England Bound!

Team Holtkamp

These newlyweds move to England on Thursday! I am so excited for them as they start their adventure as a married couple, but we will certainly miss having them on this side of the Atlantic. Love you both!

Coming Home

Sue (my mother in law) comes home today. She was in a good mood when I spoke to her. It'll be nice for her to be in her own house and not in a hospital room. She sounds like she's getting pretty bored at the hospital - every time I talk to her she's walking laps! :) We're excited to see her feeling better and moving around. I'll continue to post as she recovers and any news of future surgeries comes up. Thank you to everyone who has been praying. They're appreciated!

Texas Trip Recap - Part II

Most of the days we were in Texas, the schedule went something like this:

We would get up, have breakfast, take Trent to a local park, come back for a swim in the hotel pool, have some lunch, put Trent down for a long afternoon nap, and then go out for a sit down dinner (whether it be dinner with family, rehearsal dinner, wedding, etc.) The park was beautiful. It was right on a river and had playgrounds designed specifically for the little ones. Trent and Lily had a lot of fun burning off some energy!

Texas Trip Recap - Part I

Dana's wedding week was a whirwind, but a lot of fun. We drove out Tuesday night, spent the night in a hotel and arrived in Marble Falls, TX on Wednesday morning. Mom and Dad R, Nanny and Poppy and Eric, Alicia and Lily all arrived on Wednesday as well. So on Thursday, we drove to Fredericksburg, TX. It is a cute little town with a German flair. We shopped the little shops, played in a local park, and ate German cuisine. Nanny and Poppy toured a military museum there as well and said that it was really interesting. It was a World War II museum on the War in the Pacific. The girls (Dana, Alicia, and I) had to leave a little early to get to Dana's bachelorette party in Austin that night. So after lunch, we left the kids with the guys and headed out.

Alicia and Lily

Lily's "blue steel look"

TJ verifying the structural integrity of the police station

Family Fun in the park

Sharing toys in the backseat

Good News

They removed the nasal canula from Sue and she was able to get up and move around a bit today. They were going to discuss with the doctors when she can start eating again and what her meals will be like. Doctor said that she is doing really well.

Back in the Recovery Room

Surgery went well. The doctors plan to start her back on fluids tomorrow and hopefully solids after that. She has not eaten anything since Sunday so she is hungry. She will have to go back in two weeks to have the mass removed. In the meanwhile, she will hopefully be coming home on Sunday to recover from this surgery at home. She and Dale are both tired but they were in good spirits tonight.

Update on Sue

Sue was about to go into surgery the last time we saw her. The last update I received was that her colon is too inflamed to do the surgery to remove the tumor. For now, they're doing a surgery to hopefully relieve some of the pressure. They will have to go in again after she recovers from this surgery. I am sure we will know more once we hear that she is out of surgery.

Prayer Request

Please pray for Jesse's mother. She is having surgery today to remove a tumor in her colon.

The story:

Jesse's parents were driving home from Dana's wedding. They had stopped in a hotel in Louisiana for the night and Sue started experiencing pain. They went to the hospital and it was determined that she had an intestinal blockage. It was later determined to be a tumor. She was transferred by ambulance from Louisiana to UAB hospital. She was admitted to UAB last night. They are removing the tumor this afternoon to relieve the pressure. They are probably going to have to take some of her colon as well. They will be biopsying her liver during surgery.

Please pray for a successful surgery, strength for both Dale and Sue, and guidance/knowledge for the doctors that they'll have more answers soon.

We're back!

Sorry for the lack of blog posts during the past week. We were in Texas for a very important occasion - my sister's wedding. The whole week was a lot of fun. We had the chance to see a lot of family, TJ played a bunch with his cousin and did a great job as ring bearer. My sister looked gorgeous and the wedding was beautiful. I have to organize the pics (and get some from my sister in law). Since I was in the wedding, I didn't get the chance to take pictures during the wedding and since Trent doesn't sit still, Jesse had his hands full as well! But be on the lookout because I plan to post them over the next few days!

More Walking in My Future

I came across this article the other day and found it really interesting. It talks about naturally preparing your body for childbirth by doing squats and walking. It explains the hunter/gatherer mentality of years ago and how today's lifestyle can keep us so sedentary that are bodies are not as physically in shape to deliver babies. The lady who wrote the article is all for natural, drug free, non-hospitalized births. I think it's great that women can choose how they want to birth their baby. However, in Alabama, midwives are legally not an option. I would have to cross state lines and give birth on a "birthing farm" in order to make this happen. That makes me uncomfortable. I want to deliver close to home and I love the doctors and hospital where I delivered Trent. While I may still consider drug free this time around, pending any major surprises, it will be another hospital birth.

Each time I get pregnant, I think about whether I want to use pain medication. Last time around, I had planned to go without pain medication, but ended up having an epidural. My water broke but contractions did not start so I was put on a pitocin drip to start the labor. Pitocin does its job to start contractions, but it gives you supersized, painful contractions (from what I've read/heard since I have only had pitocin induced contractions - hopefully after this next one, I'll have a comparison!). They are awful! I suffered through them for several hours, until the contractions made me sick. At that point, I decided to go for an epidural. Overall, my labor was fairly quick. From the time my water broke to the time I was holding Trent in my arms, was about 7 hours.

This pregnancy has been much different from my last pregnancy. I have had more morning sickness, my cravings are different, my belly is shaping up different. No two pregnancies are exactly the same. Only about 10% of women have their water break, so there is a good chance that this labor will start in an entirely different way than the last time.

I like the suggestions in the article for being physically fit for the pregnancy. I will be walking and squatting. I do body pump a couple of times a week and squats is one of the areas of focus. On the other days, I'll walk. This morning, Trent and I walked 5.2 miles. It was great - good weather, nice exercise, and we even had the chance to stop and play in the park for a while. :)

Great Recipe Suggestion from A Friend

When you are eating what is in season, often times you have to find recipes with ingredients that you have on hand, rather than picking out recipes and buying what you need. Anyway, each week I try to make one beef or pork meal, one chicken meal, a veggie meal (I can only handle so many meat days in a row, but Jesse isn't a huge vegetarian fan), a pasta dish, and a soup or salad night. I also try to vary the cuisines we eat.

A friend of mine posted this recipe on her blog and it worked perfectly for our veggie meal. It was SO yummy. We ate it with coconut rice. I have only recently started eating rice again. I've always had texture issues with rice and the fact that it looks like bug larva. For years, I did not eat rice, but we want our children to be adventurous eaters. So I've been forcing myself to eat rice again and Jesse is forcing himself to eat raw tomatoes (usually in the form of caprese salad - another staple at our house). The coconut rice is SO good! I never thought I would rave about the taste of a rice dish, but I really enjoyed it. We eat mostly brown rice at our house (it's healthier and looks less like bug larva). Overcoming a rice dislike is a work in progress... So we had brown rice in our recipe. We also had sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes, sour cream instead of yogurt(note: add sour cream at the end, it will curdle if heated over long periods of time) and green beans instead of celery.

It was a success! The dish was delicious and I love seeing my 14 month old son chow down on vegetable curry. You should see the way he devours chickpeas! He also LOVES raw tomatoes (much to Jesse's bewilderment.) He's very much into feeding himself these days. He wants nothing to do with us feeding him. The vegetables in this dish were the perfect sized chunks for him to grab and he shoveled the rice in without a problem.

Dirty Dozen

The "dirty dozen" list is a list of fruits and vegetables that contain 47 - 67 pesticides per serving. You can eliminate up to 80% of the pesticides you consume, by simply buying the organic alternatives.

The dirty dozen:

Celery

Peaches

Strawberries

Apples

Blueberries

Nectarines

Bell Peppers

Spinach, Kale, Collard Greens

Cherries

Potatoes

Grapes and Lettuce

There's also good news. The following vegetables and fruits are considered the clean fifteen because their outer shell keeps them from absorbing much of the pesticides. They were found to have little to no pesticides on them.

The Clean Fifteen

Onions
Avocados

Sweet Corn

Pineapples

Mango

Sweet Peas

Asparagus

Kiwi

Cabbage

Eggplant

Canteloupe

Watermelon

Grapefruit

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet Onions

CNN recently had an article explaining the effects that pesticides can have on your health. The article can be found here.

I'm in T.R.O.U.B.L.E

Oh boy! The cravings with this child are crazy. My sweet tooth is ridiculous! This afternoon I went to get the tub of cookie dough out of the fridge that I've been grazing on for a few days. I had left one last serving, but Jesse had gotten into last night and left me one last bite. Only one bite of cookie dough?? This just would not do. So naturally, tonight, we made a whole new batch. I had cravings with Trent but it was more salty than sweet. Salty is actually a lot easier to keep healthy. It's hard to pretend to be healthy when you're shoveling cookie dough into your mouth. I seriously hope these cravings calm down a bit soon! But, just in case you are now craving delicious edible cookie dough, the recipe can be found here. Don't say I didn't warn you! Enjoy!

Oops!

So Trent learned how to spit today. I would not have guessed he would learn that from me. Here is how it happened...

We were sitting outside. It was a hot, humid day and we had a blanket and a baby pool set up. It was buggy so after we both suffered a couple of bug bites, I went and got the bug spray. While I was spraying myself, the smell of it went up my nose and made me have to spit. So I did. And Trent thought this was hilarious. He laughed. Out Loud. Multiple times.

Then it was his turn. I sprayed him with the bug spray. He laughed. Then spit. Multiple times.

Then I laughed. Out loud.

Lead by example, right? :)