Memorial Day Weekend

Hi all-

Giving you an update on baby's "first memorial day weekend." We've had a really busy last few weeks and a super busy weekend but we're finally getting around to posting!

We are slowly starting to accumulate stuff for baby. Last week I received an AMAZING present from one of my best friends, Kim. She got me into long distance running and has always been a great source of encouragement. This is the BOB Ironman jogger she got me!! The picture doesn't do this thing justice....it is amazing. I am so tempted to put a 15 pound weight in it, or put Brina in it and go for a run because I want to try it out!

Brian's parents were in town over Memorial Day weekend. I feel guilty because their "vacation" turned into a weekend of working around the clock doing home improvements in our house. They arrived on Saturday afternoon while I was at work and by the time I got home they were already busy working in the garden and painting our guest room and nursery! Here are some "before" and "after" pictures of the new nursery! The "before" shot is the room with primer and tape. And the "after" shot is the final product! Baby has a room! By the way....the room was not painted blue because we know baby is a boy....we chose a very light blue thinking it would work well for a boy or girl depending on how we decorate!

We also got lots of other work done around the house, like fixing an outlet, fixing our awful squeaky door, yard work, etc. Thanks to Mom and Dad Roelofs for all their help!

Baby kind of ran his/her first race this weekend as well! 2 years ago, Lyle, Brian and I ran a Memorial Day 5k and Lyle and I decided to do it again this year. 2 years I ago I won my age group in this race.....definitely did not happen this year being 4 months pregnant!! But it was still fun to run in a race again. Being pregnant is lots of fun...but I'm looking forward to running like a real person again.

That's about all from us for now. We're back into a busy work week and looking forward to the Ritsema parents coming next week! We also find out if baby is a boy or girl on Monday so we'll be sure to post then! Thanks for reading!

Zoom Zoom Zoom

Hi everyone!

We figured we owe you all some pictures since we haven't posted any for a while. We just don't have that much to photograph right now....that will change soon.

A brief update. We had yet another battle; us vs. house. This time we came out on top....slightly exhausted and worse for the wear but on top nonetheless. I started a load of laundry (1st of 5....don't know how we'll survive when we're washing things for a baby too), and went downstairs to change out my first load and stepped into the huge puddle that was our laundry room floor. Our theory is that when the sump pump stopped working and the basement flooded a few weeks back, it clogged the pipe leading out of the washing machine. So...all the water that went into the machine had nowhere to go and ended up pouring out on to the floor and all the loads of laundry waiting to be done. Brian got home later and we tried using the drain snake. We were snaking the drain, and Brian was laying on the wet floor with his head next to the pipe when all of a sudden a huge nasty clump of something fell out of the pipe. Then dirty water came flowing out on to the floor centimeters from Brian's face. Needless to say, the drain and pipe were clear- YAY- but the clean up of the laundry room wasn't quite as fun. But everything is in working order now and all my laundry got done.

We got a new car! Brian's Jetta kind of works....but won't start if it's raining, can't accelerate fast enough to get on the highway and has 2 windows that won't roll up. So we figured...time for a new car. We brought home the newest addition to our family on Tuesday morning. We're quite proud.

No pregnancy news. We'll find out June 1st if baby is a boy or a girl. Sometimes I think I feel him/her moving around, but it might just be my imagination. The doctors said women normally feel the baby between 16-20 weeks and I'm officially 17 weeks tomorrow so we'll see! Here is my 17 week pregnant shots!

Kind of showing.....not really...but kind of!

I'm definitely starting to need maternity clothes!

More Ramblings

Hi again everyone
Every night I get home and consider posting about my day but really nothing seems that thrilling when I actually sit down to write. But I'll give in tonight and give you an update on the last few days in the Roelofs house.

First of all- sorry for such a downer of a post last week. We did have a rough few weeks but I realize my post was somewhat depressing. I went to a homeless shelter and served breakfast the next morning with some people from church and instantly felt guilty about complaining about my life. I complained about my leaking roof....but I have a roof over my head. I complained about our car....but we have the resources to actually go get another. Really....I have nothing to complain about at all. Stepping outside the comfort of my wonderful life into the reality of the world around me really gave me some perspective. My goal for the next few weeks comes from Philippians 4....to be content in all circumstances.

It's been a busy week thus far. Brian is out of town in West Virginia on a retreat with his department at Hopkins. He had to present a poster and said it went really well. So Brin Dog and I are holding down the fort here in Maryland until he returns tomorrow. I spent the whole weekend and early this week getting ready for a huge presentation in my Greek exegesis class. This is my final capstone project for my year of Greek class and I chose to wrestle with the extremely difficult passage 1 Timothy 2:11-15 which deals extensively with women in church office. This is probably the one passage that directly speaks against women in office and even after extensive research, I'm not sure I can disagree with it. Granted it doesn't take into context the rest of the Biblical story, but this passage is pretty direct and it's been really eye opening to see that. So it will be interesting to continue my research.

No new news on Baby R. Still in there....still baking. I'm almost to week 16 and according to the pregnancy books, I should start feeling baby move soon. Sometimes I think I can feel him/her moving around, but it might just be me really wanting to feel it and imagining it. We'll go in for another ultrasound in 4 weeks and we'll be able to tell you all if it's a boy or girl. About 70% of the pants in my closet no longer fit....and I'll give in to maternity clothes sooner or later.

Well that's about it for now. Time for bed! We'll post more when interesting stuff happens! Hope you are all having a great week so far!

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...***