What do we do when dad's not here?

Well, first of all we sleep in......................That's right Quincy slept in yesterday until 9:30! I had to go in to wake him up. This is seriously something memorable, because he never sleeps in!



I remember after finally being able to come home from the hospital and having him sleep in our room with us for the very first time--- he slept for 5 or 8 hours the first night. We were totally shocked! After all, in the hospital there were nurses coming in at all hours of the night to bring him to us and to check on me. Surely we didn't expect our sweet little newborn baby to sleep through the entire night the first time we bring him home. But sure enough, he did.



I was so panicked and kept waking up every couple of hours to make sure I could hear him breathing. Every time, I saw him laying there all tiny wrapped snugly in his blankets, breathing ever so softly. He was fine. And just so you know, that was probably the last night he slept through until he was 6 months old!


Something else we do when dad is gone for the week is PLAY! We play a lot; this is something Quincy loves. With Tyler gone, he has my undivided attention almost all day. Which leaves plenty of time for reading, make believe, building, making messes, laughing and playing hide and seek.



I can't believe how big my little baby is getting, he is so big that I feel like I shouldn't really call him my baby anymore. On Saturday night we went to our ward Christmas party. I was looking forward to it, since it's a nice sit down occasion with china, a great christmas-ee dinner, music, and a program. Quincy came with us because I thought there was babysitting (since there was last year, this year, however, there was not any babysitting-- oops). It turned out fine though, Quincy was tired enough that he was quiet through most of dinner and ended up falling asleep on my lap.



Our bishop's wife, and my former visiting teacher, offered to hold Quincy if I wanted a break. After he had fallen asleep I asked her if she would like to hold him. She was afraid that he would wake up and to which I replied... he's a Howard, when he's asleep, he's OUT! After the end of the program concluded she said to me, "Wow, I can't believe how big he's gotten, I didn't expect him to be so big and heavy! Does your back ever hurt? " I just said, yeah-- he's grown a lot. He's not quite a little baby anymore.



No indeed, he's not a little baby anymore... he's turning into quite the 'big" boy.


One of my favorite things to do, and we can do, when dad is gone is sit down and color. Quincy got a little coloring book from the Santa at the mall. And it just so happens that for Halloween he got a box of coloring crayons. He loves them. I'm not sure he loves to color with them just yet, mostly he loves to dump them out and then try to put them all back in the box. I keep trying to coax him into coloring in his book with them, and this is the result:

And, now I know some of you out there are looking what hand he's holding the crayons in and saying, "Oh, he's gonna be a leftie." So I'm going to tell you now, that Quincy likes to use both hands and has so far, shown no preference to one over the other. So stop predicting! :o) You're just going to have to wait and see.

And something else we like to do when dad's gone, or shall I say Quincy likes to do, is give mom loves.

And what does mom like to do when dad's gone out of town?

Rearrange the furniture of course.... which reminds me of when I was growing up. Every time that my dad went out of town, just so happened to be the weekend we painted a room a color. It seems that my mom always strategically picked those couple days dad was going to be gone to try out a new paint color in a room. And then when he had returned, there was nothing he could do, surely he wasn't going to repaint it all again white!?! My mom was pretty clever. :o)

Now, unless you knew every detail of of what Quincy's room looked like before you probably wouldn't notice what I did.

After moving around every piece of furniture in his room a couple of times in different places I settled for just switching the bookshelf and the changing table. Lame, I know... but it's a subtle difference and Quincy seemed to like the change.

I would have preferred to change everything's place altogether, but his room is rectangle, which proves difficult for various furniture arrangements. I also put in some blue paper in these 8X10 picture frames. I'm so horrible at developing pictures... and so these frames have always been empty.... I decided that since I haven't developed any pictures and we can't paint the room a color, it would be nice to bring some color up on the wall.

Not too bad eh?

So this is what we do when dad is gone... that and stay in our pajamas ALL day long, put off brushing our teeth, showering, and other hygiene priorities to just HAVE FUN!