The Museum of Science and Ouch!

For our first full day of Silly Grandpa's visit, we'd decided to go to South Chicago to go to the Museum of Science and Industry - one of Quinton's favorites museums in town.

Our visit to the museum started off well and Quinton enjoyed the model ships on display...

But about 5 minutes after this picture, we entered into the "Images" exhibit where the halls are a lot darker and then next thing I knew, Quinton ran ahead to the next area and then SMACK! He was flat on his back after hitting a tall screen that stopped at about Quinton's exact head height. My dad scooped Quinton up as I retrieved his stuffed animal that flew in the opposite direction and when I went to reach for Q a couple of seconds later, I looked at him and noticed the blood dripping down his face. YIKES!

Needless to say, we ended up getting a lot more in our museum visit than we had bargained for! Luckily for us, the University of Chicago has a children's hospital about a mile away from the museum. The children's hospital has it's own ER just for kids, which was so wonderful. The people there were so nice and efficient! We were seen right away and the doctor who saw Quinton wasn't sure if he needed stitches or derma-bond glue so she didn't hesitate to get a second opinion from another doctor. Quinton has a pretty good gash on his head but they decided to go ahead with the derma-bond, thank goodness!

Quinton was such a trooper. He only cried a little bit and by the end of the whole ordeal, he seemed to perk up and acted as if nothing had ever happened!
We ended up going back to museum, where Quinton promptly fell asleep, and later, we enjoyed a fun dinner with my dad and Matt at Ed Debevic's downtown.

I do have to say that it was rough for me, as a mom, to have to go through Quinton's first ER trip. I knew it was going to happen someday, since he's so fearless, but it was hard to see my little boy in pain. I am very thankful for the nice doctors and my dad for keeping Quinton so comfortable.

Stay tuned! My dad's here until Monday and you never know what else might happen!

We Love Silly Grandpa!

We are so lucky to have my dad in town for a few days. He flew in, yesterday, from Utah and we are so excited to have him all to ourselves! They don't call him Silly Grandpa for nothing!

We started our afternoon off spectacularly with a lunch date at Chuck E. Cheese's, one of my, I mean, Quinton's favorite places to eat and hang. I know a certain former boss of Matt's totally cringes at the thought of going to Chuck E. Cheese's for fun, but really, there's nothing better than pizza and lots and lots of tokens - except when Silly Grandpa is there, too!

Quinton and my dad had a great time playing together. They especially loved the air hockey table.

You can tell my dad is getting beat by the look on his face!
More fun to come, I'm sure!

Bah Humbug...Already!

One of my friends said her son woke up this morning at 5 am, looked out the window and was BEGGING to go outside and play in this:

Our first real snowfall of the season.

Sure it's kind of cool, but really, it feels like we barely stopped shoveling snow 5 months ago!

Quinton was so mad when he came out of his preschool class at noon, today, and the snow was mostly all gone. He started crying and asked me where all of the snow was, like I was hiding it from him! I have a feeling we'll be playing in the snow a lot this winter!

Even though I wasn't excited about waking up to the snow, who wouldn't love waking up to this cute little boy making faces and pretending to be a pirate?

The Buzz on Quinton

I was trying to save a couple of bucks by trimming Quinton's hair, the other day, but when I was trying to fade the sides of his head, he moved and it was cut way, WAY too short. So then, I gave up, put the #3 blade on the trimmer and just buzzed it all off. He looks like Matt's twin with this new haircut and it's so much easier to take care of...oh well...I guess I still saved the money, just not Quinton's hair.

The Colorful Season of Quinton!

Oh, my lovely Quinton loves to color with markers. He was doing pretty well, the other morning, until I went to take a shower and came out to find Quinton had colored on himself and was sitting on the kitchen counter helping himself to cinnamon rolls #2 and #3 for the morning.

Oh and he'd decided to drink his chocolate milk from a doggie bowl. We don't have a dog, though, so I'm not sure where this came from.

Just kidding! We'd been given these bowls as a promotion for the new movie, Bolt. Out friends scored us some great sneak preview tickets to see it last Wednesday and Quinton keeps talking about. I think we're going to have to see it again when it's released in the theatres to get any peace around here!
These are the kinds of colors I love on Quinton. You can almost smell the leaves, looking at these pictures! We had such a great time raking all of the leaves into a huge pile and Quinton jumping into them.

Quinton is very good at raking them up...and then running through his pile, dispersing all of the leaves all over the yard again!

My little Quinton is growing too fast!

I think he swallowed a leaf in this picture.

We Voted!

I have to say that it was very exciting to live in Chicago during this election season. I won't tell you who we voted for because this isn't that kind of blog, but we did make a point of taking Quinton with us to show him that we are active participants in our country's democratic process. That and Matt and I both have degrees in Political Science and we are kind of nerdy about the whole thing.

Quinton lucked out because our polling place had a playground right on the way in so Matt and I took turns playing with him while the other voted.

After voting, I found out that Ben & Jerry's, among other places, was giving out free ice cream cones to people who voted. So we HAD to go and snag free ice cream cones!
Quinton's face is classic! he looks like he won the lottery with this ice cream cone at 7 o'clock at night!

Matt is still a little bummed we didn't go down to Grant Park for the big celebration because it's such a historic period that we are lucky to see during our lifetime. When I saw how many people were on TV at Grant park, there was no way I was going down there, though!

The Rest of Halloween

I think a lot of my mommy friends would agree that the Halloween holiday season seemed to last a long time this year. Quinton celebrated several times over the course of the week with a church Halloween party, a Halloween-themed birthday party of our friend, Miss A, a PreSchool Halloween party, an early afternoon of Trick-or-Treating Halloween day in Glencoe with playgroup friends and then actually Trick-or-Treating on Halloween night with his dad! I am not ashamed to say that my 'trick' this year was to re-gift a lot of the 'treats' we accumulated in all our Halloween adventures.

I guess it's a good thing we saw the dentist BEFORE Halloween!

Here is Quinton, chatting up the locals.

Quinton was Buzz Lightyear, so yes, this outfit makes me Jessi from Toy Story!
Quinton's first REAL trick-or-treating adventure. Luckily, we live in a fantastic neighborhood that likes to participate in the Halloween traditions and we had about 100 kids come through our door!

More trick-or-treating fun...

Matt and Quinton had a great time scoring more candy than one person (me) should eat!

Is that spider creepy or what?

Matt donned my costume and pretended he was a red-headed Little Miss Muffet.

Matt, having way too much fun in a pig-tailed red wig!