enjoying the beautiful day

linda just sent me these pics from day care. quentin is enjoying the beautiful weather. it was 68 degrees last i looked! there are 5 other kids at day care, and quentin is the only one who notices and cares about their dog, jessie. guess jessie likes quentin too :)

winter?

yeah it was zero only 5 days ago. today it's 63. seems about right.

monday real estate update

still nada. had another showing last week. no offer but the people are still undecided and looking, so it's not a complete dead end. we also had a showing for it as a rental property but the peeps mentioned some credit problems and the realtor hasn't heard back from them since he gave them the application and credit report authorization forms. sounds like people we wouldn't want to entrust our house to anyway. and so it goes...

have we mentioned how much we love our jumperoo?

we all drove out to western mass today so that i could attend a baby shower. quentin had fun watching football all day with his daddy and grandpa, but there's no jumperoo at grandma grandpa's house so we had to settle for sitting in laps. when we got home, i tried to give him a bottle - and he HAD to be hungry - but he was not at all interested. he was wiggling like crazy looking over at his jumperoo. i bailed on the bottle and put him in the jumperoo. he jumped continuously for a half hour! so much pent up energy - i hope he sleeps tonight!

what's in a name?

a lot of people have asked us where we got the name quentin. some people have even thought that we just made it up. others think we must be huge "pulp fiction" fans. it's really not an exciting story - we just liked the name :) - we wanted something classic but not super common. we also wanted it to be a cute name for a kid but also a name we could picture as a respectable adult. neither of us like the trendy names that are out there (jaden, brayden, anything that ends in ayden) for our kids so i played around on baby name websites and made lists of boy and girl names i liked. jeremy and i just both really liked the name quentin. plus how cool is "q" as an initial?!?!?! add in joseph as a middle name - after jeremy's grandpop - and there you have it! - after about the 10th time i had to explain to someone that quentin is in fact a legitimate name and not something i made up by playing with refrigerator magnets i decided to scour this fine internet to assemble a more extensive list of existing and recognizable quentins. here are some of the highlights of what i found for "quentin" on wikipedia:

• quentin tarantino, director of movies such as pulp fiction, kill bill, and reservoir dogs. he's the quentin most people have actually heard of. he also once played an elvis impersonator on an episode of the golden girls. awesome.
• quentin lee cook - aka fat boy slim of the rockafeller skank fame - coincidentally in one of my fave teeny bopper movies of all time "she's all that" starring ironically rachael leigh cook (hahaha see it quentin lee cook, rachael leigh cook... i think it was meant to be!) i love a good modern-day shakespeare adapation. (see also: the leo version of romeo + juliet and 10 things i hate about you.) i also love a good inexplicable choreographed dance scene in said teeny bopper flicks, which "she's all that" has to you guessed it, the rockafeller skank. (see also: romy and michele's high school reunion and superstar.)
• quentin richardson is a basketball player for the new york knickerbockers
• saint quentin is a minor christian saint who gives his name to a town in france
• quentin blake is the beloved illustrator of many children's book including those authored by roald dahl including matilda, james and the giant peach, and charlie and the chocolate factory
• quentin jammer plays in the NFL for the san diego chargers
• quentin compson is a character in faulkner's "the sound and the fury" and "absalom! absalom!" who ironically went to harvard. there's actually a plaque on a bridge over the charles river in boston that commemorates his "life" and "death". we'll have to go find it one day!
• there's a town in pennsylvania named quentin as well as san quentin in california, home to the infamous san quentin state prison where johnny cash played as concert in 1969 and where metallica filmed its "st. anger" video in 2003.

of course none of these people influenced our name choice, but still fun to know some random quentin facts!

xmas card photos that didn't make the cut

i was lucky to get one good one. quentin kept trying to turn around and look at the tree. he also wouldn't take his hands out of his mouth. oh and he spit up all over his sweater about 5 minutes into our photo shoot!

n-ice

5 months old!

can you believe it? i sure can't!

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quentin is so big and he has such a little personality now. he is a very happy baby. every day when we get him at daycare, linda comments about what a good baby he is! he loves to smile at people, even ones he's just met. he also LOVES our dogs. he "pets" them which ranges from him just lightly touching their fur to him grabbing a handful of their fur and skin and squeezing with his little claws. i've got to give the dogs credit - they are very patient with quentin. none of them have snapped at him, or even growled, and i know from experience how bad it hurts when quentin grabs a fistful of your skin. the dogs also like to give quentin kisses, which he also enjoys.

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about his onesie in these pics - i saw it on oldnavy.com over the summer and thought it was cute so i ordered it in the next size up (3-6) from what he was wearing at the time. then i read in my how to be a mommy book that they don't teethe until 6 months or later. i was kicking myself because i thought he would outgrow the outfit before he ever had a tooth. but of course he surprised us by getting teeth at 3 months. by the time he outgrows the outfit, he'll likely have a few more teeth to go along with the 2 he already has!

happy new year!

1. hope everyone had a wonderful new year's eve, and hope that 2008 has thus far been kind!
2. pics from christmas will be forthcoming - jeremy and i were too busy hosting to take any pics so i am waiting on my mom for the ones she took :) hint, hint mom!
3. anyone else still eating christmas leftovers? 'cause we are!
4. monday real estate update - again on tuesday - we had some more showings over the past couple of weeks despite the holiday. business seems to have picked up recently, which can only be good! new air conditioner is also installed, and hopefully stays that way!
5. a little bit sad - i just packed up all of quentin's newborn and 0-3 month clothes. they look so tiny now! heck, it's almost time to pack up the 3-6 month batch! it's truly amazing how many clothes one little doodle has!
6. there appear to be more teeth coming. yeah! except it means very fussy baby at night.
7. abby wants to be a painter. jeremy painted our stairway a lovely sage green yesterday to match the living room and i guess abby wanted to help. she managed to brush one of her floppy ears up against the wall so she has a green ear. she then wagged her tail repeatedly into the freshly painted wall, so 1/2 of her tail is also solidly green. to make the art experiment complete, she then wagged her tail against the beautifully stained front door, so that too has streaks of sage. what a train wreck is abby!

jumperoo, jumperoo, jump up, jump up, and jumperoo

so you have to tilt your head 90 degrees to watch it, but work with me here. taking videos with a regular old digital camera sucks. which is why it is awesome that we got a brand new digital video camera for christmas. woo hoo! expect lots more videos in the future!

dear fisher price

we heart the jumperoo.

and when there's snow

you just have to put your baby in a snowsuit and take pictures!

winter wonderland

we moved to boston because we wanted snow. oh boy have we gotten it so far! we had almost 2 feet on the ground before christmas, but it has been warm (40) for the past few days and much of it has melted away. it'll be back though! :)

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we are wondering how much snow it will take before we suck it up and invest in a snow blower. if money wasn't such an issue right now, i'm sure we'd already have one. jeremy is lucky though - it only seems to snow when he is on call and has to stay at the hospital so i have to shovel the driveway!

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fortunately we have the best neighbors in the world. i was out shovelling during the last storm and the neighbor across the street told me to go inside and that she would send her husband over with their snow blower once he was done with their driveway. and then our neighbor next door said he would do our driveway when it snows if he could store his snow blower in our shed (easier to access than his.) works for me!

no power suit shopping... for now

some decent news on the job front. i have a 3-month temporary role in the office in framingham. it is actually one of the roles i interviewed for. after i interviewed for this role, they decided not to hire anyone into the job because of some organizational changes about to happen. they wanted to let the dust settle and then determine what type of role it would be and hire for it. oh boy did getting that call suck. this was the last open role in the office that i could interview for so when the HR guy said it was a no-go i had to hold back the tears, at least until he was off the phone. pretty much thought i was be headed for the unemployment line and back to the power-suit wearing interview process. i think the HR guy was as frustrated as me because he thought i was a perfect fit for the role. he said he would keep trying to find something before my temporary project with the richmond team ran out. then, a couple of days later he called me back to see if i would be open to another temporary assignment. oh heck yeah. temporary job is certainly better than no job at all. it would at least buy me some more time. he was able to work things out with the hiring manager so i will be starting this new role on 1/15 once i have wrapped up my current project. the really, really, really good news is that this 3 month role will get me through bonus day (yeah for money!) which i was really worried i would not be around for. AND that time of year tends to be a musical chairs job swap. everyone gets their end of year performance review and bonus and then finds a new role within the company so that they can maximize the amount of time they are in a new role before the next performance review (improving their chances of getting a better review and higher bonus next year.) so even if the temporary job doesn't turn into a permanent one, there could be more openings available to me by then. phew. imminent financial ruin halted for at least a few more months.

abby's house of pie

as promised a few days ago, i am catching up on a bunch of backlogged posts. abby is doing well. she is no longer relegated to wearing a lampshade and her stitches have been removed. we discussed the cancer treatment options with the vet last time we were there. he said that treating her with prednizone only (what we were going to do) would probably do more harm than good because of the extreme side effects doses that large have on small dogs. the chemo would probably make sure the cancer was gone, but it costs $2500-3000 a pop. and there's no way to know how many "pops" she would need - it's more of a do one round, see how it works, determine if another round is needed, repeat until no more rounds are needed thing. that could get super crazy super fast. so for now we have opted to do nothing. the vet was encouraged that the surgical margins (excised skin around the tumor) were clean, i.e. no cancer. she is a bit of an enigma though, because in general grade 3 tumors do not have clean margins. so maybe we caught it just in time, or maybe she's just a weirdo. we have an appointment in early january to have her looked at again to see if there are any signs that the cancer has spread. the good news is she is acting like her old self again. super bonkers, tail wagging like crazy, knocking over everything in her path (poor christmas tree ornaments!) in fact christmas night, jeremy and i were cleaning up the kitchen after a monster day of holiday meal prep. while our backs were turned, abby pulled a fruit pie off the dining room table and went to town. by the time we got to her, it was almost all gone. after that, i pushed in all the chairs to make sure she couldn't get up to the remaining pies and hoards of cookies. but... the next morning i came in from taking bailey and jackson out for their morning business and i found abby standing on the dining room table face-deep in a pumpkin pie. i have no idea how she got up there. she either jumped straight from the ground (doubtful, if you have ever seen the production she puts on when jumping into our bed which is considerably lower) or she jumped up on a chair several feet away from the table and made the flying-squirrel leap to the table. in a period of about 8 hours she consumed 2 whole pies. bonkers!

all i want for christmas is...

quentin's two front teeth. the bottom two teeth are in and now we are working on the top set. poor kid is in such pain. these mean teeth turn an otherwise agreeable baby into a screaming, drooling terror. a very fussy baby + getting ready for christmas = why i haven't posted much but i've got a ton of stuff to catch up so i may go blogging-crazy today and knock them all out. we'll see how long quentin will nap...

welcome to the fam

quentin proudly introduces his brand new cousin!

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calder laurent turpin

born 12/18 at 1:04 p.m.

7 pounds, 14 ounces

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congratulations to leah and bruce!

happy roo day to you!

on this day, one year ago, i peed. not just any normal pee. i peed on a stick. the magical stick told us that we would be roo parents. i already knew i was pregnant. jeremy did not believe me until i told him my boobs hurt. after that he was out the door to buy a pregnancy test and lo and behold i was right! the box said it could take 5 minutes to show a result but that darn thing had a plus sign on it the second the pee hit the stick! coincidentally, on this day 5 years ago, jeremy and i got engaged. happy roo day to you!

monday real estate update

again on tuesday (some day i'll actually get it up on monday!)

bad news (there's ALWAYS bad news)

• the people that had our house in their final four have narrowed it down to 2 houses and ours is not one of them

not bad news (but not exactly good either)

• our replacement air conditioner / heat pump will be going in on thursday so at least the pipes won't freeze leading to further cost
• we had three more showings last week, which is surprising given the time of year

the chance of a christmas miracle is looking less and less likely. stupid house.

naughty or nice?

quentin went to the mall today to meet santa claus. of course he had no clue what was going on, but he did like the little girl in front of us in line. she and quentin bonded over the fact that they had the same stroller :)

back to front!

at day care today quentin rolled from back to front, marking another big developmental milestone! he finally figured out how to get that pesky arm out of his way. now to spend all weekend trying to get him to do it again so we can see it this time...

I took care of this patient

With all the snow in Boston yesterday, the news started fishing for stories. Anywho, this family was taking their baby home yesterday when it became "unresponsive." Long story short she was admitted to the MGH NICU where I am currently working. I was her primary physcian today. Basically, all I did was discharge her but i thought it was cool that I was taking care of "the baby from the news." I was prepared to have a news conference today but apparently the media was not :) Here's the link to the story. Linky

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas!

we got about a foot of snow yesterday! at one point, we were watching the news and they said the snow had stopped. we looked out the window and it was still pouring down. then they clarified that it might still be falling on the south shore, where we are :) we shovelled the driveway three times to keep up with the snow. the dogs love it. too bad we don't have a fence so they can't romp around without leashes. note: there is really nothing funnier/cuter than a miniature dachshund that stands no more than 6 inches tall running through snow a foot deep time to wake quentin up and feed him. i have no idea how long it will take me to get to day care and back. it took jeremy over 3 and a half hours yesterday when he went to pick quentin up around 1!

the snow is falling down on our new england town

see that purple? oh yeah! the news is saying we'll get 9+ inches today/tonight!

so close!

after last week's exciting roll from front to back, quentin is trying to quickly follow with a dramatic sequel - back to front. he's not quite there yet, but so close! i also like how he doesn't stop chewing on his fingers during this roll attempt :)

roo jumperoo

quentin has a ton of energy and no longer just wants to lay on his play gym or sit in his swing. he wants action! so last night jeremy and i bought him a new toy - a jumperoo! i put him in it for a few minutes this morning and he loved it. he can play in it some more once he wakes up from his nap!

think it's time to take our fall decorations down?

monday real estate update

on tuesday, because i didn't get around to it last night. our real estate agent calls us every monday to let us know what is going on with the house, if we've had any showings, etc. (love it - so much better than our previous realtor!) even if there's nothing going on, it's nice to touch base. the past few updates have been pretty depressing so i haven't bothered to post them, but last night's was less depressing and potentially promising. we had three showings over the course of last week, and one was someone looking at it for a second time. apparently we have made their "final four" and they will likely be making a decision soon. don't know what other houses they are looking at but we're still in the game. we have not and will not get our hopes up, but this is a glimmer of hope that our house still might sell. we had officially given up on it and were pushing the rental options. we simply cannot drop our price any lower (we'd be entering the sell-for-less-than-we-paid territory - eek!) and the neighbors 2 doors down have plenty of room to keep dropping their price. any price drop that we make, they can drop 5-10K below us, which is exactly what they've done since they went on the market. we will not win that game because they paid a lot less for their house a long time ago. so why try? who knows, maybe it will be a christmas miracle. in other stupid richmond house news, i am truly amazed at just how easy making a home owner's insurance claim for the AC unit was. 2 simple phone calls and one fax. check is in the mail. we're good to go. i thought for sure it would be a complex maze of insurance hell, like the time i had to call the virginia state police to get my car insurance to pay for something. impressive state farm!

it's never good when...

the vet walks into the exam room and says, "i'm afraid i have some bad news for you." abby's biopsy results came back and her tumor was right on the border between grade 2 and grade 3, and with these types of things they "round up". grade 3 mast cell tumors are extremely aggressive, and even though they removed the whole tumor on tuesday, chances are very high that it has already spread to her lymph nodes and will eventually show up in her liver or spleen. according to the vet today, without treatment abby will have less than a year. all the articles i have read on the internet paint a similar dismal picture. she's probably only got a few months left. so we need to make a difficult decision. there are two chemo treatments we could choose from. one would be simply giving her prednizone which would be the milder (and cheaper) form of treatment. the other option would be to go on the full-out attack with the real stuff - vinblastine. even with the heavy duty (and super expensive) stuff there are no guarantees. if the cancer has already metastasized, the chemo will only delay the inevitable. and most likely make her miserable. i always believed that i would do anything, including going broke to care for my animals. they are family members no matter what non-pet people believe. but at the same time i have a baby to worry about, and two mortgages. i have no problem eating nothing but ramen noodles for a long time but that doesn't exactly work for quentin. and the practical side of me has a hard time sinking a ton of money into treatment that may only add a few miserable months to her life. right now we think we will start her on the prednizone and continue to monitor her condition. she isn't acting sick at all. she is back to her same goofy self. our main concern no matter what is her quality of life. we do not want her to suffer or be in terrible pain. no matter what happens i know that she lived a good life with us and was lucky to make it this far. if the beagle rescue had not sprung her from that shelter in west virginia, she'd probably already be gone.

something old, something new...

i'm so excited. i just sent my wedding dress here to be fashioned into a christening gown for quentin and any future babies. i had gotten my dress preserved after our wedding in case a daughter or someone in the future wanted to wear it, but i realized that was unlikely. i didn't want to wear my mother's dress - i wanted to pick my own. chances are, my future daughter (assuming i even have one!) would want to pick her own as well. this way it will become a special family heirloom and can be used over and over, rather than sit in a box, taking up precious space in my tiny closet for the rest of time! i can probably use the scraps for fun stuff too - tooth fairy pillows, handkerchiefs or ring bearer pillows for quentin's wedding, etc. the lady does beautiful work and i can't wait to see what she can do with mine!

cranky pants

mr. quentin has been quite the cranky pants today. he's been down right inconsolable. we think it's the post-vaccination ickiness that babies get. he's been up almost all day, crying and screaming. he should sleep well tonight!

veterinarians, pediatricians, & decorations, oh my!

1. abby is doing great after her surgery. she has a massive incision and a second smaller one. she also has to wear the lamp shade collar so she doesn't chew on her wounds. it's driving her crazy. she's a beagle so her nose is always on the ground, but the lamp shade prevents her from getting the nose all the way down. she's a beagle who can't sniff! she also has no sense for the size of the lamp shade because she keeps trying to get into coves that she could normally get into but then gets blocked by her cone head. she'll go back to the vet in a few days to have the incisions drained and then again in 10 days to have the sutures removed. i need to take pics of her cone head but the camera batteries died and i'm lazy :)
2. quentin went to the pediatrician today for his 4-month check-up. jeremy was even able to meet us there!. the boy is 25.5" long and weighs 17.3 pounds, which puts him in the 71st and 88th percentiles respectively. big baby boy but not too big! he's right on track with all his developmental milestones. we even had our first conversation about introducing solid foods. we could start him now, but they recommend holding off until 5 and a half months or so. gives me time to figure out how to make baby food :)
3. we got some of our christmas decorations up - the tree is up but not yet decorated, the lighted deer and moose are in the yard, and jeremy even got the icicle lights up across the front of the house. we've got more that we want to do, but it's a start!
4. i'm almost done christmas shopping! woo hoo!
5. i'm sleepy. good night.

roll over. good boy!

he did it! after weeks of being close and days of being really close, quentin rolled over from front to back today!!! and even more amazing i caught this monumental feat with the video functionality on our digital camera. no sound, but still fun!

he was really close to doing it this morning during tummy time so i got the camera out. on a few attempts a light breeze could have rolled him the rest of the way but instead he went back to his belly. after his last feeding i put him down for some more tummy time and he was gunning to go before i even got the camera out. i was lucky to catch the actual roll on film!

bye bye tumor!

abby is at the vet today to have her tumor removed and biopsied. if all goes well she will be back here tonight with a wicked cool lampshade collar. stay tuned for updates! (and funny lampshade photos!)