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....