Happy Birthday Quint!!!

In the beginning, there was a tiny blue line.....and much rejoicing....

And then it was all about me....
and occasionally him... (behold, we see through a mirror dimly...)
but mostly me....
and then him....
and now, it's just all about him. Quint was born on 9-15-09 at 12:26pm. He weighed 7lbs, 7oz.
When he was fresh squeezed, his hair looked curly, but it just needed a comb.
Here's roughly a picture a month for my wonderful little fellow.
I still have a hard time talking about anything else.
"Hi mom!" Ahhh the magical bouncy seat which could calm my baby within three bounces. At times I thought my foot would fall off, but I bounced anyway.
1 month old
"Yay! A clean diaper!" 2 months old
It wasn't always a bed of roses...
It's a good thing he was so cute. Those first three months, it sooooo made it worth it.
4 months old.
5 months old.
6 months old.
7 months old.
8 months old.
9 months old.
10 months old.


11 Months old


First Birthday Party!!


Happy Birthday Quint! You have changed my life in ways I would never have guessed. You have made every moment richer. You have made it easy to sort out what in my life is important and what really is not. Your kisses are the sweetest thing ever. Your love of music and dancing booty always makes me smile. I love to watch you learn new things. You are the joy of my life and I love being your Mom.

What Quint is up to right now: Quint is learning to drink out of a cup and really likes crystal lite lemonade. He is almost weaned and has done all of that himself. He eats 6-8 ounces of baby food goo three times a day with tons of snacks in between. He really likes fried chicken. He can say mama, dada, cracker, and papa with regularity and consistency. At other times, we swear that he's said outside, OK, thank you, dat (meaning cat) and once even "hey cat" while trying to get the kitty's attention. He is walking around all furniture while holding on and absolutely loves his white, hard soled walker shoes. As in cries when I take them off him until I give him one to hug. A time or two, he has insisted on taking the shoes to bed with him. He took his first few unassisted steps just before his birthday party. He had missed a meal and was in search of cheerios. He weighs 22 pounds and is in a forward facing car seat. On the way home from daycare each day, he chats away and tells me all about his day. I can understand none of this, of course, but I pretend like I can and respond with interest. He loves to swing doors back and forth and the pantry and dryer doors are endlessly entertaining. He's a very active little boy with a good sense of humor. He loves to be squirted in the face with water. Gravity is a favorite toy as is anything with buttons that he should not have.

Quint's Birthday Party

Look for several additions to this post today as I have time to work on them. But just to get this video up as soon as possible for Quint's Grandmother, here you go!

This weekend, we had Quint's first birthday party. His birthday is not until Wednesday, so I just picked a Saturday to have the party. We had several friends over and several family members came to town to shower our little guy with gifts. We are very grateful for all the wonderful gifts. Soon, we will separate them into perhaps three batches, store some away for a while and then bring them out when a fresh toy would be good.

There was a monkey theme to the party with plates, cups, napkins, cake, rug (yes rug!) and whatnot.

I made and decorated the monkey cake for Quint's birthday. It turned out MUCH better than the first try and only took 2 hours or less to decorate. Lots of short breaks to deal with small fry dangling on my leg while I outlined things in icing. My hand was half crippled from squeezing an icing bag at the end, but I got two backrubs out of the deal!

Here's just part of the loot from the birthday weekend!
Here's a synopsis of the loot. New are the big blue ball, (the stool is old), the table toy with 4 blue legs, the wood puzzles on the floor and chair, (the basket of toys is old), the ball popper, and 3 or 4 DVDs.
A new piano/xylophone can be played with the red sticks or you can plink on the (invisible from this angle) piano keys just in front.
Quint loves this learning and music table. It has a million songs and noises, several things to flip back and forth, it speaks English and Spanish, teaches alphabet and numbers, cooks eggs, can parallel park, can field dress a moose, and has planted the seeds of world peace. It also has an off switch. :-)

These are some new bath toys that we'll try out tonight when we try to scrub that big scab off his head. We've got a couple other new bath toys that have already been kid tested and mother approved. The dolphin squirter is really fun. I'll have to take a picture of the safest frog on the planet which is now our carseat toy.


This fun, monkey rug is double sided and just darn cute! It's pretty big too! Probably three feet across at the ears.
This shows the xylophone/piano, a lovely wood block house my dad built (and Quint for some reason did NOT knock over), an elephant toy, a single weeble (we have 4), and the walk and ride lion that I got on Craigslist.

The weebles have been a whole lot of fun already. Quint put them in one of the package boxes and would scoot them side to side, watching the weebles dance choreographically.

There's the ball popper which I don't have a still photo of, but here's a link to a great video of it. There's one of these in the church nursery, but the balls have all gone missing and I think the batteries are dead as well. Friday, I bought some balls to go in the one at church and was going to take batteries too just because we wanted to see it work! And then Hubby's sister had this one shipped to us just an hour later. So I immediately had extra balls for my own ball popper!

There's even one more present that hasn't gotten unwrapped yet, but my sister said it was a bath toy and we could just unwrap it later. The big problem with baths lately has been that he won't stay sitting down. Maybe all these bath toys will help with that. Or maybe I'll just have to start getting completely in the tub with him. I'd be just as wet as I am outside the tub!

Some friends of ours are getting married on Halloween and they bought Quint a superman costume for the wedding. We will be in nice dress clothes, but the kiddies will be in costumes. It is size 2T but looks like it will fit perfectly!

I think my mother purchased every monkey-themed outfit at Walmart that was in either size 12M or 18M, so we've got some incredibly cute new clothes too. Several of our friends have recently given us boxes of 12m and 18 month clothes and Quint has everything he needs in life.

So Quint's birthday was a big hit, he (and we) enjoyed his cake, we enjoyed seeing our friends who were willing to come to a 1 year old's birthday party, and we received enough gifts to last the next six months.