Our "Chunky Monkey": 7 months old

 Look at those kissable lips!

And because I love his chubby feet and hands...

-21 pounds, according to my scale at home. Last sunday I swaddled him and stood in the foyer to help him fall asleep during sacrament meeting. My right arm literally started shaking because he was so heavy and my muscles were not happy. For the next few days, my right bicep was super sore. haha I sure get a workout holding him!
-His nicknames from Daddy and Grace: "Chunky Monkey" or "Chubs". Logan is SO BIG. He has rolls on his back, for cryin' out loud. He is big everywhere! Thighs, stomach, cheeks, arms, and even his hands and feet are just, well, LARGE.

-Wears 9-12 month clothes and size 4 diapers still.
-Sits up extremely well on the floor (and prefers that to any other position) but does occasionally tip over one way or another. He still enjoys the exer-saucer sometimes as well.
-Gets all giggly and excited when the Super Why opening song comes on. It's Grace's favorite show so I'll let them watch it while I shower in the morning. Since his sister loves it, of course he does too. Isn't that the way it goes?
-Pretty much loves anything and everything to do with Grace. She will do mean things to him and he still thinks it's awesome most of the time. I especially love it when Grace is ahead of me climbing up the stairs while I'm holding Logan and we're walking up behind her. I wish you all could hear how excited and squealy Logan gets every time he watches her simply climbing the stairs! She also likes to lay down next to him when he is sitting on the floor and he will rub (or scratch) her head, back, or play with her hair. It's seriously adorable.

Our handsome boy, all dressed up and ready for church! 

(Grace doesn't allow me to take pictures of JUST Logan these days)

-Foods he has tried and liked: mixed grain cereal, rice cereal... and homemade foods we've done are: yellow squash, butternut squash, pears, sweet potatoes. He loves everything as long as he can eat it! :) I've handed him a carrot to gnaw on, plus watermelon, cantaloupe and an apple slice to suck on.

-He's having some pooping issues... Ever since starting the more constipating solid foods (like sweet potatoes) his system hasn't quite decided how to stay regular. Poor guy. I have been back-tracking for the last week by only giving him pears and prune juice (mixed with cereal) instead of the veggies. I'm hoping his body will get used to it all soon.
-He has still been sleeping in our room this month because of our house guest, but tomorrow night is THE LAST NIGHT. All he needs is some sleep training in a quiet room where nobody else is, so he is officially getting his own room on saturday finally! He's never learned to cry it out yet, and I've only been giving into what he wants in order to keep him quiet so Ryan and I could sleep. All month Ryan has been getting up at 4am for work, which means Logan has been stirring at that time too. I end up having to nurse him in order for him to fall back to sleep so I can go back to sleep. I know he doesn't need it (I mean LOOK at him) but it's the only thing to do when I'm so tired and he's bugged me 3 other times in the night before then. My goal with the night time sleep training is to also figure out what he prefers: swaddling on back, half or full swaddling while on his tummy, no swaddling, etc. I'm not sure what he likes anymore! He wakes up 3-4 times at night no matter what I try.
-As far as napping, Logan does pretty well. He seems to be transitioning himself to 2 naps instead of 3. He gets mad about going down for a real nap in the late morning hours but always falls asleep if we go in the car to run errands in those hours. His earlier afternoon nap is really great usually! Today he went down around 1:30 and it's now been 2 1/2 hours without a peep out of him. :) I sure love that! The only time he takes evening naps is if he is ridiculously upset about everything by 5pm, or if his earlier naps weren't very long. Then he'll go to bed at about 7:45pm and I "dream feed" him at 10.

Logan with cousin Ave (who is 3 weeks younger)

-Logan loves his toes! He's either chewing on them or holding on to them constantly. (see photos at beginning)
-Sits up in the bath like a big kid now! I can't believe he's getting so old so fast.
-Is not easy to entertain a lot of the time. In church or anywhere that he is supposed to be quiet and sitting nicely on our laps, he is usually a mess. He whines, squeals, throws his arms up, head back and arches into a "stiff board" position. I swear he acts like a 2 year old throwing a tantrum more often than he does a 7 month old baby. He's so so so so different than Grace was at this age. Man, she was such an easy-going, sweet little thing compared to this crazy boy.

Enjoying the "tent" with Grace and Dad

But of course we love our little man! Or... BIG little man, I should say. He is already growing up so fast that I feel like I can hardly remember when he was just a little baby. I like that he has a personality and already knows what he wants, even though it means he can be very unworkable because of it. I like that he has found his voice and loves to make noises almost constantly. I like that he is flirty with other girls/women and that he is so bright-eyed and aware of everything around him. I love that he loves his binky so much and can put it in his mouth by himself. I love that he loves his family.

We love you so much, Logan!

A big, long random update - Tons of photos too!

1. We are LOVING the rain here. So so so much. I can't say it enough. It's nice that it's not everyday, but it's been happening enough lately that it feels perfect to me. I love not living in a dessert!

 It seriously comes down in sheets!

 2. Last week, the kids and I "go go go go'ed, on an uhbencher" (thank you Cat In The Hat). I wanted to find some great places for photo sessions and explore some different parks in the area. This one has a neat old covered bridge.

 And get a cute shot of my kiddos!

 Everyone tends to go to the same one in Old Pickerington because it's right near where most of our ward members live. But there are some other parks within 10 miles that are fun... We found this one called Huntington Hills, I think? Tucked away in a neighborhood that only my GPS unit could have found for me. It was pretty hidden!

 We had a little picnic and Grace played for a bit. Man, was it humid and hot that day!

 Logan enjoyed the cute little car swing.

 And I found another "dream house" possibility to add to my never-ending list. A lot of houses around here have so much land attached!

 We found a Dairy Queen and stopped in for a nice treat.

 3. Our garden has struggled in the last couple months. It was attacked by beetles and we didn't know about them in time to kill them and save our zucchini and squash plants. :( Total bummer. Plus our green pepper plants are struggling, our black berry bushes didn't produce more than a cup or two of berries (which came a lot earlier than we expected), and our watermelon and pumpkin plants are completely dead and pulled up now. But we did get one watermelon, and are continuing to get tons of tomatoes and jalapeños! Some of what is pictured are from Amanda's plants that she put in our garden. It's so fun having so much fresh stuff! Oh and I should mention that we also have cucumbers!

 4. With all the rain clouds moving in and out of the area, we've had beautiful sunsets.

 5. Amanda and my next door neighbor, Liz Brown, took our kids to the zoo last week. It was so fun! Thank you again, mom and dad, for the pass. :) Cute Annie was totally enthralled by the manatee and fish and turtles in one exhibit.

 And our favorite animals to hang out and watch are by far the Bonobo monkeys. They are so funny!

 6. Amanda and I have been sharing our kids' clothes with each other, so Ava is wearing some of Grace's old stuff, and Logan is wearing some of Owen's old stuff. This outfit totally took me back to 7 month old Grace ...

7. We got these alphabet and number puzzles in the $1 Target bins and Grace is a whizz with them! She puts them together all by herself after I helped her probably two times to get the concept. So smart.

 8. My 2 cuties with their matching monkey PJs. :)

 9. The humidity here does AWESOME things to Grace's hair. Look at those curls! This was after a whole day of just running around, playing, and letting it do its own thing.

 10. Finger painting! Grace loves painting, coloring, drawing pictures, experimenting with writing letters (which she just started showing me over the last few days) etc. We are also starting a preschool/mommy school with Amanda and my next door neighbor Liz. We've already met to set up the schedules, the themes for each week, who is teaching when, and our goals for the 3 kids. It'll start September and go through the first of December. We're all very excited! I'm a little nervous myself because I've never done anything like that before, except teaching sunbeams 5 years ago... not the same thing at all! But it will be so great for Grace, and for me. And... I'm very much looking forward to having 2 hours a day, two times a week, with just Logan and I. :)

11. Grace is fully potty-trained now. I don't think I've mentioned that recently. She did have issues with a bunch of accidents one or two weeks in a row, but we have fixed it I think. She had one yesterday in nursery, but it's very rare otherwise. I'm proud of how well she is doing! She even wakes up dry from naps and occasionally from the whole night. We only do pull-ups at night and I know we'll need to be done with those soon. I'm not ready to take it on yet though...

12. The last 2 weeks of Ryan's work schedule have been pretty yucky. Like really yucky. 16 hour days and some even went over 16, which is a no-no for the residency program to let happen. Hopefully the rest of the month will be less hours per day so that he doesn't go over his 80 hours per week (which they average over the 4 weeks). The program can get into trouble if he goes over 80 per week consecutively. I officially hate night shifts, by the way! I just wanted to put that out there haha. Ryan has a few of those the end of this week, BUT there is a light at the end of this tunnel because his next track is just clinic work! So he'll have 4 weeks of just NORMAL clinic hours, and he might even have Labor Day off because of it! Yay!! Emotionally, I still have my days of hating this whole thing, of course. But I'm doing much better than I was when I wrote that unhappy post a couple weeks ago. I feel happier and try to fill our days with fun stuff. It helps so much when I do something social, outside of my house, and when I keep our house picked up. It's amazing how much a vacuumed living room and a disinfected bathroom does to my mood in general. :)

13. I need to take a picture of the places that Amanda and I have been going on walks together. There are some seriously beautiful, green, lush metro parks here and they have walking/biking paths that connect up to each other. Literally miles and miles of paved pathways through all the greenery of the city. Sometimes I feel like I'm walking through a forest on a mountain somewhere, and have to remind myself that there are no mountains here! Have I mentioned yet that I love it here? ;)

Funny Girl

1. Grace saw a commercial come on for a local fast food place. It showed french fries on the hamburger and Grace was really concerned about it. She was very emphatic, shaking her head, and said to me "No fries on the burger."

2. While in the bathtub, a little fly landed on the wall next to her. She got nervous but I reassured her it was just fine and wouldn't hurt her. We talked about how it would fly away soon and I asked her where it would fly to...
Grace: "To Grandma's house."
Me: "Really? What will the fly do there?"
Grace: "Play with muffin toys, and eat woot loops (fruit loops)."
...and a few seconds later added "And fly food."

3. Recently Ryan was in our garage building our new barbecue (replacing our broken one from the wind storm). I was out talking to him about something or other... just a normal conversation, no arguing. However Grace must have thought otherwise because she came up to us, put her hands on her hips and said "That's enough, guys!"

4. She has been stealing Logan's swaddling blankets and playing with them as her own. The other day, she asked Ryan to wrap her up like a baby. So Ryan did, and she was pretty stuck!

5. I was driving the kids home from errands and Logan started getting mad. At that point, we were just turning into the entrance of our development. Grace saw where we were, turned to Logan and said, "I know, Buddy. We're almost home." She took the words right out of my mouth!

6. Grace's Woody and Jesse dolls are now "kissing"... :(

7. While watching the Olympic Men's Volleyball match last week...
Grace: "That's a lot of daddies!"
Me: "Yep, there are a lot. They're playing volleyball."
Grace thought for a moment and said: "They need to go to work."
Apparently she doesn't feel that PLAYING volleyball counts as work. 

8. Speaking of the Olympics, Grace was standing on Ryan's back, jumping off, and putting up her arms like the gymnasts, saying "Ta-dah!"

9. If Grace doesn't want to do something (pick up toys, go potty, get dressed, etc), she turns into a "dead body". I HATE it. But she sure does a good job going completely limp, with eyes closed, mouth hanging open. I'm sure it would be funny if I weren't the parent trying to make the little "dead body" do  what she's asked to! ;)

10. A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the table eating lunch. Grace had finished and was playing on the couch. She was talking to me constantly and I started to tune her out saying "Uh huh", "Yep","Really? Wow!" to whatever she was saying. After a few minutes of that, I heard the word "snowman" and it stood out in my head as odd. So I finally walked around the corner to see what she was doing. When I saw what happened, I had a split second to decide how to react... I got a little mad, but then started to laugh and grabbed the camera. Grace started getting sad because she was in trouble and almost teared up, saying "Don't take a picture!" And with that intro, cue the video...