Happy Birthday, Quinlan!

    

    Yesterday Quinlan turned 1! It is hard to believe that a year ago we were at MGH in the NICU and Quinlan had to be fed through a tube in his nose. Here he is showing us how capable he is at feeding himself. Of course when we gave him this slice of banana blueberry birthday cake, we did not expect him to try and eat the whole slice.
     We celebrated with some close friends and Grammy. Quinlan tried to grab the candle on the cake as he was mesmerized by the fire, and mommy helped him blow out the candle after everyone finished singing to him.
   

      He then opened a few presents with mommy's help including a fun wooden alligator from Great uncle Phil, a Trio building set from Allison and Emmet, a monkey from Melvin and Heather, a shape box from Grammy and some lovely clothes from Kristen. He made out quite well for his first birthday!
     All the clothes are 18 months, but this little guy is getting longer so he will probably be sporting them some time soon!

Blizzard of 2013

     Quinlan experienced his first blizzard a couple of weeks back! He was fascinated with the huge snow flakes and loved looking out the window. Both his mom and dad were home with him Friday-Sunday, then mom headed in to MGH while daddy enjoyed another 2 days off with Q.
     Overall we got 25" of snow with the storm starting Friday around 3pm, the heaviest snow after 8pm, and the snow finally subsiding Saturday morning. Thankfully both Main St and our side street were well plowed and the car was easy enough to dig out.

     Of course all that snow did not stop Quinlan from getting outside. He enjoyed a couple of walks in the carrier with his parents, and as you can see his little legs have gotten too long for the coat so we were sure to bundle him up.
     It was fun to see all the snow, but the coolest was the snow owl that someone did on one of the side streets near us.

Feeding Himself

      Quinlan started feeding himself a couple of weeks ago and now there is no stopping him! We started giving him Cheerios so he could get used to picking them up and chewing. Previously there had been some issues with Quinlan gulping solid pieces and gagging or choking, so we took this slowly with our mantra being "Chew, chew, chew!"
     He mastered it within a week and we were able to upgrade to sweet potato chunks and soaked prunes. He now enjoys bread with olive oil (dad introduced him to that), bananas,  breast milk & egg omelets, lentils mushed up in a ball, and avocado.

   



     Quinlan now refuses the spoon or tries to feed himself with it, so we have gotten creative with how we present food to him: mash in some cottage cheese with the lentil balls, adding oatmeal to the egg omelets. Q has his dad getting creative with the meals and he loves sampling whatever dad prepares.... including smoked fish!
      The neatest part is that he is now selective, and you can tell what he likes by what he reaches for first. Bread and bananas now have to be added to the plate last as he would eat a meal of just those if given the chance to choose.
      All this food helps him grow, in fact, check out all his hair in the picture below!

Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy

     Quinlan has been enjoying his doorway jumper that was given to us by our friends Ted and Juliana. We have tried putting him in from time to time and he has showed little to no interest until recently when dad decided to try again.
     Quinlan immediately started bouncing and doing what we refer to as his little jig. It looks a little like Irish step dancing and we are so excited to report that we got it on video. If we figure out how to post it online, there will definitely be a link on this page.

     And he loves trying to move the beads along the wire with this toy given to us by Tina and Mohit.  He will play for 30 minutes with this, either in the doorway jumper or sitting up, and has gotten quite good and grasping and moving the beads with his fingers.
      Kristen, his nanny, has even been able to use this toy as incentive to get Quinlan to work on pushing up from side lying into sitting as Q is still not transitioning positions without assistance. Oh, and he now will call out to you to let you know when he would like that assistance!

Sometimes he just loves to bounce, and does so on command when you say: Bouncy, Bouncy Bouncy!

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.
    

Thanksgiving with the Gartons

    Quinlan had quite the adventure back in November when he flew down to Atlanta to spend Thanksgiving with the Garton Family. This was his first time flying and the woman sitting behind us said that she would have never known we had an infant if she didn't see daddy lifting him overhead. Go Q!
    Quinlan did not sleep longer than 45 min and his parents just needed to be creative on how they kept him entertained.

     Auntie Em was nice enough to send the photos along to document all the new relatives that Quinlan got to meet. He had already met Grandma Melanie and Grandpa Steve, but that was back in May when he was half his size, so he enjoyed becoming reacquainted. He also finally got to meet auntie Em and uncle Alex, and even his great grandma Mary and great aunt Denise.
     Quinlan was a bit shy at first with everyone, as he is still in the "stranger danger" phase, but by the second day he was enjoying all his new playmates. In this picture, he is showing off how much his hair is like his aunt Em's!

Quinlan can hardly wait to see everyone again soon!

A Warm December Day

Since it was almost 60 today, we decided to head to our favorite park with mom's friend Bec. Quinlan enjoyed his time on the swings.

And riding his favorite dinosaur.

Which he of course tried to eat. No teeth yet, but still chewing on everything.