Road Trip!

We are heading to Wisconsin and we are taking planes, trains and automobiles to get there. The Luckster and I will be hitting the road slightly before dawn tomorrow riding in our chariot, Black Beauty. We got the ol' girl all washed up, modified slightly to provide more room for the pooch, gassed up and ready to unleash all 200 horses of power on the open road. Lucky has never left the state and starting tomorrow he's going to have his tongue hanging out the window drooling across several state lines. We hope to traverse Florida (really hope to make it that far!), Georgia, slightly crossing into Alabama, Tennessee and stopping in Kentucky to do some camping at Mammoth Cave State Park. We made a stop at the vet this morning to get some tranquilizers for Lucky. (We don't want any more hanging incidents) and the bottle is big enough that's if he's willing to share I should get a great night sleep under the Kentucky stars. Day two should have us arriving in Lake Geneva around dinner time after passing through (6-7 hours) of straight Indiana driving and Illinois. In all we should knock off 7 states. I'm sure this 20 something hour drive will be a blissful man's best friend bonding experience. "You're such a good boy. Who's a good boy? Stop chewing on the seat. No, no don't pee in there! Oh, man!?!?!" I am hoping to provide updates or at least provide a good one after arriving.

Carrie and Quentin are taking the 21st century approach and getting on a big metal apparatus that apparently flies through the air and only takes hours to get there. In fairness she's giving me a full 24 hour head start. We should rendezvous around the same time in the great cheese state of Wisconsin. Quentin will get to see his great grandparents along with his grandparents and cousins for a few days before loading up the car again and heading to western Wisconsin to do some boating on the mighty Mississippi. This will be our first 4th of July in Wisconsin so we are looking forward to the less muggy weather and hopefully a good fireworks display.

This past weekend I solidified a new career option. If things don't work out in the fundraising industry I am clearly on my way to being a plumber. Our toilet broke this weekend and fortunately for us this was the third and final toilet to have a problem so I had some experience working on the other two. Our three year anniversary of living in this house will happen over the 4th of July. Within that time we have fixed all three toilets, the upstairs shower, which was leaking through the ceiling into our kitchen, and the kitchen sink. This only leaves the downstairs tub and the two faucets in the bathroom, which I'm confident will spring a leak while off on vacation. Outside of that and Q consistently thinking 3am is a good time to start the day we had a fairly quiet weekend. We got the supplies for our trip, did some shopping, snuck in a golf lesson (still shanking it right), bought some toys, went stroller shopping for a travel stroller for I think what amounts to the 16th time (Is it really necessary to price a travel stroller north of $140)?, and started packing for the trip including getting in a sleeping bag and harassing the dog to make sure he could handle me sleeping next to him on the floor. I leave you with a picture of Q cheesing it up for the camera. Look at those teeth!

Push Up Contest

I went out and bought the new iphone 3GS turbo excalibur light sabre version, which is pretty sweet. It's more like a toy than a phone. The video above was shot on the phone, which I thought was pretty good. Believe it or not you can actually edit (cut, paste, etc.) video on the phone and then upload it to the net, email, text all using the phone. It really is a toy.

He is working on his army crawl I think. He gets up on his belly and moves his arms and legs in a swimming motion. I assume at some point he'll learn how to get traction and actually move but right now it looks like he is doing exhausting push ups. He pushes himself up and then hangs his head down like he's dying so I was on the floor last night with him and thought I would catch some of it on video and post it out here. It's pretty funny to watch him. He could be the next Jane Fonda in work out videos if the NFL thing doesn't work out.

He's also getting a mouth full of teeth. He has four in a row coming in on the top so he won't look like a bunny. They are coming in at equal speed so in the next couple of weeks he should have six full teeth. With the new teeth I thought we should introduce to him some decent food. I gave him a pretzel rod the other day and he seemed to enjoy it. The wife didn't think that was such a good idea but would you want to eat mushed up peas every day? I had to spice it up for him. He would just suck the salt off and then ditch the pretzel but it was hilarious watching him man handle this twelve inch pretzel trying to jam it into his mouth. He wasn't sure if it was a new teething ring or some sort of non-mushy food item. In the end I think he enjoyed the salty treat. I don't think babies really get enough salt in their diet or junk food so I am trying revolutionize the way we see the food pyramid for babies. Pretzels really should be somewhere near the top. It is a grain after all. Enjoy the video!

Father's Day

This is the longest streak of not having a post since we started this blog. We had a crazy couple of weeks with me being up north with my dad and having my mom, sister and kids at our house. I wanted to wish everyone a belated Father's day! I spent the morning having breakfast in Lake Geneva with my dad and then flying to Tampa to see GQ for our first father's day. I don't think I'll be lucky enough to do both very often so it was nice to be able to fit it in. Q learned a new trick while I was off catching fish....drum roll please...he can now clap his hands along with sitting up unassisted. They grow up so fast (tear being shed). So he sits up and knows how to play patty cake, which is pretty funny. He is getting stronger and has a good vice grip when he grabs on to you pinching your skin. Maybe that's a sign I need to tone up. The ladies at daycare complain he's grabbing them when they are changing him and bruising their arms. That's my lil' Q bruiser. Football player all the way. With Favre going to the Vikings (excuse me while I upchuck my lunch) the Pack needs a bruiser to put him down when they play this fall.

Up north my dad, brother and I caught a ton of fish mostly walleye with a sprinkling of catfish, sheepshead and an assortment of strange fish such as the elusive sucker fish. We caught about 200 fish in the first two days and then went hunting for some muskie the third day with no luck so it was a bit of bust but we took home a good 30+ pounds of walleye filets so if anyone wants some fish stop by my parent's house as they have an abundance for two people. In the mean time my mom, sister and kids in tow visited Disney World in record temperatures (100 degrees). Orlando is inland and gets a good 10 degrees hotter than Tampa, but way too hot for June just the same. They came to our house on Sunday and stayed for a couple of days playing the wii (we got wiifit!) and going to the beach. It was nice to see everyone but as we were all on a 10 day travel trip everyone was pretty exhausted by the time they took off yesterday.

I'll get back to posting daily. I leave you with a video of the Qster playing peek-a-boo.

The Weekend

Our insomniac driven son is at it again and has managed to string together 8 consecutive sleepless nights. Just when you thought you could see light at the end of the tunnel your infant drags you back to square one. We're not sure what the deal is but we are sure that we are sick of not getting any sleep. A night here or there is fine but when you start stringing these sleepless nights together they really start to take their toll. It's not just waking up. It's middle of the early morning hours of screaming for 1-3 hours split up so you get to go through that several times before you start your day. So we did the only thing we could do - we got a babysitter for Friday night so we could have some peace and quiet. Rachel came over to do the honors and was met with an hour and half of all Quentin could bring screaming his heart out. About two minutes before we walked in he fell a sleep. That's exactly what we needed and probably exactly what she didn't. We appreciate her taking one for the team. American Express sent us a meal ticket at Capital Grille so we indulged including a $154 free bottle of wine with our dinner. We were floored. For the record we couldn't tell the difference between that and the $10 wine we occasionally buy for home, but we'll take it for bragging rights. We had a very nice adult meal out, which was the first since Quentin was born. Rachel stayed for a while since Quentin was sleeping and we got a chance to catch up and play adults for a whole evening. We got to bed late and we got penalized by Quentin waking up at 4:30 am. That hurts.

Saturday we were exhausted from getting up so early and going to bed so late. We now know for sure that the early bird doesn't catch the worm nor do they catch any sleep. It turns out that's nothing more than an urban legend. I cashed in my first golf lesson and took off early in the morning. It turns out everything I am doing is wrong. Throughout an hour long lesson I hit three balls. That's all it took for my teacher to tell me I don't stand right or hold the club right and it took the whole hour to teach me how to stand and hold the club. I believe I can now hit the ball straight about 33% of the time, which is actually about the same as before but with a little more practice I think I can improve. It was an interesting experience.

I hustled home and Carrie ran out the door to cash her spa day in, where she received a much needed massage and pedicure. Quentin took a nap with me on the couch without crying himself to sleep. It's so odd how he's a bundle of joy during the day and sleeps easy but nothing short of an angry grizzly bear at night fighting every moment of trying to find dreamland. The rest of the day was spent lounging. Sunday, we weren't so lucky.

We of course had another long night with junior waking up repeatedly but still manage to drag our zombie bodies to church. We returned home craving coffee only to tun the kitchen faucet on and have it spray everywhere, as in we sprung a leak. That's perfect. SCREAM! (Enter choice words here, but remember we just did due diligence returning from church). It's amazing what you find yourself doing as a home owner. So I magically turned myself into Mr. Plumber, pulled my pants down a little to get into character and off to Home Depot I went. I took pictures on my phone so I could explain my problem and get a quick education only to be met with some resistance from the store personnel that informed me I didn't provide them with enough information. I was instructed to go back home and take apart the apparatus to begin the investigation. This is not a good sign. I miraculously took apart the sink with only minor flood damage and grabbed all the pieces I believed I needed to replace and this time went to Lowes. It turns out they were even less helpful than Home Depot. That actually seems to be a running theme with those two stores. I bought way more parts than I needed and spent another two hours trying to put it back together. When I was finished the water wouldn't turn off, but it wasn't leaking any more. Success! Sort of. I toiled for another solid 45 minutes and finally figured it out. By 7 pm I received my plumber licence. I know the kitchen sink inside and out. I can help anyone with any sink. You could say I gave it my all; or I threw the kitchen sink at it. Ya, that's about how fun the day was.

I'm taking off tomorrow for 7 whole days and it will be the longest trip away from Quentin since he was born. I really hope he learns how to sleep or Carrie is going to end up in an asylum by my return. It's a really long post, but I am going on a work trip and then my father/son fishing trip so I probably won't post for a while so spread this one out over a couple of days.

I like peas...

...but I don't like eating them. We have begun the great introduction of vegetables and like people of all ages some will be great and others will not make the cud. To borrow an unconfirmed fact from my wife, which she says read, "Children need to try something as many as 21 times before they can make a decision on whether or not they like it." Well, we gave peas a shot a few times and he enjoys using it for painting his face like the Incredible Hulk but not so much for eating. He did get down a little, of which he managed to upchuck a short time later. So he says no to peas but seems to enjoy squash, which smells horribly wrong so dad doesn't like squash night. Quentin gets it all over the place so everything reeks of squash, which is down right nasty. He is digging the sweet potato and took a shot at carrots yesterday. To date that's all we've introduced. He needs to take a couple of turns in a row at each one to make sure he doesn't have an allergic reaction. We don't want him breaking out in hives. If he was found to be allergic to squash we would be okay with that. We're biased towards the squash.

Dinner has turned into quite the messy affair. Note the pictures. One, the aforementioned pea dinner and the other I believe is an evening with Mr. Stinky Squash. He gets it into his ever growing surfer locks and uses both hands to help shovel the spoon into the caverns of his mouth. You only have a split second to beat his hands to his mouth so you have to be quick. With his hands full of the vegetable goo and flailing about wildly there is a good chance you too will need a bath to get the sweet stench of the squash off you before you hit the sack. I think next week we are going to graduate into fruits so one can only assume things are going to get a lot sloppier around here.

Did I mention Carrie is making all of Quentin's food with the exception of carrots, which I guess have some sort of carcinogen in them, making them dangerous to make at home? Who knew? So the carrots are being bought but the rest are in various baggies frozen in time in our freezer. It makes for a crowded freezer, but added some much needed color to our rather bland inside looking freezer. Enjoy the food fight pictures.

We're Going Streaking!!

My kid loves being naked. If he's balling and you can't figure it out, strip him down. He'll go from tears to giggles. The kid just loves being naked. We took him to the doctor yesterday and the first thing they ask you to do is strip him down. Be careful for what you wish for lady because this kid may never put that diaper back on. He had his 6 month check up and we have his latest measurements. He weighed in at a paltry 18 pounds 8 ounces. (That's buck neked). He's shrinking. That only got him to the 72nd percentile. The doctor thinks it was because he had just hit a growth spurt, because ready for this? His height was off the chart. That's right he's in the 134th percentile. Okay I made that up, but he was literally off the chart so I don't know if that's 99th or 100th or what but he's taller than you were when you were six months old. We celebrated by getting a basketball hoop. He was dunking already yesterday. We got him some Jordan's and are currently in discussions with Nike to get him his own shoe. If the NBA hadn't put that stupid rule in about being 19 he could be there by next year making us some moolah. That's okay I hear a senator from out east is lobbying the commissioner about the legality of that age restriction. Your government at work! His height was 28 inches and 1/4. His melon was of a "good size." Whatever that means. I guess not too egg headish but big enough to know there's some smarts in there. We've been watching Jeopardy together to fill his head with useless trivia facts that make you look smart in front of others. It's all a facade folks.

Yesterday was a marathon post so I'll leave today's short and sweet. He got four shots and one oral shot for a total of 5. He took it like a champ but had a small fever this morning so he's been downing the Tylenol. He'll be fine. He doesn't have to go back until he is 9 months old. They did confirm he has 5 teeth as well. He is going to being crawling any day now. He's moving and gets up on his knees and crawls in place. Once he gets the traction he and Lucky can begin racing across the living room.

I leave you with a picture of him streaking through the house. He did a loop from our bedroom through the living room into the kitchen to goose mom and back again. Pretty funny.

Better Days

To make up for the, "Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays!" (shout out to Office Space) we had a fantastic or I should say I had a fantastic Tuesday. I did attend work in the AM, but that's not the fun part. Carrie was gracious enough to work the afternoon to make enough money for daycare so I could take the afternoon off. I decided I would get some sun and work on my always need to improve golf game and got a round of 18 in with a round of beers on the side. I ended up playing fast enough that I had ample time left over so I decided to play another 9. So yes, I got a whopping 27 holes of golf in, which was more than I had played in the previous two years combined, but it was fun and I scored a par on the last hole. Exciting I know. The last nine holes I ended up finding 5 balls on my way through the course so for a change I left the course with more balls than I started with, which is always a plus.

I made it back home and collected Carrie and Q so we could bring Quentin to his first Rays game (on the outside). This was our first one as a family since we attended pivotal game 7 of the ALCS and watched the Rays win their first ever pennant and World Series berth. The Qster was in the womb, but that counts! Carrie bought us some nice front row seats in the second tier, which is the club section and decidedly less crowded complete with couches and no lines for bathrooms, concessions and the like. That made things a lot easier with Quentin in tow. You should've seen the people's faces we were sitting next to when we brought our 7 suitcases and tried to wedge our gear and selves into those two seats. (Diaper bag, baby Bjorn carrier, bag of peanuts, cracker jacks and sun flower seeds, beer, burgers and waters). Quentin quickly won them over with his award winning smile and Spiegelhoff charm. The ladies were smitten. "We're in!"

We love the Rays. Every time we go to a game we walk out with more loot than we came with. When they stank Carrie and I used to park about 50 yards from the door (front row) and be literally the only ones in the parking lot tailgating. For this, Rays personnel would drive over in a golf cart and give us free hats for being "the best fans there." We'll take it. We once sat in the upper deck next to a woman whose husband was on the board of directors and she gave us several vouchers for free tickets. This time the "Rays' Girls" saw Quentin coming and immediately give him some beads complete with the verbal choking warning before we even got in line for will call to grab our tickets. It's bingo night on Tuesdays, which I am hopelessly addicted to and I don't think I've ever even played bingo before this. So we walk in to gather our bingo cards and Carrie signs up to be a DD. During the 7th inning they draw a name and give away a jersey. Well, of course Q was putting on the charm and so that guy gives Carrie a Rays hat because Quentin and Dad had one so mom needed to match. So here we have just walked in and are up some beads and a baseball cap. (That's the 5th free Rays hat they have given to us at games).

I love the bingo game. They have the baseball scores on the card. For example if there is a 6-4-3 double play that may be a square you can cross of. So me being me, I grab about 30 bingo cards. I'm here to win. Well, everyone sitting around me, including the wifey, is having an amusing laugh at my expense as I try to keep up scoring my 30 cards. That was right up until the point where, BINGO! I won baby. That's right. There may have only been 13,524 fans there on Tuesday night but this one was a winner. So I take my card down to collect what must be a prize worth no less than several thousand dollars and what do I win? The choice between a T-shirt and a cowbell. *Quick history lesson* See the owner of the Rays grew up in Brooklyn and watched the Dodgers. Fans were more reserved than say a person like me complete with megaphone going to games harassing the opposing players so they brought cowbells to make noise and cheer their teams on. He has brought that to Tampa and people bring cowbells and they have cheers "MORE COWBELL!" and the like throughout the game. I very much wanted to go to cowbell give away day earlier this year but couldn't work it into my travel schedule so I dominated bingo and long story short; too late! I won a free cowbell on my birthday. I know after that Monday it's almost too much to believe. Oh, and the Rays hit a two run homer in the 8th to break a tie and win the game. A quick recount; tragically terribly hopeless Monday turns into 27 holes of dominating par golf complete with adult refreshment followed by hot girls hitting on my son, followed by old man hitting on my hot wife ending with dominating bingo performance by one year older middle aged man with resounding late inning heroics by local baseball team. We got home, enjoyed a Captain and hit the sack. 33 in the books folks!

Thanks for all the great wishes, cards and prayers that clearly made Tuesday better than Monday. Here is a pic of Dad and Q gearing up for game day and one of Mom and the shorty at the game.

Monday Morning Part Two

Yesterday Lucky turned one and half and it was my actual birthday. But before we go into the celebrations I wanted to tack on a few things to Monday's horrible day including Lucky attempting suicide before I put that post to bed. After the flat tire we needed to buy a new tire so we zipped down to the tire shop conveniently located down the street. Since it was such a short drive I thought we would take Lucky because Carrie would just turn around and come home with him. Since we've had Quentin Carrie has not been driving the dog around because she has Q and they can't be in the car at the same time. (See "The Park" post). Like all dogs the Luckster likes to stick his head out the window so we roll them down and lock the windows. Well, Carrie isn't used to going through the routine so she rolled down the back windows about half way but didn't lock them. Within about a block and half Lucky has his head out the window and had his two front paws perched on the armrest attached to the door. (Cue scary music). He gets his paw locked onto the automatic window mechanism and begins to roll the window up on his neck. As the window goes higher panic begins to mount. He's directly behind me so I can't really see what is happening. Again, one block from our house. This ride has been exactly 31 seconds long at this point. I can tell he's freaking because he has begun thrashing about trying to get his head out, but its too late. His collar comes flying off, window still going up. It now is only open about two inches and the dog, all 100 pounds of him, is in straight freak out panic mode with his head jammed sideways out the window. I'm screaming at Carrie, because she has the controls. The dog begins peeing all over in his panic. Did I mention we are in a car and it's 88 degrees outside? Warm pee does not smell good. Carrie pulls the car over, gets the window down and Lucky survives his first suicide attempt. Let's say he was, ahem, lucky. What a day. We now have to turn around and try to get the pee cleaned up. (He desperately needs a bath now)! We won't tell you what car it was so when you come to visit and find yourself in the backseat you won't be turned off. Don't worry, we'll purchase some air freshener. We get it cleaned up, decide to take the dog anyway, get the new tire and the car fixed.

But wait there's more. To end the day Carrie drove all the way to daycare and arrived realizing she didn't have the car seat. That's just great! With the unexpected switching of cars the car seat never made the transition back to the baby-mobile. It's a 45 minute round trip experience in rush hour traffic so to take it once for giggles is less than ideal. I am in the middle of giving the dog his aforementioned bath but I decide I'll help out and take the trip the second time. There was a horrific accident that slowed traffic on the way home and then conveniently some genius runs out of gas about 50 yards from the gas station blocking the two turn lanes (yes he was sideways) at the 2:39 stop light. As in that's how long you wait at the red before it turns green. It took 3 turns of the light (that's 7:57 of your life that you're not getting back) before some good samaritans helped push the genius' car into the gas station. I forgot to mention Quentin was giving his best impression of screaming bloody murder in the back seat. It was a forgettable day to say the least. In the end we decided that was enough bad luck for the entire week and are now looking forward to enjoyable rest of the week.

Here is a picture that a work colleague took of Quentin. The credit for the pic goes out to Captain H.

It's a Monday

And that means that Quentin didn't sleep last night. I am starting to think he gets daycare anxiety and doesn't sleep well on nights leading up to daycare. He hasn't slept through one night before starting the daycare week. Every Sunday he has a tumultuous night and last night was no different as he was up from 3-5:15am. I seriously think he must know it's coming. Last week he slept well on Sunday but not on Monday, because of the holiday he didn't need to be at daycare until Tuesday. Coincidence? This is roughly six weeks in a row that he hasn't slept through the night the day before heading to daycare.

On top of that we awoke to a flat this morning so we got to change a tire as well. (Coincidentally it was the same tire that I blew a tire (what? another blowout?!?) on I-75 picking my brother up at the airport in Tampa when I lived in Gainesville on the 4th of July with the car packed full of our possessions as we were moving to Tampa, which made that painfully more difficult to change unloading all the gear on the side of the road). It looked like we were moving in to the swamp adjacent to the freeway. Anyway, Carrie drove last on Saturday with Quentin to attend her cousin's graduation party in Sarasota. The drive is about an hour each way so we're lucky she made it home without any issues. It took some serious effort to get the lug nuts off and with a baby in the car I think she would've been stranded on I-75. I went deep sea fishing about 40 miles off shore (2 hour boat ride each way) and didn't even have cell coverage so I wouldn't even have known. It all worked out and now I need to buy yet another tire for black beauty. BB sure goes through shoes fast. Quentin isn't even spending money like this!

Over the weekend Quentin turned six months old and for his trouble he'll get his third round of immunizations on Thursday. He also had his first round of baby food this weekend. Carrie decided that she was going to make her own baby food and who am I to argue. So through hours of the delightful chainsaw like buzz of the blender and food processor we now have ice cube trays not full of ice but of various ground to mush vegetables. Yummy! Carrie decided the first go around would involve some delicious squash. She went out and bought a three pound squash so he better like it, because no thanks over here on the squash. He made some faces, but for the most part took it down. We have to stay on the same vegetable for a week to see if he has any kind of allergic reaction. For example let's say maybe it keeps him up from 3-5 AM after eating. Should we consider that an adverse reaction? If he doesn't I certainly am having an adverse reaction to introducing the squash. We'll get in the ring for another bout with the squash tonight and see how it goes.

Tomorrow we are taking Q and the family to a Rays game. It will be his first big league game. He's going to be tall so I hope he falls in love with pitching. After all that's where the money is and they only work once every 5-6 days. Cha-ching. (We didn't win the lottery so this our well thought out plan B). It should bring some nice photo ops. Here is a happy Q posing in his crib.