Official Photo!

Here is the photo that will be used for Matthew's passports. This picture will be used to identify him for the next 5 years. When he is five years old, he will also be listed as being 22 inches tall with blue eyes. Hopefully, customs and border control people have a sense of humor.

Spring in the Hood

Well it is April here in Brussels and several people have asked how the weather is over here. It has been very mild ever since we got here in January. While it did get a bit cold during January and February, it was never really too cold. It would hit the low 30's over night but would generally warm to 40 during the day. It did rain a lot.

As February rolled along and definitely as we got into March, the temperatures climbed. In mid March we were routinely into the 60's and touched 70 once in a while. We saw the crocus' in February and the daffodils came and went in March. Spring has arrived a bit earlier than we were used to from Boston. It still rained a lot.

Now that we're midway through April, I thought I would take a few photos from right around our house. Much is in bloom including several hundred cherry trees that are planted up and down the streets of the neighborhood. I counted 25 trees down the median strip on our block and the immediate blocks in each direction. There is a circle just outside our house that has another 25-30 trees on it. They are all in bloom right now. They also planted loads of flowers all over the place right around Easter. Some of the circles really look nice. It still rains a lot.

We live on Avenue de Mai or May Ave. (There is a street for every month right around us.) Right outside our door is one of the larger traffic circles or rotaries around. This is called Place de Mai and is dedicated to the victory at the end of WW2 - which was on May 8th, 1945. It is a significant holiday here in Belgium, but I will not have the day off from working at NATO. NATO, of course, has representatives from both the winning and losing side, and it's poor form to celebrate the holiday in front of the Germans and Italians.

So, the photo up top is linked to a few shots of Spring in Brussels.

Citizen Matthew!

We have received a lot of questions from people who are wondering if Matthew is a US citizen. Furthermore, many people also commented before we left that since he will be born outside the US, then he won't be able to be president.

I won't go into all the gory details, but I would like to clarify a couple of things. Most people realize that if you are born on US soil, then you are a natural born US citizen - irrespective of the status of your parents. However, what some people might not know is that you are also a natural born citizen if both of your parents are US citizens - no matter the location of your birth. These two scenarios result in the exact same thing. (You are also a natural born citizen if one of your parents is a US citizen - but there's more paperwork and some other residency requirements of your US parent.)

In order to become president, you must be a natural born citizen. The constitution doesn't care which of the above scenarios you followed, so long as you followed one of them. Therefore, Matthew is not only a US citizen, he is a natural born citizen and is eligible to become president once he hits 35 years of age.

What's a bit different is that Matthew has a Belgian birth certificate. I must now take this to the consulate offices here and start the process. First, we will apply for a CRIBA or Consulate Record of Birth Abroad. This will end up being the document that will prove his citizenship. While at the consulates office we will also apply for his social security number/card, his tourist passport and his official passport. Lots of paperwork.

I bring all this up now because we will be going in to apply for all of this something this week. I'll try to post up his passport photo when we get it!

House Sale

We are in the process of selling our house. Most everyone knew that we were trying to sell our house as part of the move over here. My company helps out with the sale. That coupled with our general situation made it very attractive to sell rather than rent it out and keep it for when we return someday. Of course, if you've been following the news lately, you might have heard that the economy is not doing too well, and that it's not all that easy to sell a house right now.

Well, our recent good news is that we are selling the house. We received a decent offer and are almost through the selling process. The negotiations, inspections, more negotiations and bank appraisal have all come through perfectly. So, if everything keeps going as it has been, we will close on the sale - perhaps the end of next week.

The house sale is a little different than normal because a third party is involved. This is part of the assistance that my company gives us. The third party jumps in and buys the house from us when the paperwork is done - sometime next week. They will turn around and sell it to the actual buyer on the 29th of April. Also, much of the paperwork must be flown back and forth across the Atlantic - what fun.

So, check in next week to see if we are celebrating.

This week

So this was the first week without Natalie's mother. Our safety net returned home on Monday. This was a fine week to start out because it was a very short week. Monday was pretty well spent getting her to the airport after dropping off Sophia at day care. I had an eye doctor's appointment in the afternoon, so I took the day off. So Monday wasn't so bad. Today is Friday, and Good Friday is a holiday here at NATO. So, we only had to manage 3 real working days this week. Next week, Monday is also a holiday (Easter Monday) making for another short week. We are trying to enjoy a four day weekend here, but it has gotten off to an inauspicious start as Sophia's runny nose turned into Daddy's sore throat.

On Tuesday, NATO had the flag raising ceremony inducting two new nations. Albania and Croatia are now the 27th and 28th members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or "the alliance" as everyone was saying. "The alliance" sounded too much like something from Star Wars on some other Sci-Fi movie for me. Anyways, the Albanian prime minister spoke in a semi-rambling speech where he stated many, many times that Albania wasn't corrupt. It was a welcome to NATO speech and he was stating numbers like he was reading an Excel spreadsheet. "In Dec 08, we had 2.7 million visitors to our great country...There is no crime.." Me thinks he doth protest too much.


Not much else happened this week as we were simply putting on a plate spinning act trying to handle the kids in a new routine. Natalie walked down the block to a small clinic and had Matthew weighed yesterday. He has gained more weight back and is now at or slightly above his birth weight. This weekend, provided we stay healthy, we will start to make a serious push to get Sophia potty trained. Stay tuned for updates on that.

Today is Sunday and it is the last day that Natalie's mother will be here. We have to take her to the airport tomorrow morning. So, we feel like we are being pushed off, on our own with no more training wheels. Hopefully, Matthew will settle down and get through his colic as fast as possible and then we can get rest and find a routine.

We did have a nice time today. Natalie and her mother found a tricycle at a thrift store that has one of those poles out the back that the parents can use to control the bike. So, Sophia got her first chance to ride. It was quite amusing for Natalie and her mother as Sophia's legs were just a little too short to be effective on the pedals. So she kept looking down at her feet to see what was going on. Of course, this meant that she wasn't paying attention to the handle bars and was constantly driving off to the left or right. She would bang into something and still be looking down at her feet. Natalie was laughing pretty hard at that, but it was annoying to me because I was the one trying to keep her going straight down the road. Every so often I would just push down on the pole which would lift the whole front wheel off of the road so that I could straighten her out. By the end of the walk, I was just pushing her like this all the way back.

On the bright side, we took a walk down the street in a new direction and found another park! This park has animals in it for the kids. Sophia got to see a Shetland Pony, goats and a donkey. There were many other animals including chickens, ducks, geese, and rabbits for her to look at. I think we will be going back.

That's all for now. Life should get more interesting in the next week or two.

Easter Egg Hunt

So we headed out to the Ambassador's residence this morning for an Easter egg hunt. There were quite a few people there. I would say around 25-30 children. It was a very nice time despite the weather being cloudy and a bit on the cool side. The folks at the residence did a great job with lots of food and drink for before and after the actual "event".

On the appointed time, someone yelled go and the expected mayhem ensued. Sophia did quite well and ended up with 6 or 7 eggs - although I think she got a couple of them by plucking them from some other children's basket. I guess the practice runs that Grammy was making her do in the backyard paid off.

She was quite pleased when she figured out that there was candy inside the plastic eggs! Here's a shot of her with her loot. Grammy and I took quite a few photos and we even have a bit of video. I will be posting the photos out to a web photo album shortly.