Our Happy Boy in Plaid

     Check out this cutie in plaid. We are finding some clothes that just bearing fit him in the drawer including this 6-9 mos sized plaid shirt. He has been wearing it over his sleep suits to keep him just a little warmer during the day.
     It is amazing how much he has grown and grown out of! At the last pediatrician visit he was almost 18.5 pounds and was in the 15th percentile for height and weight, and 60th for his head. This explains why we usually end up struggling to get a shirt over his head before we notice any difficulty with snapping or zipping it up.
     He is now wearing 12 month sized clothes for the most part now and is starting to outgrown his cloth diapers!

    This big wide smile shows off his teeth, as Quinlan is super happy about getting bigger AND STRONGER! He can now support his weight through his shoulders and is spending more time on his belly playing with toys. He has shown some initial crawling signs, but still prefers the log rolling technique to get across the room if he finds something interesting enough.... such as a pint glass, daddy's prayer beads, and the rocking chair.
     He loves playing with empty boxes and wooden toys as well as anything that shakes, makes noise, or has moving parts he can figure out. He does not like anything with flashing lights or recorded music as it seems to scare him. Not sure if that is a throw back to all the beeps and flashing lights in the NICU or not.
     His favorite toys are still mommy and daddy and he loves to explore our faces.

Daddy appears to have teeth too, and Quinlan needed to check them out!

Rockin' Some New Clothes

      Quinlan was super excited to wear the new clothes he got over the holidays. The dinosaur PJs from G-Ma and G-Pa have become the long underwear of choice and the fleece hoodie from uncle Erik and aunt Sarah keeps him warm on the top.
     Quinlan is still getting out daily even with snow and the colder temperatures. We just bundle him up, put him in the carrier and zip daddy's extra large fleece over him in the carrier and everyone stays nice and toasty!

 

    Quinlan still loves his stacking blocks, and likes to bang the different pieces together. We are thinking we may have a future percussionist on our hands!
     We are still putting the boppy behind him when he sits as he still likes to throw himself backwards when he is done playing. He is starting to work more towards transitioning from different positions himself and have even done some pre-crawling reaching and rocking on his tummy.... child-proofing might be in our future yet!

Two Teeth!

     Over the Christmas break, Quinlan finally cut his first 2 teeth. We were nervous about this time as everyone says that 2 things can be majorly affected: sleep and breastfeeding. As we have worked so hard on both of those, we feared the time he would get teeth. The first one just appeared without much fuss and was completely unexpected!
     The second one came with a bit more fussing. We tried a few things to make it easier on little Q, like gnawing on bread and Ibuprofen as needed.

    What he really liked was putting a cube of frozen pureed apple or pear in his mesh feeder. He loved it and it kept him happy for usually the next hour or two. This was much better than waiting until he was crying and trying to squeeze pain relievers in his mouth with a syringe. Quinlan also got to use his new teeth to chop on the ice cube.
     Now that we have new teeth we are starting on some finger foods. Quinlan has been munching on Cheerios, small chunks of squash and bits of banana.
     Although we keep trying to snap a picture of these new additions, we have not gotten a great photo yet of his new teeth. Below is the best we have gotten, and another picture illustrating his love of chewing on pretty much everything right now!

   

Christmas in PA

      Quinlan has his first long car ride (8+ hours) driving down to Pennsylvania for Christmas. We were quite nervous about the trip as Quinlan does not sleep well in the car. We asked some more experienced parents for car ride tricks and used the following: (1) we decided to travel during the day as we were running a risk of him not sleeping through a late night travel while we might have dozed at the wheel. (2) we packed a bag of toys to hand back to Q one at a time when he got sick of them and tossed them, and (3) we planned for many stops to feed, change and collect toys.

     He traveled so well that we made half as many stops as anticipated. While in PA, Quinlan experienced a ton of new things: fire, dogs up close, many new relative, presents, and Christmas trees. He did struggle a bit to sleep in a new place with a lot of new people, but he was still smiling most of the time.
     He may have had more fun with the ribbons, bows, wrapping and tissue paper than the presents at the time, but is definitely enjoying the presents now.