One of the playgroups that Nathan and I are a part of visited a local fire station last Friday. I thought it was pretty neat to be so up close and personal with the fire trucks, though Nathan was a bit timid about exploring the giant truck. He didn't want to get inside the truck at all and wouldn't even stand on the back bumper of the truck for a picture.  In fact, I'm somewhat surprised that he's touching the truck in the picture above.  But Nathan did make friends with the firefighters, giving them "five". 

After the other kids got their fill of playing in and around the truck, we went inside for a tour of the fire house.  I found out that fire stations these days don't usually have pets (dalmatians were used by firefighters hundreds of years ago to locate the fires and to help find people trapped within the fires), but firehouses DO still have the fire pole to quickly access the garage from the second story.  We even got a demonstration by the firefighters. 


Ummmm, Nathan seems to be looking the wrong way. And since I was busy taking a picture, I'm not sure if he got to see the firefighter slide down the pole or not. Come on Mama, pay attention to the kid!


By the end of the tour, Nathan had decided he was comfortable enough to stand on the back of the fire truck and let me snap a few pictures. And as a bonus, we even a got a rare one of the two of us!



Nathan has been doing the whole finger-in-the-mouth thing a lot lately. I would say that he's teething, but we've been saying that for months and still no molars have popped through. But I guess eventually "he's teething" will be the correct explanation?!

When Brian had his "day off" last Monday, I put him to work in Nathan's new room hanging curtain rods for the curtains. Fortunately he had a little helper to make the job a little easier.  Well, "easier" after Daddy made a trip downstairs for an extra tape measure, Mommy brought in a second stool and we found a pencil so that Nathan could "mark"!

Here are the videos I promised you in my last post.  Enjoy!

This past weekend was a Friday/Sunday call weekend for Brian. That means he works a 24 hour shift from Friday morning to Saturday morning, then comes home and sleeps until Saturday afternoon. He goes back to sleep Saturday night so he can get up early and work from Sunday morning until Monday morning. Then he'll come home and sleep until Monday afternoon, is awake for a few hours, goes to bed and starts his regular work schedule on Tuesday morning. As you can imagine, this is not typically a fun weekend for anyone in the family. The schedule exhausts Brian for obvious reasons, I don't get much of a break and Nathan sees his Daddy even less then usual. But this past call weekend actually turned into a really good weekend!

The big bonus for Nathan and me was that we had two fun visitors to keep us entertained. Gran stayed with us from Thursday afternoon until Monday morning. And, for an extra special treat, Great Aunt Karen drove down to spend time with us from midday Friday until Sunday morning.  We all had a blast!

A few of my favorite memories:

• We were talking about potential names for Baby Girl and nicknames in general, when Aunt Karen made a joke about calling someone "Mo".  Well, Nathan thought that was absolutely hilarious, and for the rest of the weekend would say "Mo!" and then crack himself (and the rest of us) up.
• Aunt Karen called Nathan "goofy" for some reason and that also would cracked him up every time she would say it.
• Nathan and I had been talking the week before about mosquitoes, and how they were outside and would bite Mommy and Nathan.  And he keeps seeing both Brian and me trying to smash mosquitoes and fruit flies between our hands and then check to see if we had killed anything.  So Nathan decided he would help us try to kill the bugs as well.  He started randomly clapping at the air, then peering and his hand and point to the "bug" that he just killed.  All of us, and especially Aunt Karen, found this hysterical (video to come soon).  And THEN at lunch or dinner this weekend, out of the corner of my eye I saw a spider descending from the ceiling to land on the hearth.  I took off my flip-flop and smashed him, which Nathan found hysterical and started imitating as well.
• The weather this weekend was FABULOUS.  Instead of feeling like a sauna outside, it was actually pleasant!  So Gran, Aunt Karen, Nathan and I spent some time out in the back yard on Saturday afternoon and I got a few cute pictures of Nathan and Aunt Karen.  Unfortunately, these were basically the only ones I took the whole weekend.  Darn! 

• Gran brought Nathan a flag!!  We had to go to the store to buy a flag pole, but Nathan was super excited about having our own flag at the house.  When we first put it up, he signed "thank you" to Gran (I don't remember if I prompted or if he did it on his own), but then every other time Nathan saw the flag after that, he would sign "thank you" again to Gran.  And he still is doing it days later!  And this morning, he actually gave the corner of the flag a kiss before we headed off in the car to run some errands.  This kid really loves his American flags!

• We went to the mall on Saturday morning to buy some ADORABLE little girl clothes, and a few pairs of shorts for Nathan.  Then Aunt Karen treated Nathan and me to our first merry-go-round ride!  Nathan was pretty hesitant before the ride started going, but I think he ended up enjoying it.  Video of this also to come soon.
• Saturday night after Nathan went to bed, Aunt Karen and Gran offered to stay at home while Brian and I went out to get ice cream.  Brian and I had a nice evening and really appreciated a little away time for just the two of us!

Well, no other specific memories come to mind right now, though I'm sure I've forgotten some good ones.  But we had lots of fun chatting and laughing and playing with Nathan, and just had an all-around wonderful visit!  And the icing on the cake was that Brian (amazingly) got a full night's sleep on Sunday night and ended up with a day "off" on Monday.  This was such a treat for Nathan and me, and allowed Gran to drive home a day early and spend the evening with PaPaw on his birthday!  So a special thanks to Gran and Aunt Karen for helping turn a potentially "blah" weekend into a fabulous one!

Our "Aunt" Jenny invited Nathan and me to go to the pool with her a few weeks ago. Her boyfriend's mother has a pool in their backyard, and it was BEAUTIFUL!! The weather was perfect the morning we went and Jennie and I had lots of fun talking and lounging in the pool.


Nathan spent a little time in the water, but mostly amused himself with throwing pebbles (and some bigger rocks) into the pool for me and Jennie to retrieve. For a while we got him into the pool, but only because we let him continue to toss the rocks from his float.


We has an almost catastrophe as the morning was drawing to a close.  There were some very friendly dogs that were in the yard with us, and Nathan was alternately intrigued by them and scared of them (when he felt they might get into his personal space).  But by the end of the morning, Nathan was feeling pretty comfortable around them and decided to start barking at the dogs.  As one of them came over to investigate, Nathan began rethinking his decision and started backing away from the approaching dog.  I yelled at him to "STOP!" but he wasn't paying me any attention.  Before I could get to him, he backed over the edge and fell into the pool.  Thankfully he didn't hit his head on anything, and I grabbed him a second after he went under the water and pulled him up.  He was only mildly upset (thank goodness) and didn't seem to have swallowed or inhaled any water.  It was starting to get close to naptime, so I decided to pack our bags and hit the road before anything more exciting could happen!

So I keep putting this post off because there's so much more to tell and I don't feel like tackling it all, but here we go. Mainly this is some stuff that I want to remember, but hopefully it will be slightly interesting for the rest of you.

In Part 1, we made it to Nashville...

The think I forgot to mention in the last post was that the trip to Nashville almost didn't happen. The night that we got into Knoxville, we got a call from some friends from church that their daughter just came down with Hand, Foot, Mouth disease. The complicating factor was that I had dropped Nathan off at their house THAT VERY MORNING while I went in for a quick OB appointment. We had also been around her the previous Saturday night for a birthday part and at church on Sunday morning. They were sure that she picked the HFM from someone at church, which meant that Nathan had multiple exposures to (likely) multiple children with the illness. The last thing that I wanted was to be in Nashville with a sick toddler and an 11+ hour drive to get home. I almost called off the trip on Wednesday night, but decided to sleep on it and make the decision on Thursday morning.

Since you know we made it to Nashville, you know what my decision was. After some prayer and a good night's sleep, I decided that this was likely my only chance to make it to Nashville in the next few months (or years?), so I decided to go ahead and go for it. For those who don't know, Nathan never did come down with HFM (thank you God!), and was one of the only kids at the party on Saturday night who missed the bug.

So back to our arrival in Nashville. We were staying at my old college roommate Jen's house. She has a little Yorkie named Chloe, who I wasn't quite sure how Nathan would react to. Initially, Nathan was pretty concerned about this little, energetic bundle of puppy dog, but he quickly warmed up to her. In fact, he was calling her "Chlo-chlo" within half an hour of our arrival (and I'm not sure he ever said Jen's name). Jen and I were super excited to see each other and she was thrilled to meet Nathan. We spent part of the afternoon catching up at her house and then headed out to an early dinner at SatCo.

I have to admit that months ago when I first started thinking about going to Nashville, I was making plans to get a queso fix at SatCo while I was there. And it did not disappoint! (Although I should have brought a stash back with me because I can't seem to get enough good queso during this pregnancy.) Then we headed back to Jen's house because Nathan's bedtime was fast approaching. Nathan went down ok but didn't go to sleep for quite a while; Jen and I could hear him kicking and banging around for probably 45 minutes before he finally settled down!

Jen had quite a treat for me that night: a movie that Jen and I and our suite mates made at the end of freshman year! It was so much fun to see all of our friends (from 10 years ago - yikes!) and some of the movie was pretty hysterical. But the highlight was towards the end as Brian made an appearance! I'm pretty sure that this was before we had even gone on a date, but apparently he had promised me that he would come to a luau that our dorm was hosting. As the evening was coming to a close and he hadn't stopped by, Jen and I (and the video camera) went out in search of him. He finally showed up towards the end of the video (I think he said that he had fallen asleep and that's why he was late to the luau). It was so fun and funny to see us together so many years ago! Then at the very end of the video, there's another short piece of footage of the two of us with some friends watching intermural basketball games in the SAC (student activity center).

Funny side note, I was recounting some of the video over the phone to Carroll (my MIL), and mentioned that the end of the video showed Brian and I together in the SAC. Which, of course, sounds exactly like "the sack". I quickly cleared up what I meant, and we both laughed about it, but OOPS!

Sleep that night wasn't great for either of us. Nathan quickly realized that with the two of us sharing a room, he could pull some "fun" new tricks. Usually if he wakes up in the middle of the night and calls out for me, I ignore him and he falls right back asleep. But he realized that now he could just stand up in his pack-n-play and repeat his request for my attention. So I would tell him that he needed to lay down and go back to sleep, but by then we both were more awake and it was harder to fall back asleep. But we made it through, of course with an early awakening by Nathan the next morning.

The two of us snuck downstairs (of course, disturbing Chlo-chlo while specifically trying NOT to disturb her) and Nathan had lots of fun playing with the decorative rocks that Jen had in a little flower pot on her table as well as other fun "toys" that she had around.

So this was lots of story telling and we still didn't get to any good pictures, so I'm going to leave you with a teaser from the next installment: Lipscomb and our visit with Uncle Joe, Aunt Suzi and Mary!

Two pretty impressive things happened today at the Kornrumpf household.  Even more special was that Brian was around for both of them!

First up, NATHAN WENT PEE-PEE IN HIS POTTY!! 

This was kind of unexpected because Nathan hasn't been sitting on his potty much lately.  But he came to me a while after his nap (I had forgotten to change him when he got up so he was overdue for a diaper change at this point), and was pulling on the front of his diaper and told me "Pee-pee."  I asked him if he had gone pee-pee and wanted his diaper changed, but then something made me say "...or do you want to go sit on your potty?"  He headed for the bathroom, so I assumed that he had chosen the second option. 

I took off his pants and his diaper and he did his thing: standing up, sitting down, wanting a square of toilet paper, asking me to say "Pat-a-cake".  (For some reason this has become our ritual activity when he sits on the potty.  We never do it any other time, but he really gets a kick out of it and it keeps him sitting down for a while).  After he got up once to throw his TP square in the big toilet, I thought we were done, once again with nothing exciting to show for our efforts. 

But Nathan wanted to sit down again and asked for another round of "Pat-a-cake".  I started saying it really fast, and Nathan was laughing pretty hard when he got this funny look on his face and said "uh-oh."  At this point he started reaching into the toilet between his legs and I had him stand up. And there, in the potty, along with the dust that had been accumulating over the past weeks and months, there was a puddle!! 

I think my first shout of triumph scared him a little, and he looked pretty concerned - I really think he thought he did something wrong.  But we called Daddy in to celebrate with us, then I let Nathan help me pour his potty into the big potty and told him to say "Bye-bye pee-pee" as he flushed.  By this time he was smiling and (I hope) feeling proud of himself.  For the next little while, I would catch his eye occasionally and say "Nathan went pee-pee in the potty.  HOORAY!!!!"

Next big accomplishment: COUNTING!

A few days ago I started counting something and it sounded like Nathan started to count along with me "..two, three..." Brian was there and we both looked at each other, but then we couldn't get a repeat performance.

Tonight for dinner I gave Nathan peas. I'm not sure why I started this, but a long time back I began counting the number of peas that were in the bite that I was going to feed him. So tonight I was trying to get him to eat a little more dinner and scooped up a spoonful of peas for him. I said "lets count the peas"... and he did!! Brian and I stared at each other in amazement as he counted up to six or seven!

Of course, we decided we had to try and get video evidence of this impressive feat, and we did! So now you can be amazed with us!


I'm pretty sure he didn't say actually say "zero", but it sure sounded like it!

I haven't forgotten about documenting the trip to Nashville and Knoxville.  I'm going to try and work on the next post in a few minutes, but I wanted something fast and easy that could go live tonight!

Just a few random thoughts for you today...

1. Nathan has a new-found love (obsession?) with flags.  We first noticed it while Carroll was here for a visit a few weeks ago.  Nathan would always be on the lookout for balloons as we rode around town in the car, but all of a sudden was noticing, pointing out and asking about American flags.  I'm not sure if its just this time of year, but we started noticing flags all sorts of places around town.  There are usually two flying on our street and we see something like 14 in the few miles between our house and church!  For a while, Nathan's favorite two words in the car were "Flag! More."  It became almost a two word sentence, but thankfully he has backed off some.  But I have now memorized the locations of dozens of flags around town, if anyone ever needs to know!
2. Nathan did something that had me laughing so hard the other day.  Usually when its time to put Nathan's shoes on, I put them in front of me and Nathan holds onto my head (for balance) while we put his shoes on him.  Thinking that it might be time to start teaching him to put his shoes on himself, the other day I said that it was time to put on his shoes and "Nathan try!"  Here's how he thought it should be done:

3. Nathan continues to love, Love, LOVE the ipod.  I'm so thankful that he hasn't gotten hooked onto TV, because then I would be starting to worry about his screen time.  But I tend to find him in the funniest places, engrossed in a home video that he's watching...

So far, Nathan seems to like his new room. He started showing his love through the joyful running and yelling he did in the completely empty room. An empty room is VERY echo-y, which I guess makes it more exciting. Running and yelling, kind of like this...



By the way, I have no idea what he's saying, although he seems to be yelling the same words over and over. I'd love to come up with a funny translation, but sadly my brain has turned off for the night!

PS. No toddlers were hurt in the filming of this video. I think Nathan just shook off his head bump, but if he did cry, it wouldn't have been for very long.