the sincerest form of flattery

quentin can be a pain to dress these days because he wants to pick out his own shirts (always truck shirts.) last night, he slept in a truck shirt and a pair of pajama pants. i wasn't planning on getting him really dressed this morning when i went in to get him up because we're not going anywhere until much later today and it was just going to be easier to leave him as is. but he insisted on putting on a different truck shirt for the day. fine whatever. but then he started crying about the gray sweatpants i reluctantly decided i would put on him. he started mumbling incoherently about dogs and presents and then went over to his hamper where he pulled out his flannel christmas doggy pajama bottoms. weird, i thought, until i realized they are the same exact jammie pants i am wearing. (yes, everyone in our family has matching christmas jammies - we're that cool.) so now he is wearing a different, clean truck shirt and a previously-worn pair of PJ bottoms (but not smelly - i sniffed!) so much for easy.

guess who's back, back again

some drama/trauma this time around. yesterday morning, halfway in to this latest monstrosity, jeremy went down cellar to see if we were still dry. big time no. not only was water seeping in from several small area in the foundation, it was also pouring in from under the bulkhead door (home to one of the two permanently-installed and currently overworked sump pumps.) the sump pump was not operating at 100% (probably since it has been running non-stop every 15 seconds for the past month) and it was getting overwhelmed. so lucky jeremy looked when he did because we probably would have completely lost the cellar within a matter of an hour or two. in addition to the two sump pumps in the cellar, we were also running 2 more outside submerged in the puddle spitting water into the road. jeremy moved one of them in to assist the tired pump, so we rode out the rest of the storm with 3 pumps in the cellar and one in the puddle. we also ordered a new big-ass pump online. it should be here friday to get rid of the puddle again - hopefully the final time this year.

meet the family

in case you're not sure who we are

back in the USSR, i mean ER

you might wonder why i am posting cute videos of caroline at 3 a.m. it's because caroline woke up a little after 1 with a barky croup cough. sitting in the bathroom with the steamy shower didn't seem to help her, so jeremy wanted her to go in for some steroids to help open her airways. so the two of them left around 2 to go to mass general to hit up the ER. poor baby girl. but for the first time in recorded history, jeremy was actually at home when a night time emergency happened, rather than on call at the hospital (see: jack bites quentin, caroline has croup - volume one, the great stove alarm, and the potential natural gas leak.) how about that.

i did it! (cue dora music...)

here is a video of caroline waving, as she listens to her pal violet puppy sing her name. thanks uncle tim and aunt kristy - she loves it! it gets a little boring at the end. i don't know how to edit videos. heck it took me three years to figure out how to get them out of the camera and on to the computer.

the wave

caroline shows off her new favorite skill... waving. she LOVES waving. she waves to everyone. she even waves to her own reflection. she amused herself through the entire church service this morning by waving to all the people around us. also church-related, several people today told me i had such a handsome baby boy. one even called her a girl first, and then apologized and said, "sorry, baby boy." seriously people. this is what she was wearing. a dress. with frills and a girly scotty dog with a bow. she was also clutching a pink puppy lovey. what's up with that.

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i did get some video of her waving too, but like every video i have taken in the last three years, it is trapped on the darn video camera. i am trying something new tonight so maybe we'll finally have years of video to share. good news is i have figured out how to make the camera save videos to a memory card going forward to avoid the issue, but i want to rescue the years of baby vids already stranded inside the depths of the video beast.

gone today...

we have successfully pumped away our puddle pond for the third time this month, in time for a lackluster open house today (2 parties came by, realtor thinks one may be interested, but we'll see.)

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but our old friend puddle pond will be back tomorrow, with another 2-5 inches of rain headed our way. we are seriously wondering what the yard would look like had we not already disposed of it 3 times. our house might actually be underwater. guess it's a good thing Q loves finding nemo so much??

shweepy

all night, quentin kept exclaiming, "shweepy! shweepy!" and i had no idea what he was talking about. i finally realized he was talking about the vacuum cleaner. he wanted to push it around and pretend he was sweeping like a street sweeper (among his new favorite types of trucks.) this kid is nutzo for anything with wheels, even a dyson. with a disturbing amount of pet hair in it.

yay for poop!

at daycare today, quentin was babbling about stinky diapers and gesturing toward his rear, so linda asked him if he wanted to go poop on the potty. Q answered with a definitive, "yes!" so she brought him to the bathroom. and he did it. he pooped on the toilet. on purpose. yay for Q! who knew you could be so excited about bodily functions!

it's ba-ack

yay.

9 months old!

caroline is 3/4 of a year old today! man time flies! she's such a big girl now. she crawls like a demon, especially if there is a stray monster truck she can get to. she can switch from crawling position to upright sitting all by herself. and she's even trying to stand. she's trying all kinds of big people food - so far she's tried toast, non-mushed bananas, and noodles. she babbles up a storm and has major separation anxiety (i cannot leave her alone in a room, must be within eyeshot.) she waves bye bye and even tries to mimic the motions to songs like itsy bitsy spider. she went to the pediatrician today. here are her stats:

• height: 27 3/4" (59th percentile)
• weight: 17 pounds, 14 ounces (34th percentile)
• head circumference: 45 centimeters (79th percentile)

i think she might be in the middle of a growth spurt. her 6-9 month clothes are getting on the small side. but she's got to hang in there for a little bit because all the 12 month clothes i've gotten her are spring/summer items, and it certainly ain't spring here yet!

speaking of our lake...

this is all that is left!

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jeremy has been dedicated in his pumping, running 2 pumps all the time and constantly moving where they pump to as to not flood other parts of our yard or those of our neighbors.

but it'll be back with the 1-3 additional inches of rain we will be getting tomorrow. goody.

waygroun

the weather has been nice, but we haven't been able to let Q play in the yard because of the lake. so instead we brought him to the playground for the first time this spring. it was after his nap, so it was already getting chilly. but he had a blast, and so did caroline! as soon as he got up from his nap today, he asked to go to the "waygroun" - too bad it's raining. again.

caroline's first time swinging. she like. though we did need to use my purse to support her in the swing. please don't mock us for her mismatched outfit. it's her warmest sweater and it didn't match her pants.

irish eyes are smiling

and snoozing.

good to know he may never outgrow the train obsession

on saturday, we took quentin and caroline to a model train show, held at a local model train club. Q was excited to see the choo choos, but i think he was frustrated that he couldn't play with them. this was definitely more of an old men looking at each other's trains event than one for kids. we did actually see one old man get really mad at another old man for crashing his train into his.

quentin did notice and point out these current favorites: nonuts.

barbage truck.

a toast

caroline is desperate to eat what we're eating. at lunch today she refused smushy veggies on the spoon and was eyeing my plate. so i popped a slice of bread into the toaster and let her gnaw on it. i think she enjoyed it :)

my way (or the highway)

quentin is definitely exerting his independence. in addition to demanding to wear a truck shirt every day (and he is picky about which truck shirts are acceptable) he is making his preferences known on other pressing matters. he is very selective about which place mat he uses for dinner. the other day i asked him which one he wanted and he said, "miterman" (spiderman, naturally.) i pulled out a spidey mat and he defiantly said, "no. blue miterman." he has two - red and blue - and i tried to give him the red. tonight he wanted yogurt, but only if it was pink. he wanted to play with the blue flashlight but not the red one i gave him. and he also wanted to wear his snazzy new rain "boops" to bed. i didn't think that was such a great idea. he is also cracking me up these days, as his verbal skills get better and better. i took both kiddos to the baby gym yesterday and as i was loading them into the car to go there, Q made a dash for the road. our road is pretty busy for such a sleepy little town and people drive like maniacs. i grabbed him and screamed at him, mostly because he scared the crap out of me. realizing that i scared him just as much with how loud i yelled, i told him that he scared me and i didn't want him to get hurt. he knew i was angry and for the entire car ride to the gym he repeated over and over, "momma mad. no road. hurt." oh, and as we drove past the big bullseye today, he demanded we go to "gargit." i have created a monster.

awww

caroline and i picked quentin up at daycare today and stopped by target (gargit in Q-speak, now one of his favorite destinations since he has come to know it as the infinite source of hotwheels monster trucks) on the way home. caroline was in her carrier in the base of the cart and Q was sitting in the kiddie seat up front. while i was perusing the cleaning products, he was amusing himself by petting his sister on the head. a couple of women walked by in the other direction as quentin declared, "hi ditder. you cute." i heard one of the ladies say to the other, as she grinned at my babies, that they totally made her day. mine too random gargit shopper. mine too.

sigh (a real estate update)

sorry for the lack of blogging. we've been scrambling to get the house ready to go on the market so we can be in philly in july. we were really rocking things out and we were all set to go on the market on march 1st (2 weeks ago) until we were hit with back-to-back nor'easters a couple of days before. the massive amounts of rain caused our annual puddle-pond to appear (see 2008 version.) we didn't really want to go on the market with 1/3 of our yard (i.e. 1/3 of an acre) underwater so we decided to wait a week and see what we could do to expedite the disappearance of the water. - first, jeremy bought a pump and tried pumping the water into the woods behind our house. he left it running for a couple of days with no visible progress. so jeremy called every septic company, pool company, and flood restoration company he could find to see if someone could come pump the water out and haul it away, but no one could help us out. one of them did recommend that we call the fire department about it (?) and since we were desperate, jeremy called. our adorable little town fire department sent a guy out to scope things out. he said there wasn't anything he could do to help, but also added that he had been here about 4-5 years ago (before we lived here) when there was 5 feet of water in our basement. he said that the sloping of our yard that causes the puddle-pond was actually the solution to keeping the water out of the cellar. i guess that's a good thing but still doesn't help us with the unsightly lake in our yard. fire dude put in a call to the town highway department to see if there was anything they could do for us. the highway guy came out and said it was too bad we didn't have a catch basin near us to pump the excess water into. jeremy did some scoping and found one at the end of our street, about 1/4 mile from our house. he went down to town hall to ask if we could run a hose to there and pump it out. miraculously, they said ok. when jer talked to our next-door neighbor to tell him that he would be running hose across his front yard, our awesome neighbor offered up his super-strength pump. so he and jer set up both pumps and just started pumping the water to the other side of our yard. after 3 days of pumping and nice weather (last monday) the lake was gone! woo hoo. so we gave the realtor the thumbs up to put the house on the market. we went live on march 8th. - on wednesday, we ran into another of our neighbors who has lived here forever and we learned that the land our house was built on used to be part of a farm before it was parcelled out to build houses. and there was a pond in our yard. like a real pond. good thinking 1960 house builder. that won't ever be an issue. eye roll. - so over this past week we had a couple of broker tours to build awareness of our little house and today we were scheduled to have our first real open house. but alas, another nor'easter rolled into town yesterday. 5 inches of rain later, the puddle-pond came back bigger than ever. and it is still freaking raining. ugh. there is also water coming into the cellar in a few spots through some teeny tiny cracks in the foundation i guess. nice. - we still had the open house and four families came through. i guess it's a good thing that the rain seemed to keep people at home. now we just need it to stop raining so we can try to make it disappear again. and the news just said we should expect 2-3 more inches of rain tonight before this finally stops. good times. - some pics of the pond as of this afternoon. these do nothing to illustrate the fact that this thing is more than 2 feet deep. swimming, anyone? -

buzz cut

quentin's hair in the morning:

quentin's hair later in the day:

i'm not the biggest fan of his new 'do. it's prickly. i miss his soft hair and he looks like a kid instead of my baby, but it will grow back. this is what happens when your kid is too squirmy for scissors and the hair person has to resort to the clippers for safety's sake. maybe the $20 at the over-priced baby salon is worth it?

do you like my hat?

new hats are not only stylish, they are also fun toys and if necessary, a good afternoon snack!