the only thing that's constant is change...

hi everybody! how's it going? we've been thinking about/praying for you, and hope you're doing well. as for us, we've been going through an exceptional amount of change of late. though nearly all of it's been good, it's nevertheless been stressful around here. in spite of it all though, we're hanging in there.

what's so different these days, you ask? first off, karen's pregnant! some of you already knew this, but for those of you that are hearing about the good news for the first time, let me catch you up: we found out about baby kaufman on august 17 (the day we got back from our trip to ohio); she's 18 weeks along so far and is due april 13 (the last day of final exams); she had a horrible first trimester--much worse than with jeremiah--but thankfully is feeling pretty good at the moment; we've heard the baby's heartbeat twice now and we go in for our first ultrasound tomorrow (our doctor said that we've got an 80-90% chance of being able to determine the baby's sex, so we're keeping our fingers crossed).

jeremiah is really excited about the baby. he frequently goes over to mommy to kiss her belly. he also yells "goodbye! love you!" to both of them when they head off to, as he puts it, "r-bucks" for work. although we'd like to say that he fully understands what's happening, it's clear that he's still in the dark quite a bit on this issue--he occasionally comes up to me to kiss my belly, and we've even caught him walking around the apartment with his shirt pulled up, rubbing his belly and saying, "baby! baby!"

since we're on the subject of jeremiah, he's changing a lot too. his vocabulary has exploded over the last few months and he's now beginning to string words together. he can count to ten (most of the time in order), sing half of the alphabet song (once again, most of the time in order), and identify a handful of colors. he continues to love to read and frequently hits the local thrift stores with daddy to add to his personal library. finally, he's now sleeping in a "big boy" bed, and after a couple weeks of late night trips to check in on mommy and daddy, he's sleeping through the night again.

another big change is that we've moved into a new apartment. although we liked our old place and the family we rented from, the idea of having to share that tiny one-bedroom suite with another living being was just too much for us to handle. but since vancouver is such an expensive city to live in, it wasn't just a matter of packing up and moving out--on the contrary, we spent months looking for a place that was affordable, in a good location, had the space we needed, and was owned by a landlord crazy enough to rent to a family like us (why people weren't interested in renting to an unemployed grad student, his pregnant wife, their energetic toddler, and large slobbering dog is beyond me!).

well, all of our searching eventually paid off and we moved into our new place on october 1. it's a bit further from school and work, but it's certainly worth the extra ten minutes of commuting! we’re excited to say that karen and i once again have a bedroom that doesn't double as our living room, a bathtub so jeremiah doesn't have to take baths in the sink anymore, and a huge fenced-in yard so the pooch can run around and stretch his legs.

as for school, change has occurred there too. this year has been a lot different for me--i'm only on campus twice a week instead of daily, i'm taking a weekend course for the first time, and i just started a year-long internship at our church. it's taken me quite a while to get fully adjusted and into the swing of things, but in spite of it all, classes are going well and i'm still really enjoying being a full-time student.

this term i'm taking "intro to preaching and worship", "intro to counseling" (karen is taking this one too), and "reading the bible with the 'damned.'" just to shed a bit of light on why that last class has the title it does, it's taught by a professor/pastor who works with inmates and migrant workers, both of which he says wrongly "perceive themselves as condemned to poverty or permanent exclusion, beyond repair, unable to change, in bondage--in short, 'damned.'"

well, thanks for laboring through this long (and long overdue) entry. we miss you and will talk to you later.

p+k

8.15.06- jeremiah and his cousin abbey riding a cow at young's dairy in ohio

10.1.06- jeremiah getting ready for his first night in his "big boy" bed

11.02.06- jeremiah "refusing" to take a nap

10.11.06- jeremiah helping daddy document his weak attempt at growing a beard (by the way, the beard is long gone now)

10.23.06- jeremiah showing off daddy's drawings of his favorite sesame street characters, to include "burp-an-ernie"

10.6.06- jeremiah fully enjoying a bowl of pasta

10.6.06- jeremiah and mac testing out his new tricycle in the backyard

10.31.06- jeremiah all dressed up for halloween (check out those broad and burly shoulders!)

10.31.06- jeremiah holding the pumpkin he helped mommy carve

11.9.06- jeremiah trying with all his might to put on daddy's socks and shoes