Colton the 2 Year Old Tornado

Colton is always keeping us on our toes-getting into everything, afraid of nothing and generally a lot of fun. When we travelled to visit Nick's parents, he slept in a pack-n-play and climbed out of it every day that we were there. Up until now, he's been sleeping (and staying) in his crib. He's two and a half and he's stayed in the crib longer than any of the other kids (we were always making room for the next baby, so the others moved to big kid beds earlier). I wasn't going to mess with it because he is such a good sleeper-no need to rock the boat. Well, as I expected, he immediately climbed right out of his crib the first time we put him in it after returning home. So he is now in his big boy bed.

It's the end of an era as we've had the crib continuously in use for almost seven years. It is the first time we've moved a baby out without another baby moving in. My husband had a moment of celebration as I had my moment of nostalgia. I told him to store it away-you never know what God will do and we might need that crib one day. He thinks I'm a little crazy, but agreed to store it. I keep telling him we have one more seat in our car and one more seat at the table-again, he thinks I may have lost a few marbles in Ethiopia. For now, we are a happy family of seven with all of our little ones growing up before our eyes (a little too quickly I might add).

Getting the new bed set up.

Colton looking quite pleased with the new sleeping arrangement.

Pretending to sleep. He got up too many times to count during the first week in the new bed.

We found him like this one night-fast asleep on the floor (we put pillow next to his bed after that).


He came out of his room on the second or third night like this-covered in lotion (we thought he was sleeping already).


This is the contraband he had stashed in his bed when I went to put him back to sleep-some of the girls' hair products, lotion and rubber bands. I guess he was giving himself a spa treatment.