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!

no. truck shirt.

i was getting quentin dressed for church on sunday and was looking for a nicer shirt in his drawer. i pulled out a respectable polo shirt and he looked at me defiantly and said, "no. truck shirt." he then started pulling shirts from the drawer and throwing all non-truck shirts to the floor. thankfully for me, there was a lone truck shirt lurking at the back of the drawer, saving me from the otherwise inevitable toy-throwing, sister-hitting meltdown. this was the first time he has ever expressed any interest in the selection of his outfit. the look on his face in this pic is one we are all to familiar with these days. it's the "on the verge of a tantrum from hell" look. we see it several dozen times a day. i think his teeth are really bothering him because he does say, "hurt" from time to time. but in general we have reached the dark depths of the terrible twos. man they are terrible. quentin can be altogether unbearable. thankfully, he's still cute.

sitting pretty with the kitty

use your noodle

caroline tried minced up pasta for the first time a couple of days ago. we were all eating leftover noodles for lunch and she was drooling over them. she was a big fan, as she has been with every type of food she's tried. she really enjoys feeding herself finger food.

bish on ice!

last wednesday, we took quentin to disney on ice - finding nemo. between monster trucks on saturday and bish a few days later, i think this kid was in heaven. the nemo show was set to the actual dialogue of the movie and followed the script as close as a live production on ice really could. as soon as Q heard the first line, he whipped his head toward the ice and never stopped staring. he was transfixed. the only time he got squirmy was during the intermission, and he calmed right down when daddy came back with cotton candy.

righteous! righteous!

it's like wicked dark down there, you can't see a thing. how's it going, bob?

mine. mine. mine. mine.

don't bother me, mom! i'm watching bish!