Belgian Maternity Wards

We're still sitting in a hospital room with Claire. The normal stay after labor and delivery in Belgium is 4-5 days. It's nice in some ways to know that Emily and Claire are well-taken care of before going home. However, Emily is tired of the same four walls and is ready to get home. I am taking a few days of paternity leave, so I end up running errands during the day and coming back to spend the night at the hospital with Emily and Claire. Isaac and I will probably be back at our house tomorrow night. He's been staying with friends, but Emily wants him to get a good nights rest and have some time at the house before we bring Claire in on Thursday.

Claire Arrives

Yesterday afternoon, my beautiful and stubborn wife refused to admit that she was in labor until her contractions were seven minutes apart. Around 6:45 PM, she decided we should go to the hospital. (Something I'd suggested an hour and a half before). At 7:05, we dropped Isaac off at some friends' home (thanks Joe and Rochelle) and went to the hospital. At 7:45 PM, Claire Lucille was born. I have thoroughly enjoyed saying I told you so to Emily today. It's amazing how much less she intimidates me when she's not pregnant.

Claire was 7 lbs 5 oz and 19 inches long. Mother and baby are well. Isaac is very indifferent about Claire. I convinced him to be interested for almost a full 60 seconds before he decided to play with my cell phone some more. There are pictures of Claire and Isaac, as well as the house we're renting, in my photo albums.

For those who've asked, I hopefully will begin consistently posted pictures again. My laptop is out of commission and using Em's laptop is an annoying and painful process.

Probable Belgian Rental

Well, let's try this again. I have been trying for two days now to post a few pictures of the house Justin and I are probably going to rent here in Belgium. It is in a town called Erbisoeul, between the two posts Justin will be frequenting. We are probably closest to SHAPE, but that is o.k. since he will need to go there occasionally, and I am hoping to get a classroom there at some point. Once all the photos are uploaded, I will go back and type a brief snippet about each underneath. The pictures were an afterthought, so they are kind-of random, as the language barrier prevented me from truly evaluating how the landlords felt about me taking photos. Ok, the computer is putting these pictures in crazy places, but they are on here! Now, for the tour......

When you walk in the front door and turn to your right, you see the living room/dining room combo. Right now, there is still carpet that the previous tenants left behind. We may leave it in some of the bedrooms, but we are probably going to have it removed from the rest of the house. It prevents some of the doors from opening properly.

When you walk in the front door, if you look straight ahead, you see the three steps leading up to the bedroom/bathroom area. The door on the far right is what will probably be the master bedroom. The door on the left will likely be Claire's nursery. Just to the left of her room is the main bathroom with a shower/tub combo, toilet, and sink. Just past that is the room that will likely be Isaac's.

This is a picture of the kitchen. It is quite large by local standards. The cabinet space is a HUGE attraction. The only major appliance we will have to borrow for the kitchen is a refrigerator. That doesn't bother me, however, as it means we can go ahead and request an American-style fridge/freezer combo. Most Europeans do not use freezers. We still will have to get several small appliances, as ours are in storage due to the incompatibility of the plugs with European outlets.

I'm not sure why Blogger decided to put these two pictures beside each other. The picture on the left is the part of the kitchen area that got left out when I took the previous shot. It would be a nice place for a small breakfast table. The picture on the right is another shot of the living room. I panned a little farther left than in the first posted shot of the living room, so that I could show the fireplace and TV area. The lady in the picture is one of the landlords. The color of the brick in the last picture is approximately the same color as the exterior brick. The exterior brick may be a slightly more golden shade, but it's close. We meet with the landlord at the housing office tomorrow, where our "agent" will speak both French and English and act as a translator. Hope this helps to give you an idea of our (probable) new home -- Voila!

Still No Good Pictures

OK, I did not take the camera with me today. Inprocessing doesn't really provide anything photo worthy anyway. I was able to meet a number of people in the battalion this afternoon as well as the garrison chaplain. My office area is extremely nice. The weather was excellent, which I've been told is not the norm. Dreary weather is supposed to be a little more common. The area we're in is definitely farm country, which is nice. We passed hay fields being fluffed and baled today.

Since I seem to be unable to remember my camera, I am posting a few pictures of our hotel room and the view from the balcony. The army lodging facility was at capacity, so we're in a local hotel, which is nice. The restaurant in the lobby is really good. Since we don't have a vehicle or drivers' licenses yet, we're stuck spending a lot of time at the hotel after work hours. We are going over to our sponsers' home for dinner last night. They've been great. Otherwise, there's not much to tell about.

Arrival

We made it to Belgium around 0900 this morning (local time). We did a few of the necessary steps to begin inprocessing, mainly getting IDs made. Tomorrow we'll actually start doing the inprocessing.

Our hotel is nice. The room is pretty large by Belgium standards (I think). The area is beautiful. I'm just getting ready to move forward with getting settled and plugged back into ministry.

Isaac handled most of the trip well. His stomach got upset a little before we landed. We think that he'll be back to normal in another day or two. We didn't even take the camera out of the briefcase today. Between wrestling with Isaac and our own exhaustion, it just didn't happen. Maybe that will happen tomorrow.