happy halloween from skunk and pig!

happy halloween! - we had a low-key day today. Q has been running a fever so we stayed home most of the day. we went to trick or treat at my aunt's house this evening. you can tell by the quality and volume of photos that Q was not thrilled about dressing up. he didn't like his costume yesterday either. they had a halloween party at his gym and he had a meltdown when i put the head part of his costume on him. i was able to get it on him tonight by bribing him with oreos. he does like to say the word "skunk" though. -

happy roo-2 day!

one year ago i went to the grocery store to buy a couple of bags of candy in case we got any treat or treaters. since i had been ridiculously tired all week i also bought a pregnancy test. we didn't get any trick or treaters that night, but we did get a roo-2.

if you give a mouse a cookie

know that book? the one where the kid gives a mouse a cookie, and then the mouse needs a glass of milk, and next thing you know the mouse is giving himself a haircut, cleaning the whole house, and taking a nap...

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i think we might be able to write our own version soon... "if you give a house a dishwasher"

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we bought new kitchen appliances because our current oven is busted, the dishwasher is rusted, and the microwave is a crap shoot (sorry, couldn't think of another rhyming word.) we found a nice stainless steel package of appliances at best buy. and it was supposed to be that easy - old appliances out, new ones in. but...

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not gonna happen.

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they delivered the appliances today. they couldn't set up the fridge because we couldn't disconnect the water line to the old fridge because the fabulous previous owners of the house have the water line valve buried behind the wall. when jeremy gets home tonight, we'll see if we can find it. in the meantime, our new fridge is chillin (pun so totally intended) in our not-so-big dining room.

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then, they were going to take away the old stove. but the gas line was not disconnected either. i swear the fire fighters disconnected it when they came, but i guess they reconnected it before they left. so the new stove is hanging out with the fridge in the dining room until monday when best buy's installers come to hook it up.

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but the stove also introduces a new problem. the back of the stove is an inch or two taller than our current stove. coupled with the fact that the current above-the-range microwave is already too close to the stove, this becomes a major problem. it looks like we may have to saw off the bottom part of the upper cabinet and mount the new microwave higher than the current one. so the microwave is hanging out in the dining room too. and we need to do the cabinet demo before the installers come on monday. and the cabinet demo means we will have no choice but to paint the cabinets. (we planned to anyway, but didn't need to.) i know this is going to cause more problems when the installers come...

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they also couldn't do anything with the dishwasher today because the current one is still hooked up to the water. the new dishwasher is - you guessed it - in the dining room until the installers come on monday. and it looks taller than our counters (hard to say for sure) so there may be additional floor and countertop modification needed. once again, we were planning to put new countertops in, but not immediately.

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so basically, the entire contents of our fridge and freezer are in laundry baskets in the dining room for no reason. time to put them back in the old fridge until we can find the water line.

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here's a before shot of the kitchen:

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and the pretty new appliance garden i have in my dining room:

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this is so not going to be fun.

one-upping her brother

it took over two years for us to have to take Q to the ER. caroline did it in only 4 months. over-achiever?? - once again, jeremy is on call so i got to deal with it solo. i tucked Q in, fed the dogs, and thought to myself, "hey! i made through another solo day." figured i would feed caroline one last time, tuck her in for the night, and then flop on the couch to watch some baseball. - i picked her up from her swing and she started crying this really weird cry, like nothing i've ever heard before. she was also panting and doing this weird breath-holding thing. and she was burning up. - i raced upstairs for the thermometer, and sure enough... 102. her breathing was so awkward and irregular so i was super panicked with all the nasty bugs going around. - called the pediatrician, paged jeremy, and called in for back-up Q-care. the doctor had us give her some tylenol and sit with her in the bathroom with the hot shower running for 20 minutes. after that her breathing was better, but she was still doing the breath-holding and was coughing more. because of that, he wanted her to go into an ER to be seen. - we went to jeremy's hospital and he called in back-up so he could come down and join us. of course as soon as we were there she made me look like a loony because she had no fever, was breathing fine, and was all-around happy and smiley. she still had the croup-sounding stuff when she sneezed or cried, so they gave her some steroids and sent us on our way. - now we're back home and she's sleeping happily. so much for my nice, relaxing evening!

boppy-envy

sometimes, when i am feeding caroline, quentin tries to crawl into my lap and sit on the boppy too. we usually end up with one kid on each side of the boppy. this morning the three of us watched "jack's big music show" that way :)

everybody say hay (ride)

today we went back to the farm to finish the rest of our fall festivities - a hay ride. this year, the farm actually combined its two daytime rides into one: first they take you to the "pick your own" pumpkin field and then they take you on the "not so scary" hayride where people with scary masks jump out from behind various crops and kinda roar at you. - edited to add: we were joined on this hayride by children (not kidding) named cheddar and rhapsody. -

quentin found the hay truly fascinating

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even on the ground, it's more interesting than pumpkins, apparently

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- the pumpkin cart is also way cool - - cool enough to sit in -

- something captures his attention -

- getting tired and fussy -

- an unexciting pic, but you can see part of the not-so-scary clown chainsaw guy that jumped out at us. quentin = unphased. -

- when he was 0, Q had no reaction on this hayride. at 1, he found it hilarious. at 2, he is ambivalent. -

- a weak attempt at a fam shot - we ARE all in there -

- and caroline was there too (sleeping in the bjorn the whole time) -

how tall this fall: a retrospective

to compare this year's pumpkin pics to previous years, you can do what i did and look back through the blog at our visits to the pumpkin farm in 2007 and 2008, or you can just look at this handy comparison post :) - it is really fun to look back at these. quentin has gotten so big already! -

quentin in 2007

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- quentin in 2008 -

- quentin in 2009 -

- caroline in 2009 -

i choo choo choose to sleep here

this afternoon i found quentin taking a nap on his train table instead of in his bed. he was curled up with his blueberry (security blanket,) didn't have the camera on me. that could not have been comfortable.

4 months old!

holy cow. caroline is 4 months old today! earlier this week we officially moved her out of 0-3 month clothes and into her 3-6 month stuff. some of it (like these jammies) is still way too big, but the 0-3 stuff was just too small! her stats from the doctor:

• length = 24.25" (50th percentile)
• weight = 13 pounds, 10 ounces (50th percentile)
• head circumference = 41.5 cm (67th percentile)

basically, just a normal little baby girl!

poompoons

that would be how quentin pronounces "pumpkins" - yesterday, we brought the kids to the farm to do pumpkins and photos. we'll go back this weekend to do the hayride thing since those are only offered on the weekends but at least this way we could do pics in relative peace, without hoards of families and kids there. because of all the rain we had this year, the pumpkin crop is super weak. there were barely any orange ones! -

caroline amongst the pumpkins. she was tired and thoroughly uncooperative.

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what she wanted to be doing

how tall this fall? not very.

quentin? much taller.

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quentin would not look at the camera. crawling on the pumpkins was much more appealing.

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awwwwwwwww.

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