confusion sets in

not to blow my own horn or anything*, but i think i've gotten pretty decent at this whole parenting thing. i mean, keeping a living and breathing baby alive for an entire year?? come on, it's a big deal.

of course, there have been some confusing moments along the way. mostly associated with the stacking rings toy. i picture the stacking rings toy being one of the first toys ever. little cave babies stacking rocks, bones, woolly mammoths, on top of other things. turns out i was wrong in thinking it was a simple concept

take for example:

 photo courtesy of katie wise. she doesn't know i'm using it. thanks for being a great finger model, katie.


in case you're thrown off by the fancy colors and round, shiny rings:

granted, these notices don't really apply to us since q clearly has the intelligence of a 5-year old...maybe 6. BUT, for all other parents out there, how are you to know when it's okay to give this toy to your tot? is 18-36 months a grace period where your baby can try it out for a couple of minutes at a time to prepare for when they're three? are you sealing a dreadful fate for your child if you let him play with it between that period??

and if that's not confusing enough for you, try figuring out this stacking ring box:

seven rainbow tower of the colors?!? Companion my baby the intelligence growth?!? YES please!

honestly, i don't even know what to focus on in this description. i just really hope quincy doesn't learn how to read and speak based off this box.

and the other side of the box:

the conversation in my head upon reading this side goes something like this:

"hahahahahahahaha. i can't understand a thing they're trying to say here. it's absolutely absur...wait - what's this wonderful rhythm they speak of that will exercise sense of hearing?"

(eyebrows raise in slight concern)
"it's a ring stacker, not a xylophone..."

(mouth gets dry)
"they repeat the same thing twice, though. that must mean it's an important part of the toy..."

(palms start getting sweaty and eyes start shifting nervously)
"ut-oh, am i missing something in this toy that is developmentally crucial to my baby's growth??"

(hears quincy in the background, playing the piano sonata she just finished composing)**
"...whew, i guess i dodged that bullet."


* i actually am blowing my own horn. on purpose even.
* quincy has never written a piano sonata. she plans to finish her concerto first.

top five list

here's the thing about being a mom: it rocks. it rocks for all sorts of reasons (reasons that include keywords such as "snuggling" and "loving" and "more snuggling"), but here's my top five list of the less obvious reasons why it's the best (in no particular order because my mom brain can't handle such high levels of organization...):

5. "mom brain"

becoming a mom is kinda like a get-out-of-jail free card. you can now blame any blond moment you have for the rest of your life on being a mom. how fantastic is that?? i've been doing stupid things for, like, ever but now i'm JUSTIFIED in doing them. rock on

for example

over the course of my life, i've lost countless pairs of gloves by forgetting they were sitting in my lap while driving and then letting them carelessly fall to their demise when i got out of the car. pre-baby: stupid blond moment. post-baby: mom brain! score

4. catalogues

what i once used to throw away without a second glance, i now love flipping through with quincy, because the illustrations in catalogues offer WAY more opportunities to teach your kids some good, solid adjectives:

hilarious

 freaky

fantasatic. but let's face it, even that adjective can't describe how great this picture is

3. you get to live vicariously through your baby because social-rules don't quite apply to them yet
when a baby crawls on top of a drum to show how much she loves it, it's considered cute. when an adult crawls on top of anything to show how much they love it, it's usually considered illegal

2. costumes are cool again

what better excuse to throw on a costume than to say, "my kid (who can't even talk yet, but please ignore that small detail) was begging me to dress up with her" even though it's a complete lie because really you just secretly love dressing up in costumes

1. we now have a bi (tri?)-lingual household
we can't tell if quincy's talking in russian, chinese, or a nice mix of both, but jabbering is a special talent of hers

did i also mention it's really fun to snuggle with her?

preparing for the een of hallow

here are the sad things:

- going to a pumpkin patch where there's not even a corn maze, only a bail-of-hay maze. and said bail-of-hay maze leaves a lot to desire...like, for example, height

- making your own apple cider out of your own apples from your own apple tree. only the end result is the consistency of apple sauce and has to be eaten with a spoon and tastes like poop (in the apple cider's defense, i do have a strong food aversion towards apple sauce, so maybe it wasn't that bad...still, there was no sipping of apple cider - just chomping)

here are the happy things:

- dressing your daughter and your dog up in matchy costumes



i'd rather not talk about why
a) there were two identical puppy pumpkin costumes in our holiday box
b) we put a dog costume on our sweet baby girl (you have to admit, it's really cute (but not her REAL halloween costume. stay tuned!)

- bug and her guy came up to carve pumpkins with us. talk about a thick fog of creative juices happening at our house last night. bonus: the boy found a playlist on rhapsody called, "back in black halloween." um....yes please!


the dexterity with which quincy carved her pumpkin was pretty impressive...



literally, right when i inserted this charming picture, i looked outside to admire our work, and a squirrel was eating the boy's pumpkin... that should be in the sad list...

- caramel apples!! i couldn't decide if these should go on the sad or the happy list because, let's be honest, they didn't really turn out (at all). the caramel was waaay runny and didn't even pretend to want to stay on the apples and it was insanely sweet. fail! i put it in the happy list though because it did lead to some pretty serious sugar buzzes, so there was that



and now, for a completely irrelevant and utterly random pop-quiz
q: what word has been stuck in chelsea's head all day long for absolutely no good reason?
a: gefelte fish
ummm.....???

here i am, not hiding my talents under a bushel

as a peace offering for not blogging for so long, i come to you with a slew full (you'd think that would be one word. it's not) of new talents that the fam's been working on these past few months: 

the babe
1. quincy has taken an interest in marine biology. when you hand your infant your phone to entertain her for a few minutes, you expect to get it back full of slobber and maybe some chewed up cheerios. instead, q somehow managed to opened the internet on my phone and pull up this page for me:




of course she wants to learn the ins and outs of bog turtles! what genius baby doesn't??

2. q has also indicated that she wants to be a farmer



here she is giving tips to farmers on what makes an apple great while sampling the local fare at our farmers market





3. we have a first word! it's "banana." of course it sounds more like "anananana" and she kind-of says it with regards to any piece of fruit in our fruit bowl and the boy doesn't think it counts, but i just think he knows that once she starts talking, it's one step closer to having to fend all the boys off with guns 

the boy
1. contrary to my last statement, the boy's new talent has nothing to do with guns. it has to do with lederhosen



2. and paintbrushes. we found this studio in denver where you go and they give you a blank canvas and paint. then you just paint whatever your heart desires for two straight hours. or so we thought (and hoped). instead, they had an instructor showing the class how to paint a specific painting. where's the creative liberty in that?? here was the painting she was teaching us how to paint:



i didn't actually take any pictures of what people's paintings looked like, but here are some pretty realistic mock examples...



and here's what me and the boy ended up with:


bella luna...


and the flying mustache

needless to say, we were not the teacher's pets. she stopped coming over to ask us if we needed any help about 5 minutes into the class starting. and i'm pretty sure she snapped a picture of us to hang on the "do not let back into my studio" board. 

me
1. i'm knitting now! because i mastered sewing so well (ahem...), i decided to step up my game and start knitting. to date, i've knitted one hat that actually FITS on my head,



one hat that actually DOESN'T fit on quincy's head (aka, one hat that we'll now be giving to our friends who just had a baby...)


she's pretty bummed that it doesn't fit

and one hand... yes, i stabbed myself in the hand with a knitting needle. bet you didn't think that was even possible, did ya? i was going to take a picture of it, but it's kind-of yucky and maybe not so happy-blog appropriate. and little did i know, up until very recently, you weren't allowed to take knitting needles on an airplane, so i guess other people have also experienced the danger that is knitting.

2. i had a dream the other night that we went to our local dinner theatre and they ended up hiring me on the spot to be one of the cast members because i was the only person in the entire place who knew all the lyrics to the "and the world will know" song from newsies. i woke up feeling very proud of myself and realizing that maybe there is a place for me at the dinner theatre since i do know an awful lot of song lyrics after all...

i also woke up with that song playing over and over again in my head. i went to listen to it on rhapsody to get it out of my head, but turns out, rhapsody doesn't have the rights to that album, so i queued whatever newsies songs i COULD get hold of, which turned out to be over a half an hour of the song "santa fe" replaying over and over again, only in different languages every time. which really works to my benefit because now i could get a job at our dinner theatre, OR a dinner theatre in france, germany or spain...

gunny sacks

remember one time when i got so excited because i sewed my little girl a few dresses? and remember how cute the dresses looked on the hangers and how perfect they were going to look on my baby? and then remember how i actually am a horrible sewer and can't measure anything to save my life and how one time i put a dress on my child that i made and her arm started turning purple because the sleeve was cutting off her circulation?

purple arms or not, you have to admit it's a pretty stinkin' cute dress

flashback: my mom used to tell me and my sister all the time that we were so pretty, we'd be cute even if we were wearing a potato sack. i tend to believe her based on the halloween i went dressed as a dragon. i was filled with newspapers for crepes sake and i still look adorable... 

but who are we kidding? this post isn't about me and my costume past. no no. it seems that narcissism kind-of goes out the window with a baby in the house...
 
now that i'm the mom, i'm taking my own mother's philosophy one step further. instead of just telling quincy she'll look pretty in a gunny sack, i'm showing her that she will. here's what our morning looked like:

really, mom? you're really putting me in this "outfit" you made me? you're kidding, right?

okay fine, you dare me to look adorable while wearing this hideous thing? try this face on for size

ya know, i may look like the love-child of one of those plastic tablecloths from the 70s bred with lady gag's shoulder pads , but this is actually kinda comfy

wait! where are you going? i wasn't being serious. can you please take this ridiculous piece of work off me now, woman!*

*in addition to losing any and all drops of narcissism that i once had, i've also completely lost my marbles and now have more complete and intelligent conversations with my 7-month old than with anybody else. sad. 

date night and other perks of having a baby

for date night a couple of weeks ago, the boy and i went disco bowling at the cu student center. and here's why it rocked:

- we dressed up (of course). i'd rather not even talk about how many random pairs of sunglasses we now have floating around our junk drawer. and yes, my shorts are velour. far out.
- nobody else was even there - i can't believe ANYONE in their right mind would miss disco bowling
- we're not even students...and we dressed up... and we were the only ones there...

but, even with how great we looked, i've come to accept that nobody really cares to see pictures of us anymore. so, i'll end this post with a video of q baby eating sweet potatoes.

say what you need to say

mother ALWAYS trumps the likes of yelp and...well just about any other review/referral/recommendation possible. besides, who knows plumbing better than an old lady knitting in a rocking chair? nicely played, o'connell plumbing. nicely played.

and speaking of elderly things...

my aunt wendi stumbled upon this gem at her local zoo. i can just picture the conversation that led to this announcement:

zoo worker (picture this guy just for fun): umm... sir? everyone keeps asking why we have a dead goose

boss: come on now kid, we've been through this a million times. herbert's not dead, he just sleeps funny. everyone knows egyptian geese sleep in weird positions*. 

zoo worker: oh whew. thanks for telling me that again. everytime someone asks about him, my heart skips a beat and my skin gets all tingly and bumpy. 

boss: tell ya what, kid - why don't you make a sign so people don't get concerned anymore and so you'll stop bugging me. can't you see i'm busy here? (taps his golf ball into a paper cup lying on its side)

* don't feel stupid, not everyone knows what an egyptian goose is. i didn't. the boss was just annoyed with the zoo worker so he says senseless things, it's bound to happen. here are some pictures to educate you:

 (only i think that one really is dead and not just sleeping funny...i also like to imagine that guy's name is herbert in real life)

on our way to grandma's house, we saw...

california was calling our name and we answered with a trip out there. and you gotta know that ANY trip is gonna be good when you start off getting what we dubbed "the green dinosaur" as a rental car!

i can't believe we didn't get our own picture of it! but imagine it more like this:

we started off our weekend with a day in san francisco where we rode trolleys,

took q-baby on her first tuk tuk ride,

and even got foot massages in china town.

turns out the boy has incredibly ticklish feet. i thought he was going to kick the foot massage guy (do they get the title of "masseur"?) right in the face. our guys kept talking in chinese to each other and i'm pretty sure they were saying, "man - this guy's a wimp with baby feet! i bet his own baby's not even so ticklish!" ...and it's true.

quincy's perfected the art of flirting and she pulled out all the stops for the foot massage guys. i think she thought it'd get us a discount or something. it didn't

she's crazy about opening her mouth all wide like that these days and i couldn't figure out what that's all about... then i looked through our pictures and the proof was in the pudding (how great and underused is that phrase??)

like parents like daughter??

our green dinosaur then took us to visit my grandparents (q baby's GREAT grandparents) and the boy's cousins and uncle/aunt. quincy knew she was surrounded by her peeps and hammed it up good for everyone (i think everyone hammed it up good for her too...) ushy gushy love oozed around the entire weekend. it was great.

next, we went to the maker faire, which is a giant geek fest where people make random gizmos and gadgets then show them off... think life-size mouse-trap games, giant cupcake cars, a mechanical tongue that licks a lollipop down to the stick...aka, complete entertainment.

and what's a trip to california without a stop at in & out burger with aunt wendi and uncle karl. mmmmm milkshake