Q entertains the kitty...or vice versa?

Quinn discovered a new game tonight....

Lil' Fishy!

One of Quinn's favorite school songs is:
All the little fishies are swimming in the water.
Swimmin' in the water,
swimmin' in the water.
All the little fishes are swimming in the water,
Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble, POP!

Today she tried out her new pool and new swimsuit! She loved both of them. I think she would have stayed in that pool all day if we would have let her! She is definitely our little fishy! Water makes her sooo happy......She also showed off her new skill of standing!!

We (heart) summer!

I was off today so Q and I enjoyed a walk with friends on some new trails and lunch out.
These are a few pictures taken in the backyard this afternoon...I was just messing around with the p/s, so nothing spectacular, but you can see two of Quinn's favorite things....outside and my cell phone...combining both? The perfect storm.

Fun with Aunt Meg

Quinn spent the day with Aunt Meg. They went to the park, played with lots of toys, and Quinn crawled all over the place, I heard! As you can see, when I picked her up she was so tired she didn't even have the energy to suck the whole paci!

A Little Crawling Action

Matt said it best...Who needs a vacuum?

...When they have an Alie dog to clean up!

She likes those numbers...

We might have us a little engineer in the works....Sunday Quinn passed the time in church by playing with one of Daddy's old statistics calculators from school. She loved pressing the keys and holding it. Over at the B.L. house she has a combination lock in her "thingy basket" and that was one of her faves over the weekend. She kept staring at the numbers and turning the dial. She was also very interested in watching Daddy and Martin measure and cut Hardie....If she's into numbers she will definitely be taking after her Daddy and not me! :)

Passion Baby

Quinn and Momma's passionflowers......

Time for an update.....

Blue bottle brush??? Major Yummmm!

The kitchen sink can hardly contain our wiggly-worm!

Her favorite toys are now a golf ball (Grandbob informed me she only has another month or so of playing with it safely until it will fit entirely into her mouth....note to self....remove golfball from "thingy basket" soon...), her books (proud moment for Momma!), and her OWN set of carkeys complete with a clicker. She wanted mine every day when we left work to go to the car, but when I took them away to unlock the car she had a FIT. So I gave rounded up some of those "what are these keys even for" keys that were in various places around the house, took the clicker that doesn't open the truck doors anymore since it was broken into, and voila! Quinn's own keys! She also loves the knobby puzzle Mimi lets her play with in her office. I am going to have to get her a few of those because she loves taking the pieces out and banging them around.

Lotsa Firsts.....She had her first bath at the B.L. house this week, we ordered her her first hamburger completely for her (Momma was too hungry to share hers this time), we are pretty sure she now says "hola" and I have heard "Alie" a couple of times. She has said "Momma" for Matt, but not for me. :( She also ate her first spoonfuls of salsa last night at a restaurant. Her Great-Grandaddy and Opa should be so proud! She also played in the sand for the first time--we are studying "the ocean" with my preschoolers so we have a tub of sand in the sensory area. I let Quinn have a feel or two of it. One handful right to the mouth immediately....

She is crazy about making tongue-click noises this week.....

This morning after I gave her a bath I actually needed to brush her hair!!!! Sadly the brush is in her thingy basket at the B.L. house. So her first hair-brushin' will have to come tomorrow.

Yesterday morning I nursed Quinn, put her back into our bed with Matt for about 30 more minutes of sleep while I got ready for work, and then turned on my computer on the bed to check my email. She went from dead asleep to rolled-over, banging on the keys and ripping off the spacebar in under a second. It was amazing.

Yesterday Quinn spent her first day away from Momma with someone other than a grandparent. My good friend Alejandra watched her for me because I had an inservice day at work. I stopped over to nurse her during my lunch and she was so happy!!

Another sidenote...does it mean I need to tame down the yellow/orange veggies if I had to run a batch yellow desaturation on all the pictures I took of this girl yesterday?? :)

Fooooood!

We went to a friend's graduation party last Saturday night.....Shouldn't I get an award for navigating a buffet while carrying a very grabby 8-month old? She only snatched one handful of salad.....
As you can see, we were both very serious about scoping out what was to eat! We take our meals very serious in this house. :)

Only one horse was harmed in the taking of this picture....

We've entered into a new era of bedtime....Quinn is now mobile enough to get up and crawl around her crib. Gone are the days that we lay her down and she just falls asleep. We've had several nights of 45+ minutes of screaming lately, as she has been exhausted, but won't lay down and let herself drift off. Tonight Matt laid her down. She sat up, screamed for about 5 minutes....musta gotten tired of that, so she played with her horsey, crawled a few laps around her crib, tried to pull the bumper off, and....YEEEEHAW!!! Drifted off to sleep on her own! This is also the first time she's fallen asleep on her tummy. She has always been a back or side sleeper, so we were surprised to find her like this!

Quinns showing up everywhere....

Well, Quinn is somewhat of a celebrity these days....to the 3 and 4 year-olds in my preschool class, at least! The two babies in our dramatic play area are both now named Quinn....and last week one of the kiddos showed up with her own "Baby Quinn." Hers was better behaved during the photo session than mine was, as you can see......Which brings up another point. She's mastered crawling. She is even getting fancy with it--going from crawling to sitting, back to crawling, add in a little rolling, onto the back for a bit, crawl some more...you get the picture.
Tonight I took a little wooden ball that is the finial to our laundry hamper out of her mouth and Matt rescued a penny from her clutches. May the baby-proofing begin!

Makin' sure Daddy does it right.

Volumizing Conditioner....a girl can dream!

Things that make ya crawl.....

Last night after she finished her dinner (hence the nakedness) Quinn was playing with her magnets on the front of the dishwasher while I worked in the kitchen....and of course the pleasant tinkling of the dog and cat's water fountain (I know, ridiculous that our pets have a fountain...Matt's purchase....) lured her to crawl across the floor. She got her hand inside before I could grab the camera, of course. I guess she didn't expect it to be filled with water, though, because as soon as she touched it she started wailing! She had to have some Momma cuddles before she calmed down...and wanted right back onto the floor. She didn't head back to the water, though, the spatula she was playing with was just too distracting.

8 Months Old!

NOTICE ANYTHING??? Besides the Valentine's Day pj's in the middle of May that are a bit on the small side?? Yup, our girl has finally boycotted the swaddle! In the last week or so she started busting out of it every time we swaddled her, so we gave up....and she has been able to fall asleep and stay asleep without it. She loves to roll onto her side to sleep, which means her paci falls out, so we had a bit of an adjustment with her crying when that happened.
Quinn and I both had some kind of allergies or sinus infection the last couple of weeks, so we are still putting her to sleep propped up a bit so she doesn't cough quite as much.

Anyhow, besides the absence of the swaddle, here is what else our 8-month old does!!

Eats....everything!! She has had bbq sauce, watermelon, pork, guacomole....you name it, she eats it up! The only food she has refused is raw blueberry. She is drinking out of her little shot glass all by herself (with a little spillage). We don't share waterbottles with her, though, because she totally backwashes.

Types...until she pulled 3 keys off my laptop, then I ended that activity. She is obsessed by our computers! Also cell phones, but only real ones. We tried giving her one of Matt's old ones to play with and she wasn't to be fooled.

Signs...she can do "more" when she wants more food. It is a toss-up whether she will sign for more or just squeal at you, though, so we need to work on it some more. We will teach her "water," "finished," and "milk" next.

She is so close to crawling that it's scary...she has done a few forward scoots, especially when there is a computer or plate of food on the floor.....definite motivation for her.

She loves to read books and wants to help you turn the pages.

She doesn't sit in the bathtub anymore...she wants to crawl through the water on her tummy after her polka-dotted duck or fishy keyring, or best of all, her shampoo.

She is very opinionated about what she wants and will FOR SURE let you know if she doesn't get it.

She says "dada" all the time, and in the morning she says it in such a sweet little voice that it melts your heart.

She can pull herself up on the side of her crib....we lowered it last week after she peeked over the top rail at Matt when he was in there working on some paperwork one night. When we put her down for a nap she likes to crawl to the side and look through the rails and talk. Gone is our little baby that just stays put and goes to sleep. She is all over the place rolling and squirming.

She just started waving bye-bye....with her fingers facing herself, of course.

You can't leave her in just a diaper for longer than 2 seconds or that diaper is off...she's a quick one, that girl!!!

She sings in the car along with the radio on our way home from school every day....Speaking of school, she is doing great! She is sticking to the schedule, sleeping well at school, doing great in circle time and really seeming to be enjoying herself!!

Of course she is more fun with every month that passes, and we were so excited to take her camping, one of our favorite activities, to celebrate her 8th month!!

Giddyup, Cowgirl!!

The best parts of camping???

Eating.....

Sleeping...

Being silly!

We took Quinn on her first campout! We met several friends at Double Lake for the weekend. The weather turned out being tolerable...a little warm during the days, but cool enough to get a few zzzzz's in the tent at night. Quinn got to hang out in a tub of cold water, swim in the lake, sleep in the tent and crawl around on her quilt trying to eat sticks and dirt. She has about 5 mosquito bites to show for all this fun!! We tried our hardest to keep em off her, but it was a mighty quest as they were in full force!
Quinn helped Daddy cook breakfast this morning in the backpack. She also loved the lake--splashing and kicking her feet like crazy! She slept with us on the air mattress the first night, but she drove us crazy because she was too squirmy, so she spent the second night on a little pallet on the floor.
We had lots of fun relaxing and catching up with our friends!

Baby is distracted by the spatula.....

Baby notices the hat....

VERY unhappy about the hat.....

Baby Soup...

Matt and I squeezed in a little photo shoot tonight. The blooming oleander was just too gorgeous to resist!