Rolling Over

Earlier in December Adde rolled over once for Lana but we mainly thought it was a fluke. In the past week she has clearly demonstrated that she can repeatedly do it at will... which probably means the end of 'tummy time' for a while since Adde has never been a big fan of it and now has a quick way out. Here's a video from the other day...

Who is this crazy guy?

Lana and I were really excited that it worked out to catch up in person with our good friend Tim Deller over the break. Timmy was the Best Man in our wedding and now lives in Milwaukee.

Unfortunately we don't get to see each other as much as I would like. Tim's parents now live in Fort Wayne, so Friday after Christmas, he was kind enough to drive down with freezing rain to Berne to hang out for a couple hours.

It was good to see him and fun to watch him interact with Addelynn. Seeing him always brings a smile to our face.

Check out my ride

Santa got a new sleigh... yeah I am definitely the coolest kid ever! At least Grandpa Sprunger realizes I am capable of doing more than just eating, sleeping, pooping, and smiling... I can soooo drive this thing. This is definitely the coolest thing those big people have let me do so far. Good thing Grandpa Sprunger promised to buy me a big one of these on my 16th birthday....

My first Christmas

Overall it was a bit anticlimactic this year as Adde slept through most of the 'official' family Christmas times and watching Lana open gifts isn't quite as fun as watching Kit or the Potter kids tear into things. However, Adde definitely made out like a bandit and got a ton of new toys and books. Grandma Rohrer really wanted a picture of Addelynn in this outfit to remember her first Christmas. It's strange to think how different she'll be by next year...

Titus's Little Incident

Despite constantly being given a hard time from our families about the cold weather up north, as of late, Indiana has actually had much worse weather. Last week they had some extremely bad ice storms causing a ton of people to lose power, some for a couple days.

Upon our arrival, basically everything was covered in ice. Lana has been feeling guilty lately that we haven't been getting Titus out as much. We had some down time at the Rohrer's so Lana decided to take him out to play ball across the icy landscape and Titus ran his heart out. Titus even tore up a strip down the center of his nose as he picked up the ball while running full speed on the chunky ice (not that he cared).

About 10 minutes after they came in, Lana was messing with her new red coat and noticed a lot of 'fuzz' on the floor below her. Upon further inspection, she noticed it zig-zagged clear across the floor and wasn't fuzz. Apparently Titus not only cut his nose, but ripped up one of his paws and was bleeding little dots all over Grandma Rohrer's carpet. I don't even think Titus knew or cared that his paw was ripped up or at least you couldn't tell by looking at him.

So we all promptly sprang into action. Mark carried Titus downstairs to the workroom and Lana stayed there to tend to his paw. In the meantime we starting using carpet cleaner like it was going out of style. Fortunately it all came up rather easily. Lana improvised and emerged from the basement with a rag duct taped to Titus's paw. He was a really good sport about it, however the road salt drying out his paws and the jagged ice definitely got the better of him.

3 Month Pictures

So much happened around Christmas for Addelynn this year. Several Christmases and her 3 month birthday on the 26th. We think she has changed a bunch in the past few months. She doesn't look like her daddy quite as much anymore!

Raising Adde Right....

As we are attempting to be responsible parents, there are a few key issues in how a child is raised that parents just need to take a stand on. Typically grandparents get the 'free pass' to do whatever they want with their grandchild, like spoiling them, or eventually allowing them to do a few things that their parents usually don't, like staying up late. Overall it's part of their job description.

However, we have had to make it clear to Grandpa Sprunger that attempting to teach Adde to cheer for IU is completely unacceptable. We don't want to screw her up for life. We are going to raise her to be a Boiler through and through.

Lance, Jenne, and Kit gave Adde her first Boilermaker hat in support of this....

Adde meets her new cousin

Sunday night we went up to the Potters to all meet the latest addition to the family, Zane Noah Potter. Much to Jen's dismay, Zane decided to hang out for some extra quality time in the womb in order to have the privilege of sharing a birthday with his uncle Mark (the non crazy one). Yes, believe it or not, the Potter kids have an 'uncle Mark' and a 'crazy uncle Mark' yet I am not 'crazy uncle Mark'... go figure.

As you can see, Zane wasn't messing around during his extra time in the womb. Adde is 2 1/2 months older yet Zane is almost as big (only separated by 2 lbs). We also took some pictures of the two of them on Christmas Eve.

The Drive Home and Time with the Sprungers

Originally we planned to drive home to Indiana first thing Saturday morning (as of Wednesday it was supposed to be good weather). However, Friday afternoon about 3pm, I (Mark) was on a conference call with some people at corporate in Natick, MA hearing about how bad their weather was and that they expected another storm front in two days... which made me start to wonder when that '2nd' storm front was going through our neck of the woods. So I checked the weather only to find out that it was now supposed to dump 5-7 inches of snow starting in the Twin Cities clear through Chicago. Based on the winter weather advisories and typicall drive time, we'd be right on the front of the storm for the entire 11 hour drive (or potentially 20 hr in this case). So we called an audible, gave Lana a call to start packing, and decided to leave as soon as possible.

I got home from work about 5pm and we managed to get packed for a 2 week trip for Adde, both of us, Titus, plus Christmas presents, quickly eat and feed Adde, then quickly clean the house (one of Lana's interesting must-do quirks before we ever leave for an extended period) and still be on the road by 6pm while only forgetting 2 minor items. Lana did an amazing job getting everything around.

We definitely made the right call to drive through the night as roads were completely clear and there was little to no traffic. Adde slept almost the entire trip and only needed to eat once around 9:30. She only had one incident where she got riled up, as she started fussing a little and Mommy thought she was cold since her cheeks were chilly. We added more layers and turned up the heat a bit. Adde continually escalated until we pulled off to calm her down. When we pulled her out of her car seat the back side of her was drenched in sweat (while still having chilly cheeks).... so turns out she was fired up about being too hot and she let us know that we had made it worse. Once that problem was quickly corrected, she stayed asleep the rest of the trip.

We arrived home with about 11 hours of drive time. Promptly handed Adde (now wide awake at 7am) to Mimi and Grandpa Sprunger for child care duties, and headed directly to bed to catch up on some sleep.

Christmas Card

Merry Christmas from the Rohrers! Four and a half years later we have finally gotten around to sending our first Christmas letter. There are several good reasons why this is the year to finally sit down and write...

o The birth of our daughter Addelynn Marie Rohrer – This is the number one news our family has to share. Addelynn came into this world kicking and screaming (literally) on September 26, 2008. She has been such a blessing to our family. We just had to stop and laugh the other morning and realize how “fortunate” we really are. In the midst of a large bathroom accident and spit up everywhere, Addelynn looked up at the two of us with the biggest grin as if to say, “Isn’t this fun!” Truly, it has been fun. There is nothing like seeing your daughter’s eyes light up and a huge smile spread across her face as she responds to your voice. Addelynn has already grown and changed so much since we brought her home from the hospital. She is much more responsive to our voices, smiles nonstop (well, not quite true), follows objects with her eyes, and holds her head up. Titus is pretty much indifferent to this new addition except for the fact that his rank in the family has gone down. Feel free to check out our blog for more Addelynn updates (www.marklana.blogspot.com).

o Finishing our Master’s degrees – Actually Mark finished his degree in November of 2007, and Lana trailed along to graduate this past May. Mark completed an MBA program through Kelley School of Business at IU, and Lana completed an Environmental Education program through Hamline University. We are both extremely thankful to be finished and enjoy the extra spare time we have (or had until September 26^th).

o Traveling to Europe – To celebrate our graduations, we planned a backpacking trip to Switzerland and Italy as our last hurrah before kids. Fortunately Mark still allowed the trip even though Lana wasn’t quite finished with her last requirement for grad school – the capstone. In all honesty, we found out one week after ordering our plane tickets that we were pregnant and wondered if we would still be able to go. Even though Lana was more tired than normal, she enjoyed the trip immensely because she could not carry a very heavy pack. Many thanks to Mark for being a “Sherpa” on the trip. Some of our highlights were Bern, Switzerland and the Alps, hiking the scenic views of Cinque Terre, experiencing the rich history in Rome, and eating way too much gelato. Lana claimed she needed the extra calories for the baby.

o Continued House Projects – In our “spare time”, we have continued to update our house. This year we remodeled the basement (because the spare bedroom was being transformed into a nursery), added a fireplace, and installed a sprinkler system.

We have truly been blessed during 2008. We pray that your family too has been blessed richly during the year.

Much love,

Mark, Lana, and Addelynn Rohrer