It’s been awhile since my last post so I figured it was time to get on the ball. I won’t lie, working 8 hours a day/5 days a week takes a toll on my blogging. Whoever said there’s such a thing as work/life balance is lying to you. On the off chance you’ve found the secret to accomplishing this, please share your magical wisdom with me! At this point, I’d consider keeping up with my DVR’s an accomplishment…

So in the last few weeks Quinn has officially hit the “Terrible 2’s”. I have previously blogged about this. Forget everything I said before – I now know what the “Terrible 2’s” actually are. Q has always been strong willed but now he can vocalize it. He also expresses himself physically which is just lovely. Nothing says, “I want to crawl under a rock” like picking up your kid at daycare and being told, “Quinn got a timeout today. He wanted “Little Johnny” to go somewhere with him and when he didn’t, he pulled him by the hair.” Awesome. He loves hitting Jared and I too. Yup – go ahead kid. Hit the woman that gave you life. The biggest problem – he’s half my size already so it’s not like love taps. I keep telling myself “This too shall pass…..”

When we tell him “no”, the expression and noises he makes reminds me Michael J. Fox turning into “Teen Wolf” (the picture on the right is the beginning of that face). He grinds his teeth together and makes an extremely unattractive face. I took that picture along with about 5 others and showed him. He started to cry to which I replied, “Told you it’s not cute when you do that”. I should be more sympathetic because he’s only 2 1/2 (almost) but he has the vocal abilities of a 3 year old (reminds me of “Van Wilder” – “She reads at a sophomore level!”…. it’s only funny if you’ve seen the movie).

He’s also a MASTER manipulator. He’s perfected the same face that Puss in Boots makes in “Shreck” while saying, “Please daddy?” in the sweetest voice you’ve ever heard. If you let your guard down, you can’t see the spark of Satan glimmering in his eyes. This was made evident last weekend when I got home from being gone all week and we decided to take Quinn shopping. He’s OBSESSED with football right now and he stumbled across a helmet at Scheels – just his size. I don’t know why we didn’t just buy it on the spot…. Instead we left. Helmetless. And moved on to Target where he proceeded to ask over and over and over again if we could go back and get it, all while doing the face and the sweet voice to Jared. Quinn won. He even said, “Thank you for the football and helmet” on the way to dinner. We thought it was so adorable! Then we got home and he put it on and turned into Jared Allen, tackling everything and whipping (yes whipping) the ball at our heads every other minute. Adorable left the building.

On the other hand, he’s so much fun! We re-did his room and made it a “big boy” room…. he says “please” and “thank-you” for pretty much everything. He talks in full sentences, remembers things you tell him that you’d think he’d forget (this can also be something that bites us in the butt), reminds me to say prayers before bed and understands what it means to think things are funny or scary or sad, etc. To me, I love this stage the most… at least so far 🙂

Speaking of changes, I also turned 33 on September 16th. THIRTY THREE! I swear to God it feels like 53. I’m not like some women who think, “I get better with age” or “30 is the new 20” and so on…. I am not one of the people who want to get old. However, my husband made it a nice soft landing when I received my belated birthday gift in the mail upon my return from Dallas last week. You quickly forget being upset about turning another year older when there’s a box with a Louis Vuitton handbag in it – Husband. Of. The. Year.

The picture on the left is right after my birthday dinner with my family. As you can see, he literally is half my size. I’m in so much trouble…