depressing (aka the monday real estate update)

sigh. as of today our richmond house has been on the market for one full year. well more than one full year because of the leap day. oh the optimism of a year ago. how quickly you vanished. stupid house. stupid real estate market. i remember a conversation with the original realtor a year ago when he told me he expected the house to sell in two weeks, but not to worry if it took as much as six weeks. ha. we had three showings last week, and two the week before. at least our current real estate agent isn't an idiot.

v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n

quentin went on his first vacation last week, leaving the bay state for only the second time in his life. it was quite a long car ride and he did not really like the state of new jersey very much, but he took it like a champ. we tried to break down the trip into chunks to make it easier on all of us. tuesday night we drove across the state to my parents' house to drop off the dogs. we spent the night there and made the trek to DC the next day to visit with friends. then we drove down to richmond thursday morning and spent a couple of days there. we drove over to williamsburg on saturday to see family and for Q to meet his cousins sara and jake. then on sunday, we reversed the whole trek. a lot of time in the car!

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travelling with a baby is insane. jeremy and i had like 1 bag each. Q had about 6 for clothes, toys, diapers, feeding paraphernalia, etc. not to mention the stroller, the exersaucer, and the pack n play. the poor little jetta was stuffed!

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and speaking of the mexican jetta - it wouldn't be a long trip out of state if the check engine light didn't come on. it came on on our way to williamsburg on saturday, along with some really jerky engine function and crappy gas mileage (normally get ~380 a tank, was getting less than 250!) fortunately, once we got up to speed on the highway it seemed fine. apparently my spark plugs weren't firing properly and i needed a new coil (?) - you know, only another $1000 on that damn car.

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these pictures are from williamsburg where quentin met his cousins for the first time. and the last one is Q testing out the hotel bed!

and another new toy!

another freecycle acquisition (i love freecycle!) quentin now has a walker / ride-on toy. he's still too small to use it on his own, but that hasn't stopped him from being obsessed with it. for a while it was on the floor in the dining room near his high chair. he would just stare at it and reach for it. he just wants to be a big boy and play with big boy toys. linda says he does the same thing at day care, crawling as fast as he can toward the other boys to see what they're playing with. for now though, Q really likes it when daddy pushes him around on his car.

carrots

Q has also tried carrots, though we didn't get too many good photos. his poor teeth are killing him. stupid molars! he was not happy this day.

new toy!

as if quentin doesn't already have enough stuff, we were able to get him an exersaucer off our local freecycle group. he really likes playing in the saucer at day care so i had been looking for a cheap one on craigslist for a while but hadn't find one at the right place that wasn't like 2 hours away. he still loves his jumperoo more, but the jumperoo does not fold up or travel well. we can easily move the saucer from room to room so Q can be with us no matter where we are. and it was a lifesaver on vacation, since it folds relatively flat. we brought it with us and he could play in the hotel rooms. because seriously, who wants to let their kid crawl around on a hotel floor???

squash

and the catch-up begins...

earlier this month, quentin tried squash. he really seems to like all the veggies, and continues to like the spoon most of all!

lamest. 300th post. ever.

we are still alive. it's been a hectic week. look for a flurry of posts this weekend when i get around to posting all the exciting things we've been up to!

as good a place as any

nap in your highchair? why not?

monday real estate update

if a monday real estate update isn't posted until friday, is it still a monday real estate update? hmmmmm. oh well. a few more showings. but. there's always a but. one of the people also looked at the neighbors' house and decided to buy that one instead. oh well. at least that is one less house on the market. and we are now officially the cheapest house for sale in the 'hood. random: driving to work today i saw a flock of wild turkeys on the side of the highway.

peas please

last saturday, quentin tried peas for the first time. he liked them a lot better than beans. i couldn't get the spoon in his mouth fast enough! he also continues to be enamoured with eating the spoon itself.

wanted: ark builder

B.Y.O.A (bring your own animals, no spiders please!) as mentioned a few days ago, jeremy discovered a couple of inches of water in the basement. further investigation found that one of our two sump pumps had stopped working. a whole bunch of rain + melting snow - a working sump pump = standing water after several hours of sucking up buckets of water with the wet dry vac and making absolutely no progress, jeremy eventually figured out how to fix the sump pump. that sucker cleaned the basement out. a smart new englander would know that there is no such thing as a dry cellar and would have everything off the floor or in plastic storage bins. but alas, our "throw it in the cellar, we'll deal with it later" method of moving and unpacking came back to haunt us. the cellar was going to get organized... eventually. it just hadn't happened yet. so far we've lost some books and other small things, but nothing too major. this weekend we will execute "operation cellar" and try to get things better arranged down there. as i said, it's been raining cats and dogs here. this is what our yard looked like on saturday afternoon.

then, saturday night, we got 3 more inches of rain. this is what our yard looked like 24 hours later, at noon on sunday.

it hasn't receded at all. it looked wicked deep so i got out my sweet rain boots and walked in. i went in as high as i could without getting my legs wet (it's damn cold!) the water i was in was over a foot deep, and there were sections that look significantly deeper. we're waiting to see ducks or trout or something out there. it's insane.

beans beans the musical fruit...

on thursday quentin had his first veggie... beans. he wasn't a fan at first but eventually didn't seem to mind. what he really likes is chewing on the spoon. poor toothy kid. there are definitely molars about to erupt.