Quinn is One!

My sweet little baby is one year old! They always say that time speeds by when your kids are little, but it was much more true with Quinn's first year than it was with Bennett's. It seems like it was only a few weeks ago that we brought him home from the hospital, and here we are at his birthday. We had his party last Saturday, and he had a great time--especially once he figured out what to do with the cake (which turned out to be grabbing fistfulls and shoving it in the general direction of his face, then diving face first into the plate when both hands were too messy to be useful).

Quinn's favorite toy is a stuffed penguin, and he was a penguin for Halloween, so we decided to have a penguin party. I made penguin cupcakes (you have to see the book, Hello, Cupcake! if you ever host parties) that turned out super-cute if I do say so myself. I have to credit the excellent instructions, not my own skill. I also made an igloo cake because the cupcakes were better to look at than to eat because the penguin was made from mini donuts and donut holes on top of a cupcake, and I couldn't find any good mini donuts anywhere. I'm sorry I don't have pictures to include...we don't have enough room on the computer to download any recent pics right now. I'll try to remember to add them when we get them downloaded.

Quinn is such a little character. He's a lady's man like Bennett was, but a little more subtle. He went for his 12 month checkup yesterday and he was really putting on a show for the women in the lobby, smiling and laughing and waving and trying to walk around to the back of their desk. Yes, he's walking now, but he doesn't like to try it unless you hold his hand. He'll take 6-7 steps while he's playing, but he's not convinced it's his most efficient mode of transportation yet.

He's not quite 20 pounds and 29.5 inches--MUCH smaller than Bennett was at this age, but still very healthy and on-target or advanced developmentally. He understands a lot of what we say, and he's learning new words all the time. He does this cute thing where he points to something and says in a questioning tone, "That?" or "What?" It's adorable. Yesterday, he was on the changing table and pointed to the wall and said "That wall." He's so smart--kids don't usually put two words together like that at such a young age.

I wish I could put a current picture of him up right now, he's so darn cute. He's got huge blue eyes and chubby cheeks and his first haircut makes him look so grown up. I know I'm a little bit biased, but I get a lot of confirmation of his adorableness from people in stores and restaurants, so I'm pretty sure he's empirically gorgeous.

Quinn is such an affectionate little guy. One of the first things he learned to do (after getting a modicum of control over his neck muscles) was give people kisses. He goes through stages where he's more generous or more stingy with them, but they are so sweet...if a little damp. He gives the sweetest hugs around the neck, too. He'll get excited and give a little squeal and throw his little arms around my neck and squeeze while grabbing my hair and it just steals my heart. He loves to sit on my lap and cuddle, but he's not a mommy-snob. He loves to snuggle with Daddy and Uncle Ty and Grammie and Granddaddy, too.

I've never seen a little baby who loves his daddy quite as much as Quinn does--when Steve comes home from work, Quinn lights up and gives an excited shriek. Then if Steve doesn't come straight to Quinn and pick him up, Quinn will cry like his little heart is broken. If I tell him "no" he usually thinks it's funny, but if Steve or Ty tell him "no," even gently and sweetly, he'll cry like you set his favorite toy on fire. Sometimes he even cries if he overhears one of them say the word no in a conversation with someone else. He's so sweet and tenderhearted.

Bennett and Quinn love each other so much. Quinn's first word was "brother." Well, it was "bwuh-vuh" but close enough. He can say "Bennett" now, too. Bennett got in trouble last night and had to spend some time in the crib upstairs, and Quinn kept looking at me with a quizzical expression and saying "Benna? Benna?" It was so cute. They like to play peek-a-boo with each other, and they both think it's hilarious when Bennett uses his toy giraffe's tail to tickle Quinn. They give each other hugs and kisses all the time, but Bennett usually holds on just a little too long because he loves his baby so much. Sometimes I hear Bennett explaining things to Quinn, or singing to him, or telling him a story. Quinn is so lucky to have such a sweet, loving big brother--I wish every baby could have a big brother like Bennett (yes, I know that's physically impossible, but it would make the world a better place).

I realize that this post probably isn't interesting to anyone except me and my kids' grandparents, but I couldn't let Quinn's birthday go by without singing his praises and bragging on how precious he is. We are so blessed to have such sweet, loving, smart, fun, cute, wonderful sons.

Who Needs Sleep?

Insomnia stinks. It's 4:17 AM and I don't feel the slightest hint of sleepiness. I have kids who do me the favor of sleeping till after 9 AM most days, and my awesome brother takes care of them and lets me sleep in even later than that most days. But if I were to fall asleep right this second, I would have to sleep till 12:17 PM to get the 8 hours I desperately need to function properly--not that I ever actually get it. And there's something unseemly about sleeping past noon when you're not a teenager, a drunkard, or infected with mono. Not that I haven't done it. It's just not something I would do if I could help it.

Oh, who am I kidding? I would TOTALLY sleep past noon all the time if I could! But since I rarely get to sleep before 1:30 AM, it's not quite as scandalous as all that.

Why is it that it seems lazy and irresponsible to sleep past noon, even if you fell asleep at 5 in the morning? My mother-in-law seems to think I'm a good-for-nothing because I sleep later than she deems proper. She doesn't care that I actually sleep less than she does--I do my sleeping at different hours than she does, and that means I am ruining my life, her son's life, and her grandsons' lives. Evidently sleeping from 3 AM to 10 AM makes you a bad person and sleeping from 10 PM to 6 AM makes you a good person. (Okay, that's not fair for me to say. It's not my sleeping habits that make me a bad person and have me ruining everyone's life--it's everything else about me.) She seems to think that I chose to have insomnia and that if I really wanted to go to sleep before midnight, I could, even though I've never been able to manage that, even as a preschooler.

When your earliest memory is when you were barely two and you were lying in bed trying to fall asleep while your parents watched Johnny Carson, it doesn't give you a lot of hope for establishing an early bedtime.

I'm afraid this insomnia is hereditary. My dad was an insomniac most of his life, and it's only recently that he's developed the ability to fall asleep quickly--except now he wakes up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night all the time. Poor little Bennett didn't fall asleep till 1:15 this morning and it's not an unusual occurrence. He sometimes lays there and stares at the ceiling for an hour or more. I might get a little frustrated if I didn't know exactly how he feels. Speaking of the sweet little guy, he just came into our room and climbed into the empty spot that Steve just vacated--poor guy feels like it's sleeping in to get up at 4 AM for work because he used to have to get up at 3 AM. I should probably break Bennett of the habit of coming into our room to sleep in the middle of the night, but I have to admit that I love it when he climbs in and snuggles up with me. I know it won't be long till snuggling with Mommy will be considered cruel and unusual punishment, and not too much longer after that when I'm up late worrying about where he is and what he's up to. At least it won't be tough to stay up till his curfew--and not just because of the insomnia, mostly because his curfew will be 9 PM!

Any One Find the Title of the Previous Post Hilarious?

You know, because it says the pictures are "new" and I posted them, oh, six months ago. I'm a bad, bad blogger.

It's not my fault, it's those darn (adorable, sweet, smart, funny, cuddly, busy, precious, practically perfect) kids. They have this nasty habit of demanding to be fed several times a day, not to mention the times they have the temerity to want my attention. Before they came along, I had tons of time at my mind-numbingly boring job to post several times a week. I even did weekly Top 8 lists which kept me very amused (not so much anyone else, but since a blog is basically a diary for those of us narcissistic enough to think other people want to read our pointless ramblings, I don't really care if they amused anyone but me). Now it's been so long that I wasn't sure if I should ever bother to post here again because it's so embarrassing to have such a huge gap between posts. But I have my own little red netbook thingy now (thanks to my awesome husband and brother--best Christmas EVER), so I have a little more freedom to blog and still be a decent mother. Till I got the netbook, I had to do all my computing upstairs, but the boys do all their playing downstairs, which we in the business call a dilemma.

"But Gina," you say, "Christmas was almost four months ago, and you're just now getting around to blogging again? What took you so long?"

An excellent question, Imaginary Blog Reader.

Mostly, it was because I was busy being a good mom, good wife, good daughter, good sister, good granddaughter, relatively decent friend, and terrible-horrible-awful-dispicable-reviled daughter-in-law. The usual. But a little of it was because we've had about 6 days since Christmas when everyone in the household was healthy at the same time. And the rest of it was the afore-mentioned hesitance to post when it had been so long since the last one. The bigger the gap, the greater my reluctance to post and draw attention to my laxity. Vicious circle blahblahblah fishcakes.

Anyway, tonight I have insomnia, so I decided to post something. But it's super boring and self-centered, so now I'm tempted to delete it without posting. But I suppose that would be dumb, so I'll just post it and then post something slightly more interesting right after this. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket!

A Few New Pictures

Steve, Bennett, and Quinn are downstairs playing with the electric train, so I thought I'd take a second and slap up a few pictures. I don't have time to put them in any particular order, so I'll just tell you that the ones where Quinn looks younger were taken when he was about 2 1/2 months old and the ones where he looks older were taken when he was about 5 months old Bennett's about 2 1/2, in case you can't keep up.

These brothers love each other.

Little Mister's new funny face. Bennett's in the background putting on his pj's.



Everything is hilarious.

Church was exhausting, and now you want a photo shoot?

Practicing a little air guitar. Is two months old too young to start rockin' the free world?

"Been a long time since I rock and rolled..."

Think I should try out for the touring company of Aladdin?

Thanks for the crazy hat, Auntie Shelly! My bro and I have made good use of it!

Go, Ducks!

Quinn is almost 5 1/2 months old now. He's so sweet and happy, and big and healthy, too. His favorite new thing is giving us baby kisses--he gets really indignant when he wants to kiss you and you don't bring him up to your cheek. He knows what the word "kiss" is and he'll give you one if you ask--it's so precious, and I'm sure I'm not biased at all. He and Bennett must give each other at least 100 kisses a day, which never stops being adorable. We're so blessed to have such sweet boys.

Bennett is such a sweet, smart kid. He sings all the time (and gets pretty darn close to the right lyrics and the right tune most of the time, too). He's learning lots of words in Spanish and he recognizes a good share of his letters and numbers--in fact he taught himself to write several letters last week before any of us realized he could do it. He's a funny, affectionate, helpful, all-around adorable kid. We're so proud of him--we just wish more of our friends and family could get to know him better.

We're planning to be in Portland for Christmas, which we know is a tough time to try to fit in any non-required visiting, but we hope we'll get to see at least a few friends while we're there. We can't wait!

Mamma and the Cute Boys on Tour

My best friend from high school is getting married this coming weekend, so we're making a quick trip to Portland. Steve can only stay for the weekend, but the boys and I will be staying with my parents for at least a week (the first week of August). If you're going to be around and you wanna see some of this cuteness:

come find us! We'll be at my parents' house, and I'm guessing that if you know me well enough to want to see me, you know where mis padres live. If not, call me or take your chances with leaving a comment here to give me your number. I won't have much access to the internet, so if I don't get back to you, please don't take it personally (unless I just don't like you)!

He's Here! (edited in red because I forgot stuff)

I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long for news...I was waiting till I had the pictures downloaded off the camera (we have a new thingy for pictures and I don't know how to use it, so I had to wait for help).

Without further delay, here's our newest family member:

Quinn Reuel Stevenson Kortan
Born May 5, 2009 at 8:03 p.m.
8 pounds 10 ounces, 20 inches

The meaning of Stevenson is pretty obvious. Quinn Reuel means "wise and strong friend of God." Reuel is an ancient Hebrew name that comes from the same word as Ruth, which is my mom's middle name. (It's also the name of at least one of the fathers of the Church of Christ, and my nerdiest friends will recognize it as one of the Rs in JRR Tolkien's name.)

I'm having trouble getting a space between the paragraphs and it's driving me nuts.

Here's how it went down for those of you who are interested in my agony: The doctor was busy with a procedure when we arrived at the hospital, so they didn't actually start the induction till we'd twiddled our thumbs for almost 2 1/2 hours. Then 4 hours later, we discovered the first round of medicine didn't do much, so we had to wait another 4 hours to find out the second dose didn't do much. We were pretty freakin' bored and irritated by the time anything started to happen (and the fact that I'd only gotten about 3 hours of sleep the night before didn't help). The doctor broke my water at about 5:40 (I was at 3 cm), and I got in the Jacuzzi tub a few minutes later--I was in hard labor by around 6 p.m. and at 7 cm before 7 p.m. when I got out of the tub. The doctor had gone home for dinner, but the nurses called him when they realized I'd gone from 7 cm to 8 cm in about 5 minutes. He told them to call when I got to 10, which wasn't much later. At that point I was pretty much incoherent with the pain and I informed them that I was pushing no matter what anyone thought about it. I only got a few seconds of rest between contractions, and I felt like I was giving birth to a speeding freight train (with sharpened wheels). I have no idea how long I pushed, but thank goodness it wasn't 2 1/2 hours like last time--it hurt so much worse this time that I would have passed out if it had lasted much longer. (The doctor lives 5 minutes away from the hospital, but he only got there in time for the last 3 or 4 pushes.) I was screaming my fool head off for the last hour or so of labor--probably did permanent damage to Steve's hearing. I'll never make fun of actresses for over-acting in labor scenes again--if I had been on a movie set, the director would have told me to take it down about 10 notches. The nurses are lucky I didn't rip their faces off for annoying me with all of their "breathe, breathe, don't let the pain take over" crap. If I hadn't been busy getting ripped in half by a freight train, I would have told them that since I'm capable of screaming the place down, I must be getting some air into my lungs. The end of the story makes it all worth it, though. We have a beautiful, robust, precious, sweet, healthy, perfect baby boy who we love. And I'm miraculously still able to walk.

Here he is in car seat ready to come home from the hospital

At home with Daddy and his adoring big brother

Big brother and baby brother in their matching pajammies with Grammie and Granddaddy

After his first bath

After church on Mother's Day with 4 generations (4 1/2 days old)

Feeling a little snuggly

His hair isn't nearly this red in person, but it might have a bit of red in it

Sweet little baby face

Quinn is a sweet, easy-going baby--only cries when he needs something and actually gets the concept of sleeping at (if not through the) night. He's snuggly and adorable and alert, and he's already trying to smile and hold his head up.

Bennett loves him so much! In fact, the only problem we're having with him is keeping him from smothering the baby with affection. All he wants to do is hold and kiss "baby bwrother." It's so sweet and we're so proud of him.

Quinn is begging for his lunch, so I have to go. Sorry for keeping you waiting so long!

This Is It!

I'm going to the hospital at 7 a.m. to be induced. As long as things go well, it looks like our little guy's birthday will be Cinco de Mayo.

Feel free to guess birth time and birth weight...and feel free to pray that I can deliver him without having a C-section--he's likely to be quite a bit bigger than Bennett, whom I was barely able to deliver after pushing for 2 1/2 hours. I'd really like it if it wasn't quite so brutal this time.

Wish me luck!

It's About THAT Time

Well, my due date is May 8th, but my doctor all but promised me he'd induce on the 4th or 5th if nothing has happened by then.

Anyone want to make a guess as to birth date and birth weight?