It's About Time

Dylan walked at 8 months.


Hayden walked at 9 months.


Kolton walked at ? months.


We finally decided today that we can officially answer that question. The answer is 10. He took "baby" steps at 9 months, but nothing that we were willing to classify as walking.












Here are some videos, we think they are funny because he kept swatting the camera as he walked up to Paulette.

Tons o Fun

This past week has brought with it tons o fun.

Last Saturday, Dylan had his first official swim meet and a gymnastics "meet". He did very well at both of them. He was on the 6 and under free relay team which won first place, the 8 and under medley relay team (he swam the freestyle leg) which got disqualified (along with every other team), individual freestyle which he did not improve his time, and individual backstroke which he improved his time on a lot and won second place. Later that day, he had a gymnastics "meet" and had a really good time.

Pommel Horse

Rings



High Bar

Parallel Bars

Yesterday, Dylan had another swim meet at Raveneaux and did pretty well. His relay won 1st again and he improved his freestyle time a little from last week. I don't know how he placed on his individual events; I guess we'll find out when he goes back to practice.

Also yesterday, we went to a neighbors house for their "2nd Annual Coon@!# Crawfish Boil." We all had a lot of fun and ate a lot of GOOD food. I think the pictures below should explain it better than I can.

Dylan was jumping over the other kids as they came down the water slide.

Batch 1 of 3. This picture shows about half of the table. Each batch got progressively spicier (aka more awesome)



It took some convincing, but Dylan finally tried one and ended up liking them alot.
Hayden wasn't interested in the crawfish so he stuck with "normal" food.



I think Kolton ate his weight in Ritz crackers, but he obviously enjoyed them.

Needless to say we all had really good time and enjoyed all the food.

Paulette's highlight of the week though was that after a month and a half she was finally able to start working out at the YMCA again. Just to keep things interesting, though, she decided that since she had already hurt her upper body and her mid body that she just as well hurt her lower body so she went ahead and twisting her ankle while working out. Thankfully, each time she was hurt, the severity was less.

Time Flies

It seems like a lot has happened since we found out that our son was willing to tattle on someone over 1500 miles away, and his own grandma none-the-less. Hopefully, I will be able to blog more about the kids than gross things, although I won't promise anything.

Dylan's swim season has started already. He had time trials last weekend and tomorrow is the first real meet of the season. Considering he has not done much swimming since the subdivision pool closed for the winter, he has really improved since last season. He's no Michael Phelps, but he is doing really well. For some reason, swimming is the only thing he does that he doesn't care if everyone else is better than him. We have had a couple conversations with him, asking if he knew it was a race to see who could get to the other side of the pool the fastest, and he does understand, but he still mossies along.
Dylan is still in gymnastics and is doing great. After this session is over, they are moving him up two levels; fortunately for me that means little since the classes are still the same length of time and the same weekly frequency. I know when my parents think of a gymnast moving up, they automatically cringe thinking about how it will affect their pocketbook. Thankfully, I am safe, for a little longer, from that problem.

Dylan has finally reached a milestone in a young boys life. He has lost both of his front teeth (not a pleasant experience, ask my dad) and now has that goofy, toothless, smile that all kids have at some point. Dylan is really weird, most kids pick at their scabs and try to pull their own teeth out; he picks, but what he picks is not a scab. I think a strong wind could have knocked his teeth out before Paulette finally pinned him down and got them out (they came out one week apart).

Enough about Dylan. Hayden is still the same fearless, rowdy, out-of-control Hayden that we all know and love. Just look at the picture, he's cute, but you can see the mischievousness in him. I have had some funny conversations with him lately, as he is beginning to think he is smarter than us. He developed an affection for puzzles recently, just ask my dad; he can spend hours building puzzles. Paulette and I have been studying his thought process for building them and we have some ideas, but are still not quite sure. The other day I took him to the office with me and on the way home he told me that my car was broken. "What do you mean, my car is broken?" I replied, to which he pointed at the large crack running down the right side of my windshield. "Mommy car not broken, your car broken. You need take you car to the car fixing store." This went on for a while, apparently he thought I could go to the car fixing store just as easily as we can run in to Wal-Mart. We had to stop at the grocery store on the way home that same day and after we left, the mini-van in the lane to the right of us on the feeder-road started passing us. He began to tell me how slow my car was and that mommy's car was fast. He told me that I had to push the fast button to go faster, to which I replied that if I pushed the fast button then we might go so fast that we would crash in to the car in front of us. This got him thinking and he asked if it would make us "to die." "Maybe" I told him and then he pointed out the air recirculation button on the dash and told me not to push it. Every time I reached down to push it, he would yell at me not to touch it. After that, we decided that the a/c button was the slow button and the rear defrost button was the stop button, so, for the rest of the drive home, I used the slow button when we were getting ready to stop, and then he would tell me when I had to push the stop button. When it was time to go, I pushed the fast button to make us speed up and then I would push it again so we didn't crash in to the car in front of us. As much as he stresses us out, he is a really funny kid who idolizes his big brother and loves to help with his little brother.

Kolton is growing up way too fast. In some ways he is developing faster than his big brothers and in others he is not. He is just over 10 months old now and can't really walk yet, which is much slower development than the others, but he has been climbing stairs and getting in to EVERYTHING much earlier than his brothers did.

Watch the trick he learned this morning.

Paulette found him on the floor after having put him in the walker and asked Hayden if he helped him out, but he insisted that he didn't so Paulette put Kolton back in to see it for herself. As much as Dylan and Hayden climbed, neither of them ever considered climbing out of the walker. We are not quite sure what to do now because we can't just dump him in the walker while we're busy doing something.

My dad came down this week for work and was able to make it an extended trip so he could spend some time with us. We all really enjoyed him being here, especially the boys, who couldn't wait to wake grandpa up every morning and play with him as much as possible. We feel extremely fortunate to live in a place that he is able to visit regularly for business and that he takes the time to share his time with us.

The only other news-worthy thing to blog about is that Paulette's arm is healing well and since she was doing so much better, she was blessed with a little gift. For those of you familiar with the TV series Friends, please refer to season 5, episode The One Hundredth. Kidney Stones! Saturday seemed like it was going to be like any other Saturday. We went to Dylan's swimming time trials, to the Art Fair at the high school, and to her mom's house for an early Mother's Day get together. We left our house at 2 pm for her mom's and she mentioned something about pressure in her back. By 3 pm, she was in so much pain that we had to come home and she literally cried from the pain all the way home. I told her I would take her to the ER but she refused because she didn't want to have someone tell her that she had gas. After we got home, I got on the Internet to research the symptoms of appendicitis and came across kidney stones, which she exhibited every symptom of. At that point she was the first one in the car ready to go to the 24 hour emergency clinic. The doctor gave her some pain medication and told her to visit a urologist on Monday. We went to the urologist and he suggested removing it rather than waiting for it to pass and she jumped on that idea because she couldn't stand the pain any longer. By 3 pm we were home, sans kidney stone, and mostly pain-free. I feel bad for Paulette because of all the pain she has been through; she has had two surgical procedures within one month. I hope we are done and get back to "normal."

I apologize for the time you just spent reading this lengthy blog; we will try to blog more often to keep the length down.

TIME FLIES WHEN YOU'RE HAVING FUN!