Eventful week

Hi everyone
Well.....it has been a very eventful week for many different reasons. To best explain, I'll revert back to dinner time as a child where we told our "happy" and "sad" of the day.

Happy- it's beautiful in Maryland right now. It's a bit hot (in the 90's) but everything is green and blooming and just beautiful. Praise God for the beauty of his creation. Thank God for allergy medication!

Not so happy- we have had a series of unfortunate events in the past 10 days which has created a bit of chaos around our household. For some reason....it all happened on the 2 days it was pouring rain and I was craving an everything bagel. On the first day, it had been raining pretty hard for a day straight. I went out to get the craved bagel and proceeded to drop my phone in a puddle of water. So...no phone. I sat through a 3 hour long elders meeting at church and headed home to what I thought was a quiet night sleep with Brian and Brina. I arrived home to find Brian in the basement with the shop vac cleaning up the flood he found a few hours earlier. Apparently, the box of wrapping paper fell on the sump pump and blocked it and with all the rain we had, it flooded part of the basement. Luckily, nothing was ruined that we know of...just very wet. A few days later it poured again and I was working from home when I heard water dripping upstairs in our bedroom. There were a few drops coming in the bedroom but I could hear a pretty steady leak in the chimney. If we hadn't just spent $4000 on a new roof in August, this wouldn't have bothered me as much as it did. I cleaned up the upstairs and put a bucket down and went to the basement to see if there was any water collecting from the chimney leaking. There was a puddle that I was in the process of cleaning up when the dog started throwing up upstairs. By the time I arrived upstairs, she had chosen several locations around the house to be sick. I called Brian, he came home and settled everyone down. Dog was ok...water was at least being collected in a bucket. I got a phone call a few hours later...the car died. Brian's 97 Jetta which already needed a new clutch and new tires died and pretty much is DNR at this point in time. SO- if anyone is looking to get rid of a car, let us know!!

That was the not so good part of our last few days. On a brighter note, we went to the doctor today for our second visit (now almost 15 weeks!). We heard baby's heartbeat which was going really fast! It registered about 150 bpm which is about double the average adult but is totally normal for an unborn baby. The nurse joked around that an old wives tale says that if the baby's heart rate is 135-145 it's a boy and 145-155 it's a girl. She told us in her opinion, we have a 50% chance of having a girl. The doctor came in and said everything looks great except one thing. My drug test somehow came back positive.....strange considering I've never taken drugs in my whole life and haven't taken anything stronger than a tylenol since October. So she carefully questioned me to make sure I'm not on drugs and sent me back for another test. She said she wants to make sure the last one was a false positive or else they'll have to detox baby when he/she comes out!!! So crazy!!! So hopefully no more false positives.

Other than the house/car drama, things have been going really well. I'm feeling great and have even been running pretty regularly. I'm going quite a bit slower than normal and definitely not as far, but still finding time and energy to do what I love to do.

Thanks for checking in! Let us know if you're getting rid of a car!

Strange Start to the Day.....

Woke up this morning....hungry.....very hungry.

Went down to the kitchen and immediately everything looked good. I thought to myself (and actually said outloud to Brina) "Eating for two!"

So....."breakfast" consisted of oatmeal, a banana, ramen noodles in a cup and gatorade.

Perfect combination for a rainy monday morning :)

Update From the Mom-to-be!

Hi everyone

I figured it was my turn to post and fill everyone in on life as a pregnant lady!  Needless to say, life has changed much in the last few months, and it will only continue to change for years to come!

     The pregnancy has been going really well so far.  I was sick for the first 4-6 weeks but then it miraculously disap

peared.  I know a lot of women have it worse than me, but those 4-6 weeks were definitely long enough!  I was in the middle of a 10 credit semester at Reformed Theological Seminary but ended up dropping 2 classes a few weeks after we found out.  A combination of work, school, morning/evening sickness was too much!  I'm feeling great now other than being tired.  I feel like I can sleep 10 hours a night and still need a nap in the middle of the day.  Brian often comes home to find me looking like this.....

but he looks like this.......

I'm now a little over 13 weeks and will go back into the doctor again next week.  We really like our doctor and we're grateful for wonderful healthcare!  I'll deliver right in the Johns Hopkins Hospital!  We'll be right across the street from Brian's lab so I'm teasing him that if I'm in labor too long, he can walk across the street and work for a few hours and come back for the good stuff :)  I doubt he'll take me up on that.

Last week I went to Denver to see my family, especially my new nephew Levi who was born on March 2!  My sister has a 2 year old, Makenna, as well so I got a true taste of what motherhood entails.  Holding the baby definitely made me look forward to having my own.....the diapers did not.  

Word of the Day

Hello Everyone,

        Sorry it's been so long since we last posted. It's kind of hard to follow up your first sonogram image.... Nothing just seems cool enough. Also, I don't have any new pictures to offer - though that's not to say that there haven't been photo worthy moments in the last few weeks. I'll recap a few of them:

1. Brina also does not like the new high-pressure water-powered dandelion remover I have. If the vacuum cleaner was a war, this is Armageddon. She's usually panting by the end of a 25 minute session of me pulling dandelions. Like with vacuuming, she slows the process down a lot. She also usually ends up soaking wet, which means our house stinks for a few hours....

2. The leaf blower/vacuum I got for Christmas from my parents also torments her. The noise seems to really bother her, and if she happens to run in front of the path of the leaf blowing, she gets very agitated... it's quite funny but at the same time somewhat sobering. I can't imagine how she must be attempting to comprehend the machines we use to do things around the house and yard - poor creature.

3. Our old friends the Bosscher's and the DeVries's were in town! Both on the same weekend too - it was pretty awesome. First we got to go to Navy Yard and have an incredible prime rib dinner with Admiral and Mrs. Debbink (Alicia's parents), Nate and Alicia, her brother/three friends and some family friends on Saturday night. I haven't ever eaten that many ribs - it was somewhat embarassing. Then, on Sunday night, the DeVries's stayed at our house before catching an early Monday morning flight out of BWI. And really importantly - Brina did incredibly well with Corrie! The DeVries's have a 9-10 month old  baby girl and she loved Brina. Brina just wanted to pad over to Corrie and lick her hands and face - it was incredibly cute. This bodes well for 6 months and 9 days from now we think...

4. Last, but not least, Easter dinner this last Sunday. We gathered with fellow young adults from our church at the home of Jon and Amy Vander Vliet and feasted on ham and crab cakes (Maryland style Easter) as well as a slew of other excellent food. I didn't even need a dinner later, other than a bowl of ice cream. 

And finally, you're probably wondering why I titled this post Word of the Day. Well, not to lock myself in to having to come up with a new word every now and then, I wanted to report on a good one that came up today. Not surprisingly, Katie and I were discussing Brina. We were talking about how Katie was not a dog person until we got Brina, but has become a Brina-person. She claims not to be a dog person still, but absolutely loves Brina. So, I asked her if she was "mondogamous", or roughly translated from Latin - "one dog love" - and it turns out that seems to fit her feelings pretty well. So, while I guess I would be pandogamous, Katie is definitely mondogamous, and will remain loyal to Brina for all of time.

This ends the most recent ramblings of Brian, and hopefully you've enjoyed reading. Katie promises to post pictures of her recent trip to Denver and our new nephew Levi tomorrow. We also plan to provide more updates on the baby every time something cool happens. Right now, there's not a lot other than arguing over names.... If you've got any good suggestions let us know. We may end up posting a vote here and letting you guys decide!

***humorous side note - while typing the above mondogamous passage, I have constantly been typing Brian instead of Brina due to the natural reaction of my fingers. It actually fits quite well, except for the "Katie was not a dog person, until we got Brian" part...***

Baby Roelofs!

Can you believe it??? First sonogram pictures yesterday at the Dr.'s appointment! As you can clearly see above, it looks like everything is okay, and there's only one in there! We both had gut feelings that we had twins on the way for some reason (which would've been awesome :-)), but that is not the case. That's probably good since we were having a hard enough time settling on one name - let alone two. When the doctor held the imager still, you could clearly see the baby moving around in there - we've got an active one. It was just great, at once exciting, chilling and humbling.... It's a bit hard to believe we're responsible for such an amazing thing with God's grace. I guess it does not really hit home until your face-to-face with your child-to-be like this. He/She was already 3.4 cm long, estimated due date is October 22nd. If he/she gets my height and Katie's shot we may have the next Candace Parker/Michael Jordan :-). Just kidding of course, but it's just awe inspiring to think about the limitless possibilities of the future for this child...