Quinn showing off his dance moves....

more x-mas pics...

Quinn practicing with his new remote control car

Yippee, another car
Cheese...

boy in a box

We had a good trip to Cleveland. Quinn slept really good and even slept in until almost 9am, which has NEVER happened before. We are all glad to be home after a lot of traveling over the past few days! Hopefully getting back into the swing of things won't take too long.

Merry Christmas!

Adam with Quinn and great grandpa with cousin Liam (Liam is 9 months younger than Quinn and 7 lbs. heavier)

Quinn only ate the white chocolate and then he was done w/ the pretzel

Quinn w/ cousins Christian & Grace


Quinn w/ all his cousins

Quinn riding his new John Deere tractor

Giving a hug and a kiss to his new table & chairs...I guess that means he likes it!

Checking out his new Nemo book

In the rocking chair at great grandpa's house

So far Quinn has had a great Christmas and has gotten a lot of new & fun gifts. We still have to go to grandma & grandpa Makuley's today and then up to Cleveland over the weekend. I think we'll be putting some of his old toys away since he's getting so many new toys. This year was a lot different than last year because he now knows how to tear the paper off gifts. More x-mas pictures to come after the weekend!

Visit with Santa

We took Quinn to the mall tonight to see Santa. I thought a picture with Santa would include tears, screaming and reaching for us. To my surprise, Quinn thought this was no big deal. I sat him on Santa's lap, walked back and he just sat there. Santa did have a sucker for him so might have helped.

November

Where has the month of November gone??? We have had some very odd weather...it's been warm in Ohio in November. I don't think I ever remember it being this nice. We had snow flurries on Thanksgiving Day and today it was back to 60 again. We even have had a few days this month where we didn't even need to wear jackets. Very odd but very nice.

Quinn is talking up a storm. It's getting to the point to where we can usually get what he's saying after a few repeats. He still babbles but usually one of us can understand what he's saying. The new thing I'm trying to teach him is to ask "where were you born" and for him to say "Vietnam". We have been practicing and he can say "biet-nam".

Quinn's new favorite are his 2 fishy movies. We have The Reef and borrowed Nemo from Grandma & Grandpa Makuley. He will sit and watch both movies. He LOVES the fishy movies and usually asks for "fishy" first thing every morning. We try to watch a little before bedtime but usually on the weekends we give in and watch "fishy" a few times. So, Adam & I have seen The Reef 50 times by now.

We spent Saturday night in Cleveland and to our surprise Quinn slept all night. Usually when we are away from home he does not sleep well and we are all up off and on throughout the night. Maybe he's finally getting used to it. I hope so. I put him in bed with me at 8 pm and I tried closing my eyes and telling him it was time to go night night. This did not work. He would tap me and say "wake up mommy". After telling him if he didn't lay down he was going into the pack & play to sleep by himself he was out within 10 minutes. We'll see if he continues to sleep when we're away from home of if this was just a fluke!

Above are a few pictures from November.

Halloween

Quinn dressed up like a little vampire this year for Halloween. Here are some pictures of him in costume!

19 months old

Quinn turned 19 months old on 10/4. We went to the doctor 2 weeks ago for his 18 month check-up...yes, a little late. We found out that he's still tiny, not a big surprise. He's 19.2 lbs and 30 inches long. He's in the 5th percentile for height and not even on the charts for weight. He will probably always be a little guy. Adam just hopes he's at least 5'5 so he's not too short when he gets older! He's talking a lot, saying 2 words together. Big truck and mommy's truck are his usual 2 word phrases. He'll say bye dog or bye bye daddy too. He's getting to the point where he'll be trying to say an entire sentence and we can't understand any of it. Then he gets frustrated. So, hopefully he'll learn new words fast so we know what he's talking about!

CHEEEESE!!!!

Quinn is really into saying "cheese" when he sees the camera. As you can see from the bottom pic, sometimes he really gets into it! The past few days we've been working on the frog says ribbit. He has that down now so I thought I would put his frog PJ's on him tonight!

Vietnamese meal

So, my first attempt at cooking a Vietnamese dish went well. It was very easy, quick, good but not very filling. It was just rice noodles with vegetables and the sauce was good. Next time I think I'll venture towards something a little more difficult. Quinn was not a fan. He would try to eat it but then was more worried about the noodles sticking to his hands. Hopefully the next Vietnamese meal I make he'll eat.

A special week

Above, Quinn on 9/25/08. Below, Quinn on 9/20/09.

This week holds a lot of memories and will forever be special. On 9/20/08 we arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam. On 9/23/08 we met and held Quinn for the first time. On 9/24/08 we had our G&R ceremony and officially adopted Quinn. We then flew back to Hanoi that same night. On 9/25/08 we had our first full day as a family.

Sometimes it seems hard to believe its been a year and other times it feels like its always been the three of us. Quinn has grown to be a fun, loving, chatty little toddler. Its been so much fun over the past year to see all of his firsts and they will just keep coming. He seems to be saying new words weekly now. In the past few days he learned to say the dog's name. His name is Zeke but Quinn calls him Deke. Z's are a little hard to say! He still loves music and loves to dance. I need to get some video of his dance moves to put on the blog.

I've been wanting to make this week a special one and thought maybe I should cook a Vietnamese meal every year on 9/24. But, then I don't think I should only cook Vietnamese once a year. So, as Quinn gets older maybe we'll celebrate 9/24 in different ways. This year I'm going to attempt to cook stir-fried vermicelli with vegetables. This is something that seems very easy and something Quinn would eat. I found this recipe on www.saigoncooking.com in case anyone is interested. There seemed to be many easy recipes.

I think most adoptive families celebrate "gotcha day" or "forever family day". I think we'll celebrate all week!

Quinn & Lya - September 2009

We played dress-up with them. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of the 2 of them together in their Vietnamese outfits and they are both crying. I think they were fighting over the firetruck.

Playing nice on the slide.

Mommy's with the kiddos

The best picture of them, they are too cute!

Here are a few pictures of Quinn & Lya from this weekend. Quinn & Lya spent the first 7 months of their lives together at the same orphanage in Vietnam. Lya's parents, Nick & Becky, adopted Lya the same day we adopeted Quinn. We all spent about 3 weeks together in VN for their adoption. It was so much fun to see Quinn & Lya together again. This time was much different than a year ago...they could actually play together. We look forward to seeing these two grow up together. We live about 8 hours away from each other but were already discussing our next get together. We hope to see them at least once a year.

A trip to urgent care...

The bandage daycare put on Quinn's boo boo

On our way home after a little skin glue

Daycare called me today at work and said that Quinn had fell, hit his head and had a good sized gash. They thought he needed to see a doctor. Obviously they were right because he ended up having to have Dermabond (skin glue). This was much better than stitches but they still had to strap him down to one of those boards, which he was not a fan of. He's definitely a tough little guy!

One year ago yesterday...

A year ago yesterday we received our approval to travel. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember my mind reeling about what we needed to do to get packed and ready to go. I remember worrying that in just a few short weeks we would be parents and have a baby to take care of. Even though we had planned, what seemed like forever, for that time to finally come it was still such a shock to have 3 weeks to prepare to be parents. Of course, it has all been sooooo worth it!!!!!! This past month has been so much fun with him I can't wait to see what this next month brings. 17 months old is such a great age! He's learning so much, talking a ton, and just so much fun. His new words of the week are cheese and not nice. He will say cheese when he sees a piece of cheese and sometimes when you have the camera out. He was kicking last week when I was changing his diaper and I told him we don't kick because it's not nice. He then pointed his little finger at me and said not nice, which sounds more like na nie but close enough! We love our little man so much!!!

silly boy...

Quinn is definitely a daddy's boy...notice their right arms.

Wearing an old pair of mommy's sunglasses. Good thing they were an old pair because they are no longer in one piece.

Ohio State Fair

There's nothing like a corn dog and a lemon shake up at the Ohio State Fair.

pictures from today

Quinn and cousin Hudson at the Makuley family reunion

laughing

Quinn loves chocolate pudding

Quinn will be 17 months old on 8/4. He's talking a ton and has a ton of new words. Of course, these new words may not be words everyone would be able to understand, but we know what he's attempting to say! We're also working on animal sounds and he has learned a lot. He now likes to run all around the house and he really loves to be chased. He climbs on anything he can. Lucky for us he's tiny so his legs are not long enough to climb on everything he wants. The poor dog gets yelled at a lot, mostly when Quinn is trying to eat. Zeke tries to basically jump up in his chair with him to get his food. So, whenever he's eating and hears me yell "Zeke", he now says stop. Guess he's learned that most of the time we say Zeke, we also say stop. All 4 of his molars have broken through but only 1 is all the way in. We're glad that's over!

Trouble...

new haircut

Adam cut Quinn's hair last night and it's the shortest it's ever been. I like it short and think it looks cute but this one was kind of a shock because it's so short. Still cute!
In the previous posts you may be able to tell he has a black eye under his right eye. This showed up on Thursday evening so it must have happened at daycare. It kept getting more and more purple over the weekend. Today he came home with the big scratch on his forehead, definitely visible in this picture. Poor kid!