happy birthday buggy dear!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KENDALYNN!

#2

So Kendalynn has been around for a whoppin' 2 years now which to us just seems crazy. She's the craziest kid I know, and we love her to pieces. She's such a great combination of everything wonderful. She's energetic and SO much fun to have around! Of course she has her "fun" moments when she is a typical 2 year old, but if you ask me, she's not at all a "terrible two." At the doctor today (what a fun present...a trip to the doctor! luckily...no shots for her) she weighs a whole 23 lbs (10th percentile) and as the doctor put it, "petite and perfect." I don't think I recognize enough what a blessing it is to have such an awesome kid who has never had any serious health problems and is completely wonderful in every way. Man I just think she's the greatest little girl ever.

As far as Logan man goes... He also had his 2 month check up today (although he is 3 months) and he's perfectly awesome also! He is 14.1 lbs (60th percentile), 24.5 inches (54th percentile), and he is doing extremely wonderful. He sadly did have to get shots today, and he actually recovered quite quickly for the little pansy baby he is. (Now don't think I mean "pansy" in a bad way, because I don't at all. Logan is so incredibly different from Kendalynn as a baby. Both are extremely good babies, but he is much more of the tender sort. You can already tell he's much more sweet and cuddly which makes me ecstatically happy.) Other than that, he's doing great! He sleeps through the night for at least 10 hours which as far as I'm concerned is the most awesome thing in the world.

We sure do love our kiddos!!!

a birthday shout out

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMBERLY!

Today is dear little Emberly's birthday. There is no doubt that little Emmy is one of Kendalynns favorite people in the whole world. Kids Kendalynns age tend to forget people they have seen in a while until they see them again and then they quickly remember. Well it's not like that with Emmy. Even though we haven't seen her since

September, Kendalynn frequently walks around the house asking where Emmy is, or she'll stand at the door looking out the windows saying "Emmy, bye bye." And when we look through pictures from the last few months, if we encounter any of Emmy we hear a lot of mumblings about her for the rest of the day.

So here's to you little Emmy girl. Have a superb birthday!

(ignore the hair attacking both their faces. this very intense smile just goes to show how happy Kendalynn is around Emmy.)

a little update

Well I figured I should update my blog and let people know what we've been up to. And yes, you may have already noticed (since I'm pretty sure people only visit this just to see pictures of my kids..) that there are no pictures. BUT...I will gladly post a link at the bottom to my latest facebook album. Lucky you.

So this last month our most exciting thing was to go out to Utah to go to Kara and Ryan's wedding. Hooray! It was awesome for sure. Casey and Kara went through the temple for the first time together since Casey is leaving on his mission in 10 DAYS to go to Anchorage, Alaska. (enjoy the cold Casey...) While we were there we got to stay with my Aunt Lori & Uncle Scott and we had tons of fun just sitting around with them talking. We also got to go up to Layton area (Kaysville specifically) to go and visit my dad's parents and show off the cute kiddos and chat with them. AND...we ate at Bajio aka Heaven. It was wonderful.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Tyler's cousin Kristy's house with a bunch of his family that live in the area. It sure is nice to have family around. And tonight we had an early Christmas with Tyler's parents and Casey, since Casey will be leaving before Christmas and Tyler and I & kiddos will be off to Arkansas this year for Christmas. That's right everyone...we're going to Arkansas and I honestly can't wait. HOORAY! My sister and her hubby (and new cutey-pah-tootie baby Ainsley!) live there and my parents and brother are also spending there Christmas there so it will be loads of fun. And sadly we will all probably gain a few pounds with my mom around baking but it will be worth it for all the yummy treats we'll get.

So other than that, things are going great around here. Kendalynn is cute and crazy as ever and doing great with Logan. She never tries to sit on him or pick him up anymore, so that's definitely a good thing! Logan is the happiest baby I have ever seen no doubt. He smiles allllll the time at me, and loves me sooo much that he has been sleeping through the night for a good 3 weeks now. Awesome?? Yes yes indeed. We sure love having them both around, and there definitely is not a dull moment with Kendalynn and all the crazy things that she does.

So anyway, like I promised, here is the link to the photo album I added just the other day. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2149177&id=193302356&l=4cfb79f65b

my brain...a mystery to us all

Alright...so here is a blog free of pictures or anything to do with my children and family. Strictly about my brain. I am one of those chain thinkers. I start thinking about one thing, and the next thing I know I'm on a COMPLETELY different subject. Wow.

For example, one time while we were living in Asheboro (the home of the NC Zoo) I started thinking about how it would be fun to take Kendalynn, and I thought about whether they had tigers or not. Within 30 seconds I had started planning out in my mind what would ever happen if I came face to face with a tiger in the jungle, and how I would protect Kendalynn. And to be honest, I was getting a little worried about it. That is a very simple example.

Last night was an especially good chain reaction. Bare with me here, and mind you that this all took place in under a minute. I laid down after we said prayers, and noticed that my tongue was between my teeth. I then recalled an unpleasant story of a friend biting a chunk of his tongue off jumping on a trampoline and needing stitches to get it back on. I then thought to myself that if there was an earthquake or something during the night, I wouldn't want to risk biting my tongue, so I moved it. But that led me to the thought that there aren't really earthquakes in the south, but more so hurricanes or twisters or whatever. So then I started thinking about how terrible it would be to have a twister come attack my house so I started thinking about how I could make sure I could safely get my family and potential future pets into the basement/cellar to wait it out. That made me think about how if we had a cat and he was out wandering the neighborhood when the twister was about to hit, what if he didn't return when being called? My parents cat will sometimes come back to the house when we call him but not always. Whereas, if we had a dog during this disaster, it would always be in the house or in the backyard so it would be easy to save, and bird would always be in their cages and such. I kinda went back and forth about how it might be possible to have an inside only cat, or MAYBE the cat would sense the twister coming so he'd stay inside if we were lucky. But not likely. So I came to the conclusion that I'd be okay to not ever have a cat in our family. (tyler is allergic anyway.)

Wow. So after I went through this process I said out loud to Tyler that I would be okay with not getting a cat to which he asked where that came from. After telling him my chain of random thoughts he pointed out to me how weird I am. Yup.

So after laughing at myself for a few minutes I decided to blog about this experience for all of you, asking for any of you who do this sort of thing to comment so I know I'm not alone. But if not, hopefully you were at least able to get a kick out of this like Tyler and I did last night. :)

it's at it again

Well once again my blog will no longer let me post pictures. This time I think I might have a good idea of what the problem is, so we'll see what I can do to fix it this time around. But in the meantime, I posted pictures on my facebook of all the crazy happenings around here.

So thus far life is going good with both of these crazy kids. Logan is starting to be a little bit more of a fussy baby, but I'm starting to get a better idea of what it is he's unhappy about. He's doing really good through the night, and the other night he slept for 6 hours which was WONDERFUL. Kendalynn is doing...okay. She is going through a splendid phase of always wanting to take the blanket off Logan while he's sleeping. And then she'll rush over to him again and try to pick him up really fast before I notice. Luckily, she's never been successful, or even made him cry so that's good. A few times she's attempted to sit on him, and even step on him, but again, luckily it always happens when I'm already right there. She also seems to be getting worse about listening to what I tell her (especially when it comes to leaving Logan alone) so hopefully soon I'll figure out how to move past that cause it's rather frustrating at times. But oh well I guess, it's what comes with the job and I'll figure the only thing I can do is to do my best in the meantime to help her learn!

But anyway...I must be off to protect Logan and feed them both so they'll sleep so I can sleep. Last night Logan did okay...we went to bed at 2 which is really late because he decided to be wide awake last night. He then woke up at 6 to eat (still 4 hours, not terrible) and luckily one ate for about 25 minutes before going to sleep again. Sadly, Kendalynn woke up around 7 (normally she wakes up around 9) and instead of trying to coax her into going back to sleep I figured I'd just bring her in our bed to sleep instead which I never do. And this morning reminded me of why I never do. Kendalynn tends to think of our bed as a sort of "fun" zone or something. Rather than ever attempting to sleep in our bed, she just gets really excited and wants to play. So I tried to sleep a little more while getting kicked in the stomach, hit in the face, sat on, and countless other "fun" things instead. Who needs sleep anyways...it's overrated.

Here is a link that should work to take you to my pictures on facebook. A few of them are repeats, but my kids are cute so you can look at the pictures again. :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2142909&id=193302356&l=3f8bc5df81

Logan's first bath

I guess there isn't much that needs to be said about his first bath. We were both thinking he wouldn't like the first one, because most babies don't, but he actually just sat there and seemed to enjoy the whole thing. ...until I washed his hair which bothered him a little bit... But anyways...here are some pictures of the event. :)

I LOVE babies wrapped up in towels. One of my favorite things.

Kendalynn kept trying to take his diaper off afterwards.

One of the first good pictures of me with the kiddos. :)

awesomely cute kids

Alright you all. Here are some pictures of my super kids.

Life is swell over here as we continue adjusting to Logan's arrival. Kendalynn is...I'm not sure how to put it. She's still an amazingly good little girl, and as we predicted has moments here and there where Logan is of great interest to her. She loves to try and put the pacifier in his mouth and occasionally tries and pick him up...so we always have to be on the look out for her "helping." On the other hand she has also been a little bit more defiant over the last few days because I think she's starting to see the difference in time I used to spend with her that has now gone to feeding Logan and carrying him around so he's safely out of her reach. But overall, she's doing good and really does love wee little baby boy.

Logan is AWESOME. We've decided that he's a little bit more fussy than Kendalynn was, but he's such a good baby. Already at night he'll sometimes sleep 4-5 hours! It's awesome. And he's been awesome at going back to sleep right after so my nights haven't been bad at all. He makes the funniest faces when he's awake that make him look like he's always worried or concerned, and Tyler and I have decided that he's probably on the lookout for Kendalynn, or still just wondering where on earth he is. He's quite jumpy too, so maybe he's just a little paranoid. :) He went to the doctor Tuesday and is already on his way back up in weight gain and is healthy and perfect! The doctor said not to take him out of the house (except for walks around the neighborhood she said) for 8 weeks. EIGHT WEEKS!!!!! Small groups of people can come over to visit us, but otherwise baby Logan needs to stay put. Wow. But oh well. Better safe than sorry.

I'm doing swell. If it wasn't constantly raining and pouring outside, I would be going on more walks around the neighborhood because I feel the need to be active which is good. (my ghetto scale says I've lost about all the weight already. I'm not sure how accurate that thing is, but that'd be nice!) My mom has been here since Saturday so we've been able to enjoy her treats and constant entertainment. (if you know my mom at all, you know there is never a dull moment with her around!) It's been great to have help, but I'm actually looking forward to being the only one home with the kids. I'll definitely admit it's been nice to not have to feed Kendalynn all 3 meals everyday, but I'm excited to get back into the habit of being in charge of all the little things and spend more time with her. She's so wonderful...I love that kid!

But anyways...here are some random pictures from the last week of the awesomely cute kids!

Ooooh I love his feet.

Kendalynn kept wanting to put the hat on. She's so goofy.

Kendalynn likes to lay next to Logan on the floor and try to stick the pacifier in his mouth.

Little man in one of his brief awake moments.

No...it's not beer. Aldi has some bottled root beer, and Kendalynn kept following me around wanting the empty bottle. Picture moment.

I used to think she was so small...

Kendalynn's cute "smile."

Little man in his manly pink chair. :)

His cuuuuute little feet.

more of Logan

This kid is just awesome. He hasn't even been with us for a full 2 days yet and I already feel like he's been with me forever. SO AWESOME. He's been such a great little boy. He eats like a pro already which makes me soooooo happy. Last night was our first night home (we only stayed in the hospital about 30 hours) and he did really good. He has his "awake" times (which only last about 30 minutes at a time) all during the day, so last night he went to sleep at 11, woke up to eat at 2:30 followed by diaper change, back to sleep, woke up to eat around 6:45 followed by diaper change, and back to sleep again to wake up at 9 to have some open eye time. Wow can I just say I am one lucky little mommy!

Kendalynn has been so excited to have him around. She just loves to point at him and give him kisses and has taken a greater interest in her baby dolls now that Logan is around. We just have to watch out for him trying to "feed" him with her spoon and I'm sure she'll be trying to put loads of things in his mouth and all up in his face. But she's such a sweet girl we're sure she'll just want to help out all the time. Sometimes it just might be a little more "help" than we really need.

Here's some pictures of him in his first little outfit! The frog is the object that I'm going to continue taking pictures of him with to compare how much he's grown from when he came home. Enjoy!

yes...he's here!

LOGAN WALKER!
7 lbs even
20 inches long
12:10 p.m.

Oh my goodness gracious today could not have gone any better. Hooray! Things have gone exceptionally well, and sooo much faster than I would have ever anticipated. Kendalynn's labor was about 14 hours, which I still don't think is that bad, so I was expecting it to go a little faster this time around...but not nearly this fast! I was also a little worried about the pitocin and if it just didn't like me, but we turned out to be great friends. :) Here's the basic summary of what happened today!

6:20 - get to front counter to fill out a few papers.
7:05 - in our room changing into my gown.
7:50 - start the pitocin!
8:10 - contractions start, and VERY quickly jumped to being VERY consistent at about 1.5-2.5 minutes apart. :)
9:20 - epidural. Heaven.
11:40 - the nurse came in and discovered that his head was "right there"
11:55 - started to push
12:10 - out pops Logan!

So ya. From the time that labor "started" and ended was only 4 hours. AMAZING. It was seriously so smooth. At 11:40 when the nurse came in, it was actually to put a heartbeat monitor on his head because he kept moving so much they couldn't keep one up with the other monitor. Well she then realized that he was moving so much because he was trying to escape. So by the time I started pushing, I had pushed 3 times with the nurse, and then the doctor walking in, looked down to see how things were going and said, "Oh! Hello!" and then one more round of pushing and out came wee little Logan man.

So it's been awesome. I'm feeling great, and hoping to be able to go home tomorrow night if they'll let me...but we'll see. Kendalynn was able to come in a few hours after Logan was born with Tyler's mom and brother Casey and she was so cute. She seemed a little scared of her surroundings at first (which I'm sure reminded her of scary doctor visits that she'd prefer to forget!) but warmed up real quick. She especially liked pointing to Logan saying "baby" over and over again, and pointing out features on his face and giving him kisses. We're sure she'll be a very sweet and loving big sister, and we're excited to get home altogether and get into as much of a routine as we can.

So anyways...things are good. Tyler went home about an hour ago to help with Kendalynn and will come and visit Logan and me tomorrow. And in the meantime I'll just enjoy the last moments of silence that I can and take advantage of the nurses to watch Logan so I can sleep!

LIFE IS GREAT!!

update!

Yes....I'm still pregnant. But not for much longer! For those of you who haven't heard, I'm being induced this Tuesday (the 8th) so sometime on that day we will be adding little Logan to our family. Wahoo!! Last Friday at my doctor appointment the doctor said I was well on my way to having this baby and could possibly have him on my own before Tuesday gets here. So I've been working on that all weekend... Hopping around, volunteering to retrieve things from upstairs for the chance to run up them, and Tyler and I just finished going on a walk around the neighborhood (during which I would skip for periods of time) to try and get things moving.

So yes...we're excited to add Logan into our lives. I know it's going to make things way more hectic around here, but I'm over being worried about it. People are continuously telling me how hard things are going to be, and I get so tired of it! I decided quite some time ago that since there's nothing I can do about how crazy things may get sometimes, I just need to be willing to live with a messy house sometimes and enjoy my cute and ADORABLE children while I can. So for those of you who feel you need to warn me about how hard it will be or how messy my house will get...don't worry about it! I've heard it all! I'd rather let myself be excited about having Logan around rather than worrying about things that don't matter as much as my cute awesome kids that I get watch learn and grow. SO MUCH FUN! So if you happen to be someone who might frequent my house of the next few months, I'll apologize now for the unorganized messes that will most likely be lurking around every corner! :)

Other than that! For those of you who don't know, Tyler, Kendalynn and I have been living in our WONDERFUL house for just over a week now!!! HOORAY! We've been to our ward twice now, and I LOVE it soooo much. Kendalynn has done AWESOME in nursery and there have been soooo many people who have befriended us already. I can already tell that we're going to make some great friends while we're here.

If no one has seen pictures of our house, here is the link to the house when it was for sale, but what I need to do is take pictures of it with our stuff in it. I made sure to put pictures and decorations on the wall the day we moved in to make it feel like home, so it actually looks like we've lived here longer than a week. We have SO much storage space in this house, so we were able to unpack just about everything in just a few days. AND our wonderful Buttle parents bought us some bedroom furniture as a housewarming present that will be here Tuesday! So we'll finally own dressers and our clothes can go somewhere other than piles on the floor or metal racks that so obviously belong in a garage...not a bedroom.

But to wrap it up...I'll try to include some pictures of Kendalynn enjoying the backyard. But just be on the lookout for pictures of our new addition by Tuesday at the latest! If we're lucky, I'll have him tomorrow so Tyler will already have the day off work, and things will be a little easier to move his schedule around. But anyways...enough rambling. But cross your fingers for me so all this hopping around the house will pay off!

Kendalynn LOVES wearing my shoes. This time she had a little bit of a hard time matching them.

Playing in the backyard today she saw a plane. When she hears one in the sky, she looks around all excited trying to find it. (yes...it's blurry...phooey.)

She found it. And was so excited to watch it go by.

I'm not sure why she's making that face...but it's funny!

an adventure

Today we all went and had an adventure together! (We being Daddy Buttle, Mommy Buttle, Tyler, myself, Kendalynn, Kyle, Keri, Kara, Ryan and Casey. Wow.) First we went to The Varsity for a good ol' greasy meal, and then headed off to the Coca-Cola museum here in Atlanta. (If you didn't know...this is where the headquarters are.) It was super! I've got pictures, so I'll let them tell the story and add in when I feel the need.

The building. Ooooooh...awwww.

Seriously the best part. They have this bear (with a person inside I'm sure) but the face and everything do all kinds of stuff too! Wow...it was cool. So you can take pictures with it and I was thinking Kendalynn might be a little too hesitant. Not even close. She kept running out of line to go and see it and boy did she love that thing. The rest of the day she kept putting her hands up (how you would when asking where something is) saying "bear? bear?" SO AWESOME. I'll try and post the video we got later.

Everyone with the awesome bear.

Tyler and I. I don't even remember the last time we took a picture together.

Another awesome part. I had heard about this, the tasting room, where you get to taste other flavors that are popular in some other parts of the world. Let me just say...I don't know what on earth the Italians are thinking. DISGUSTING.

Then they had the area just with the typical Coke and normal flavors. Cherry, vanilla (the best) etc...

The happy sign outside the store.

She was also very excited about sitting on the sign. She was mad when we took her down.

So all in all quite a fun day. I'll have to try and remember to post the video of the bear, and Kendalynn with the birds. This kid cracks us up. As we were walking to the museum there were some pigeons by the grass, and she ran after them while the poor things just kept running for their lives. I'm pretty sure she could have gone all day too. She's hilarious and boy do we all love her!

finishing up july

Alright, I reset my computer today so I could do a little blogging, so I figure I'll do as much as I can right now while it lasts because my computer is weird like that...

So we have left our wonderful home in Raleigh. :(  It was actually quite hard for me because I loooooved it there.  The weather is much better there, the ward was awesome, our apartment was right next to everything wonderful in the world (even the ward building) and I had a super duper sister and her dear little Emmy like 4 miles away.  Every time Kendalynn sees pictures of Emmy she gets really excited and sometimes even runs around like she's looking for her.  It's cute, but kind of makes me sad that she won't be able to play with her as much anymore.  

But we have arrived in Atlanta (ha...like a month ago) and are doing wonderful!  After looking at houses for 2 days with our Uncle Ron, we found one!  Things are still going great with it all and we're looking to close on August 27th at 1 pm!  Check it out!  So things are going well and Kendalynn is having a little too much of a good time here with everyone home.  (so much that she never wants to sleep anymore...)  Tyler is very much liking his job and is finally rid of the trainee title.  We are extremely blessed.  

Here are some pictures of one particularly eventful day when Ryan (Kara's fiance) came to visit.

if you can't tell he's sticking his tongue out.  Ha!

Bug's enjoying a visit from grandpa in her princess castle.

Boys playing Wii tennis.  (Tyler, Justin, Ryan, Casey)

Casey and Tyler getting ready to box.

I love the face!

He was quite into it.  It was quite entertaining.

Justin didn't make very many weird faces like everyone else.  This was about as crazy as he got.