Illinois Weekend

First of all, I want to send a special message to a dedicated reader of this blog. My sister Carolyn's best friend reads this, which I just think is so neat, and she's getting married this weekend! Kari, congratulations on your wedding!! I hope everything goes beautifully and you and Grant have just the wedding you've always dreamed of. : )

This past weekend, we went home to Illinois to visit my parents. It was so great to be home, and my parents were very entertained by all of Quinn's new tricks.

These first 3 pictures are of Quinn admiring his "girlfriend", the baby on the back of the rice cereal box. Andy and I have named her Gerbie, after Gerber baby. Quinn loves her. He loves to look at her, and as you can see in the third picture, he even gives her kisses. I think it's so cute, which of course is because she's not real. Thirteen years from now, I might not think it's so cute if Quinn is kissing girls! ( ; There she is, the beautiful Gerbie.
It was gorgeous weather, so Quinn enjoyed some time with Poppa, Daddy, and Oliver while my mom and I went shopping. And Quinn had a good time just cuddling with Grandma for awhile too!

Like mother, like son

I guess this funny face is genetic. The picture of me was taken when I was one, and it's part of family lore how my parents were able to catch it on film. When Quinn starting making the same face, usually when eating, I knew I had to take a picture so I could compare the pics side by side. Everyone outside of our families think Q looks just like Andy, but I definitely see resemblance to me here!

Cute pics

These two are "artistic" pics I took the other day over at my sister's house. I'm trying to capture pictures of all Quinn's baby parts: hands, ears, feet, etc. My squirmy-wormy is making it a long process, but I really liked these shots.
I just had to post these pics from this afternoon. I love this outfit on Quinn, so I took him outside to take some pictures. Obviously, he's been outside tons of times before, but today the grass completely captivated him, and I could hardly get him to look up! I think these pictures are just darling because they show his little mind processing what grass is.



Check out the sun glinting in his fuzzy hair! And no, I didn't let him eat the grass. : )
This next picture makes me smile. Here my two little guys are waving goodbye to Daddy. The door is covered in little handprints, the upper ones from my niece Carys and the lower ones from Quinn.

Cruisin'

One of my favorite things to do right now is go garage sale-ing for fun stuff for Quinn. To date, we have only purchased 4 toys for Quinn in the stores. Everything else is from either garage sales or from other people. I have so much fun on Fridays and Saturdays finding incredible deals on all kinds of toys. One of my finds last week was this push around buggy for $1. After I ordered new wheels and stickers from Step 2 for a couple more dollars, it's like new and Quinn LOVES it! Andy and I get a kick out of seeing our little guy cruisin' around the neighborhood.
Hey look, Grandma Mary! I drive a red bug car just like you!
Quinn also had fun in the swings at the playground.

Some more lunchtime fun

Yes, I had some fun during lunch today, snapping several pics and taking video. I love being a stay-at-home mom, what can I say? I caught a pic of Quinn's face during another bite of avocado.
And just in case you think Q was miserable the whole time, this picture proves he wasn't. After he threw his bib down just to emphasize being done with trying avocado, the lunch of squash and applesauce continued with success. Here Quinn shows his correct response to, "How big is Quinn?". He answers the question with about 85-90% accuracy now. I am soooo excited about how much he imitates us and learns now because soooo many more fun tricks are to come!
Here is a video clip of Quinn's SOOO Big! trick.

Quinn tries avocado

Since the other video post worked well, I have a couple more I'll try to post in the next day or so. This video is of Quinn trying avocado. I'll make a confession: we tried it today because I read the other day that (the actress) Amanda Peet's daughter loves avocado, and it inspired me to try it with Q. Well, the video speaks for itself, but let's just say that apparently Quinn doesn't share his dad's love of guacamole. This is the first time Quinn hasn't liked a food. I gave him credit for trying it several times but didn't push it. We'll try it again another day.

Jersey Boy (and our first video post!)

This was a week of big football games: the Colts' opening game and the next Notre Dame game. I really struggle to care about those things, but I do have fun dressing Quinn to coordinate with the games! Thanks to the McCans, we have an adorable Manning jersey onesie to take us through the Colts season. We also have an awesome #10 ND jersey (Brady Quinn's number) for the Irish games. If I would've remembered we had that jersey, Quinn could have debuted it last week at the tailgate. Oh well!

The real Peyton Manning isn't close to this cute!
Hey Daddy! If I bite your finger, will you get off the phone?!!

What did you think of that play, Daddy? Is our team doing well?

Woo-hoo! The Irish scored a touchdown (which is one more than they score last week!).

And here's a flashback to the last time Q and A watched a ND game together. My, how he's grown! (Q, that is.)

And, we'll see how this turns out. It's okay footage of Quinn playing and crawling, which he started doing in full force this week. In fact, tonight at church he was with the crawlers in the nursery! He's already gone up a grade! I can't stand to hear myself on video because I always talk in such a high voice, so my apologies. You'll also see two new tricks we're working on, which are Q raising his arms to "SOO big!" when we ask, "How big is Quinn?" and getting him to clap (which he can do but doesn't while I'm filming). Enjoy!

Labor Day Weekend

What a beautiful weekend! After an extremely hot August (the third hottest on record!), we were blessed with gorgeous weather for Labor Day weekend. We stayed busy this weekend, spending Saturday in South Bend for the Notre Dame season opener (Andy went to the game; Quinn and I just went to the tailgate for awhile. We lucked out not having to witness the slaughter of a game and got to hang out with Grandma Mary instead). Sunday and Monday were just relaxing days of spending time as a family and going to the pool with Aunt Carolyn. With 90 degree days forecasted for the rest of the week, it sure doesn't feel like summer is coming to a close. What a fun, wonderful summer it is/was, though! It helps that summer for me no longer ends when school starts but when the weather actually changes. I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to play again this summer with my darling little guy.

This was exactly the picture I was hoping for on just the second try! Here Quinn models the Oliver onesie his Aunt Carolyn made for him before he was born. Just to show you how much it looks like Oliver, Carolyn is holding him too. I couldn't believe the two little guys posed so well! Thanks, Carolyn, for all the fun onesies you make!


This is currently Quinn's favorite place to be. He will bypass all the toys I set out for him just to scoot/crawl over to the table. He loves feeling the different rungs of the chairs. When we bought this table last year, I envisioned it making a great fort for our kids someday. I didn't realize how soon Quinn would like it!

We're not sure if the pool is closed after today, so we took a picture just in case. We had sooooo much fun going to the pool as often as possible. I'm really sad to lose it as one of the activities we can do each day.
It was a huge deal for Daddy and Papa Bruce to have Quinn at the Albert Tailgate. Good thing Aunt Amy came through with the parking pass so the tradition could continue!
Daddy and Quinn with Notre Dame stadium behind them
Quinn and Papa Bruce
And last but not least, I just love this picture of my sweet boy!