Fall Harvest

For F.H.E. last week we decided to treat our garden to a little TLC.

It was looking overgrown and out of control.

We took out the dead plants and harvested a ton of produce

mostly tomatoes, bell peppers and green beans.

Yummy!

One Month Old

Our little Bracken is one month old now. The time does fly by. He is an enjoyable baby. There was a week were he had a fussy hour every day, but that seems to have passed and we are settling down into a routine. He does great at night. I feed him around 9:30pm and he is down by 10pm. He sleeps till sometime between 2-3am and he wakes me up for another feeding. Then he goes right back down till 6:30am. During the day he eats about every 3 hours, has some awake time and then some more sleep time before it is time to eat again. He responds to all of our voices and loves to look at people's faces. I love to rub my fingers up and down his spine when he is resting on my shoulder, he is very tickelish and he squirms and does cute little squeals.

He does really well with tummy time, which is a new one for me because Nathan detested it. Bracken gets so comfy on his tummy, some times he dozes off.

Almost caught a full smile!

Right now his eyes seem like they will be blue, right now they are a clear dark blue color.

This was his first bath the evening after his cord stump fell off. He calmed down the minute I sat him in the warm water. He relaxed and started kicking his legs like a little frog. He was so comfortable in the bath that he through a fit when I took him out.

Here I am snuggling with Baby Bracks right after his late evening feeding before bed. He loves to snuggle up near my neck and I love to smell his sweetness when he is close by.

Happy One Month Bracks!

"Footbars Games"

Nathan LOVES "footbars" and this is how he hikes the ball.

Pock-it Poke-it!

For our Labor Day holiday we started off with an Elders Quorum softball game, then enjoyed a hot dog lunch at home and spent the afternoon getting some things done around the yard and house. In the evening we decided to have a pizza and movie night. So I headed out to our local Red Box and picked out the Hannah Montana Movie! We had not seen it yet, and I admit I was curious. I wasn't sure what Nathan would think of it, but he was captivated and entertained the whole movie. Hannah even reaches two year old little boys.

Jammin' like a rockstar!

I guess he was moved.

Pock-it poke-it!

First Week Home

Here are some pictures of Bracken's first week of life.

BABY BRACKEN IS HERE!!

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Bracken Peirce Kleinman arrived at 8:54am on Thursday September 10th. On Wednesday around 8pm Courtney felt that perhaps her water had broken or something else "was going on down there" and under doctor's instructions we headed to the hospital to be "analyzed". It was determined that she was dilated to three centimeters and we were cleared to return home to labor. We rested until about 2am when the contractions were too frequent and too painful to continue laboring at home. We arrived at the hospital and labored all through the night without much progress passed the seven centimeter mark. Around 7am the nursing staff gave Courtney pitocin and things began progressing fairly rapidly. Around 8am the nurse upped her pitocin dosage and things began progressing too rapidly for Curtis’ liking. Soon Courtney could not control the urge to push. Finally, without the OB’s presence, the nurse gave Courtney the go ahead to push. On the first push the head nearly emerged and the nurse fled from the room looking for the OB. Curtis was afraid that he would be left to deliver the baby alone, and he nearly was. The OB ran into the room amidst the next contraction, analyzed the situation, shrugged into a gown half way, and caught the baby like a left fielder just as he emerged from the birthing canal. The delivery room nurses jumped into action taking the baby from the OB and plopping it up into Courtney’s arms, Curtis cut the cord and the baby was here to stay. The OB, still stunned said, “Can someone get me some gloves please.” She was standing with both hands resting up on the delivery cart, pushed half way through the bloody sleeves of a blue-green scrub apron. Not even having time to put on surgical gloves, Curtis hadn’t noticed until just then that the OB had caught Bracken with her long apron sleeves. Now she looked like a little child wearing her father’s long sleeved work shirt with her little hands drowning somewhere inside. He came very fast. The little boy is already in a hurry. Runs in the family.

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Up To Date

First off I have not had the baby yet, today is my due date and I'm still feeling great. If nothing should happen over the next few days I will be induced Monday September 14th. Hopefully I won't make it that far. Everything is super ready. All my projects are done, the house is clean and ready for all things baby. Nathan is even potty trained, a last minute surprise to Curtis and I since we were not really focusing on that yet. One day I bought some training pants at the store just to have on hand for when I started seriously potty training him. He had showed some interest off and on but mostly off for the last several months. That very day he wanted to try wearing a pair and ever since he has been using the toilet. He even trained up at night super easy, he did not like wetting the bed.

Other than that, Curtis is back to teaching. Yavapai College is in it's second week of school so our summer is officially over. I have 11 piano students and I really enjoy teaching. We are staying busy with in our ward, Curtis is the Elders Quorum President and at the moment he is frantically trying to plan the ward camp out. I am the organist and I teach a sunday school class for the 12-13 year olds. I have also become the unofficial ward food storage lady. No one was doing anything about food storage and I kept asking people why not, so now I take care of it. But so far everyone is really grateful for the information and products that I bring to their attention.

Here are a few highlights from the last bit of our summer.

At the end of July we spent 3 days in Albuquerque, NM for Curtis to attend a Spanish Teachers Conference. We went to an aquarium, and botanical gardens which were gorgeous, walked around down town and enjoyed some gelato, ate pizza in the Old Town Plaza, and while Curtis spent the day in classes Nate and I were able to enjoy the sunshine out by the pool. Nathan loved swimming.

In August we headed to Utah for 2 family reunions that both took place on Pioneer Day weekend. First, was the Haymore Reunion that took place up in Provo Canyon at the BYU Timpanogos Lodge. It was gorgeous up there. They had a ton of activities for the kids and as you can see Nathan and Curtis really enjoyed the go cart races. We were also able to spend some time with Andy and Bekah and Nate had his first slip'n'slide experience with Ava and thought is was great. Then we headed to Salt Lake for a King reunion were we did some hilarious skits and also spent a lot of time swimming in my Grandmother's community pool. The King reunion ended with a tour of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House which was amazing. Nathan did really well walking reverently through the temple.