Happy New Year!

I had a great Christmas post but I couldn't upload the accompanying video so I never posted it. I will get a Christmas one out there but wanted to get our new year's resolutions out first. We had a beautiful day in Tampa today and there is a cold front coming through so we don't think we'll get too much time outside this weekend after today so Carrie took the Luckster and Q for a walk this morning. We decided we would grill out for our NYE dinner and get to spend some time outside playing ball with all of Quentin's new toys. He got a T-ball set from the Sloppys so we set that up but he only used the bat to hit our patio chairs to listen to the "music" they make and threw the balls. It's a start. We grilled up some burgers and cheesy potatoes with several appetizers Chez' Carrie whipped up.

After gorging for the umpteenth time this holiday season we decided to go around the table and make our resolutions for the new year. Quentin promised to sleep more starting with tonight. We are definitely holding that one to him. He said he would cry less, be more mischievous, climb more, continue to work on his sports and love his parents. He has made the switch to full time mobile boy and we are spending all our time chasing him down. There is not a minute out of the day that he isn't into something he shouldn't be. As soon as you put him down he immediately surveys the room and any place that is normally off limits but is currently unsecured he bolts for. That could be the stairwell, the well known dog bowls or the master bathroom where he gets into Carrie's lotions. He wears you out. My resolution? Hopefully chasing him less.

We'll get some Christmas pictures posted shortly. We hope everyone has a Happy New Year! Champagne at midnight if we make it that long. Last year we didn't have the energy for any champagne or to make it to midnight. Here are a few pics from the visit. Q's first look at snow, playing like Mozart and ready to go for the Badger game. The Badgers of course started the Big Ten Bowl Season off by knocking out #15 Miami.

Oops! We forgot to...

We had a great casual Christmas last night. As we begin our family traditions with our expanding family the first item was to go casual for holidays. Dressing up is nice for pictures but not so nice to hang out in all day so in palm tree land we're doing it up island style. Shorts and T-shirts will suffice for our holidays. Secondly, when in Florida - land of the pirates of olde matey you must invite the Captain to your holiday festivities. We invited two Texas fifths of Captains and that helped with the overall atmosphere. Of course we wanted as much family as possible as well, but the Reiters keep moving out of state so we are down to Rachel. Now, that's not a slight to Rachel, she added a spunk to our party that we needed. Rachel is very much a part of the family so we were glad she was able to attend. With it being a work day we didn't have tons of time to get ready and with Q's bed time looming we had to hustle. We made hors d'ourves for the main course and cookies for dessert. We enjoyed the Captain and munched on won tons (nicely done Care)!, cocktail wieners and of course M&M's. And no party at our house would be complete without our world famous taco dip. We gorged and then we started to open gifts.

Lucky, is a bit of an attention whore, so we thought we would give him a gift first so we could film Q ripping into gifts without a big shaggy dog getting in all the shots. Well, he went first but that didn't deter the furry shots. We are proud to announce our dog's behind represents roughly 25% of the Christmas video. We are now taking applications for an editor. Q opened his first gift, took the bow and stuck it to his ever growing belly, and fell in love with a new ball game that you pound balls into a hole and they go through a contraption before spitting out the bottom. That was it for him. He loved it and it was tough to redirect his attention after that. He opened a few more gifts from Grandma and Grandpa but due to the late hour didn't get a chance to play with them. In fact we put him to bed and came back downstairs to exchange gifts on an adult level when we realized we forgot to give him his "big" gift! Hilarious! I guess that's how you know your kid is spoiled. He got so much stuff we forgot the crescendo gift. So, I have one really shiny new wagon with giant home made bow still in its hiding place in my office. I guess we'll have some event when we return from Wisco to give it to him. It should be a nice addition when we take Lucky for walks.

Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa S. for sending some bigger gifts down to Florida. We are, however, running out of square footage so keep that in mind for the next round of Q gifts. We also want to thank Nanna and Poppa Steve for all the awesome gear they left on their last visit. I will be decked out in full Packer gear upon getting on the plane today. You are, however, setting the bar too high for me with that hand bag you gave to Carrie. If we could slum it a bit more in the future I would appreciate it. A quick shout to Rachel thanking her for watching our dog over the holidays. Please make sure the puppers has a jolly Christmas. That four foot bone should last the week, but watch out for the ramifications of him eating it in the flatulence department. He is well versed in clearing a room.

We are flying into an ice storm today. Hooray! Just in case traveling during the holiday season wasn't a thrill, add a dash of freezing rain. Jehovah Witnesses just stopped by the house so I have them putting in a good word for us to arrive safely. Such nice people. They just want to chat the day away, on a Wednesday, at 11 am in the morning. Hmm... We also noticed they skipped our neighbors and the house after that and the one after that. We must be on their short list for recruits. Have a Merry Christmas everyone!!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

Actually tonight we will be celebrating Christmas at our house with the family before trekking through the airport for the fourth time as a ticketed passenger in the last seven days. That's how you squeeze the miles in at the end of the year. Yesterday I was in Moline, Dubuque and flew out of Cedar Rapids to Minneapolis where I sprinted about a mile and a half with briefcase, luggage, and in a full suit to make my connection, the last flight of the night to Tampa. Upon arrival to my gate, which was already boarding, out of breath and thinking that was the farthest I had ran in quite some time I was happy to find out I made the flight all to arrive home at midnight. We are leaving for Milwaukee on Wednesday and I didn't want to have to turn right back around so at least I get a whole day in Tampa to celebrate Christmas in the sunshine.

We are very excited to see Quentin tear through all the gifts under the tree. He has tons of gifts that people have sent down and that we have spoiled him with. Even the Luckster, is sooo lucky that he has at least three gifts under the tree. Such a good puppy... It looks like a little snow heading into Wisconsin so we hope we make it without delay. We found the deal of the century on a flight but that means we are taking a late flight, but a direct flight. Quentin is such a mover and shaker now we're worried he won't sit still. I already feel for the poor guy that's going to get his seat kicked for the duration in front of us. Our departure time coincides with his new bed time so we are hopeful he will sleep through the 3 hour flight. We can't wait to celebrate with our little guy and the family!

A while ago we attended a Christmas party and I was trying to describe the crazy talents of a artist that was there. The party was hosted by our photographer and it turns out that he posted some pics on his blog and Q made the cut a couple of times. There are also several examples of the silhouettes. It's just crazy to think these were getting churned out in about two minutes free hand with a pair of scissors. Definitely check out the link. http://www.jasonangeliniphotography.com/blog/?p=7756 See the model in the black and white at the end? Looks like all man to me! We'll post some great pictures of Christmas in the next couple of days.

The Christmas Tree

The Q-meister turned one on November 29th. He was not into his birthday presents at all. Today is December 20th and he is obsessed with the tree, the ornaments and extremely focused on the presents as they continue to multiply under the tree. No bow is safe at our house. They have all been removed. He took a couple and it was kind of cute. I moved the presents farther under the tree. He grabbed a couple more and it was still kind of cute buy I started to wonder whether it was even worth putting more bows on. I move the gifts way under the tree. Well Captain Persistence just gets on his belly and crawls all the way under there to get them. Now we don't have any bows. I guess he's still pretty cute but the gifts are not. What's a one year old boy to do with no bows to pull off? He's moved on to opening the gifts. He's smart. He's not going for the top of a gift. Oh no. He's going for the corner, the easiest point of entry. He knows he can wedge is pudgy little finger into that crease, get a grip and start tearing. Clearly, he's missing the concept of wait until Christmas. Not only that, but he's opened one of Carrie's gifts and this morning started in on Lucky's 4 foot long wrapped bone. Lucky already knows what it is so he's standing right next to him urging him to hurry up. It's criminal these two. They might as well be brothers!! We can live with it. We are celebrating our family Christmas on Tuesday before we hit the road so we only need to survive a few more days. Every time Dennis the Menace does some new cute mischievous thing I just think about the damage that is heading Grandma's way. I hope the ornaments start about 3 1/2 feet up the tree. One can only assume no gifts have been wrapped with bows. A present terrorist is coming to town and it doesn't matter who's been naughty or nice.

With all the Christmas rushing around we thought a nice dinner out would be a nice change of pace. Q is finally sleeping and hitting the hay around 7:30 so we are militant about keeping the schedule. That means, hooray!, we're the early bird special people. We had a gift certificate that we received for Christmas last year, still not used, so we employed that to head out to a local restaurant. Now, I think a little hippie goes a long way. Let's face it, facial hair is cool. You may not like it but that just means you're a square. Long hair on dudes is awesome. We don't want to go crazy here and you can leave your mullet at the trailer park but long hair for dudes is generally a sweet fashion statement. So, in the spirit of who wants to give their one year old a buzz cut the Qster is sporting a nice old melon of shagariffic hair. It's his trademark. He came out with inches of hair and for all we know he could go bald at some point so let's sport some locks.

Back to the dinner. We had to wait a few minutes for a table and a woman was playing "he's sooo cute" with him/us and then asked if he was a boy or a girl. Really? I mean I know he is extremely good looking. Is he too good looking for a boy? Is there such a thing? He's dressed in blue overalls so I'm not sure if that was a moment of extreme caution trying to avoid I don't want to call their ugly daughter a boy. But outside of that what gives? They sat us in a booth, so it's Carrie on one side, me on the other and Q on the end of the booth with his back to the foot traffic. A few minutes into dinner a group of 5-6 people are like ooooh, look at the cute girl and her dress. Excuse me? Do I need to hand out glasses this charitable season? They think my son is a cross dresser? He's wearing overalls! Does he have a pink ribbon in his hair? How drunk are these people? I'm not cutting his hair so that's out. I guess more T-shirts that explicitly state "All Boy" or "Daddy's Son" or even "Momma's Boy" are better than this kind of treatment. So I hope these ignorant gender blind people are just an abnormal slice of the goofy gene pool that resides in Tampa. Hopefully, when he arrives in Wisco, where people still know the difference between a boy and a girl, he'll called out for being the sooo cute little boy that he is.

Here is a pic of Q shopping. As you can see he is exhausted and our rare day sleeper is out cold in a shopping cart.

Man versus Dryer

A few posts ago I commented about how our dryer died. We have propane for our house so the stove runs on propane, the water heater and our dryer. This is supposedly more efficient but makes everything cost more. We've already replaced the water heater and our stove died the first year we bought the house but as part of closing the previous owners tossed in a home warranty to sweeten the deal so the stove repair was covered. Well, upon coming home and gearing up for another short jaunt today and then leaving for Christmas on Wednesday we are in dire need of a dryer. Carrie has been getting by while I've been out by doing a load a day and get this, air drying. Ha! What a novel approach. We've been blasted back to the sixties!

Yesterday was the first day I had to really deal with it when all my dress shirts came out looking like I had them stored on my dorm room floor for the past consecutive 10 years. I would have to iron 6 times to get all the wrinkles out so I was determined to get a dryer in the house yesterday. It turns out I know very little about appliance purchasing. Imagine that. Even if I was able to purchase a dryer no one actually carries them in stock. After I purchase it and get it delivered I still have the additional step of tracking down a licensed plumber to hook the gas line up. It took about 3 phone calls and 15 minutes on the internet when I realized if we wanted a dryer we were either going to have to live without one for at least 3 more weeks or find a plan B.

Plan B. - call a repair man. Novel idea number two. Genius! I'm generation X, which apparently is not much better than Generation Y (Just buy another one! Money grows on trees! I've never lived a day without everything I've ever wanted! Text messages cost money)? I just assumed it came with the house and was old and wouldn't be worth the cost of repair. I call this guy up and I tell him I want to ask a few questions because my POS dryer has died and it's really old and I want to know whether it would be worth paying for a repair and wondered if he could diagnose it over the phone. How old he says? I say, it was installed in 2001 and is no longer shiny. He laughs at me. It turns out these things are supposed to last 25 years and all gas dryers are made the same regardless if you paid $250 or $1,500. The difference in price being who is a sucker and how many cycles you want that baby to have. (Personally, I just want my clothes to be dry).

Long story short. I made the phone call at 10:30 am on a Saturday. I was drying my clothes at 12:30 pm Saturday with my quieter (apparently there was 21 cents - two dimes and a penny caught on top of the giant drum making a very pleasant screeching sound while on), more efficient, repaired dryer. The whole experience totally changed my mind set. I'm not sure I won't repair every last thing in my home for the rest of my life, probably to the point my poor wife will be living with 30 year old appliances. They'll work though! All I know is the Qster is a lot happier wearing his dry pressed shirts.

Here is an iPhone video I took of Q sprinting through the living room. Notice the disaster in the background.

Cardinal Sin

I was in Chicago this week at a conference and was presenting on Thursday morning to a small group when my phone started ringing with a Tampa number, but one I didn't immediately recognize. The same number immediately called back. Shortly there after Carrie was calling so at that point I realized something must be wrong and stopped to take the call. Daycare had been trying to get a hold of both us. Carrie wasn't answering her phones because she was on a conference call. It turns out they had an emergency at daycare. Quentin had been in an accident caused by one of their employees. He had taken a pretty good fall. They had him on a changing table and committed a cardinal sin. They left him there for a second to pick up something they had dropped on the floor. It only takes a second. In the time she moved away from him he lunged to grab her, missed and fell off the table landing face first on the floor. He fell awkwardly so he wasn't able to catch himself so the impact was on his face. He also had a pacifier in his mouth making the situation worse because it's hard plastic. He ended up tearing the skin off that attaches your upper lip to your gum above your front teeth. He's lucky he kept all his teeth. There was some blood, a lot of crying and some fear with a head injury since he could have a concussion. I was out of town so it was a wait and see moment while Carrie rushed to daycare to take him to the doctor. They decided to cut the remaining part of skin off and thought it would heal in a few days. They told us to just monitor his sleep by giving him a little poke every 30 minutes or so to make sure he was stirring.

After flying home and getting in late last night I spent some time with him this morning and he wasn't acting any different than normal so he's going to be fine. That was our first call and my colleagues, nearly all parents, said it was good preparation for the ones that are sure to follow. At least it wasn't the police. In our parenting class they were constantly harping that it only takes a second and I think most tragedies involving children lost sight of them for a second and disaster struck. It makes me a lot more concerned leaving him at daycare. Being involved in operations at work my first thought is how many times did this same thing happen with no consequences? If this happened once surely it's happened before and the child (not just ours) simply didn't fall. This is a procedural mistake. The real question is, is this a pattern of behavior or an isolated incident? For what it's worth the teacher supervising him we really like and so does he. She felt awful, crying the entire time Carrie was there when we picked him up but that doesn't make me feel any better. I just feel like the only thing we are paying for is safety. I am expecting my child to not have to wear a helmet to the changing table. Maybe I should be more cynical about the whole process. After the first few months of taking him to daycare we haven't thought much about his safety but now all day long that's all I'm thinking about. After all we had to bring him right back this morning. That's like sticking your hand right back on the hot stove after getting burned. What if he would've ran into the road? I guess it's not wise to the play the what if game.

We'll most likely just have to get over it. For what it's worth the daycare just went through their yearly safety training. I think that makes me feel worse. They probably should've made sure everyone was awake.

On a more positive note follow the link to our wonderful screaming child on Santa's lap. He enjoys screaming through life's firsts. (Remember his birthday cake)?

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=358034830803%3A1643649734&cm_mmc=site_email-_-new_site_share-_-core-_-View_photos_button

Meeting Santa

My smart, intelligent, beautiful wife checked the Packer schedule and realized they were playing the Bears this past weekend and then scheduled some time with Santa after the game was over. Fortunately for all parties involved, mostly Santa, the Packers won the game and afterwards the family attended their first Christmas party together that our photographer put together for all his clients. This was one classy shindig complete with a Thanksgiving-esque meal of turkey, stuffing, mash potatoes, green beans and gravy. They had drinks, desserts and build a better coffee/hot chocolate with marshmallows and chocolate chips. The little Qster took his first stab at being naughty or nice meeting Santa for the first time. He screamed, but eventually calmed down enough to stare in amazement and then wanted off Santa's lap. We haven't gotten the pictures back yet, but I think there will be a few priceless moments in there. The photographer thought he got some nice shots of full fledged screaming while telling Santa what he wanted at full volume.

They also had an artist there doing silhouettes free hand with scissors. I have never seen anything like it. She was sitting at a desk and asked you to sit about 3 feet away staring straight ahead. She would be viewing you at a profile. In about two minutes time she would take a 3 X 5 black piece of paper and some scissors and simply cut the rectangle into you. It was crazy. We each got one - for free so now Carrie, Q and I are immortalized into silhouette.

Upon returning we walked into an appliance debacle. Our dryer had been running for like 5 hours without shutting off (or drying our clothes). It has died. That meant we have few remaining anything left in our house that hasn't needed to be replaced. On top of that I noticed our mini-adult-beverage fridge door was open. There was such major icing in the freezer that it grew an iceberg out the door, which meant the ice was melting all over the floor. So we had a dryer on for hours without working and a freezer defrosting on our floor. So I began the task of cleaning everything out and defrosting the rest of the ice with my MaGuyver tools of screwdriver and hairdryer. A little heat here. A little chipping away there and after about 3 hours the iceberg at dissipated into the bottom of my cocktail glass. My always helpful son walked up to the fridge and pulled a what out? A redbull and then tried to chug it. Buried in the ice? That would be a bottle of Jaeger lost from a three year's ago New Year's Eve party when we were young, and slept, and did such crazy things as Jaegerbombs.

Tonight Junior gets his second haircut. He's too big of a hippie and can barely see. I still think it's awesome, but feel a little bad for him so we are trimming it up for the holidays.

The Farframslepin Method

Quentin came home from daycare yesterday in a wife beater. I thought it a bit odd, but then I noticed how nice his pipes looked. I'm sure his all female teaching staff thought it hot when they took his shirt off and decided to find something to accentuate his manly brawn. If only the shirt had read, "Welcome to the gun show" we would've been in business. He's got some serious muscles. I think it's probably from the reps he's been getting in with the regulation size football. We have two in the house and he's been spending every afternoon after school throwing the pigskin around a bit trying to get a feel for the ball and generally working on his technique. He can toss it about 3 feet on average but if he needs a last minute bomb for a come from behind win he can long arm it for about 7-10 feet depending on what kind of pass rush he's facing. With his practice regime I'm not sure we have time to have another child. I would hate to neglect Quinny's dream of entering the NFL as a number one draft pick just so he can have a sibling. I guess time will tell.

He took his return visit to the doctor yesterday to get his shots. They also noticed his strong arms and gave him a shot in the arm, literally, for the first time. Ya, he didn't like that very much. He was pretty good after calming down and getting out of the doctor's office. He's officially in the "one year old" room now saving us a few bucks on daycare. Sweet. He's required to wear shoes now and no longer is allowed to sleep in a crib. Growing up is tough! They sleep on mats instead. Super sanitary no doubt! Speaking of sleep we are using the Farframslepin method after reading a few books with mixed results. The wifey is pretty optimistic and I guess we're doing better overall. There is a lot more crying but we just sort of let him work it out on his own now. He's going down pretty easy and sleeping longer but still getting up throughout the night. We just don't go get him anymore. Instead we crowd around the 1.5 X 1.5 inch screen on the baby monitor at 3am and place over/under bets on how long it will take him to figure out how to fall back asleep. He immediately stands up in his crib upon waking/crying so it's not an easy position to fall back asleep in. We haven't whispered, "Shh, everyone is sleeping. Please go back to sleep" in his ear in a couple of days so the middle of the night stairmaster has been put to bed for the moment. I think in the end the farframgrooven method might pay off. Tonight will be night number 8 so we should be making serious progress at this point.

Here is a pic of me riding Quentin's horse. I put it together so I get to ride it whenever I want to. Q is really coming around. He'll sneak up behind "Blaze" and pull on his tail to hear a Neigh. He likes doing that but isn't too keen on riding him yet. Baby steps.

The Sleep War Update

We have been waging war with our son over sleep for the past four days. Actually, tonight will be night number four. If this is winning I'd hate to be losing. The stats from last night. He went down (I use that term lightly) at 7:50pm and cried until 9:30pm. We check on him in 5, 10 and eventually 15 minute intervals where we are reassuring we love him and it's sleepy time. We tell him we would appreciate it if he was a wee bit quieter because *whisper* "the whole house is sleeping. Shhhhhh." He was soundly sleeping so we thought we might be in good shape. We went to bed a little after 10pm and were out like a, dare I say? light. I woke up in a puddle of drool to him crying and went upstairs. Carrie was out so cold she had the monitor next to her head and didn't even wake up. We are using two versions of fixing our sleep woes, which probably isn't wise. One says we are not allowed to touch him under any circumstances. The other says if he gets up in the middle of the night he's pretty much out of it and you can pick him up to get him back down. Big mistake. I pick up him and rock with him and he goes back out fairly easily. I put him down in the crib. He rolls over grabs his teddy (another part of "winning)" so I think I am golden. I don't even get to the door, and we're talking less than 5 feet before he is standing up wailing away. Choice words uttered and I lay him down patting his back and I'm getting no where. I spend 30 minutes total and give up and take off downstairs. That's when persistent son versus persistent parents dig into their respective trenches for the long haul. This kid has staying power. He stood up the entire time crying until around 3 am. Off and on he was falling asleep - while standing up! Now, there is a little part of me that is extremely proud of that son of mine. I mean talk about manning up. That's a tough little dude up there. It's like slow, painful torture to not go up there and relieve him. I feel awful every second of every minute he's crying when you know if you just scooped him up he would be fine and go right out. It's horrible. I can't believe people can be so nonchalant about it when they tell us, "Oh ya, we just let Jimmy scream his head off for a whole week. We needed the sleep. Sucks to be him! Ha!" Now, I am a first class cynic but this is your kid we're talking about and maybe their kid isn't awesome like mine but my awesomer kid is dying and that is tough sledding for me to deal with. I foresee paying for therapy for my little guy down the road.

Finally, at 3 am he collapsed and hit the mattress. He was standing for over three hours. There must be some sort of endurance award he has earned. He woke up at 5:30. You have got to be kidding me?!? This kid is superman. Geez-WAH-leez! We have my brother in law and his GF coming to town tonight. Hope you brought the ear plugs, because guess what? Your room is next to his. Oh, ya, we are breaking him in so I hope you don't plan on going to bed before 3 and like to rise early, like before 5:30. Oh no? Well, you know when people tell you that you'll never forget this vacation? Well, put it in stone my frined. This is a vacation you'll never forget! We are in way over our heads at this point so there is no turning back. The book tells you to suck it up and no one should have to go through this twice. Guess how long the books says it may take? Umm ya, two stinking weeks! I think if I would've read that part first I would've just moved him into my room permanently. Two weeks? Where are the karma Gods? What did we do to deserve this? How is this kid holding out night after night like this?

So, every night around 7:30 we begin to get a queasy feeling in the pit of our stomachs and start furiously praying that tonight will be the night that Q learns to put himself to sleep and stay asleep. And every night, in one bad turn after another, our ferocious praying falls on deaf ears as we strap ourselves in for another ride on the InsomniaQ Express. It's not pretty, but it is parenting - we think. So welcome brother-in-law to the station that never sleeps. We hope you enjoy the extra awake hours you'll be spending with us.

Off subject but we made our photog's blog as did Lucky. What a Lucky dog... http://www.jasonangeliniphotography.com/blog/?p-7491

Numero Uno Weigh In

The little guy had his one year doctor's visit and managed to pull his first weasel. As in he weaseled out of getting his shots because he woke up the night before with a fever, which makes shooting you full of viruses a bad idea. He won't weasel for long as he has to go back in a week to get them. He's looking at chicken pox (really? I mean this was a rite of passage for my generation), pneumonia, hepatitis A and one other that is dose number four and the final one, which I can't recall.

I am dropping a few pounds and I think it's because Quentin weighed in at 24 pounds and 14 ounces and I'm picking him up 275 times a day. It's like going to the gym without changing into your workout gear or having to pay. Well, that's not true. I'm definitely paying. I'm just not getting a membership out of the deal. That put him in the 75th percentile for weight. He measured 32 and 1/4 inch, which was in the 95th percentile for height. He's going to be tall. While we were discussing what a fine physical specimen my son was, he was playing on my lap with a dog that barks and in typical Quentin fashion threw it on the floor to which he quipped, "uh-oh." Well, the doctor got all excited hearing that because apparently that is a "complex word combination" that he shouldn't be smart enough to utter until 18-24 months. He went on to show the doctor my nose, eyes and ears, which is also advanced - knowing body parts. He also knows up! down! ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, hi baby (more complex word combinations), momma, dad, apple, etc. He's walking like a mad man and has 11 teeth with the 12th and final one year old molar coming in. He's really growing up.

He's becoming quite mischievous in his old age and is so dang smart. He learns so fast by watching, thinking and is really a good problem solver. He's getting tall enough that we had to move the TV because there is a little red circle that lights up when it's on and he's fond of flicking it on, flicking it off, flicking it on, flicking it off. Umm, I'm watching the Badgers beat the 5th ranked Duke basketball team over here. He is also obsessed with the "balls" on the Christmas tree, which of course are ornaments. So we did the smart thing and placed them high. Well, he tracks down a fly swatter that we got for our wedding. (Odd I know but it's a "high end" fly swatter and looks like a sunflower). At any rate he gets the fly swatter and then starts batting the "balls" higher up on the tree. What a genius! Oh, wait those balls smash when swatted. Smart, smart kid, but that keeps us on our toes. Too funny.

He got a new pair of shoes this week too. He wears a 6.5 extra wide. What a shock! It's a good thing this kid didn't come out feet first! So, he's got these monster feet. He had an awesome pair of chucks that are too small now. Total bummer. I think we'll get him another pair for Christmas. He's gotta look cool. The lady at the store said they would last 3 months. Sweet. I only have to buy shoes four times a year.

I uploaded a video of a ball he hijacked from some other kids at the park and just started playing with. As you can see a ball of any size will entertain the Qster. Enjoy!