Birthdays and Readers

Quin and Ethan have been busy folks as of late. Quin went and turned one and we barely even acknowledged it! Well, digitally anyway. In true Grady boy fashion, Quin celebrated his birthday not once, not twice, but three separate times so that he could cover all his bases. Our favorite celebration was the one we had at our house with just our little family, though. It was the first time Quin really got to dig into some chocolate cake, and boy do I think he was impressed!!! Here you see him starting his sugar coma! It didn't take him long and he was pretty much demanding that he be fed cake any time one of us was eating some. I had a piece on my plate the other day when he was eating his supper and he spit out the noodles he had in his mouth and screamed until I gave him a bit of my cake! He may have a sweet tooth... Now to figure out how to take advantage of it...

Quin is developing at a nice pace. While his height and weight are only in the 40th percentile for his age bracket, his head is solidly in the 90th, which means he really does take after his dad and brother. He's been walking for about 6 weeks now and is getting quite proficient. Lately he has even mastered the ability to stand up in the middle of the floor. The early connection between actually moving forward and hysterical laughter is now gone and he is capable of propelling himself as silently as you could expect a 1 year old to do.

He's still a very happy boy. He laughs all the time, loves to blow and give big wet kisses. He still loves Barley! Barley is such a good girl with him, and that is saying a lot as Quin really likes to give Barley big wet kisses as well! He likes it so much that he tries to hold her still with clenched fists while he delivers said kisses on her back.

We had a bit of a traumatic event recently - Quin finally got a haircut. We were going in to get his 1 year old pictures taken and decided it was finally time to part with the hair (no pun intended). He was a very good boy in the barber's chair - he didn't cry once. He only fidgeted a little as the hair was falling down over his face.

Ethan is, of course, doing well as always. We recently found out the peril of having another reader in the house. For valentines day, I got Jenny one of those oh so clever cards that said something like, "This card has a wheel you can spin that, whatever shows up, I will promptly provide for you." On the wheel it was filled with the same task, "A night of hot sex." Yes, yes, very clever. Jenny left the card on our nightstand, I assume so she could trade it in at some point, when Ethan got ahold of it. I was walking through the downstairs when I hear Ethan say, "Jenny." I didn't realize at the time that he was reading the card! He got to the point where he was reading the different options on the wheel and repeated several times, "A night of hot sex, a night of hot sex, a night..." Luckily it hasn't come back in question yet.

Brett thinks that Ethan is destined to be a real ladies' man. Last weekend when Brett, Blaine, and my parents were down to visit, Brett was having a conversation with Ethan about various things. Ethan declared to Brett that he, "[knew] a lot about two things, Star Wars, and Jesus." Rumor has it that Brett has him lined up to teach him so he can score a girlfriend!

Quinton's top 10 Lists

Top 10 things Quin does that drive mom and dad crazy!!!

1. Plays with the computer mouse while they're using the computer.
2. Drinks from the dog's dish
3. Plays in the dog's dish
4. Plays in the toilet
5. Takes all the toilet paper and paper towels off of their dowels onto the floor
6. Identifies anything that is not currently on the floor and within his reach and frees it to the floor
7. Eats dog food
8. Climbs the stairs when nobody is watching
9. Touches the TV
   
10. Licks things (like the gym wall and miscellaneous bolts sticking out from it)

Top 10 things Quin does that make us wish we had a dozen more

1. Big wet kisses
2. 100 Megawatt smiles
3. Sleeping 11 hours at a crack
4. Constant laughter
5. Cuddles (for anybody, not just mom and dad)
6. Playing the piano
7. Cat-like curiosity
8. Playing peek-a-boo
9. Saying "da da" (this might be on Jenny's other list)
10. All the rest of the things on the first list
    

Fully Ambulatory

As of last night, Quinton has become one of the walkers of the world.  He took his first tenuous steps from Jenny to myself last night before bed.  Everybody was very excited.  Well, Ethan was a little disappointed since he was in the shower when it happened, but was excited nonetheless.  Looks like it's time to get the house to the next level of baby-proofness.

Another score for the "nurture" portion of the nature vs. nurture debate.  Quinton walked when he was 11 months, 2 days old.  Ethan first walked when he was 11 months, 0 days old.  These results are not scientific by any means.

2009 Update

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful 2008 and are ready to endure what is sure to be an interesting and trying 2009. I have mailed a "2008 Year in Review" to some of you, those that I knew could take it (it's a 30 minute video of our family). If you would like one of your own and did not receive one, please e-mail me and I will be happy to send one out to you. Now, on to the updates.

Quin
So it's been a very long time since I have posted, so obviously Quin is doing all kinds of things he didn't do since the last time. Where do I start?!? Well he can climb stairs now. Ethan says he is too little to go up wooden stairs, and I tend to agree, but that doesn't stop him from trying. He can "talk," and he still does that quite a bit. The only things that are recognizable are "dada" and "hi," sometimes he even puts the two together. I'm pretty sure it is random, though, as he says it not only when he sees me, but when he sees the dog, when he sees a lamp, etc.

Quin is now quite proficient in clapping as well as waving bye-bye. We haven't quite gotten him to blow kisses yet, but he thinks it's funny when we do it, so maybe soon. He is also not quite walking, though he can stand for longer periods of time than before. I, personally, thought he would be walking by now, but I'm OK with it taking a little longer than I thought it might. He is a MONSTER for getting into things, so when he walks it will only be that much worse.

Ethan
Ethan is doing well as always. He had a wonderful Christmas and is very excited about all the video games and Legos he got (along with everything else). His two front teeth have finally started to come in, so that's good. He has a strong desire to make a movie. Tonight he asked me how long our camera's battery would last. He was very disappointed when I told him it would last only 1 hour since he wanted to make a 2 hour movie... The pose you see here is his idea for a promotional picture for his video of him and his friend dueling with lightsabers. He wants to put his picture on one side and his friend's on the other and put "v" on his picture and "s" on his friend's, "you know, because that means versus." Once he has it all put together, he wants me to put it on Youtube. Maybe I will...

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of it right now. It's a new year, though, so it's time to resolve to do things that may or may not happen - I resolve to update this blog at least twice a month. There.

Happy New Year again, and I hope to hear from or see you all very soon.

Quin

Quin is literally growing before our eyes. He has at least 7 teeth now, perhaps 8, and is crawling all over the place. This time it's not the army crawl I talked about last time but a full-on, four appendage crawl. And he is getting into EVERYTHING!!! Did I mention he loves to pull himself up on almost anything? I know, I know, for those of you that have kids this is really nothing new, but for the second time now I am astounded at what these kids can do! What's more, after he pulls himself up, he is already experimenting with letting go of the thing providing him support. We're fairly certain that he will be walking before he's a year.

We've also proven ourselves as "second child" parents. The other day Quin had a temperature approaching 104 degrees. Bad, right? Of course. Well, we gave him Advil, gave him a bath, then forced liquids, and got the fever down into the 101 range and didn't even take him to the emergency room once! A day later, the fever broke, and he had his 9 month well-baby checkup anyway, so he got some medicine for a mild ear infection that seems to be the cause of the sickness. Jenny and I are very proud of ourselves. At his checkup, Quin weighed in at 20 pounds and is 29 inches in height. Still rolling right along at the 50th percentile in each.

Incidentally, the picture above is my proof that Quin is now a true Grady.

Ethan

Ethan has been taking swimming lessons at the YMCA for the last 2+ years. He has had to repeat several classes, but this most recent one he has had to repeat like 4 times. This time, he has finally passed onto the new class!!! His front crawl is getting very strong and he can consistently hold his breath for greater than half the width of the pool. We're very proud of him!

What's more, I am constantly impressed at what a good kid he is, particularly since I am his father! He has a boy in his class who is very big - OK, he's fat! Ethan wanted to tell me a story about him the other night and described him as "that boy that wears the blue swimming shirt," and, "the guy that touched the wall last in our swim race." I asked, "you mean the chunky one?" and he said, "not really. I guess a little..." What a good kid.

He's also doing well in school, although he has struggled of late in religion. Jenny has him so scared of him, though, that she threatened him that if he didn't do better on the next test, she would be angry. He was so nervous, he went up to the teacher after he took his test and asked her to grade it right there and then. (He got 100%)

We're teetering on the edge of having to finally tell Ethan about Santa. He is asking questions on almost a nightly basis. Jenny is starting to feel bad that we are "lying" to him. I feel covered as I just divert whenever he asks. For example, the other day Ethan said to me, "Dad, tell me the truth, does Santa come to our house or do you guys come?" I answered, "I don't understand the question - Hey, doesn't that Monsters vs. Aliens movie look cool!" OK, maybe not father of the year material, but those of you that read this blog already know that I've been eliminated from the running for some time.

On a parting note, it has snowed down here again. The snow is showing a similar pattern to last year where we get some snow, it warms up a little to melt some snow, then we get pelted with snow again. The first day we had snow on the ground, I woke up, looked outside, and said "Oh s**t!" I then went upstairs to wake up Ethan, he looked outside and said, "Awesome, it snowed!!!" When I hugged him and got him on the bus, he smiled at me and said, "have a snowy day, dad!" I guess it is good to remember once in awhile what it's like to be a kid. Ethan and Quin remind us all the time.

General Update

Ethan

We had Ethan's parent-teacher conference yesterday. He is doing very well in School, mostly thanks to Jenny. She works with him constantly on his school work as well as reading, basic math and the like. It's a lot of work, but it is apparently paying off. While in the conference we were able to read some of Ethan's stories and reports that he's been writing up. I plan on posting a couple of them to this blog in the near future. One of them which is hilarious is his essay on what he would do if he were president. He is clearly a democrat in the making, let's just put it that way.

Speaking of politics, Ethan has been very interested in the whole political process during this election season. During the lead-up to the election, he was often coming home and asking Jenny and I who we were going to vote for. Like everything else, he would change his mind on his vote on a daily, or sometimes hourly basis. I think he ended up "voting" for John McCain. Yes, we live in the republican underbelly of this proud blue state. I can't remember his exact reasons for "voting" for McCain. At one point he wanted Obama because "McCain is too old." Oddly that's not too far off of the reasoning I was using...

Quinton

Quin is rapidly developing right before our eyes. If you haven't seen him for a month or two, you might not recognize him. He now has 5 teeth that have broken the gum line with no fewer than 3 more just about to poke through. The first few teeth he cut were a bit of an ornery experience for him, but now he seems to take it all in stride. He is a very happy kid almost all the time!

He is now crawling in earnest. He's been doing that for almost a month now, but only recently has he gone up on all fours more often than he has done the "army crawl." One of his favorite destinations is the dog dish, mostly because he knows he's not supposed to go there. Just yesterday, he headed out of the kitchen, then waited in the hallway until I came out there to look at him. When he saw me, he turned around and bolted as quickly as he could for the dog dish, laughing all the way. Now he is starting to venture into the third dimension by pulling himself up onto tables, people's legs, the toilet, you name it. Looks like it is time to lower his crib mattress.

Unfortunately Quin is sick right now. We've come to expect this having had Ethan go through the daycare experience. I seem to remember some winters where Ethan seemed like he was sick from October through June. Luckily sickness doesn't seem to dampen Quin's spirits at all. What does dampen his spirits (actually it pisses him off) is when we have to wipe his nose. Mean parents!

I am not at home to post pictures and Ethan's creations right now, so look for them in a quick update post later this week.

Big Strides

Quin has learned the fine art of movement. He still doesn't really "crawl," necessarily, but he lilts along like an army man. Actually he looks a little like Igor would look if he crawled. Since he's been in motion, he's bee quite happy and quite a handful. I don't remember if Ethan got into as much when he was younger, but Quin really likes to get into everything!

Unfortunately, Quin's also been sick for the last week or so. He hasn't really let it get him down, but his stomach has obviously not been feeling well for quite awhile. That part is easy to remember from when Ethan was younger, unfortunately. He hangs in there, though. On the worst day, we had to change his clothes 4 times!

Just when I was approaching what I thought was maximum frustration, Quin pulls out another first and totally disarms me. We were at church on Sunday for Jenny's nephews baptism. There were several occasions where the parish applauded. Whenever Quin heard it, he clapped as well! I didn't even know he knew how to clap! At one point during the mass, Quin had fallen asleep and another applause broke out. He woke up and tried to put his hands together to show his appreciation, but was just a little too tired to stay awake long enough...

It's Official!!!

That's right, Quin's a Grady! Poor kid... On October 2, 2008, we had our final court date at the Waukesha County Juvenile Court to finalize, legally, our adoption. Largely it was uneventful, but it still managed to choke me up a little bit. While there we met another family that was finalizing, except this was their THIRD adoption! Crazy folks!

Quin's getting bigger and moving around more and more all the time. Today, I'm proud to say, he said his first word that I could understand. Jenny was telling me that daycare said that Quin had been saying "dada" lately. When he heard her say that, he promptly said "dada" to us. We're working on "mama," but hey, the kid knows what he likes!

Catching up.

I know that I'm getting behind because my wife has told me that I'm in trouble because of how infrequently I blog. I didn't even know she knew I had a blog... Oh well...

Quin's doing great! He's 7 months old now and is quite mobile. No, he still doesn't (really) crawl, but has developed a rolling technique that enables him to get pretty much wherever he wants to go. He's also started to try out the "all fours" thing by getting up on his knees and lunching towards things that are slightly out of his reach.

I'm pretty sure I've written about this in the past, but I have a feeling that we're going to be in a bit of trouble in our household before too long. Quin appears to be taking after his big brother in the talking department. He is capable of babbling on and on for minutes on end. He also manages to use several consonant and vowel sounds. On occasion he will even try to mimic something that somebody else is saying!

Wednesday marks our court date. After that, Quin will be a bonafide Grady at long last. We'll post pictures then!

Guess who has a tooth?

No, it's not Ethan, and it's not Barley either. That's right, Quin's first tooth has finally busted its way through his gums. We were wondering why he's been so crabby lately, and the old "well, he's probably teething" excuse was wearing a little thin some 4 months later. But lo and behold, it really was true this time!

Here you can see him having a deep conversation with an old Elmo doll. He seems a little skeptical I think...

It's the best state fair...

Last week, Quin got to partake in his first State Fair. He "fared" pretty well, though I'm not sure it was entirely his cup of tea just yet. Ethan had a blast, at least for the most part. We started out by getting a wrist band and going on the rides. This is really the first year where Ethan was ready to go on the "big kids" rides. Unfortunately we were there with Micky and her kids, and they aren't quite ready. Not to worry, we split up for an hour and allowed Ethan to go on several rides by himself, and he had a blast. He even got to go on the bumper cars while I talked with a couple of Chicago guys waiting for their kids. The only things he was not able to go on were the rides that had a 52 inch height limit. Apparently he isn't quite 50 inches yet. Guess the NBA isn't necessarily in his future!

After the rides, we grabbed some dinner then went through the animal barns, like you are supposed to at the State Fair! Ethan's definitely a city boy. He was amazed that the cows would poop wherever they were. He also told me that this goat had its udders in the wrong place! Then there were the "racing sheep" that had blankets on them. To be honest, I suppose they could have been racing sheep for all I know. I don't know why they where those blankets!

Quin is doing very well now-a-days. He is now able to roll in both directions, which sounds great in theory, but is a bit of a pain in reality. This means that he is mobile, to a certain degree. I placed him on the floor in our living room the other day and went into the kitchen for something. When I returned some minutes later, he had migrated to the other end of the floor and was playing with the coffee table! I just can't wait until he can crawl or walk!

The last few nights, Quin has treated us with full nights of sleep! 10 hours minimum for 3 nights straight! Let's hope I haven't jinxed it by writing about it!

"Where the hell did they put them?"

Time is flying by. Quin is starting to get more and more independent, which is nice as he was being a bit clingy for awhile there. He is very good at rolling and can sometimes even roll from his back to his stomach. His latest trick is to stay in a seated position if we put him in one to start with. He's also reaching for toys and other things that are out of reach, which I'm told is a developmental milestone. So way to go, Quin.

Ethan has had a couple of funny situations in the last few days. First, we were over at Tony and Michelle's, Ethan's aunt and uncle's for a birthday party. Many of Jenny's family members were outside being eaten by mosquitoes and playing cornhole, when a policeman pulled into the driveway. Apparently a 911 call was made from a cell phone at this address, so they were coming to check it out. Well, I guess Tony's sister knew the guy, so she invited him in to look at Tony's shed. While he was touring the place, Ethan came up to me and said, "Dad, it's cool to have a cop at your party, don't you think?" I told him he probably won't think so in 9-10 years...

Fast forward to yesterday (that sounds kind of funny, doesn't it?), Ethan had some friends over the day prior to play Wii and look at Ethan's new Bakugon - a Pokemon knockoff. One of his friends apparently asked if he could keep one of his characters, but Ethan said no. Well, yesterday Ethan was looking for his little guys and could not find them. He immediately assumed that one of his buddies took it. He became suddenly obsessed with finding the toy, looking all over the upstairs. After about 5 minutes of furious looking, he said loudly, "where the hell did they put them?" After my initial shock, I calmly told him that that word was not appropriate for kids to say. He seemed to accept that, but called us out on using those words... Guess it's time to start watching our language again.

Ethan the Triathlete

This past weekend was the Pewaukee Sprint Triathlon. I ran in this event last year along with a team that we had assembled known as "Big Sky Multisport." We had our own jerseys and a whole bunch of people. Ethan was so impressed when he came to watch! He wanted to be "on my team."

This year we did it again, and they have a kid's event. So I ordered Ethan a jersey and he competed in the kid's triathlon. Well, it was actually a duathlon this year since we've had so much rain this summer that the lake where we swim is closed with algae problems... At any rate, Ethan is now offiially a Big Sky Multisport member.

When I first gave Ethan his jersey, he wore it everywhere! Of course, the jerseys are made of some sort of moisture absorbing, space-age material or something, and they don't always agree with the wearer's body parts. After Ethan wore his for awhile, his nipples started to get very sore. So before his race on Saturday, he asked me to put some band-aids over his nipples so the shirt wouldn't irritate them. They worked like a charm, but he forgot to take off the band-aids when he got home, then went to a friend's house to go swimming. His friend's mom told me that she knew quite a bit more about Ethan's nipples than she ever wanted to know.

Quin's doing very well, also. Jenny and I had to get up early this morning for our race (at 4:30) and it was my night to get up with Quin. I was very happy when I woke up at 4:30 and found that I hadn't been interrupted in my sleep the past night! He may not sleep through the night consistently, but he seems to know when it's imperitive to do so. He's also added the raspberry sound to his ramblings, which is pretty funny.

Milestones

After having been read the riot act by my mother, I have decided to finally make a most delayed post. In the past two weeks, Quin has been passing milestones by the handful and I have neglected to document them here, so here goes.

Two weeks ago Friday, Quin passed not one, not two, but three milestones in a 12 hour period. First, he ate rice cereal for the first time, and gobbled it up completely. I mean, he really liked it! Next, after his meal, Brett and I put him on the floor and he was observed for the first time rolling over (he had previously rolled over in bed two times, but this was the first time another human saw him). To top off the act, Quin slept for 9.5 hours that night from 8:30 to 6:00!!! That was the big one in my book!

Now, two weeks later, Quin is eating cereal and fruit on a daily basis. He has eaten pears and bananas so far and has really liked both of them. He also rolls over ALL THE TIME! It's actually to the point where we have to watch him more closely because he is starting to use it as a means of propulsion. Unfortunately, the last item on the list hasn't taken quite as quickly. He has ripped off a couple of 8-9 hour sleep nights in the intervening time, but has also reverted oddly back to the 4 hours sleep and up pattern at times. That is VERY frustrating as he has set a high water mark now and I expect that to be met on a nightly basis! I guess I haven't reached too many of my milestones as a second parent yet, unfortunately.

Dexterity

I'm just sitting here doing some scout stuff and Quin is sitting right next to me in one of his bouncy chairs. What's different than normal is that he is grabbing everything within reach.  He has access to a bunch of toys within reach and he is studying each one of them intently.  This is a first for him and quite exciting for us.

A rough 36 hours...

It all started out innocently enough.  We were going to church on Sunday morning, after which Ethan was supposed to attend a birthday party for a girl in his class.  While in the "gathering place" after mass, Ethan was horsing around with a buddy of his when his head got bumped and one of his loose teeth started bleeding.  On came the waterworks!  He insisted that he was in no shape to go to the party.  We drove to where we were going to meet to discuss with hosts, one of who was a dentist no less, all the while Ethan was crying in the back seat.  Luckily for us, the party was postponed due to inclement weather.

Let's back up.  It has been raining here in Milwaukee for the last 4-5 days straight.  I'm not talking about Seattle showers, I'm talking about torrential downpours.  There is standing water to spare, and flooding is the norm rather than the exception.  Today I saw a statistic that we've gotten over 9 inches of rain in June, already making it the third highest precipitation accumulation for June ever, and it's only the 9th.  What's more, our average rainfall for the entire summer is 11 inches...  On Saturday, there were several tornadoes spotted and detected with radar, high winds, inch hail, you know, basic apocalypse stuff.

So the party was postponed.  No problem.  That should give Ethan some time to recover and he should still be able to go to the party later.  After we met with Tatum's parents, we were asked to check out Aimee and Steve's basement for water.  They were away for the weekend and had troubles with water in their basement in the past, so they are a bit sensitive.  We agreed and took the trip over to Ixonia to check out their basement.  On the way, Ethan managed to work his front tooth out!  We were very proud that he managed to stop crying long enough to do so.  What's more, during the 15 minute trip over to the house, he managed to work the other front tooth out without so much as a whimper.  "Yes!!!"  He exclaimed as the second tooth lost root in his mouth.  Hopefully he will remember this next time a tooth gets loose and bleeds a little bit!  Anyway, now he has no front teeth.  You can see for yourself how he looks!  What's funnier is to hear him talk.  He's not too bad, but you can tell he has some troubles with "s" and "th" sounds.

Crisis averted!  The rest of the day went innocently enough.  Ethan bragged constantly about how he pulled two teeth.  We found jobs to do in the house because the sky had opened up yet again with some more rain.  Eventually, the rain stopped for a bit and we decided to grill out.  After supper, we were giving the boys baths when I noticed that Quin was feeling quite warm.  I didn't think much of it, and gave him a bath, thinking it would cool him down.  Well, about 30 minutes later, Jenny noticed how warm he felt, so we (read Jenny) decided we should take his temperature.  Imagine our surprise to see the thermometer reading 103!!!  OK, Tylenol, the doctor said we could give it to him, so we did that.  Unfortunately that wasn't enough for Jenny, she wanted a doctor to see him.

Gone are the days when we could both get in the car and worry equally about our baby at the doctor, we have another baby at home that needs to go to school the next day.  So I drew the short straw (because it was Jenny's night to put Ethan to bed) and headed out to the emergency room at 7:45PM, right as the sky had opened up again for another barrage of water.

Apparently Sunday is the busiest day in the ER in Oconomowoc, because I couldn't find a parking spot.  So I parked in the front only to find that the front doors were locked at 8:00 on Sunday.  It was 8:03.  So around the building I walked with Quin, a diaper bag, and a big umbrella that was struggling to do its job.

The ER was not entirely that interesting, but let me hit in the highlights.  Quin was feeling quite a bit better after the Tylenol, but the doctors wanted to make sure they checked thoroughly for anything they could treat.  They started checking the ears.  Once that yielded no results, they did a chest X-ray, followed by urine and blood samples.  I was wondering how they were going to get urine from a baby, like if they would try to squeeze it out of the diaper...  Nope.  Catheter baby!  I couldn't watch.  In all, we were there for just shy of 4 hours and found out that there was nothing treatable wrong with him and we should just give him Tylenol.  While we were there, I did get to hear some interesting conversations from people trying to score some narcotics from the ER staff as well as some woman involved in what sounded like a horrible car accident, so the night wasn't a complete loss.

Around midnight, Quin and I rolled into the driveway.  It was still raining, and the storm was picking up.  As soon as we walked in the door, the power cut out!  No problem, I knew where the flashlights were, so I was able to get the house prepared for the night.  Of course, one of our babies was sick, so we had to sleep upstairs.  As soon as I hit the pillow, I was out.  The power had still not yet come back on.

When the morning arrived, things appeared normal again.  Quin's fever had not spiked like it had the night prior, the power was back on, and it had finally stopped pouring rain (it was still sprinkling).  After getting breakfast ready for Ethan, I went to get his toothbrush ready and found out that we had very low water pressure.  I figured immediately that we must have thrown a breaker on the water pump, so I went downstairs to check it out.  I'm not sure what possessed me to check the sump pump.  It has never run a single time in the 5 years we've lived here.  In fact, it has been bone dry!  Not this morning.  The water in the sump was up to the brim!  I can't believe it didn't come out.  The pump was working just as hard as it could, but it was fighting a losing battle.  I guess I'm not going to work today!

After a while, I realized that I needed to divert the water deeper into the yard as it was collecting right next to the house.  That seemed to appease the drain tile for awhile, but the pump just kept on working, and working, and working.  At one point, worrying that the old pump wouldn't make it, I went out and bought a new pump just in case.  Turns out that was a wise decision.  I bought the new pump at 8:30 AM.  One of my neighbors went to the same place I bought mine an hour later to find they were completely sold out!  Oh, and the pump came in handy.  With two pumps going, I was able to finally get ahead of the water coming into the sump, at least briefly.  But the water was still coming in at an alarming rate.  It was like somebody hooked up a fire hydrant line to my drain tiles.  As I sit here at 10:00 PM, the sump pump is still working more than it is resting.  Apparently the ground has reached its maximum tolerance for water and the rest was going to follow the path of least resistance, which was my drain tile.

I don't know the end of this story yet, but my nerves are about shot.  I'm going to try to get some sleep if I can.  I'm sure I'll dream of breakers flipping and basements flooding, and that will prompt me to once again go into the basement to look at the sump pump doing its job.  At least the tooth fairy was good to Ethan and Quin's fever broke, though.

The "Forrest" is strong with this one...

Birthday Boy

May 17th was Ethan's 7th birthday.  To celebrate, we invited the boys from his class to join us at the YMCA for some cake, games, and swimming.  Unfortunately, Ethan has only 5 boys in his class, including himself.  Even more unfortunate, one of the boys didn't show up, so there were only 4 boys there.  Actually, that ended up being lucky for us as boys are crazy!  The spent the bulk of their time wrestling and smashing into one another.

We did manage to get them all into the pool in one piece.  Our Y has a very nice family pool that is separate from the competitive "lap" pool.  It has a small lazy river, therapeutic area, a play area with fun water toys, and a big water slide.  Ethan's always been afraid of the water slides, which is too bad since we go to the Dells at least twice a year in hopes that he'll start going down them.  Each time we've gone, we've been disappointed.  We tried everything.  We picked out any 3 year old girl that was going on the slides and point them out, we'd question his manhood, but nothing would work.  He was very stubborn.  Finally we thought we had found something that would work to get him to go on waterslides, movies.  He loves movies, particularly Spiderman and Star Wars.  We have not let him watch the Star Wars III and Spiderman 3 because they were PG-13 and that made him mad!  His friends got to watch them, he would tell us, to which we would retort, "your friends probably aren't afraid to go down waterslides."  Yes, nominate us for parents of the year right now...  So we told him that if he would go down a waterslide, we would let him watch one of those movies.  Well, he finally went down the waterslide at the Y, not because he wanted to watch a movie, but because all of his friends did it and he felt like he should as well.  He did not hesitate to tell me immediately, though, that he intended on watching Star Wars Episode III that very evening.

Episode III

Ethan has been a fan of Star Wars for quite some time.  He has recently renewed his love for the movies when he discovered Lego Star Wars, the Wii video game, a couple of weeks ago.  Since then we have watched all 5 episodes (besides Episode III) several times.  Watching the movies with Ethan means enduring a constant barrage of questions and comments about the movies.  As late as three weeks ago, he still referred to the "Force" as the "Forrest."  It was all I could do to answer him with a straight face when he would ask me, "Dad, do you believe in the Forrest?"  He finally conceded that it was the "Force" after some heated arguments and re-viewings of the movies.  All that time, though, we insisted that Episode III was too dark and scary for him to watch.  The fact that it was rated PG-13 helped us to convince him that he couldn't watch it.  After surprising us by going down the waterslide, though, we had no choice but to let him watch.

After the party, we quickly went to church (fun birthday, eh?), went out to eat at one of his favorite restaurants, Burger King, then rushed home, got into our pajamas, popped some popcorn, and settled down to watch Episode III.  It had been awhile since Jenny and I had watched the movie as well, so we were excited to watch the movie as well.

My impressions of watching the movie with Ethan are mixed.  On one hand, I thought he had an incredible amount of insight in the movie.  He understood many things that I never would have thought he would understand.  For example, he figured out early that the Chancellor was only pretending to be kidnapped.  On the other hand, he never shut up for the entire movie!  Over the last few weeks, since the Star Wars craze started up again, he had been barraging me with questions about Episode III.  I told him what I remembered and never left anything out.  From that, he was able to predict a good portion of the movie.  It was pretty annoying, though, because he would constantly be saying, "Is this the part where such and such?"  I'm sure there was not an entire minute during the movie where he didn't say something.  One thing that he said that I found hilarious was during a scene where Anikan and Padme were talking about what they were going to do with the baby that they had accidentally created together.  Padme said something like, "Do you think Obi-Wan could help?"  Ethan started snickering to himself, so I had to ask him why.  He said, "I'm thinking how funny it would be if Obi-Wan helped with the baby.  Like if the baby got stuck coming out, he could use his light-saber..."  Perhaps the PG-13 rating should have scared me away.

In the end, I'm glad I let him watch the movie.  He actually is very good at following these movies, perhaps even better than some adults (myself included).  He has a very good attention to detail and is not afraid to ask questions about anything that comes to mind.  The bad part, of course, is that he asks it when it comes to his mind, regardless of whether it is during the movie.  One of his favorite questions is, "who is your favorite character" and all variations around it.  An example of his variations on this question is "who is your favorite bad guy in the second episode?"  Ultimately, he wants me to say either Boba or Jango Fett, his two favorite characters in all the episodes...

Quick Quin Update

I feel bad that I've not written much on Quin lately.  It seems that the second child syndrome has set in.  Reading back on the blog entries on Ethan, I wrote at length on gripping topics as the consistency of his bowel movements to the exact pitch and tone of his coughs.  With Quin, however, we have been through that, and we choose not to worry ourselves about it so much.  There, another reason to get that nomination in for parents of the year!

Quin is progressing as one would expect a three month old to progress, I think.  He has become quite interactive.  He rewards us often with smiles and laughs.  He is also starting to discover that he can grab things with his hands and explore them.  Right now he is very hesitant and cautious about grabbing things, and is still trying to get the hang of controlling his limbs to such a fine degree.

He's still eating about 5 ounces at a time every 4 hours or so.  He has started sleeping a bit more at night, but it's not very predictable.  He has gone 9 hours before eating at night in the past week, but that 9 hours went from 6PM to 3AM.  Eventually we'll figure out how to get him on somewhat of a schedule.  It is more common for him to go 6 hours between eating at night, and he still goes to sleep almost instantly after eating when in the middle of the night.

Oh, he talks a lot!  I'm not sure if I'm ready for another kid that talks as much as Ethan!  The funny thing is that I really believe he thinks that he is talking.  He will look you in the eye, smile, then babble at you for minutes on end.  He repeats sounds sometimes as well!  I'm wondering if those repeated sounds actually mean something?  Do babies come out with some sort of default language that they all speak and we just don't understand it?  I always thought all babies came out speaking a Chinese dialect since they had about a 1 in 4 chance of being born in China, but now I'm not so sure.  The things Quin is saying don't sound Chinese to me...

At any rate, Quin's doing well.  I'll update more as more exciting things occur to him, like getting teeth, rolling over, eating his first solid food, you know, the really exciting stuff!!!

Superheroes

It's not secret, Ethan is a HUGE superhero fan.  He loves all things Spider-man, Superman (to a lesser degree), Batman, Fast Guy, who he now knows as The Flash, you name it.  He even thinks Ghost Rider and Blade are cool.  On Friday, he had a book fair at school where he become the proud new owner of a Spider-man encyclopedia.  It is a book that has many of the characters from the Spider-man universe, gives a brief dossier on the character, and shows a picture.  He was very excited to show me "Spider-girl" from the book.  In fact, he told me that he had Spider-girl in his collection!  He rushed upstairs and grabbed his most European looking Spider-man action figure (he has very many), brought it down, and showed me, explaining, "see, dad, this is Spider-girl.  She doesn't have very big boobs, but it's definitely her!"

"No, son, she doesn't have very big boobs at all, does she?" I replied, temporarily stunned...  I didn't even know he knew the word boobs!!!

The above picture is promotional art for Amazing Spider-Girl #1.  Art by Ron Frenz.

One Rough Vacation

This past weekend marked one of the most trying vacations we've had as a family.  In fact, it was one of the most trying 24 hours we've ever had as a complete family.  Let me explain...

We rented a condo in Wisconsin Dells this past weekend with Aimee and Steve (Jenny's sister) and Tim and Laura, and their respective children, all of whom range in age from 6 months to 2 years.  The weather in Wisconsin had been wonderful, until this weekend.  Friday night on the drive up we witnessed gale force winds along with tsunami strength rain.  Apparently there was a tornado in one of the areas through which we drove!  Not to worry.  The resort we were staying at had indoor facilities which we fully intended to utilize.  Despite the weather, Friday night went off without a hitch.  Everybody got up there safely and the sleeping arrangements were more than adequate.

Saturday was nice also.  We spent a large portion of the day in various wave pools and water play areas, no problem.  The real fun didn't begin until later in the evening, after a healthy taco meal!  It started right at the tail end of supper, actually.  Ethan started complaining a bit about his stomach not feeling well.  We just assumed he had jumped on one too many lilly pads and discounted it.  I ushered him into our room to get him ready for bed.  Before he could get there, though, he gave a bit of a squeak, ran into the hallway, and threw up everywhere.  He managed to get about 1/2 of the seemingly endless supply of vomit into the tiled bathroom, but there was still a healthy supply on the carpeted hallway.  While Jenny settled him down and cleaned him up, I got the puke from the carpet as best as I could.  At this point we were still dismissing this as overexposure to the water park.

Fast forward two hours.  By this time, Ethan had thrown up all over both of our beds and sheets.  At this point, we knew that it wasn't overexposure and it was indeed some sort of bug.  Not having a bed to sleep in anymore, we decided to head home around 11:30 in the evening.  Before we could go, our friend Tim suffered a similar fate to Ethan's.

The ride home was uneventful, if you don't count Jenny having to hold a plastic bag in front of Ethan to catch the various bouts of vomiting.  To make a long story just a little bit shorter, we got home, Jenny threw up, I lasted a couple more hours before I got sick, and Quin seemed to weather it all without incident.  Unfortunately for him, none of us were able to get up or do anything until about 4:00 the next day.  Luckily he slept a large portion of that time.

So yeah, Quin's second family vacation was probably not too memorable for him.  The rest of us will remember it, though!

Big Update

Quin is 9 weeks old now!!! We've had a good couple of weeks with him so I thought I'd share with the lot of you.

First off, he's now eating about 5 ounces at a time every 4 hours. Unfortunately, he's still doing that at night as well. Although, some nights he's been known to go 6 or more hours between feedings, and when he does wake up to eat, he's very good about going back to sleep promptly.

Next in line, Quin has started to smile. Up until now, smiles were pretty elusive, but as of today he's doling them out to deserving individuals on a regular basis. Here you see him smiling at his mommy while Grandma Grady holds on to him. Last Thursday, he was really giving it to his Grandpa Tibbett while giving him an earful at the same time. Yes, it seems to be that we have another talker on our hands!

Last Thursday, Quin had his 2 month well baby checkup. He weighed in at 12 pounds 1/2 ounce and was 23 1/2 inches tall. That qualifies him for the 50th percentile in each category. He also got his first booster shots, which he really didn't like at all! Jenny and I heard a cry from him that we hadn't heard to that point. He was really mad!

Finally, we took Quin to meet the rest of my family last weekend as my brother, Bryce, got married in Minnesota. He was a big hit, as we knew he would be. Lucky for us, he is a very good rider as we had a 6 hour drive from Minnesota to our home.