Quincy's World

Well, today is the day that we have long dreaded – Dara heading back to work. It was really, really, nice having all of us home since August 1. Before going back, Dara had gotten Quincy onto a schedule that would work for all of us. The good news is that I only have to try and give him the bottle twice a day and that Dara will be coming home over lunch to feed him in person. I think that will help all the concerned parties.

I don’t have his new weekly picture up yet for the simple reason that I have not taken it yet. It took me 45 minutes just to get him to eat about 3oz and then he was in no mood for pictures. I’m hoping he can last until lunchtime when Dara is home to feed him. If Quincy is willing after lunch, then I will get his picture taken before Dara leaves to head back to the office.

Quincy has been a real delight lately, making lots more noise, discovering his hands and that things can be put into his mouth! I might post again tonight to give a recap of my first day as being “in charge” of Quincy, but then again, I might not. This morning was a bit bumpy, but I was expecting that since his normal routine has now changed.

Keep checking for the new weekly picture – I will get it posted sometime today.

Quincy has had a busy (at least for him) past couple of days. On Friday, we drove up to Buffalo for 1) cousin Nathan’s first birthday party and 2) to have Quincy’s picture taken by “professionals”. Quincy did well at the party and his gift was well received by the Buffalo crowd (it was a toddler sized Tom Brady Patriot’s jersery). It must have been good luck because the Pats beat the Bills last night (sorry Debbie – had to get that in) 🙂 His photo experience, and ours, was a little, mmm, erratic.

I’m not going to name the department store that we went to, but it similar to the name KD Nickel. Dara put a lot of thought and effort into this whole enterprise. Just getting him up to the mall on time and awake and fed and clean was a chore in and of itself. The atmosphere at the photo place can be summed up in one word: chaotic. The people there aren’t professional photographers, just people who try and sell you as many pictures as they can while getting you out the door as fast as they can. Quincy was about as cooperative as could be expected and of all the pictures that were taken, we liked just one enough to buy. This is when they try and confuse you.

We had a coupon for a small package of photos and no sitting fee for x amount of money. We, however, were going to need more pictures than that because, I was told, we have to send out this picture to every person we have ever come into contact with on the planet. So the exchange with the young female “photographer”/salesperson went like this (slightly exaggerated for effect):

Photographer/Salesperson: “So it sounds like you will be needing more photos than just what you can get from the coupon?”

Frazzled Parents: “Yes, much more.”

Photographer/Salesperson: (Pulls out pricing sheet that might as well be written in Sanscrit – I can see that she turns to the chapter titled: First Time Parents and How to Sucker Them) “For _only_ xx.xx you can get all those pictures from the coupon and you also get 6 sheets of mix-and-match pictures with edge enhancements which is 4 more sheets than if you just did it the logical way that you already explained to me twice, but you shouldn’t since you need x number of pictures. So, do you see how you it only costs an extra .03 cents for all those pictures?”

Frazzled Parents: “What?”

Quincy: “I want to leave.” (loosely translated from the noises he was making.)

Photographer/Salesperson: “Oh, I also would like to show you these effects we can add to make him look different. This filter ages him by 3 years, this one shows him as a Wookie, this one is great for blah blah blah blah. That, of course, changes around the pricing schemes. Have you decided?”

Frazzled Parents: “Uh, can you explain this again so that we can actually understand it before we drop some serious cash on pictures that, oh by the way, really can’t be looked at very well because your computer system is not very good at all.?”

Photographer/Salesperson: “I’m sorry, I am not allowed by management to make this any easier for you. In fact, if I wait until your child starts screaming, then I can get whatever I want out of you.”

Quincy: “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

Photographer/Salesperson: “Drat!! Since your child has fallen asleep, there is no way that I can extort huge sums of money out of you.”

Frazzled Parents: “Don’t be so hard on yourself. He’s our first child, you had us the moment we came in.”

Photographer/Salesperson: “So then you’ll take the package deal that I desrcibed earlier?”

Frazzled Parents: “Would it help us any if you tried to explain it again?”

Photographer/Salesperson: “I really doubt it.”

Frazzled Parents: “We’ll take it.”

So, after that experience, I can’t say that I’m too excited about going back and having more pictures taken of Quincy. It just seemed like they were hustling people in and out as fast as possible. When did everything become about quantity and not quality? I just hope that one picture is really, really good. It looked fine on their shoddy computer system, but you can never tell with digital pictures. Not too worry, if you are reading this entry, then you’ll most likely get a picture and if you don’t, let us know, because we bought about 1,000. 😉

I realize that you all got probably 2 notifications about new posts. They were both in error. I am still tweaking the new server configuration and working out some of the errors that crop up. I inadvertantly wrote a couple of posts when I meant to write a couple of test pages. I am sorry for the unnecessary e-mail.

I did, however, actually add a new page today. For those of you with either broadband access or just good ole patience, I have added a page under photos that shows all of Quincy’s weekly pictures on one page. It is kinda cool to scroll down the page and watch him get younger. Again, sorry for the screw-ups – that’s what happens on less sleep when I’m at the keyboard. 😉

It has been a busy week since the last posting on the site. We spent all last week away – our first family vacation took us up to Maine. Quincy was great at riding just fine in the car. It did take us a long time to get anywhere since we stopped often for him to eat. We split the trip up into two legs – the first leg terminated in Leominster, MA, where we got to see our good friends Brady and Tracey (and Max). Quincy gave them a sneak peak at life with an infant with his morning wails during his 4:30am feeding. 🙂

After that, it was up to Maine for some leaf-peeping and other general fun activities. On the way home, we stopped in Freeport, ME, home to LL Bean, and spent some dough on the little guy at the outlets. All-in-all, the trip went rather well, except for the nail in the one tire that we picked up somewhere along the way. We had it plugged at a Cooper Tire place in Brunswick, ME and then kept on going.

Today was Quincy’s 2 month well-baby visit. He is doing great and exploding up the charts. He weighed in at 13lbs and is now 2 feet tall. His height is in the 81st percentile and his weight is in the 74th percentile. Not bad considering his weight had dropped down to the 17th percentile after he was born. He is feeling pretty grumpy now since he received four needles at his visit, but he is sleeping it off mainly. The doc thinks that he might be getting ready to cut some teeth soon and that might be why he is being finicky at times over eating. Quincy goes back in 2 months for more shots – yeah!

I received an interesting phone call this morning from the kennel where Ashby was “vacationing”. The lady asked me when I was coming to get him. I was going to go after Quincy’s appt (and I did). She was asking because Ashby was not doing very well. He decided that he hated a couple of the other dogs that were there – bigger dogs. He would bark incessantly at them and then wouldn’t let anybody get near him. I was all upset driving out there, but when I got there, I spoke with the people and they said that when they moved him a different area of the kennel, he was fine. They were even able to bathe him. One thing that I did notice was that they took off his gentle-leader collar. I know that did more harm than good since he acts up without it. We thought Ashby might be banned from the kennel, but now everything is good. Phew! He’s happy to be home and we’re happy to have him home.

That wraps it up here. Oh, I did get Quincy’s 9 week photo all loaded up, so go and take a peek – it was taken BEFORE he got his shots.