ONE!

Quinn is ONE! She's been one for a couple weeks now, but we have been seriously busy since. By busy I mostly mean sick. We are back in action this week and today, Election Day, I finally have a day off! So year one blogpost is on the agenda. At the official one year weigh in Quinn came in at 19 pounds, 11 ounces. She's 30 inches long. She's keeping it consistent in the 50th and 75th percentiles. She has 15 teeth...just waiting on one top molar to come through and then hopefully we will be done with teeth until the 2 year molars (which she will probably get tomorrow at the rate we are going). 

We celebrated Quinn's first birthday with our family and some good friends at our house. We had her favorite food (PASTA!) for lunch. After her pasta she had her first cake...vanilla cake with vanilla icing. After being hesitant, she got a little more into it, but never really went too crazy. Quinn (and her parents) have been very lucky for the help of our families and our Virginia family this past year. 

We are still blessed with a very funny, curious, smart, and independent girl. She becomes more and more strong willed by the day. She has learned a lot the past month. She is better at sharing attention and becoming more independent in playing. She still loves reading. She often will pick out books and bring them to us, or even pick out books and "read" to herself. She is pretty much full on walking at this point, that's probably happened within the last week. She is also really great with signs. She signs for dog, baby, milk, thank you, more, all done, bath, etc. She is also understanding more and more that we tell her and will follow our directions..."go get...," "where is...," "come here...," etc. She is not the best at following NO :). Quinn has a lot to say, but we don't really understand her yet. Hopefully soon! 

Our daily schedule is still pretty consistent. Quinn wakes up at about 6:30 everyday and goes to bed about 8. She takes an hour long morning nap and about a 2 hour afternoon one. We did drop a midday milk feeding, but sometimes takes milk in a cup at that time. She does not like cow's milk! She eats everything we eat and a lot of it. We went out to lunch today and she finished her own pizza. She still loves pasta, most fruits and veggies, she's getting better with meat, likes cheese, falafel, and really most things we give her. Her independence is alive at meal times as well when she likes to try to feed herself using a fork and spoon, and she's really pretty good at it. 

This past year has gone by so fast and all three of us has learned so much! Quinn has brought so much fun to our family and we are so excited to see what she will do each day. We are looking forward to all the new things this next year will bring! We love you, Q!

Eleven Months

Quinn turned eleven months old on September 22! We are officially on the final countdown to her first birthday! We had no well check this month, but I would estimate she is a little over 19 pounds and getting taller and taller. I am looking forward to knowing official stats at her first year appointment. What I can tell you for sure is that she is still happy, funny, smart, curious, and strong willed. She got her first molar and canine tooth recently...bringing the current total to 10 teeth.

The biggest change from ten to eleven months was being in daycare full time. This year we have her going to a home daycare in our neighborhood. She is the youngest by one month and there are about 4-6 kids there at a time. Quinn proved herself quite the diva the first few weeks. She wanted all the attention all the time. She would get very jealous if her sitter would help or hold someone else. She has been doing better the last week or so, but it was rough there for a little.

Quinn is still keeping a great routine. She wakes up at about 6:30 everyday and goes to bed around 8. She takes about an hour long morning nap, and usually a two hour afternoon nap. She has milk three times a day and eats solids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus an afternoon snack. She eats A LOT. I really don't know where she puts it all. Current favorites include pasta, peas, beets, pretty much any fruit, cheese, really anything. She is currently on a meat strike though. Occasionally she will surprise me and eat some, but usually not. She still does not enjoy time in her high chair...or her car seat for that matter.

First Chipotle!

She still loves board books and reading. She is also starting to figure out fitting shapes into the appropriate holes and stacking. She still likes golfing and rolling things under the couch for us to help her get. She is starting to mimic more and more...she likes to stick her tongue out and yell back and forth. If you tell her to go find things for you, she will...go get elmo, baby, cancun kitty, shoes, water, ball, book, etc. She is starting to do more baby signs (dog, more, all done, milk, thank you, happy).

We are looking forward to all the new things she learns this month and celebrating her first birthday in less than three weeks!!!

100 Days of Summer, Week 5

{Day 29:June 27}

I love summer dinners from the grill!

{Day 30:June 28}

Taking a class at The Little Gym.

{Day 31:June 29}

Iced coffee in a glass with lots of memories.

{Day 32:June 30}

The end of an era. Matt says goodbye to the Yaris.

{Day 33:July 1}

And then we became very suburban and very parental.

{Day 34:July 2}

She's not allergic, they said. Feed her eggs, they said. Wrong. Allergic reaction, round two.  

{Day 35:July3}

Starting somewhere. 83 days until my next half marathon. This was a 3 mile slow death.

100 Days of Summer, Week Three

{Day 15: June 13}

Waking up to find out about the Stanley Cup Champs!

{Day 16: June 14}

Checking out her pinwheel

{Day 17: June 15}

My Lisa James! One of our last days working as co-counselors. I will miss her!!!

{Day 18: June 16}

Last graduation practice for Bennett Class of 2016.

{Day 19: June 17}

Last day of School

{Day 20: June 18}

Wild Saturday night making baby food: broccoli, garbanzo beans, asparagus, cauliflower, yellow squash.

{Day 21: June 19}

Pear lovers on Father's Day!

A Day in the Life

Back at the {end of December} I documented what a day looked like for our family. I have been wanting to do a second post since returning to work, and I am finally getting to it now just before school lets out for summer. So here is what our days look like right now, this particular day was Monday, June 6, 2016.

5:40: My alarm goes off. I get in the shower pretty much right away and when I get out I can hear Quinn starting to stir. I continue to get ready, getting dressed and putting on make up. Quinn keeps chatting away happily so I don't get her until I absolutely have to.

6:15: Quinn is getting louder so I go get her out of bed and change her diaper. We wave goodbye to Matt as he leaves for the train. I take Quinn into our room and put her in her pack and play to entertain herself while I dry my hair.

6:30: Quinn's breakfast.

7:00: We go downstairs. I put Quinn in her walker while I pack bags for the day. I need my lunch, pump, pump parts, school supplies, bottles, ice packs. Quinn takes her diaper bag with bottles and her solid lunch for the day. Side note: to make day to day things easier I pack all my lunches for the week on Sunday and take them to work on Monday. Quinn pretty much has a second set of everything at her sitter's house and I lay out her clothes for the week Sunday night too. I also take the bags out to the car at this point.

After packing up the car, I make my breakfast. We eat my breakfast on the couch and listen to the today show while playing with toys.

7:25: Get Quinn dressed for the day and change her diaper.

7:30: Get my coffee ready and any other little last minute things.

7:35: Last minute diaper change, load Q in her car seat.

7:40: Get everyone and everything situated in the car and leave for our Somie's house.

8:00: Arrive at Somie's! I have mentioned a few times in blog posts about how we totally lucked out this school year with our babysitting situation. Quinn LOVES her babysitter and it has just been the best thing we could have hoped for. It's also getting to the point in the year where I don't feel like going to work and we stand around chatting for too long in the morning.

8:25: Arrive at work.

9:00: Somie drops her kids off at school and I sometimes get to see Quinn in the drop off lane.

During the school day I get lots of picture updates and texts about how Q is doing. We each do our own thing. These pictures are not all from this specific day, but I wanted to include some of Quinn with her first friends :)

4:10: I pick up Quinn in the school parking lot.

4:30: Arrive at home. This day Q fell asleep on the ride home and stayed asleep when I brought her inside. This rarely happens anymore. I unpack her bottles and get new ones ready for tomorrow. Unpack all my dirty pump stuff and pumped milk. Refill water bottles and get coffee prepped for the morning. I start getting dinner ready.

4:50: Quinn wakes up. I change her diaper then go upstairs to change my clothes. We play for a little bit.

5:15: Quinn's dinner. Oatmeal, green beans, and carrots. Quinn hates her high chair. She hates her car seat too. You can kinda see in the high chair and car seat pictures that she is complaining and trying to escape the shoulder harness part. So half the dinner is in the high chair and the other half I put her in the exersaucer.

5:45: Play inside with toys.

6:10: Play in the walker outside on the porch.

6:50: Matt gets home. I finish making dinner while Matt plays with Quinn.

7:10: Eat dinner.

7:30: Start bedtime routine. First we all read a book on the couch downstairs. Then we go upstairs for a bath. Matt says goodnight after she get in some pajamas. I feed her before putting her down for the night, usually by 8:00.

8:00: Laundry. Pens Game. Doing some emails. Chatting with Matt. Getting things ready for the allergist appointment the next day. I think this night I fell asleep on the couch at like 10:30.

I would say this is very close to about our average day right now. It was so crazy to look back and read over the post in December and see how much had changed. It should be interesting to see what our summer days will look like in just 1.5 weeks!

Seven Months

Again with the late monthly post. I all but guarantee, the 8 month one will be on time because then I will have one less major responsibility! Month seven brought on some major milestones! We did not have a well check at seven months, but I estimate Quinn is between 17 and 17.5 pounds and probably 27.5ish inches. The beginning of May brought on your two top teeth, further proving your sleep has been off and on for weeks now due to teething. I will say this month was better than last.

You continue to LOVE standing and will scream and yell at us until we stand you up. Recently you have taken it one step further and just want us to help you walk around the house all day. You are still quite vocal. Last month you would hold on to the couch or something to stand by yourself, this month you have learned how to pull yourself up, especially in the bathtub since it's low. Luckily most other things are too high for you to reach.

Waving

You discovered your Elmo toy this month and it is hilarious to watch you interact with him. You still enjoy soccer and banging things together. Also new this month is waving at people, and especially yourself in mirrors. We are still working on getting you to wave at the right times. You also started clapping your hands. We have started to see a little bit of separation anxiety, but nothing too bad.

We took you on your first airplane trip to Boston and you did a great job traveling. You were a very good baby on both flights. We still consider ourselves very lucky with a happy and well behaved baby.

Eating solids has come a long way since last month. You have had many fruits and veggies and oatmeal. You have one meal with your babysitter around lunch and then I feed you oatmeal with fruits and veggies when we get home for the day. You typically prefer thicker food and not very pureed things. It is fun to watch you try things for the first time. As always we are so excited to see what the next month brings! We are so luck you are ours and love watching you grow each day!