My Feet are Big

I came home from an exhausting long strange trip this past week to find our son with a 103.5 degree temperature, a record for little Quinny. Into the ice bath he went. That parenting class taught me few medical skills (outside of slurping snot out of his nose with that bubble syringe) so we called the doc to make sure he wasn't going to burst into flames and tossed him into the bath to cool him down. He survived the weekend but it was a whiny one. Both parents over here were tired and crabby from single parenting (her the dog and kids, me attempting to take care of myself) so it made for a long weekend, but we think we are hitting our stride again. Quinny is going through a never ending I wake up every 15 minutes post 2:30 am phase again so we played hardball with him last night letting him scream it out for most of the wee hours of the morning. It really provides some solid one on one time with your wife when you have that romantic child screaming serenading you in the background. Sort of puts you in the mood to think about how many kids you really might want. For us, as your mind drifts off into thoughts of what it would be like to sleep more than 3 hours in a row, you reflect on the impending arrival of number two that is conveniently in between you as you are having the discussion. That leads to prayer time where you are really focused on producing a healthy child first, but a very sleepy one too. One might even wish for a narcoleptic. Is that really too much to ask for? Do 13 year olds still crawl into bed with you wanting to spend that precious 2:30 am - wake up kicking you in the face? At least people have stopped telling us it's going to happen soon. We don't hear that any more. No, this son is never going to sleep through the night and wake up at a reasonable hour. Junior number two is already acting up late at night similar to Quinny so we think we may be in trouble.

We did find the time to take Mr. Big Foot to the mall to get some new shoes. He's heading to Boston in the middle of this week and he needs to look sharp. It is a pedestrian city with actual public transportation one can count on. We are meeting my parents there who haven't seen him since Christmas (gasp!) so it will be an especially fun trip. Carrie and I will be attending a Bostonian wedding on Saturday and with babysitters in tow, the aforementioned parents, it may be a glorious curfew free night. Quinny got his feet measured and surprise surprise before wearing out the last pair he has grown out of them. He is now wearing an 8 1/2. Yes, an 8.5. You should see these things. He looks like he's walking around with flippers on. He's also out of velcro and into ties already. Is it time to have the bunny ears conversation? You know take this ear and wrap it around the tree and down the rabbit hole and tie. Or something like that.

He's also into squirt guns at the moment. He still has that love of water. We bought him these tiny little guns and he can't quite get his hands around the grip properly so Mr. Genius holds it backwards using his thumb as his trigger finger. So smart. He can make anything work. This resulted in shooting the gun straight up into the air or right into his face depending on the grip. That was last weekend. This weekend he learned to aim much better and started coming up behind you and shooting you execution style in the back of the head. Lovely. I hope that isn't a premonition of things to come. It is refreshing as we move through these 90+ degree days passing the summer days on the patio enjoying our fleeting moments of island life.

On the home front we have found a house in Cedar Rapids. That's Iowa for the geographically challenged. (I also found out there is such a thing as a corn belt and we are in it)! That will be good now that Nebraska is in the Big Ten. The house at least it one less task to stress out about. We now need to fool the government to continue to get our resident tax break on our "permanent residence in Florida." And by permanent I mean we will be locked into this thing for the rest of our lives. It's willed to Q. No chance of selling for at least 25 years we are told. Lovely. We wanted to keep the backyard theme that is representative of our location. In Florida we have a pond filled with four foot tall birds, fish, snakes and our friends the gators. In Cedar Rapids we went with the cornfield backyard. When in Rome as they say. I asked my new neighbors if all corn is created equal. Really, I wanted to know if I could just sort of head out to the backyard and collect some ears for dinner. It turns out that most corn is made for non-human consumption. Buzz kill. The gators we have are open for purse or boot season down here and if adventurous you can make gator nuggets and contrary to what people tell you it doesn't taste like chicken. We are happy to have something to look forward to - the house, not the corn. Nothing against corn, but it's tough to get excited about. The bucket list is officially in motion as we have a move date on the calendar. Ironically it will be 9 years to the day that I left Madison on my journey around the eastern states. I can't wait for Q's first snowball fight or the day he turns old enough to shovel the driveway for me while I drink my warm coffee next to the fireplace "supervising." There will be a party. Two actually. One for leaving and another for arriving. Details to follow.

Here are a few pics of Quinny a couple of weekends ago when his 4th cousin or something (I can't keep track of these things), an aspiring photographer, shot many a cutie-Q and here are a couple favorites.