Feeling better

There are some rumors going around that people's water heaters are springing leaks left and right. After posting the story about our dependless water heater we've heard of two more failures in recent days. If I have a water heater in my house I am running to the closet and I am definitely doing an inspection to be safe. We heard some virgin carpet had to be sacrificed in at least one instance. If I would've known about all these failures we could've gotten a bulk water heater deal. Hind sight is always 20/20.

Quentin is feeling better, but he's teething and was soooo crabby the last few days. He was schizophrenic the entire weekend. For 60 seconds he would be jovial having a blast and then without rhyme or reason would start wailing. It was tough to take as this two minute drill happened all weekend long. He's getting some more bottom teeth, which will pull his count up to eight. It seems like he has a lot teeth in comparison to his peers, but the doctor keeps telling us that teething is totally subjective and he could be one year old and not have any teeth. It doesn't mean anything other than he can chew (and bite) a lot better than his playmates.

Carrie went out and bought him a little pool this weekend to celebrate his 9 month birthday (they grow up so fast! {wipe single tear}) so he went swimming for the first time. He essentially treated the pool the same way he treats the dog bowl- a lot of splashing and a lot of water on the floor/porch. He seemed to enjoy it and it was fun to watch him splash around. We took some video but he kept spinning around so I had a tough time shooting the front of him but you can see what I shot. Every time we bust out the video camera the dog gets so jealous and immediately pops up and does his best to get some camera time. He's so vain. If the camera is bumping around that's because Lucky's big ol' melon is bumping my hand trying to get some attention and me using one hand to push him out of the shot. What a diva!

In other pet news it looks like Mr. Oscar was just fasting. I thought he was on his deathbed as he had stopped swimming and was just "resting" on the bottom of the tank. He didn't eat any food for an entire week but today came back to life and ferociously chowed down some breakfast. I was getting pretty sad about the losing my prized fish. He's big enough to stuff and put in my office but I wasn't ready to say goodbye yet. I'm excited he's back. Travel starts back up this week....can't wait! (How come no one has invented sarcasm font yet)?

It's gettin' hot in herrrre

I got up at about 11:30 pm last night with Quentin and picked up him out of his crib and he was roasting. Boiling to the touch. He's shooting up like a weed and has grown out of his summer PJ's and we haven't had a chance to buy him new ones yet so he was in long sleeve and pant PJ's contributing. He was really hot though so I figured he was running a temp. He was pretty restless for the rest of the night but wasn't especially crabby. He was just doing a lot of flipping and flopping in bed. Kind of like the Republican party trying to figure out how to defeat this health care bill. This morning he was still warm to the touch so we took his temperature and he was posting a 102 degree fever, his first one. No school for Q! So we have our first work day with him at home taking turns handing him off as we get through our days. Hopefully he doesn't get any worse and will feel better by tomorrow.

I went up to my office this morning early to check my schedule and get started so we could see if one of us needed to take the day off or if we could swing this. I came down an hour or so later to brew up some coffee. Q is crawling on the floor and near the kitchen. Q has a new toy that counts, says the ABC's, plays music and the like. So I am standing within four feet of Q and I hear the trombone playing on this interactive toy. I'm thinking how did he do that? He's a good 20 feet away from that thing. What's going on? Then it goes off again. What's the deal here? I look over behind the ottoman and Lucky is playing with it using his nose. And he is making it work on purpose. This is a Leapfrog toy (you know make your kid smarter toy) and these designers must be really good at their jobs, because my dog can now count to ten - in Spanish! Incredible! I wish I had a video camera handy because I have never seen anything like it. He did it a good 4 or 5 times before we left the room to get the camera, which distracted him and he followed ending our little experiment. I'm not sure if our child is a little behind or if we simply have dog genius on our hands. Either way someone is going to college in this house on academic scholarship.

Speaking of pets, my fish, Mr. Oscar weighing in at a good 2-3 pounds is on a hunger strike. I don't know what to do but this is his fourth consecutive day of not eating. I wonder if he's going to kick the bucket and give us fresh fish for this Friday's fish fry? I hope he pulls through and I'm not really sure what the deal is but I don't think he'll last too much longer if he doesn't eat something. Any advice? Can you insert a feeding tube into your fish? We've got a lot going on down here at the moment.

Here is a pic of Q sitting front row at the Rays' game. Doesn't he look comfortable? He had his lunch catered in, which is why he's sporting the smock. It's feeding time at the Rays!

Church

As Q continues to get older he gets a little more fidgety every day and likes to be held a little less. Now that he can run around he is especially squirmy so church and holding him on your lap for an entire hour is simply too much to bear. He is bored out of his mind. We bring him toys, but none of them make noise (books mostly) so that only interests him for a short time. This past Sunday he turned to other things to entertain himself with, like the tween's pony tail sitting directly in front of him. He was sitting on my lap jumping up and down and I'm trying to pay attention when out of no where he makes a lunge for the girl's pony tail. I snagged him just a few centimeters short of "pony tails are not for pulling" disaster. The people sitting in the pew behind us gasped as they thought he was going to get it. They later told us what a great baby he is and how they've never seen such a young child hold on for so long. They thought my reaction time was pretty solid as well. If only they knew about the dog bowls. He's never gone for a pony tail before, but then we don't spend a lot of time sitting behind pony tails in grasping range either. Our little Qster is not a quitter either. He made several more attempts only ending in frustration but he gets an A for effort. I can only imagine the girl's face if he would've been successful. Q is not the pull and let go type. He's got that kung fu grip that means this girl is going to have her head yanked back until you can pry his fingers off the prize. Penance possibly? Maybe this girl had a naughty week and God was doing what God does. We'll never know.

He didn't stop there either. He tried out his pitching arm. And let me tell you that kid can wind up and just chuck it. We were sitting on the far end of the pew on the left side of the church. After the pony tail strike out he was working on his pacifier and he pulled that baby out and let er' rip. He hit the lady at the far end of the pew in mid-sermon. It got a quite a look of hilarity from the people around us. It really sent that message of do unto others...home. The best part was he used his left arm and he's got a cannon. Who knew church would be holding this year's little league try outs? He does work in mysterious ways. We may have the next major league south paw on our hands. I'm going to have to get that arm on You tube. The lady that got almost knocked out was very gracious and delivered it back. We then started stuffing his face with cheerios for distraction purposes. That kid loves a handful of cheerios and another and another and another. I swear he's going to turn into a giant cheerio. He can polish off an entire box of cheerios in a week. Okay slight exaggeration but he can pound the cheerios. If there was a cheerio toddler eating contest we would enter him and we would dominate the competition. My kid can slam cheerios.

Here is a picture of him enjoying being on top of my shoulders. He loves riding around on the top of your shoulders....and pulling your hair while up there.

Science Fair

Our dusty old fixer upper of a house let out another groan yesterday as our water heater had a wazzering incident. Did we forget to wrap that thing in depends? I entered the garage to get the lawn mower to cut the grass when I remember that we didn't have a swimming pool located in our garage. If we were so fortunate we definitely agreed that we would put the pool in the back yard. Hmm, what could it be? My first thought was we really have a problem with our roof but then I realized we were in the middle of a drought as witnessed by my sorry excuse for a lawn. I thought, well, a roof is probably very expensive so that was a relief. What else could it be? Then I realized we had a 40 gallon tank of water in the garage. Well, correction, it was a 40 gallon tank of water. Now, it's just a 40 gallon tank of air, grime and grit as the water, well, I was wading in the water. That nice warm spa water. One would think it would be relaxing to finish a hard day of work and have an instant spa installed in your garage, but it wasn't pleasant at all.

We played the $259 Million dollar Powerball lottery just that morning. I looked online and knew that there was one winner and the Powerball was 27, which we had on a ticket. Yes, today is the day I retire! Then reality...We weren't the Powerball winners, we were the water heater losers. It doesn't sound as glamorous but we did have some guys show up in a big truck, but they wanted a check instead of presenting one. That is the definition of buzz kill. And so we are now the proud owners of a brand spanking new water heater, which was immediately wrapped in depends in case this one doesn't know where the potty is either.

Since there was water all over the place and many things bathing in the water that ironically, don't like water there was some clean up that needed to take place. We realized we have some junk so that got tossed and in the process I came across a snake skin. Carrie, caught a snake trying to sneak into our garage coming home the other day. It may have been actually sneaking out. The entire snake skin was in there and since I had my tools out I had a tape measure handy. The skin was 29 inches long. I wonder what the odds are of that thing getting in your house? That doesn't seem like a very small snake and since it was shedding its skin that means it's getting bigger right? Cue creepy music now. Can that thing eat my boy? No, it wasn't that big, but we saved the skin for Q's first science fair. Kind of neat and kind of gross. I guess every water heater failure has a silver lining.

I would like to congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Sloppy on the birth of their first child, a girl named Jalina, which we nicknamed Sloperina to go with the family theme. This is their first child so they can kiss their sleep good bye for eternity. Congratulations!

The picture is of Q and Carrie at the Rays game last weekend.

Crawling

Alright here is the video, which is a little grainy and slightly outdated. He's actually quite a bit faster than this today, but it gives you an idea of how he his technique looks gimpy. I shot a great video this weekend but had the camera tilted and as soon as I finished taping it I realized I had the camera on an angle and you can't change the view of the picture so unless everyone wanted to tilt their head I couldn't upload it and of course Q didn't want to replicate it. He is all over the place and can cover a lot of ground in a hurry. One would think he would be a lot more tired and sleep sounder, but he's still struggling in that department.

The kid is a magnet for the dog bowls. This morning he was running around the master bedroom bathroom, busted out the door, through the bedroom, out into the living room where he traversed a good 20 feet, around the corner and straight into the kitchen to find the dog bowls at 7:30 this morning. It's all this kid thinks about! He must of woke up and been like I can't wait to get into that swimming pool! We need to invest in a baby gate, but for the moment we have put one of the stools for the breakfast bar down on the floor between the dining room and kitchen and he hasn't attempted to break in yet so that's the best solution to date.

We also set up the new furniture and of course Q was immediately determined to bust into the new cabinets for our TV components. He has to get really close to the cabinet doors to be able to pull them open but then when he does he's too close for the door to swing open. When he pulls them open his balance is off because the door swings so wide so he takes a backwards header ending in tough guy tears. Then he recomposes himself and goes right back for the cabinets. So far the cabinets are winning though. Parents 1-child-0!

This past weekend we took a trip to Tropicana Field and watched the Rays beat the Jays in exciting fashion hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the 8th breaking a 1-1 tie. It was fun to watch and Quentin was a big hit with the fans. Sundays are family days so you can play catch on the field with your kid an hour before the game and after it ends run the bases. He's not quite there yet, but soon we'll be out there. We of course, got yet another free Rays hat as kids 14 and under (have that base easily covered) received a Rays' visor so Q got one of those. He has quite a bit of room before filling that one out, though. We had a nice time and Q made it through the four hour game even taking a nap in the stands for about 45 minutes at one point. He had a whole section of fans admiring his smile. Cow bells are big and he had one ringing it constantly getting all kinds of compliments on his technique. Enjoy the video!

Ghetto Swimming Pool

Our child crawls like Captain Gimpy and I don't think he's going to perfect his style. He drags one leg like it's paralyzed and pulls himself with his hands. It's not efficient but it doesn't appear to be slowing him down at all. Yesterday we found him in the kitchen sitting in Lucky's food bowl splashing around his water bowl. Check out the video. He was enjoying his personal day at the spa.

He is also learning how to share with his older brother. He is in direct competition with Lucky for Lucky's toys. He has zero interest in the toys we buy him. We went to great lengths to make sure Lucky understood that Q's toys were his and not Lucky's. We have had 99% success. We didn't think Quinny would be quite so enamored with Lucky's toys. The Luckster has this purple rubber bone and Quentin is at tantrum throwing strength when the dog has it and he doesn't. Q will crawl all over the house chasing it down. The dog is pretty good about giving it up when Quentin gets really crabby but I don't think we really want the dog sharing his well drooled on toys with Quinny.

Due to Quentin's new mobility we had to buy some new furniture. Out with the "dangerous" coffee table with its sharp edges and head splitting corners and in comes Mr. Storage Ottoman of similar size. Lucky's real estate has shrunk because he can't get under the table (ottoman) any more but the ottoman has room for all of Q's current level of toys and some extra space for blankets and such. This past weekend Quentin pulled the DVD player off the open entertainment center so we bought a new one (entertainment center, not DVD player) with cabinet doors that we can lock but are glass so the remotes still work. We can't have Q destroying the Direct TV receiver during football season! That would classify as a true emergency! The NFL ticket might be the most valuable thing in this house outside of the humans and of course our beloved pooch. Tomorrow the outlets get covered as Quinny took a shot at sticking his fingers in the outlet directly above Lucky's bowls after playing in his water bowl. Is that bad? Again, we are really after that parent of the year award and if your kid electrocutes himself I think that automatically voids you of winning. We don't want him to look like Yahoo Serious either. After all we did just cut those locks! We also need to lock down the rest of the cabinets in the kitchen. I don't know what's next, we just take things day by day.

Tomorrow I will add some video of Captain Gimpy crawling with his peg leg. I couldn't resist the water bowl video today.

Take a Little Off the Top

We finally decided that maybe, just maybe Junior's hair might be a little too long. It has never seemed to bother him but was constantly in his eyes. Carrie has been wanting to cut it for quite some time so I lamented this weekend and we took him to the barber shop - which consisted of hoisting him into his highchair, putting a smock on him, rummaging through the house looking for a comb. (Honestly, what kind of home doesn't own a single comb)? Ans. Our home! It'll be fine, we can just wing it. Next was choosing the right kind of scissors. The kind we cut paper with? No, um let's try the ones we use to wrap gifts with. Nope. Got it! Let's use the ones we have in the kitchen. Our kitchen shears are now our haircutting shears. All we need now is a little cooperation from Quentin. Okay, he's in a good mood jabbering on the carpet playing with his toys. It's a little like hunting big game in Africa. You see your prey enjoying their habitat. You, the outsider, begin stalking him, watching him carefully. Suddenly you see him laugh and in that instant, moment of weakness, "POUNCE!" Rip the prey from their safety of the savannah or in this case the carpet.

The wife looks at me and asks very politely, "You know how to cut hair right?" "Of course! I once cut my whole high school basketball team's hair." Big gulp. How bad can you really screw this up? Well, it turns out that cutting hair is a lot easier with someone who gets that being still counts in the "get a good haircut" department. Clearly, Quinny and I were not communicating properly. It turns out scissors are kind of dangerous too. I mean they do have not one but two pointy ends and they are rather close to your eyeballs. I was certain Q was going to come out of this with similar vision as to what he went in with. I did not anticipate taking some fingers off. (Ours, not his). I managed to cut Carrie pretty good. And after the deed was done she was inspecting and said I missed a section so I did what all good Wisco boys do and that was grab my ever close trusty swiss army knife, pulled out the scissor section and went to trim the microscopic three hairs I missed only to have him flinch and to take a healthy chunk of my own finger. Those things are sharp! This kid won't sit still...for the love! It was decided we would clean him up while he was sleeping. Ya, right. So, here are the before and after photos of his first haircut.

It's crazy. He's like a man now. We cut off the darker parts of his hair and now he looks super old. He didn't even get carded at the grocery store yesterday. You decide, but he's practically 18 already!

Mr. Blog may put my child up for adoption!?

I've finally finished my summer midwest tour and I am now home for the next couple of weeks so I can catch up with Quentin's crawling and whatever comes next. But first a little note on security. This week I was forwarded a link from a couple in the northeast that keep a similar blog about the goings on in their small children's lives. They were emailed by a stranger that said someone was using the image of their son to use as an adoption scam in London. "Adopt this little boy whose father died in a car crash and his mother can no longer afford to keep him. We only ask that he go to a christian home." Yikes. The ad was on Craigslist and they had great difficulty getting it down. They haven't succeeded to date even though they have complained to their local police department, FBI and Attorney General. "These criminals are hard to track down and we do have donuts to eat..." So, they locked down their blog requiring people to sign in. I suspect that would cut down on people's quick glances at our blog, but the Qster is pretty cute and I imagine people would shell out a considerable amount of money to adopt the little guy so maybe we'll have to move in that direction. We'll see.

While I was goofing around trying to find the security settings I noticed there was a spot for email addresses for people that would like to be notified when there is a new post. When I post a new picture or message an email will shoot out so you don't have to go through the time consuming process of opening up internet explorer, typing in the address and waiting for painful dial up to download the site only to find out it wasn't updated. Just kidding. There is room for only 10 addresses, so if anyone is interested please let me know and I will sign you up. I just need an email address.

Quentin has a pretty bad cold so his sleeping patterns have gotten worse, but in his defense he can't breathe so what are you going to do. He was literally waking up every 10-15 minutes last night so eventually after working the stairmaster for several hours we brought him to bed with us and enjoyed the kicking sensation that adding a third member to bed seems to always bring. Between the hacking, sniffling, kicking, pinching and occasional biting there were a few minutes of sleep that got snuck in there. We are very much looking forward to the weekend so we can catch up on our sleep and family time. Even the dog is dying for some attention.

The never ending revolving door at daycare has finally caught Quentins' attention and he's now crying when we drop him off. He doesn't like the lady that is there in the morning. Cause for concern? It makes me wonder if she's secretly torturing him when no one is watching. We'll have to pay closer attention. At any rate it makes it hard for Carrie to drop him off because he's balling as she walks out the door. Poor guy. He stopped napping in the morning too. Always keeping an eye on the evil teacher? Who knows, but he doesn't seem to get comfortable until the afternoon teacher comes in. When he gets to walking around a bit we'll have more options and I suspect we'll move him. We haven't been horrified, but it hasn't been all that great of a place either and it's a pretty good distance from the office.

Here is a shot of Quentin moving all over the floor. Doesn't it look like he is posing? He's totally doing the model thing. "Swim at me. Oh, ya, show the camera. Some attitude now. Perfect..."

Quinny had a short visit from his grandparents this weekend where they were able to witness him running around. He is making some real progress towards crawling. He's a little snake and monkey rolled into one unstoppable squirm-machine. He gets down on the floor in a sitting position and moves down to his belly, rolls over, back up to a sitting position, scoots forward, back into a sitting position and it starts all over again. Before along he's made it all the way across the floor. He traveled to the unstable bookshelf in our living room and started grabbing at the shelves so next weekend is going to be the end. We are going to have to childproof our adult areas. He made the transition so fast it was like he went from standing still do flying across the floor in a matter of weeks. He hasn't quite made it to crawling across the floor, but I fear he will in the next couple of days while I'm on my last summer trip. I spoke to him and hope he will hold out until Thursday, but he's so close I don't think he'll wait.

He is also starting to mix up his toys with Lucky. He learned how to chew, but more importantly throw a tennis ball this weekend. Not only that but he's looking pretty ambidextrous as he was throwing with both hands. A pitcher that can throw lefty or righty? I foresee a serious contract in his future. I did catch him chewing on a dog bone, though, so we are going to have to police the dog's toys. With Quinny running all over the place the dog has been fantastic putting up with all the pulling and biting.

He still seems to be bullying the kids at daycare. When I picked him up at daycare this past week the teacher showed us the damage he did to another student. They documented it! I guess they have to cover their bases in case a parent makes child abuse accusations. It looks like our little Quentin has already started working on his juvie record. They weren't sure what to think about it. He's too young to be doing anything malicious and he's also too young to say no or punish for the act so we're at a stalemate. The folks at daycare think it's a love bite and he's just playing. We think it will go away on it's own.

The video titled handbone is Quentin "playing" his hand. He is starving so he's half eating it and half playing it. Bah, bah, bah....