I've been promising Brian I would get this post up, so NEXT post will be with pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Nathan loves playing in the yard with his Daddy and one of his favorite games is for Daddy to "kick ball up high!"  Brian boots our big ball straight up in the air and Nathan loves it!  A few times the ball has gotten stuck in the lower branches of the tree in the middle of the backyard (always recoverable) or gone over the roof of the house and into the front yard, and this just adds to the entertainment for Nathan.  I had been slightly concerned for a time that the ball would actually get really stuck in one of the many trees in our backyard, and one day last month, that concern was realized.

It was a mild day a few weeks after Sarah was born, so Brian and Nathan were playing "kick ball up high" while Gran, Sarah and I were watching from the swing on the back patio.  Brian booted the ball ridiculously high like Nathan loves and it landed in the VERY top of the tree in the middle of our backyard.  Brian had previously retrieved stuck balls by tossing a piece of wood at it to knock it down, so he tried that again this time using a rake handle.  Unfortunately after the first toss it too was stuck pretty high in the tree.  Well, now we needed to recover the rake handle as well as the ball! Next Brian grabbed a piece of metal used to stake the tomatoes in our garden and threw it into the tree in an attempt to retrieve the rake handle... yep, that got stuck as well!  Then he grabbed a wooden stake to try and knock any or all of the previous out of the tree.  We all burst out laughing as that got stuck as well!  Thankfully the piece of wood was low enough that Brian could just knock it out of the tree without throwing anything else.  At that point, I ran in and grabbed my camera to document the rediculous-ness!  So the arrows are pointing to the ball in the top of the tree, then next lower is the rake handle and finally the metal tomato stake.

Obviously, Brian's initial plan to retrieve the ball created more trouble then it solved, so he decided on a new tactic - shake everything out of the tree!  Of course, this called for pulling the truck in the backyard and attaching a strap between the tree and the trailer hitch. 

Though the truck gave the job its best effort (see the back wheels up off the ground in the picture below), it only succeeded in freeing the rake handle after about a dozen tries.  A good accomplishment but of course not the ultimate goal. 

So time to pull out the big guns... I mean arrows!  Brian and Gran both had the idea to try and shoot the ball down from the tree.  At this point I, however, had decided it would just be easier to buy a new ball from Walmart and wait for a big storm to free the stuck ball from the tree.  Brian first tried to shoot a wood stake into the tree (maybe we were worried about loosing an arrow?), but because Brian couldn't seat it well on the string of his crossbow, the aim was off.

Then Brian taped up the tip of one of his arrows, so hopefully it wouldn't pop the balloon if it made contact, and got set for a second try.  And finally SUCCESS!!!

Unfortunately I didn't get final picture of Brian or Nathan triumphantly holding the freed ball, but there was certainly major celebration from both of them as well at the peanut gallery.  Although the metal stake was still stuck in the tree, we decided that we would stop while we were ahead.  And like Brian said somewhere around the time the truck was pulled in the backyard: "At least it kept us entertained for the afternoon!"

Sarah turned six weeks old last Friday and I was able to take lots of pictures while she napped in front of the front door.  She obligingly let me keep moving and posing her while slumbering, and since it was also Nathan’s naptime I didn’t have my other little helper to distract me and/or steal the limelight.

Sarah is now responding with more smiles when she's awake. Of course I'm biased, but I think she is even more adorable then usual when she smiles!

Sarah is also starting to sleep longer stretches at night.  About half of the nights this past week, she only woke up once during the night.  I'm loving this development!


One thing I forgot to mention in the “Sibling Love” post is how Nathan always says “Sarah funny noise” when Sarah makes her baby moans and sighs and grunts.  So cute!

Sarah’s hair has been gradually turning lighter.  Sometime, maybe about two weeks ago, Brian commented that Sarah’s roots looked like they were coming in blond.  Now (to me) it just looks like her hair is a medium brown but still no longer then when she was born.  She still has a thick (and darker) patch of hair at the base of her head.

Life is still going way more smoothly then anticipated with a new baby, and for that we’re continually thankful!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Love, The Kornrumpfs

Nana and Granddad arrived last night for the Christmas holidays with the car full of presents. And since they'll be here for longer before Christmas then after, Nana decided to go ahead and give Nathan some Christmas presents today so that she and Granddad could enjoy Nathan enjoying playing with them. And of course, since the present consisted of two new sets of blocks, they were a huge hit!

It started with Nathan collecting all the blocks into the new wagon that Granddad made for him...

...then he began building the standard tower.


Nana got him started on the first three rows of a different style tower...

...and as she and Sarah watched in amazement...

...Nathan began building and building...

...and building and building! Get that boy a stool - he's building a skyscraper!
(The tallest part of the tower came crashing down right after I took this picture, but he just started again!)

Nathan loves his sister.  LOVES!

He always wants to go wake her up from her naps.  He usually likes to help with diaper changes.  He always announces when Sarah wants to be in the swing and will turn on the music for her and make sure I pull down the mobile.  Then he would like to stand there and push her in the swing (vigorously), but I've told him he can only push her one time.  When he decides she needs it, he will run and get her a blanket or burp cloth out of the drawer in her room.  He loves to sit next to her when she's in her chair, and makes sure the vibrate switch is set to "on".

I've mentioned that Sarah likes to scream most times when she's in the carseat.  Well, this really upset Nathan the first time it happened, and I'm certain it's because he didn't want her to be upset.  He still gets sad when she cries in the car and tells her "All done Sarah.  All done crying.  No cry Sarah, no cry!"

Did I mention that he loves his sister??

Here is the classic Nathan interaction with Sarah.  Though it looks like he's about to eat her face off, this is really his expression and the chant he uses when he's really excited about someone.

This week was Sarah's one month check-up and she's following in her brother's footsteps by starting out at the top of the growth charts (though he didn't stay there for long). Our baby, who was 7lb 9oz on Nov 11th, has grown into a 10lb 9oz baby by Dec 13th! That's three whole pounds in four and a half weeks! She is in the 86% for weight, her height/length was 21.75 inches (73%) and head circumference was 14.75 inches (57%).

Here's what life's like these days:
Baby acne has hit hard this past week, but thankfully its not really noticable in the 5 week pictures I took today.  During the day, Sarah's routine is still sporadic - some days she's super alert and other days I can't keep her awake even when I try.  At night she she usually wakes up twice to eat.  Sarah usually falls back asleep pretty well after these nighttime feedings, but last night was an unusual "I'll be awake for an hour, but in return, will spare you the second wake up call."  Sarah likes to scream most of the time that she's in her carseat unless she miraculously falls asleep instead. We've re-committed to try and give her a bottle most days so that she'll take it when we need her to (Brian had a bit of difficulty convincing her to take it on Monday while I was at the optometrist, so we've given her a bottle every day this week). Her right eye has started getting goopy again due to the blocked tear duct, but we hope it will resolve itself in the next weeks/months without any additional intervention.

Once again, Nathan was very eager to be a part of the weekly picture-taking action. Today I pulled out Sarah's blanket to use as a background, so Nathan ran out of the room and made sure his blanket was included as well!

I love it when Nathan imitates adults, especially his father. I mean, its so stinking cute how he pays such close attention to whatever's happening and then does his very best to do the exact same thing.

During many of Brian's residency rotations, he has to call his attending physician in the evening to discuss the cases for the next day. Brian has always wandered around the house when he's on the phone, and these calls were no exception. During these calls, I would always remind Nathan the he needed to be quiet while Daddy had a "call for work." That phrase turned into "Daddy call work" per Nathan.

Our little mimic then decided he would get in on the "call work" fun and started following Brian around the house with an old cell phone to his ear. From there, he started repeating phrases that Brian would say or laughing right after Brian laughed. I would always stop what I was doing to watch the little parade because it was SO CUTE!! When Brian wasn't at home, Nathan would sometimes play "call work" and he kept repeating this phrase "Brian Kornrumpf day. Pee us." It took me a long time to figure out what he was trying to say, but I finally realized that "pee us" was actually "p, f", as in the last two letters of our last name! He heard Brian (and I) spell our name on the phone so many times, that's what he thought of when he thought of talking on the phone (I never figured out what "day" was supposed to mean).

After talking about getting some of this on video for months, Brian had the brilliant idea of faking a phone call and using his phone to record Nathan's "call work" (we knew that it wouldn't work for me to follow them around with the video camera because Nathan would just run for it as soon as he spotted me). So here are two different takes... and now Nathan can practically spell our whole last name!

It doesn't get much better then this...

I see smiles every day, mainly as she's drifting off to sleep, but I can't wait until she starts smiling intentionally!!

So, just a few things about Sarah that I don't think I've recorded yet:

Sarah has a dimple in her left cheek and I love it! As a little girl, I wished that I had dimples so I love that my little girl does! I thought I saw it on her for the first time a few days after she was born but I wasn't sure it was really there until a few days later.

Also when she was born, she had dark eyes - just like Nathan. Both of them were a very dark gray-ish color. Nathan's, of course, turned dark brown, but Sarah's seem to be lightning up so I'm super hopeful that she'll have blue eyes like lots of the other women in the family (both her grandmothers and me!).

This was too impressive not to share! A while back, we hid one of Nathan's two tubes of toothpaste in an attempt to speed up our teeth-brushing routine.  I stuck it up in the cabinet with our medicine and other bathroom supplies and promptly forgot about it.  But the other day, the cabinet was open when Nathan walked into the bathroom, and after looking up in the cabinet for less then 5 seconds (not exaggerating!), he pointed and said "toothpaste lost!"  Yes, the lost toothpaste had been found!  I was amazed that he was able to spot it so quickly especially with the label side facing out and all the other junk up there! 

Since Sarah's still at the "I'm a newborn (a.k.a. blob) stage", I was totally underwhelmed by the picture I posted of her on Friday night.  You couldn't see her very well and she just looked so scrunched up since I propped her up in the sitting position... so I decided to take a few more pictures on Saturday and was definitely more pleased with the results!



I LOVE this adorable embroidered blanket that Kristin, Aaron and the girls gave us as a baby present for Sarah!!

After I had taken about the first two pictures of Sarah (the two above are the best out of about 40 I took!), doesn't-miss-anything Nathan came running into the room with his arms full of stuffed animals to get in on the fun.  He was NOT happy when I told him that I was just taking pictures of Sarah and that I needed him to wait.  In fact, there were quite a few tears even as Gran tried to distract him with offers of playing blocks.  So after I was pretty sure I had gotten some good expressions from Sarah, Nathan hopped up on the chair to share the limelight with his sister (after I dried his eyes, of course).


And before it was all over, we got Daddy in on the picture-taking action!

During most of Nathan's first year, I tried to do monthly photo shoots with him to document his growth over that period of time. This time around, I was hoping to do the weekly photos with Sarah, mainly because I know that as the second child I'll probably be taking significantly fewer pictures of her then I did of Nathan as an infant. But as you saw last week, and as you can see from the picture above, Nathan is not about to let his little sister get a photo op without him involved! In fact, because I had her pink bear sitting with her, he had to run and grab Ra-ra, Kitty Cat and (this week) Bear out of his crib.  But at least I can prop Sarah up against Nathan!

Over the past week, Sarah has definitely been less sleepy then during the first weeks.  Overall, this is a fun development... except when it comes to putting her down for naps... or, even worse, for the hours between 6ish and 10ish at night.  Although most of my ideals for her sleep have come crashing down around me, I am still committed to TRYING to put her down for naps and bed awake but drowsy so that she can learn to fall asleep by herself (trying to avoid some of the worst sleep issues we had with Nathan during those first months).  But the evening hours have been pretty difficult for the past few days, as Brian, Gran and I have been passing her around, holding her and trying to keep her from fussing but never really getting her into a deep sleep and certainly not getting her to sleep in the crib.  Tonight (so far) has been a much better success with her sleeping in her crib, for which I am so thankful!  Especially since Brian works nights next week and I've decided that after my Mom goes home it's time for me to sink or swim as a mom of two (though help has assured me it's only a phone call and a few hours' drive away)!

Sarah keeps smiling more (involuntarily I'm sure), but it is so adorable and I can't wait until she starts smiling on purpose!  She also has this sound effect that she makes, probably a grunt, but Brian calls it her "machine gun sound."  Unfortunately she was doing it a lot last night when I was nursing her in bed, which made it much harder for Mommy and Daddy to doze during the feeding.  She also continues to surprise me how contented she is, right after a nap and feeding, to sit in her  little chair or to lie on her back while life goes on around her.  She also loves looking at the Christmas tree lights!

Brian decided it was time for some modifications to Nathan's power wheels.  Granted, Nathan was sometimes having trouble driving up the little hill in our backyard and the additional tread that Granddad, Daddy and Nathan applied to the back wheels didn't completely solve the problem.  So there was legitimate reason for Brian to add some power to Nathan's car.  It turned out that the modifications happened the night before I went into labor, so the next morning before heading to the hospital, Brian took Nathan out back (still in his pajamas) to test out his hopped up ride.  Those Kornrumpf men and their cars!  (Just kidding!  I told Brian to go ahead while I timed my contractions.  We both wanted to make sure it wouldn't pop a wheelie with Nathan on it before we left for a few days.)  Gran and Pawpaw later reported that Nathan spent a lot of that day outside riding his power wheels, grinning from ear to ear!

Here's a video of Nathan riding and showing off some of the tricks he likes to do, including:

• Pulling his "trailer"
• Running into trees
• Man-handling his power wheels out of tough situations
• Riding with his legs propped up on the front fenders
• Playing bumper cars with a big ball
• Leaning into those sharp corners
• Steering with his "trick" grip
• Imitating Evil Knievel

Other amusing snippets include him adjusting his "cool headband" and performing tree inspections.  Enjoy!

I'm still SO THANKFUL for how much Nathan seems to adore his little sister. Not that he hasn't had any adjustment issues, but none of them have affected his fascination and excitement about Sarah. As I mentioned before, he loves to sit down next to her in their respective chairs...
...and was also excited to have his picture taken with her (though he didn't want to put his arm around her).
And here's Sarah at two weeks old with her pink bear.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Nana and Granddad! Carroll did almost all the cooking, the food was wonderful, and the timing for Sarah's feedings and naps worked out beautifully with dinner! Here we are before devouring our Thanksgiving feast:


And after being fed right before dinner, Sarah sat contentedly in her chair through THE WHOLE MEAL! Though she doesn't look thrilled about it here...

Later that day, we gave Sarah her first bath.  Yeah, it took us almost two weeks to give Sarah her first bath.  Some things just don't seem so important the second time around... it's not like she was playing in the dirt all day like Nathan does now!

Since her umbilical cord had fallen off a while before (day eight I think), we went straight to using our baby bath tub.  I think Brian made the call to put it over the kitchen sink, which made Sarah super happy as she stared out the kitchen window during most of the bath!

Scrub-a-dub-dub on her little head!  Daddy handled the whole bath by himself.  What a pro!

Sarah was super content through the whole thing...

...but once we got her out of the water, the crying commenced.

Here we are with our sweet, clean girl!

And that picture (intentionally) is reminiscent of one about two years ago with a different little bundle of joy!

Carroll kept Sarah the other night while Brian, Nathan and I headed to Lowe's to pick up some supplies for a little home project. Nathan had a blast "driving" the racecar cart he picked out (too bad it wasn't as easy for Brian and I to steer that gargantuan cart!) And one of Nathan's new favorite things to do is to direct us with his declarations of "This way! That way!"



I also was pretty amused as I followed Brian and Nathan down the aisle, watching Nathan mimic Brian's hands-behind-the-back posture.  He is so observant and loves to copy EXACTLY what the adults around him are doing!


And for a Sarah update: her right eye started looking gunky yesterday (and I think it had been more watery then the other since she was born), so I called for an appointment with the pediatrician just in case it was an eye infection like Nathan had two weeks ago. When we went in, Dr. Becky said it was most likely a blocked tear duct but gave us some medicine since we were going into the holiday weekend. The good news was that when they weighed Sarah, she was 8lb 5oz. So she gained 13 oz in the past week, almost 2oz a day! She'll be out of her newborn clothes soon if she keeps going at this rate! And because she was growing so well, Dr. Becky told me that I didn't need to come back until she was 1 month old, so I got to cancel the check up we had scheduled for next week and we'll see the doctor again in December.

Ra-ra is Nathan's special stuffed animal. Although he was able to go to sleep without it earlier this week when it got lost in the house, Nathan really does have a special attachment to him. Especially his tag. Nathan really likes to rub the tag between his fingers - I'm pretty sure he does it unconsciously.  You can kind of see him doing it in the picture below...


But from from all that handling, Ra-ra's tag was looking like this back in September...


...and since then was reduced to just a dozen little strings where the full tag once was.

But Nana came to the rescue!  She told Nathan that she would give Ra-ra a new tag!  So she removed a tag from another (less loved) stuffed animal and stitched it onto Ra-ra. That night as I put Nathan to bed, he kept telling me "Ra-ra new tag!"

I tried my hand at newborn photography today and realized that it was a little more challenging then I expected.  It didn't help that my little model started waking up as I was trying to position her, then decided to make me a present in her diaper!  But I think I got a few good ones...

I am SO THANKFUL!!! These first few days of Sarah's life have really been wonderful.  Sarah is a really sweet, easy baby so far. She eats super well and has already gained back her birth weight - we went to the pediatrician's today and she weighed exactly 7lb 9oz! And last night she slept for five hours, got up once to nurse, then slept another four until morning! Not that I expect a repeat of this, but it was sure nice last night!

But to back up a bit, Brian, Sarah and I stayed in the hospital for two nights and were discharged on Sunday morning.  Here are a few pics while we were waiting for our discharge papers to be processed



 We rushed home to see Nathan before he went down for his nap and he was excited to see all three of us!  He wanted me to put him down for his nap :), which I was glad to do... but then I ran to the table to stuff my face because it was 1:00 and I was STARVING!!  That hospital food...

Nathan initially was very interested in what Sarah was doing, whether she was awake or asleep or eating, but then when we let him hold her for the first time yesterday, his excitement grew to a whole new level!


Now he gets a little mad when she's sleeping in her crib because he wants to go into her room to look at her.  He loves watching and narrating diaper changes and helps out by putting the dirty diapers in the diaper pail.  When she's sitting in her bouncer seat, he wants to sit right next to her in his rocking chair.  And he LOVES giving her kisses!


I am SO THANKFUL that he is so loving and gentle with his sister.  I know it helps that for the last few days he's had lots of attention from Nana and Daddy so (so far) he has no resentment/jealousy when she gets attention.  In fact, he's really been loving life because all week (until today) we've had beautiful weather and he's spent hours outside with Nana, Daddy and Granddad.  There have also been no signs of regression, in fact tonight while he was running around naked before putting his pjs on (one of his favorite activities of the day), he ASKED to go poo-poo in the potty and then did!  That was a first! 

Now to Sarah.  Like I mentioned, she is eating great!  Nursing is going SO well this time around.  She is a super fast eater and almost never takes more then 15 minutes to finish eating.  I would have been slightly concerned, but she was also sleeping so well that I knew she had to be getting enough to eat.  She is also a "sucky" baby - in the first hours of her life we noticed how she managed to get her fingers in her mouth and would suck on them.  This actually threw us for a loop for the first couple of days because she would start rooting and we assumed she was hungry, but after nursing for 1-2 minutes she would just fall sound asleep!  So yesterday morning I gave her a pacifier when I couldn't calm her down and didn't want to nurse her to sleep.  So I think she's going to be a pacifier baby...  Like I mentioned, she is also sleeping great.  The first night home from the hospital she fed during the night every 2.5 hours for 3 middle of the night feedings.  The second night, Monday night, she got up twice, sleeping 3 and 4 hour stretches.  Then last night was the amazing 4 and 5 hour stretches of sleep!  I did pray before she was born that she would be a good sleeper since that was such a nightmare (no pun intended) with Nathan early on, so maybe God gave me a "yes" on that prayer!

As for Brian, I think he's already wrapped around Sarah's finger a little!  But with how easy Sarah's been so far, he's had a chance to to some yard work (those darn leaves!), finish up his pediatric anesthesia fellowship applications, and do quite a few projects around the house. 

And me... I feel so great!  Well, I have a nasty cough/sore throat, but except for a lingering backache, I feel already totally recovered from labor and delivery.  My energy level is higher then what it was in late pregnancy and I've even had to motivation to tackle some ridiculous projects, like organize our filing cabinet!  At the risk of repeating myself too many times, I have to say that I'm so thankful that this has been a night and day difference from what I went through post-partum with Nathan.  Last time I felt like I had been run over by a bus, but this time my body's bounced back faster then I could have hoped for!

So thanks to all of you for all your thoughts, prayers, sweet and encouraging comments and your love!  And thanks be to God for such a wonderful past couple of days!