Benny updates

We had a wonderful trip to Austin, TX to visit Grand Aunt Marilyn and Aunt Karen and for Tim to do the Austin marathon. Aunt Wende came also and Mike came to do the race as well. Benny really loves all his aunts and we had a really nice visit.

Ben saw the Alamo and took a boat ride on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, and went to several famous Mexican restaurants, ate a lot of good food, learned to throw pennies in fountains, sat in Karen's comfy recliner and rearranged her drawers, and got pecked by one of Marilyn and Karen's chickens.

Marilyn was hoping Ben would take his first steps at their house. He's so close, but continues to panic if he isn't holding on to you with both hands. See the video of Marilyn convincing him to do it one-handed.

Boomer likes balls almost as much as Ben, and they were perfect playmates since Ben loves to throw balls and Boomer loves to fetch balls. They had a good time together even though Ben still doesn't like Boomer kisses. Ben even learned to bark! It took us a couple of times to realize the odd noise he was making was his imitation of Boomer's bark.

We met lots of babies in the airport/airplanes, at the playground, and various other places. Benny fell in love with Ashley, a blond-haired girl his age (walking) at the playground, he played ball with 2-yr-old Ashton, and he really liked Olive, a 10-month old girl who had been walking since 7.5 months! At REI in Austin, Ben was doing his usual stand-up-in-the-cart and yell routine and around the corner came another little boy doing the exact same thing. His dad and I were amused that they seemed so alike and after chatting a minute we discovered the other little boy was named Luke (Ben's middle name is Luc), and he was the exact same age as Ben. Two little boys born on the same day who like to stand in shopping carts and yell. What a fun coincidence!

Yesterday morning I was making breakfast and noticed that Ben was pointing out all the polka dots on my polka-dotted pajamas on my calf and calling them balls. Ball, ball, ball, ball, ball... ("ba, ba, ba, ba...")

He has a total of 10 teeth now - 4 on top, 4 on bottom and two huge molars on top.

The only bad news is that Ben has started having terrible tantrums. He arches his back and flings his head around and screams. Some of them come out of the blue and some are when he doesn't get his way, so we need to figure out what's what. Most of them happen when we lay him down for a diaper change, to get dressed, or to rinse his hair in the tub, so he really hates to lay on his back all of a sudden. He can be as happy as can be and then meltdown in a matter of seconds, and then return to being happy 10 minutes later. Perhaps that is normal toddler behavior, but he's been so sweet and even-tempered since 3 months, it has come as a surprise.