Christmas Day

Christmas Eve at Grandma Cindi's

Quentin loves his Grinch!

Playing with cousin Joseph

The Train Again

Winter Wonderland

Christmas Eve

At Grandma and Grandpa's House

Quentin's new favorite thing.

Merry Christmas!

We're off to Denver on Saturday (assuming they open up I-70 again). As it turns out, Quentin's first Christmas is going to be white!

A few things Quentin enjoys...

Swings!

Slides!

Spaghetti!

Bath time!*

* Quentin sometimes really enjoys his bath and other times doesn't particularly care for it.

First Steps!!!

Quentin took his first steps on his own today!

He took about 4 steps. We don't have any pictures of the actual event, but here are a few pictures from the last week of him walking behind things.

Kicking off the Holiday Season

Today we got bundled up and went downtown to watch the Christmas parade (which consists primarily of horses). We didn't get there early enough to get a god spot up close, but Quentin enjoyed the view from Daddy's shoulders.

Back at home, Sufi was getting in the spirit too!

At the Zoo

Today we went to the Topeka Zoo. This was Quentin's third trip to the zoo (we took him to the Topeka Zoo when he was about four months old and the Denver Zoo when he was seven months), but the first since he really "discovered" animals. It was a lot of fun to watch him react to the animals this time. He was fascinated with the fish and would happily have continued to watch them indefinitely. He also seemed to be quite impressed by the lions and giraffes. Later on, he was contentedly examining a sheep when the creature let out a noise that sounded something like "bleeeeh!" (I guess it was just a normal sheep sound, but it sounded like it was ready to be sick). Quentin was startled, but quickly recovered. We soon discovered that imitating the sheep sound for him was about the funniest thing in the world. Whenever I made the sound, he would start giggling almost uncontrollably. I don't think I've ever seen him laugh quite so much. Hopefully we'll get to take him again in the spring--I imagine it will be completely different once again. I just hope he has as much fun as he did today!

The Great Outdoors

Yesterday we took advantage of the beautiful weather by going to a park and letting Quentin play outdoors. He had a great time playing in the leaves and dirt. Once again we were reminded of how useful the pacifier can be for keeping his hands out of his mouth!

Thanksgiving

Quentin enjoyed his first Thanksgiving dinner, including some foods we already knew he liked(broccoli and sweet potatoes) as well as some new favorites (turkey and cranberry sauce). This picture is actually from earlier in the day on Thanksgiving.

Other than eating, Quentin's favorite activity on Thanksgiving was looking at books. He has been really interested in books lately, especially board books (it's easier to turn the page and they're just the right size for him). He will choose them out of a pile of toys and carry them around, stopping several times in various places to look at the pages. It made it much easier to get Thanksgiving dinner together while he was busy looking at books.

Some Favorite Activities

Eating Broccoli
Playing
Showing off new teeth

Sharing toys with Spike

Fun with static electricity (OK, so maybe this one isn't exactly a favorite)

Erratum

In my previous post I stated that we were uncertain of the whereabouts of Quentin's bottom front teeth. Turns out those teeth have now just barely broken the surface. No wonder he hasn't been sleeping!

Finally--Teeth!

We discovered about a week and a half ago that Quentin was cutting his first tooth on the top left, with the top right tooth following close behind (no sign of the bottom teeth yet). So far he is mostly handling teething fairly well, but he has been waking up at night more than usual. We're not sure if that's related to teething or just general insecurity (or something else entirely). This isnt' a very good picture, but it does show his teeth fairly well.

The Squid