Car Trouble

The other day I was running with this car in my hand. I tripped and the car hit me on the chin. After I picked myself up, I took the car straight to the Time Out Chair. Luckily, I've been on the receiving end of Time Out enough to know how it goes.

I sat the car down, shook my finger at it and said "No hurt Quinn." I pushed the button on the timer and walked away to let him think about what he had done.

I think he learned his lesson.

Snow Day!

It's a snow day in Atlanta, people! It snowed last night while I was sleeping and Daddy got to stay home from work.

Daddy and I threw snowballs at each other (and at Mommy). Here he is making me a snowball-

 Here I am throwing one at him-

Here I am getting ready to throw one at Mommy. Note the mischievous grin on my face.

And here I am after getting hit in the head by Daddy.

It was fun to play in the snow for a couple of minutes, but it can get warmer now so I can play outside for real.

I'm Two and a Half!

Ok, I actually turned two and a half in December, but there was a lot going on then. Now that I've got a minute to sit back and relax, I'll give you an update on my stats:
*I am 36 inches tall and weigh 30 pounds.
*I wear 24 month and 2T clothes (even some 18 month shirts still), size 5 diapers and size 7 shoes.
*I have 16 teeth, but not my two-year molars yet.

*I'm putting lots of words together. I think my first sentence (or at least 3 words together) was "Bye, Quinn's house!" I'm starting to use verbs and adjectives a lot more. I used to say "ball" and "dinosaur", but now I say "Kick red ball!" and "Dinosaur get you!" (I like to chase people around with a little dinosaur and have it eat them.)

*I sleep great these days! I go to bed at 8 p.m. and wake up around 8:30 a.m. Lately, I take books to bed with me and then when I wake up in the morning, I stay in bed and read through them. I'm completely content to check out my books until Mommy's ready to get me up. And I get up so happy now! It's working out well for everyone involved. If you listen to the baby monitor carefully in the mornings, you can hear the pages turning and I'll say "The End!" The only downside is I love all my new books and want to take them with me to bed, there's starting to be not enough room for me in there. Here's what my bed looked like this morning.

*I nap for about 3 hours every day now (the books help during naptime, too!) and I wake up hungry and ready to play.

*I'm not such a great eater right now. I get very distracted by everything else going on and I only sit at the table for a few minutes at a time. When I do eat, I like eggs, blueberries, strawberries, string cheese, and corn. When Daddy says it's time for bed, suddenly I get really hungry and I say "Eat more!" and I'll sit down at the table again so I don't have to go up to bed yet.

*I am thoroughly intrigued with cartoon characters right now. My favorites are Buzz Lightyear, Spider-Man, Mickey Mouse, Scooby Doo, Nemo, and of course, Charlie Brown. In most cases, I hadn't ever seen the cartoon the characters were in when I fell in love, I just saw a picture of them and learned their name.

*I know all my letters and sometimes I'll sing parts of the alphabet song. I still won't sing it from beginning to end, but the letters I do say are always in order. For example, I'll say "A, B, C, D, F, G, P, Q, Y, Z!" I really love getting to the Z part, that's my favorite.

*I can recognize my name if I see it written on a piece of paper (or my puzzle, thanks Great-Grandma Maggie!)

*I know lots of shapes and I told Mommy today that my crackers were a circle (Ritz) and a rectangle (graham cracker)! She was pretty impressed.

*I know the numbers 1-10, and sometimes I'll count things. I usually count like this: "2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10".

*I'm starting to use my imagination a lot. I have my cars talk to each other and I have pretend conversations on the phone. Today at the doctor's office, I served Mommy some pretend tea.

*I've started saying "Thank you" without being told! It seems to make people pretty happy.

*I'm not always perfect, though. I don't like being told I can't do something, and sometimes I'll fall on the floor and have a total meltdown. I can also be a bit of a pusher. I get so excited about playing with my friends, sometimes I'll push them down. It seems fun to me, so I'm not exactly sure why they cry when I do it. I go right to time out, though, and usually don't do it again.

*I understand that Mommy has a baby in her belly, but I don't really get what's coming. If you ask me where the baby is, I'll point to Mommy's belly, but I don't talk about the baby otherwise. Today I got a little confused when Mommy said the baby was kicking. I thought she wanted me to kick the baby and I got all ready to do that before she stopped me!

Overall, I'm a pretty cool kid, if I do say so myself!

The Santa Torture

Here's how my meeting with Santa went earlier. Still not a fan.

I didn't mind taking the present he gave me, though.

Other than this silly tradition of making me sit on a strange man's lap, we had a great holiday season around here- I hope everyone else did, too.

Happy New Year!!

Christmas Continued

Leaping Lizards, Grandpa George is in town!

Pa George, as I call him, came to visit and to help us celebrate Christmas. And today, we went to Leaping Lizards, my favorite indoor playground.

My favorite spot in Leaping Lizards is the air hockey table. I'm pretty good at it, but I don't really have the rules down. I like scoring in my own goal as much as anything else.

Here I am climbing up one of the tall slides

...and sliding down!

After the slide, I tried to go back to the air hockey table, but someone else was playing with it. I had a short meltdown.

I recovered, though, and found a new friend at the toy corner.

Grandpa George helped me draw on the chalkboard.

Then it was back to the slides.

I say "Tee Haw!" when I ride like a cowboy (Daddy taught me that).

Back at home, I played with my new cardboard house Grandpa gave me for Christmas. I love going in and out of the door and opening and closing the windows. Do you like the paint job? I did it myself.

Before bed I helped Grandpa check his email. I had a great time with Grandpa and I'll miss him when he drives back home tomorrow!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!!

Guess what happened last night? Santa came!

When I woke up this morning, I was so surprised at all the cool stuff Santa brought.
Here's a (longish!) video from this morning.

Thank you to everybody else who sent presents. Santa isn't the only one who knows how to make a kid happy! Here I am working on my very own name puzzle from Great-Grandma Maggie.

And here I am jamming on some of my new instruments from Uncle B and Aunt Elissha.

The xylophone not only sounds great, but it's got great colors, too. I'll name them all for you (and then jam out to Jingle Bells):

Daddy gave Mommy an awesome new camera for Christmas, so pictures of me should start getting even more awesome (after she gets a lesson from Grandpa George, perhaps). Here's a picture with the new camera of me reading a new book.

After presents, Mommy made a scrumptious lamb dinner. I wasn't much interested in eating since I had so many new things to play with, but Daddy had seconds.

We actually had a bit of a white Christmas- it started snowing!

Here's the deck with a bit of a dusting. It kept snowing after I went to bed, so there might be a lot more snow out there when I wake up.

I love all my presents; I spent most of the day running around from one toy to another. The Buzz Lightyear phone was a big hit.

And so were all the Little People toys. I especially like putting the people in the elevator and making them go up and down.

Love my new binoculars! Thanks, Ian and Roxie!

So Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you had as much fun as I did!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

When all through the house

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there...