the sweetest thing ever

i picked quentin up from day care yesterday. while i was trying to wrestle him into his coat, one the of the other moms got there to pick her baby, who is a couple of weeks younger than caroline. Q saw the other mom putting baby charlie into his car seat and starting flipping out. he started crying, "no! no! sister! sister! no! no!" caroline was safely in her seat behind me, but Q didn't see her, so i think he thought the other mom was trying to take his sister home. he immediately calmed down once i showed him where his baby sister was. so sweet. and much different than the hitting phase we went through!

tummy time

for some reason, caroline prefers lounging on a blanket on the floor to any baby-occupying device. and even the blanket is only good for a few minutes, then it is time to be held some more! but hey, she's cute. -

- hey! watch me roll! -

- see! -

- yeah, i did it. -

snippets

some cute moments from the past few weeks: - quentin put his two monster trucks side by side on the coffee table and said, "race!" and then pushed them both to make them race across the table. -

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- while watching a nascar race with grandma, quentin kept exclaiming, "wheel! wheel! wheel!" just like he does when we're out driving, except that he must have said it like 30 times in a row because there were so many cars. -

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- quentin is very perplexed by autumn. he keeps pointing to the naked trees, saying, "all gone!" -

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- he continues to be obsessed with jumping. now he will stand on the couch, wanting to jump off. but he knows he will fall and hurt himself if he makes the jump himself, so he asks, "i jump?" and holds out his arm until you grab his hand so he can make the jump safely. -

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- quentin also "jumps" up the stairs to his room, on all fours, saying, "ribbit" with each hop.

english-to-quentin, quentin-to-english dictionary

quentin's verbal skills are really coming along, though we probably only understand half of what he says (and outsiders can probably discern only 25% or so.) he loves to talk and is very proud at himself when he has learned a new word. he also gets very frustrated when he repeats the same word or sentence over and over but we can't tell what he's saying. i've got to give him credit, though. he just keeps trying and eventually we understand what he is saying and then we can help him get closer to the actual word. - here are a few of our favorite of Q's recent (mis) pronunciations: - aa dun = upside down aat = hat ahhhpool = apple anana = banana boo = bird bopp = poop buddy = blueberry buttin - pine cone dock = sock dupp = jump kyeck = cake melmo = elmo mullk = milk poompoon = pumpkin wiff = leaf - he also loves to play with his toy kitchen and our shelf full of cook books, announcing, "i cooking!"

truly amazing!

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we now have 4 of 4 major kitchen appliances installed and functional!!!!

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the stove took 4 attempts over the past week, but after exchanging the original one for one an inch and a half shorter, it's in with not a millimeter to spare. we also still have the old fridge chillaxing in our dining room until we get the chance to haul it to the cellar, but at least we can use our kitchen again!!! next project... painting the cabinets and probably the faux brick back splash.

pack animals

tonight i stepped out of the room to fill Q's sippy cup with milk. i came back in to find this: - - quentin just cuddled right up to caroline who was enjoying some rolling time on the floor. so cute.

2 out of 3 ain't bad

best buy's installers came today to do the stove, microwave, and dishwasher. you may remember that i was concerned if these would actually fit. impressively, the dishwasher is in with no problems. it was very tight, but fortunately our 50 year old counter tops have a little bit of give in them and they could lift them up enough to shove the dishwasher in. while doing the dishwasher, the guy actually noticed that the drain pipe was rusted through and there was a massive dime-sized hole in it. he fixed that for us, no charge! they installed the microwave with no problems. before they did, they measured the microwave and said that this is the one of smallest one microwaves out there, so if the stove didn't fit it would be easier to find a shorter stove than find a smaller microwave. surprise, surprise. the stove is about 1/8" too tall. the photo above shows that the stove can't be pushed all the way back because it hits the bottom part of the microwave. grrrr. if it didn't have a switch to turn on the oven light on the top of the back splash, it would probably fit. fortunately (at least so far, we'll see how this actually plays out) best buy makes it pretty easy to exchange appliances so we picked out a range that is 1.5 inches shorter, though ~$50 more expensive. we're just waiting for them to call us with a delivery date to bring the new one here and take this current one away.

lounging around, watching nemo

this is the face of a boy

who does not feel well

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so pathetic. but he seemed much better after a good nap!

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) -