17 weeks



Newly hatched baby butterfly at the Butterfly House



Manger scene at Rancho Baiguate



hanging out with one of the burros at Rancho Baiguate, I look like I'm trying to model my water bottle

Our baby is the size of a turnip!


Do I look big to you?  Cause even though our doctor said I wasn't gaining enough weight and put me on the ensure diet, everyone else is saying how I am getting really big really fast (Dominicans are honest people).  I went out shopping the other day and in a period of one hour, two people said I looked so big for 4 months that I must be having twins.  Nope, just one baby on the ultrasound.  Between that and starting a pinterest account where all the expecting ladies have professional looking bump pictures but really flat stomachs with no bump when they're as many weeks as me has made me decide to stop my weight gain diet that the doctor recommended.  Oh yeah, that and I gained 4 pounds over Christmas vacation already - if I keep gaining at that rate I will have gained 52 pounds by the baby's birth in June.  No gracias.  So back to normal eating without all the extra ensure as part of the diet.  Though now I am craving food much more than before.  No pickles and ice cream, but more than anything lately I am craving CHOCOLATE.  We were sent down bags of chocolate chips from America that were supposed to be used for baking but I haven't been baking anything and I just can't keep my hands off them!


What's happening this week:


We're still on Christmas break until Tuesday but it has been rainy and dreary here, so not much has been going on, but here's a few items:


Visitors - First we had Dave's sister Pam and her friend Brooke come up to stay with us for a few days after we got back from the beach.  Dave took them out to climb the moutain El Mogote, see the waterfalls, and we did some local Dominican shopping but other than that it was pretty tranquilo.  Oh and did I mention that Pam brought us down TONS of treats even though they didn't fit in her suitcase, so we are really grateful to her for that.  Like I mentioned before, I got LOADS of new maternity clothes, which I'm already wearing everyday, did I mention maternity pants are downright heavenly?  And I've been using my tummy rub cream and doing my new pre-natal yoga DVD which I wish I could find someone else pregnant to do it with.  The other night when I tried it out, the women on the DVD were exercising their "kegel muscles" while I totally misunderstood and was flexing and releasing my stomach and chest, oops.  I'm still learning these things, but how am I supposed to know what to do when they sit on their mats and do nothing but say flex and release.  It's not the yoga I'm used to.  Also, we had a couple of teenage boys over to do respite care for some friends of ours that we work with who took them in a few months ago off the streets when they were in need.  For being two fifteen year old boys, they were some of the most well-mannered and helpful boys I might have ever met and very fun too.  Since it was a rainy couple days, we spent lazy afternoons on our patio playing dominoes and UNO, (conversations mixed in English, Spanish, and Creole) and nights putting up the projector (thanks Jessica Ensing!) to watch movies and play old school video games that were donated to Dave (umm I mean our ministry), like racing, James Bond, and Sonic the Hedgehog.


Rancho Baiguate - Today we took a motorcycle ride out to Rancho Baiguate to see a butterfly house and lounge around their beautiful property full of flowers and other vegetation.  I loved the butterfly house, we got to see every step of the life cycle, and even though I've both learned and taught the process many times, it still doesn't cease to amaze me - and I LOVED having a baby butterfly land right on my belly when I had my own life cycle going on right inside (okay well it took a little encouragment to "land" there).  I think I'm going to plan a field trip to take my first graders here soon since we're going to study life cycles this semester (or at least I think that's what I will teach them.. since we don't have standards here I teach pretty much whatever I want as long as the kids are learning English in the process :) 


Yeah so other than that, just playing catch up and slooowly chipping away at the long to-do list I made myself for Christmas break.  Remember how I was excited last week about my CONANI visit (a huge government agency here) and them wanting to come up to visit and get involved with the safehouse?  Well, six unreturned calls and emails later and I am still waiting to hear back from them.  Everything in this country takes so much time and patience!  Please continue to keep us in your prayers!


Love, Dave, Kristin, Santa, and Baby DeYoung xoxo