Kevin Has Arrived!!!

The time finally came. Kevin Daniel Glover has arrived!!! Both mom and Kevin are doing well.

So, here is a brief rundown on the days events. As Kevin past his final due date (April 5th), the doctor decided on Tuesday that we would induce on Monday, April 11th. However, as you can see, Kevin had different plans. Erin woke up around 6:00 to the beginning of contractions. She progressively kept on getting contractions all morning. None of the contractions were a full minute long but they occurred quite frequently (every 5 minutes). So, finally around 11 am, we decided to take Kherington over to a friend and headed to the hospital. Erin was checked into the hospital at 11:30 am and delivered Kevin Daniel Glover at 3:45 pm.

It went very smoothly and glad he has finally joined the family. Kherington has not seen him yet, but she has heard him on the phone crying in the background and keeps telling me that he is sad. We are going to be lucky to have a commentator of what Kevin is doing around the house. Potentially, it will prepare her for a sports journalism career.

Anyways, similar to Kherington , he has a lot of red hair. He ended up weighing roughly 7 lbs 3 oz and 19.30 in. (of course these are the converted numbers since they use the metric system in Belgium). We will now have to wait and see how long Erin and Kevin will be staying in the hospital. On average in Belgium it is 5-6 days. We are hoping they can come home after 2-3 days, but either way, we are glad everything went smoothly and excited to see our family grow.

Life Keeps Going

Yes, we are STILL waiting. But life keeps going with or without the baby on the outside so here's a little of what we've been up to:

1. Kherington and I were looking for a store and got a little lost because a couple blocks of streets were shutdown due to a gigantic market. Luckily we found a place to park, so we got out to walk around. We kept passing fruit stands, so I let Kherington pick out one piece. Of all things, she chose the most ginormous banana I have ever seen AND ate the whole entire thing by herself!

2. Kherington loves milk...and sometime likes to help herself while I'm pre-occupied (see the collage). Other times she just lines up what she wants the milk put in :).

3. Kherington also recently discovered how much she loves running around in her diaper. One of her favorite locations is where we store her plastic dishes.

Aside from the pictured activities above, we've still been going to playgroup and art group once a week. We've also been hitting up the park each afternoon to play with friends. Kherington loves to ride her bike to the park, then wait for her friend Alex to show up on his motorcycle so she can steal it and ride around :).

A Baby's Timetable

So apparently babies like to do their own thing and have their own timetables. Here's how it's gone so far with the different pregnancies:

Kherington:
Calendar Due Date - April 24th
Ultrasound Due Date - May 4th
Desired Due Date - May 8th
Actual Birth - April 23rd

Baby #2:
Calendar Due Date - March 31st
Ultrasound Due Date - April 5th
Desired Due Date: March 30th
Actual Birth - ?

With Kherington I was ready for her to be late. Like 2 weeks late. That would have worked better with my work schedule back then. Instead, I ended up drafting emails the morning of (canceling client calls / getting people to cover for me at work) and telling Ryan that if I really was in labor when we got the hospital, he needed to press send. With Kherington I went to work like normal, had a normal dinner, went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night feeling slightly off so I took a bath. Then I couldn't fall asleep so I went upstairs...Ryan came upstairs and told me I was having contractions and we should probably think about going to the hospital (so I drafted the emails). I think she was born around 2pm. That means the whole process of starting to feel crappy to having her out was 12 hours max.

This time around my back has been aching for a couple weeks. Pretty much each night starting around 5pm I start feeling nausea. I go to bed and don't feel the best so I'm like, well, maybe tonight. Then I wake up in the morning and feel just fine (minus the one morning I spent throwing up...but I'm guessing that was more food related than pregnancy related). I'd have to say I liked pregnancy #1 much better.

So...we'll see when baby #2 decides to come. As of now it doesn't seem like he's in any rush.

Crafts in Belgium

Kherington recently started doing a toddler art group with some friends in out area so I started looking around for places to get art supplies for cheap. I also decided that for playgroup birthday's (all the kids are born within a month of each other so we're planning a playgroup party) I would make superman/batman and superwoman/princess capes...but to do that I needed fabric, felt, and fusible web. After talking to some friends I found that there are two pretty good craft stores.

Creacorner - I went to the one near Tomberg metro. I had good prices on felt and had the fusible web! I also picked up some paint and spent some time browsing their crafty kitchen stuff (pretty expensive compared to what I'd pay in the US, but nice to know if you need it you can get it there). Oh yes, and they sell poster board. I would compare it to a Michaels in the US.

Mondial Textiles - I went to the one in Waterloo. I still needed to find some pink/purple fabric for the girl capes (IKEA also sells fabric but not those colors). I ended up paying between 4 and 7 euros a meter for the fabric. I thought that was pretty comparable to the US (minus the fact that I would normally have a coupon on the US). The upstairs has discount fabrics, wood stuff, paints, etc and the downstairs is just tons more full price fabrics. I would compare this to a JoAnns in the US.

Wibra - Think dollar store (except nothing I bought was more than a euro). It has birthday supply (wrapping paper, candles, plates, decor), glue, containers, 50 cent cards, yarn, toys clothes, etc. Everything is very low end, but considering that's what I was looking for :). I ended up with A LOT of random items but spent about 15 euros.

March Madness for Toddlers

What was your toddler doing at 3AM this morning? Ours was watching some basketball with her daddy!

Since we are currently 5 hours ahead of ET time (we'll be back to 6 when we have daylight savings next week), watching March Madness games this round went from Thurs 5pm to Fri 5am. The two pictures below show Ryan and Kherington watching the games together...the first taken around 7pm and the second one taken at 3am!

I had gone to bed and woke up around 2:30am to Kherington pounding on her door saying 'Daddy, daddy, ball, ball'. Apparently she had gone to bed, woken up and watch some ball then didn't want to go back to sleep...she got to get back up and watch some more with her daddy!

*Not to worry, Ryan's taking Friday off so staying up all night wasn't so bad :)

St. Patrick's Day

This year's St. Patrick's Day decorations included shamrock's stuck to the walls, green & white balloons, gold & green necklaces and green shamrock sunglasses. Kherington loves playing with balloons so those are always a hit for holidays.

We hosted playgroup at our place and the kids had fun coloring their pot of gold pictures and putting St. Patrick's Day stickers all over the place (another benefit of going to the base...6 pages of 50 stickers for just $1!). For lunch we had spinach mac n' cheese (I'll post on the recipe blog later), cucumbers, kiwi and green apple. The kids seemed to have fun and 4 of them even played with the SAME toy for 10 minutes :).

For dinner I had planned on steak, brussel sprouts and green potatoes, but we switch the potatoes to leftover mac n' cheese from lunch. I think next year kherington might be old enough for ryan's leprechaun friend lucky to make an appearance...we'll see :).

March Madness Picks

Kherington's method of picking this year took a little more creativity. She didn't want to play with the blocks so instead she colored. Different colors represented high seeds and low seeds. She usually likes to color, but she wasn't as interested in that as normal so we ended up bribing her...if she colored with two different markers (one for high and one for low) she could have a piece of chocolate. She really liked that :).

Her final bracket

*You'll notice that some match-ups didn't get colored on...she ended up handing me a couple blocks right before bedtime to finish off her picks :)

How does her bracket actually stack up? Well, her Final Four consists of three smaller schools and one potential winner (according to the experts). The teams are Princeton, Memphis, Kansas, and UCSB. She is going for a rematch of the 2008 championship game that her Dad and Grandpa attended. I suppose she has heard me talk about how cool a live Final Four experience is, so she wanted me to relive it through her bracket. One day will have to take her to her own Final Four.

Anyways, we will see what unfolds in the next couple weeks!