Fall

I love this picture. Really intense. Although it may look like it, Q doesn't have a stubborn bone in his body, yet. Determined, yes, but not stubborn.
The weather didn't take long to get cold, wet and gloomy. I miss sunshine! My arthritis got so bad with the cold that I started increasing my Reliv. I need to increase it again because at this point my fingers at still so stiff in the morning that I can't bend them or use them until I 'milk' or massage them. What is really strange though is that if I wake up at 2:30 or even 5:30 in the morning they aren't that stiff, but any later than 7am and I can't move them. I know that the lack of movement and circulation causes the stiffness, but why does it wait until 7am? Mystery to me. At least the rest of my joints aren't hurting anymore. RELIV you ROCK!

I discovered this 'mother of all spiders' nestled into the handle of my parents truck when I was trying to get inside. Eeeks. Almost as big as my thumb! She had some powerful webbing, too. Even when I got her on a stick and tried to fling her away she didn't go far and was still attached to the truck handle! That must have been an awesome spot for catching meals.My Mom and Dad bought a cruise tour to Egypt, Isreal, Greece, Italy and another place I can't remember. They came to visit us before and after their trip.
We did a real family picture while they were here. It's nice to have an updated one...three new family members since the last one.
Q and I went up to Ferndale with Ian to visit his family. We were there two days. Q loved Grandpa and Grandma's tractor almost as much as Christina and Benson's car. He got his first taste of pumpkin and saw his first Jack-o-Lantern. Mom, Q and I hit the consignment stores for two days and found some awesome deals. Q had been getting pretty bored with the same old toys he'd had for a while so we found a boat load of new ones for cheap as well as a little car to ride on and a walker so he could get around despite the muscle delay. He loves his walker and the new toys were a hit. When he runs in his walker he has both his hands up in the air like a monkey. My speculation is that this is how his hands are when he's walking with us...but who knows?
Q also got to see Daddy's (and Grandpa and Grandma's) workplace. It was really good to visit the Walkers.

When we moved into my parents place we discovered that the neighbors had not been maintaining their trees and the view was almost completely gone. (what was supposed to be a hedge of pine trees turned into a forest!) We also noticed that there was a for sale sign on the house across the street. When I finally saw a car in the driveway I went across and introduced myself and asked about the trees. They said they signed the papers in 10 days and if we wanted to have the trees down by then we were more than welcome. We started the next day. With a little help from the missionaries we got 7 of the 10 trees down and over the cliff. Man, were we tired, and boy did those trees smell heavenly! It took us (Ian did most of the work) another week (mostly at night in the dark, and Q on my back in the backpack) to get the rest of the trees down and over the hill. Then we had to clean up the lawn to remove the evidence. We recovered half of the view, now we just need our other neighbors to trim their trees. The most amazing part about the whole project is that we were never sore. I expected us to be immobile a day or two later and it never happened. What a blessing.

BEFORE
(although there were cool clouds this day that make it look like we were on top of a mountain!)AFTER

The porches here were also so green and slimy that they were a safety hazard. Not thinking too clearly I rented a powerwasher the same day as the we started the tree project and I cleaned off the porches (ibuprofen to the rescue) and a little bit around the side of the house. That was a lot of work.

Poor little Q cut teeth 2-4 all in one week. That was a rough one for me too as he was SUPER clingy!

I couldn't believe it, but our entire freezer of frozen milk only lasted our hungry little boy one month! That went by fast. He's now on formula again. He adjusted okay, but our pocketbook doesn't like it.

I decided to finally follow through on Q's Davis pediatrician's recommendation to have him assessed for muscle delay. Two ladies came out to assess him and he qualified for muscle therapy. The muscle therapist has been coming out to see him once a week for about two months now. They also recommended he try acid reflux meds to see if that's why being on his tummy is so aversive. Three days after he started the meds (and a week after seeing his new bowen therapist) he started commando-inchworm crawling. We are really excited and wish we knew which one was working...
It took us weeks to unpack, but we are finally down to only a few boxes laying around waiting for us to get sick of them. Strangely, from the day we moved in I had 'nightmares' every night that I'd lost Q in the thick covers on the new bed. I'd often wake up Ian as I was searching the covers to find him. Thankfully, after two months the nightmares began to diminish and now they are down to only once or twice a month that I wake up Ian searching for Q in the middle of the night. I find it strange since aside from the first month that the crib wasn't up yet, Q always sleeps in his crib!

For Halloween we went to my sister's ward carnival. It was pretty cool. Q had picked out his tiger costume at one of the consignment stores we'd gone to, he got really excited about it. It also has a little box that roars in the nose of the tiger.Q's sleep routine has been completely whacked since we moved here. All the trips and stuff have thrown him for a loop. We've probably had about 10 days total that he's slept through the night. Plus he's moved himself from 3 to 2 naps a day. He discovered that he could walk around the house holding our hands and that's all he wanted to do. He was almost manic. For a couple days he wouldn't go to bed until 10pm, that did us in. I decided he was overexhausted and we started his bedtime routine an hour earlier. That worked for about a week, he was asleep by 8:30. I think having the Christmas tree up is what ruined that plan.

The week before Thanksgiving we got 3 inches of snow. Crazy...Ian had to use chains to get up the last hill coming home.

I just had to include some pictures of this cutie making faces in the bathtub. One of these days Eyore's nose is going to fall off.

September

We had Walker's, Barrett's and Davis' here to help us unload our moving truck and start unpacking. This was the first time Q got to meet the Barret side of the family!Luckily Mom Walker decided to stay the night with Q and I our first night to help unpack essentials. I might not have survived otherwise. Ian immediately left with the guys to unload the rest of our stuff in our new storage unit (full to the ceiling and wall to wall!) then drop off the moving truck (they couldn't find it so it took them hours) and finally go home with his Dad to get dropped off at the Bellingham airport early the next morning.About 4 days later I flew with Ian's parents to Denver, Colorado for a Walker reunion. Ian followed a few days later from Sacramento. His sister Christina put up the entire family! That takes way more guts than I have. There were 28 people in their comfortable house, including 15 grand kids. It was really fun seeing family we hadn't seen in years. Again I must say that I apologize for my behavior on such a fun occasion, I promise I will try to be better next time!One of our excursions was to a red rock park, it was beautiful.Quintin absolutely LOVED his cousins. (All of them, even those not in pictures!) He loved being pushed around in the red car by Peyton. He would have stayed in that car the whole week! I was amazed he was able to stay in and NOT fall out!Look mom! I'm a big boy!All the kids loved playing in the hot tub.Ian had fun with the nieces and nephews.It was really good to see family we've been away from for so long.Quintin and I were alone in the still-packed house for two weeks once we got home. It took me about a week to find the crib parts so he slept with me until then - that was rough. We tried to make the best of it and get out to enjoy the state park across the street. Marvelous views! We tried the moby and the backpack and had fun getting some fresh air. Getting our new phone/net hooked up was such a headache. It took 9 phone calls just to find the right company. Then it ended up taking 3 weeks for them to get our order screwed up again and again and again. It took over another 10 phone calls and 2 house visits by technicians to get it straight, man was I frustrated.

Over the past (stressful) month my milk supply had been diminishing considerably. Since I had been trying to do this gradually anyway I decided to let it happen. By the end of the month I was no longer pumping at all. Q was solely on frozen milk. It was kind of sad for me but my arthritis had been getting so bad that I needed to stop. I think by this time Q's tongue tie had been repaired to the point that he could have learned to breastfeed, but it was time to stop.

After those two weeks alone Q and I got on an airplane back to Cali for a week. We stayed with some friends of ours, the Aldous' from when we first moved to Davis. Thank you Alice and Chuck! You were live savers! These pictures are on their trampoline out back. Poor Q had an MRI requiring sedation (it took them 3 freaking tries in his chubby ankle to get the IV in while he's screaming his head off-way to wrench a mom's heart), a pelvic ultrasound, and a special x-ray entailing catheters and dye. Poor guy. I think the x-ray was the worst because he had to lay on his side for about a half hour waiting for him to pee out the dye, which his bladder was in no hurry to do, meanwhile they're pouring warm water on his parts to stimulate pee but just turns cold once it's on the table. Therefore he was lying in cold water on a cold x-ray table mostly naked for a half hour with mommy and daddy holding his head and arms.
MRI Results: There are more folds on the left than on the right, but the computer says this is a normal way of developing. Lets cross our fingers.
Kidney test results: Dilation has increased from a 2 to a 3 requiring further monitoring and tests. Here we come Seattle Children's Hospital.
Quintin and I went to visit Grandma Alvina one last time and Winters to see my old school friends and say goodbye. We got to see Dianne, Andi (and Reagan), Alicia, Garret, Cynthia, and Tanya. They told me about how my old, awesome WHS principal is now a kindergarten teacher! I couldn't believe it. And my old classroom at WMS is correctly set up now, too bad I missed it myself. The new WMS administration is going well also.Groupon had a special deal at I Fly (indoor skydiving in a wind tunnel) so Ian and I decided to do that for our anniversary (albeit a month late). It was way down in the bay area but awesome. We have the video on DVD, but don't know how to transfer it here, so I guess you'll have to miss out. We had a blast.

Right before we left town we stopped off at the INCREDIBLE SPCA Thrift store in Davis for one last peak and snagged ourselves a nice black pak'n'play for $12! I had never intended to get one but with all the traveling we've been doing we needed a travel bed for Q. I couldn't believe we got such a deal. It was hiding under 2 other not-as-cool play pens. Yes!The Neurologist gave Q a fun pin wheel so that kept him happy for the start of our laborious trip home. In the first car picture you can see his one tooth that came in the day we packed the truck. :)We stopped and stayed with my cousins Carl and Chris in Portland on our way home. We'd learned our lesson last time not to try to do it all in one day with Quintin. It was good to see them and my cousin Jimmy. We made it home without any huge mishaps. Phew.