends.

For the most part, the other kids are very patient with him. But you can't hold up the line on a slide.

Rolling down a hill...Looks really fun, but I passed.

This dog "Shelby" didn't like me taking her picture, but she is the topic of Quinn's discussions every time we leave daycare.

On this day as I pulled him out of the car and was gathering his things, he walked over and layed in the driveway to stare at some clouds. It must have been ages since I've done that. And I was on a roll with snapping pics with my cell phone.

Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the holiday season. Steph and I were just commenting to one another about how bad we are with sending holiday cards to our friends and family... There's no good excuse cause we do miss everyone, but we've been having to keep our priorites pretty short lately. Happy holidays everyone.

Two year old photos

Thank you sooo much to our friend Kirsten who took these photos. We took them at the park near our house.

So proud of his stick.

We don't even know how this happened, but the leaves in this picture look very interesting so I figured I'd put it up.

Cheese!!! He's gotten so good at saying cheese for the camera.

Yes, that is my child crawling into a fountain......

Back up camera

Too bad that we keep losing our camera, but I did get a few poor quality pics of Quinns birthday with my cell phone. It was a great turnout of friends and family. Our tenant and resident chef Marshall whipped up quite a well recieved feast. The kind of food thats so good people kept eating well after they were full.

In my opinion Quinn has a lot of toys (not that I have room to talk). But he does such a good job of picking up after himself, and sharing his toys with others, I don't worry about him being spoiled. This was his first unassisted gift opening experience.

At two years old I couldn't be more proud of how he is. Since he started daycare and is around other children, he has been talking a lot. His sentences and vocabulary far exceed what he is able to pronounce, so I do a lot of nodding when he tells me things and repeat back the key words I can pick up.

I also recently got to meet my niece and see my sister who visited from Washington. Quinn has made me forget how much infants don't support their own weight and don't move around. I picked her up and her head almost rolled off her shoulders. Oops!

Happy late birthday my love

How terrible. We were so busy yesterday with birthday plans I never wrote you a birthday message. And even worse, I was never able to find the camera yesterday, so no pictures. Auntie Karra took some video, so maybe at some point we'll be able to use that.

Quinn, you are by far the best thing that has every happened to me. You are such a sweet boy. You still like to cuddle, thank God. You say please and thank you to everything. More thank you than please, but we're getting there. You are really good at picking up your toys. You are just blossoming at your daycare. You are talking so much now, and they love how you sing yourself to sleep at nap time. You talk about Shelby the dog from daycare all week long. You also talk about and ask for your Uncle Joes through out the week. You like the colors blue and purple. You really like cars and balls. You can even hit a ball occasionally, when I throw it just right and hit your bat with it :). You still love to dance, you love arts, and love music. You absolutely adore your daddy. The easiest way to get you to leave daycare, which is sometimes hard, is to say we're going to go home and see daddy. You love Dora and Diego, sigh, I let him watch television now. You are such an easy little boy. Daycare says we should have eight more kids, but I'm convinced that since you are so good the next one would be a terror. I guess we'll find out someday. I love you my boy. I can't wait for your next year.

Major Update

Sorry it's been so long. I've been absolutely crazy. Dan has been working night shifts for over a month (5p-7a) and so I've really been relying a lot on my mom and sisters to get any work done for school and any free time that I have (hahahaha, free time). Anyway, school is really good, I love it, and I'm learning a lot of interesting things. I miss Quinn soooo much, but he really seems to love his daycare. So that's a weight off my mind. In other news, my daycare helped me potty train him. So, the boy is all potty trained. It's really nice not having to throw away so many diapers. Medically he's doing really really well right now. OK, on with the post.

So Quinn went out for his first election today!!! We hit the poles at just the right time, luckily there was no line or I might have regretted my decision to bring him. As it was, he did really well.

Since I had the day off to go vote we did lots and lots of long overdue playing. We went to Tia Sarah's and played in the leaves.





Oh what fun.


Then we went to stay and play in old saybrook, and did lots of climbing and playing. And then we went to my mom's (which I have no pictures from) and played some more. Weeeeeee.

This was last weekend. There is lots of fun to be had under a sheet.

Grandpa came for a visit and Quinn just couldn't get enough of him.

Look at the smiles.


On to Halloween. Look at that happy grandpa.

Three of the cousins ready to trick-or-treat.

They're watching a train go by.

Karra's husband went as a stormtrooper and Quinn decided to borrow his helmet for this picture.


We carved the pumpkin to match the costume.


Enjoy, this will be a nice little laugh.