‘Raspbabies’ Meet for the First Time

Editor’s Note: Last year, three former Raspberry queens—Rosie Hatfield, Andrea Lahouze and Melissa Saigh—who happened to all get pregnant at the about the same time, each with a girl. The three women brought their girls together for the first time Thursday at Hopkins’ . Saigh shares her thoughts on the meet-up in the following guest column.

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This week, Linna and I got to meet up with two former Hopkins Raspberry Festival queens and their baby girls. To give you a little bit of background, I was my hometown's queen in 2000-2001 and met Rosie Hatfield (formerly McNamee) and Andrea Lahouze (formerly Strand) after they were crowned a couple years later. All three of us got pregnant around the same time and had our first babies (all girls) within about a couple months of each other! The newspaper actually did a story on us and our "Raspbabies" when we were all pregnant ( to see the story).

The three of us follow each other on Facebook, and it's been so neat to watch their girls (Noa and Madeleine) grow up. Rosie lives in Florida and Andrea lives in Hopkins, so when Rosie came back to Minnesota for a visit, we had to take the opportunity for the girls to meet!

Linna is the oldest of the three (she's one), then comes Noa (almost 11 months) and then Madeleine (10 months). Noa started walking at nine months (unbelievable). Linna is walking around on furniture. Madeleine loves to do the army crawl and walk with help from her mom! It was so much fun to see the girls check each other out and play together. Linna liked hitting Maddie on the head, and Noa just kind of wandered around doing her own thing. Linna had only napped for about an hour that day (she's getting over a cold), so she had a complete meltdown when it was time to go home. And I can't forget to mention her snotty nose that dripped like a faucet the entire time. Leave it to me to have the "snotty nose kid."

I brought this ball toss game we have to Maetzold Field in Hopkins for the girls to play with, but they were just interested in the snacks and chewing on our cans of Diet Coke (I promise they weren't open). It was nice getting to chat with Andrea and Rosie about motherhood and our plans for the future and to just catch up on what has been going on in our lives over the last few years. Rosie has been a stay-at-home mom for the last 11 months but has actually decided to go back to work starting Monday. Andrea went back to work after her maternity leave.

I hope the three of us, and our girls, will be able to get together more often when Rosie comes home to visit. Who knows, maybe the three little ones will all be Raspberry queens one day.

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