We all came home from the hospital on Monday night. Meghan was allowed 48 hours in the hospital and I stayed with her the whole time (on a very small pull out bed). We had people at the house watching Eden which was nice for her and helpful for us.

Eden has adjusted nicely to having a baby brother. She loves walking up to him and saying “Baby”. (We’re still trying to get her to say “Andy.”) We take this as a win because she sees pictures/videos of herself and also says Baby!

Her sleeping hasn’t taken any hits with the addition of Andy. We knew she could sleep through anything before but now we know she can also sleep through a crying baby. Luckily Andy can also sleep in the same room when Eden is crying, I guess he heard it enough while in the womb to be used it by now! As a second stroke of luck, I (Ben) can also sleep through Andy’s cries in our room at night. This comes in handy when Andy is asking to be fed at 2 and 5 in the morning! (Don’t worry, I can’t sleep through Meghan poking me and telling me to go get Andy a change of clothes though…)

I’m taking one more week off of work to help set up some sort of schedule with Eden and Andy and to let Meghan rest up during the day. The following week Donna and Lauren are coming to stay for a few days. Hopefully by then Andy is sleeping through the night! (One can dream at least, right??)

Andrew Benjamin Wolfe was born on Feb 20th at 7:42 pm. He was a sizeable 8 pounds and 21 inches! Meghan did a lot of hard work and is quite tired today. Painful contractions started around 9am, got some Nubane around 4pm, and started pushing about 6pm. He has been sleeping on and off now…which is about how his parents are sleeping too! More pictures are over on the photos page.

Well, the magical day has come…and gone. The day that we had waited for and planned for passed uneventfully for us. February 18 was my due date and Andy apparently decided that he didn’t care that Ben and I were ready and waiting for him. Instead I have been scheduled for an induction on Saturday morning. We are to present ourselves on the Labor and Delivery floor at the hospital at 6:30 Saturday morning, things will start rolling, and Andy will hopefully make his debut sometime Saturday afternoon. We appreciate your thoughts and prayers and we will be sure to post an update and pictures as soon as possible!

Its been a while since we posted any videos about Eden, so here are three new ones for you!

1: Eden playing in the living room

2: Eden laughing hysterically while giving out molly floosters

3: Eden standing outside in her pink snow suit:

Sorry for the delay in updating everyone on the pregnancy. Things have been so busy since we came home!

The end of the pregnancy has been going so quickly. I am now 35 weeks pregnant and I still feel pretty good. I have occasional discomfort and spend about an hour awake each night waiting for Andy to go back to sleep after I go to the bathroom. I have almost decided to make my permanent residence in the bathroom. It feels like my bladder is always full although this is clearly not the case since most of the time hardly anything comes out (too much info??? ). I haven’t really gotten used to my big belly and find that I am often ramming Andy into doors, Ben and anything else that I try to squeeze past. Andy is definitely running out of space and I can feel him kicking and punching all the time. He had the hiccups for the first time last week and it was funny to see my entire stomach jump.

We have now taken our hospital tour, our childbirth preparation classes and our breastfeeding class. I think we know the material pretty well, but can you really be prepared for childbirth? We’re getting very excited as we get closer and closer. We have started to make plans for decorating Andy’s room and hopefully we will be ready for him when he decides to come!

Wow! Words cannot describe how thankful we were this Christmas. It was such a joy to be able to have Eden here with us! She was the best Christmas gift we could have asked for.

Eden was spectacular over the holidays. We had five Christmases in 8 days, drove to Pittsburgh and back, traveled to West Lafayette twice and Eden slept in a strange bed 5 out of 10 nights. Through it all she entertained everyone around her and was as cute as ever!

I know that everyone was worried that Eden might not get completely spoiled at Christmas, but not to worry…she was! Between the five Christmases that she had she got about a gazillion toys and cute outfits and had constant attention from her adoring fans. She has become such a little diva. She pulls out her bag of tricks every time that she has an audience and people just ‘oohh’ and ‘ahhh’ and laugh at her like she is the cutest thing ever. I don’t think five minutes passed in the last two weeks during which someone didn’t say “She is so cute!” or “She’s the smartest baby!” Not that Ben and I don’t agree, but…wow.

We really appreciate everyone’s support and loved getting to introduce Eden to so many people. We hope that the holidays were wonderful for you as well!

Eden turned one on December 12. Ben and I made pancakes for breakfast which she gobbled up and then we had a small get together in West Lafayette with cake and presents. Eden loved being the center of attention and totally showed off for her guests. She is much more steady when walking now and cracks up when others mimic the sounds she makes.
As you can see, she was not shy about digging right into her cake! She started with the icing and had quite a bit of that then started in on the cake. She had so much fun that by 3:30 she was sound asleep. I’ve posted several pictures from the day…enjoy!

For those of you that haven’t heard, we all made it back safe and sound to Indianapolis. It took Eden a few days to adjust to the time difference, but she has settled in nicely now. Our next goal is to get her to sleep through the night!

Speaking of goals, Eden has started to walk on her own! Its limited to only a few feet and usually only towards Mommy or Daddy, but its a good start! Check out the video for all the super cute action: http://blip.tv/file/2939818

We’ve made it halfway home! The three of us are now sitting in our hotel in Amsterdam for the next 20 hours or so. We had a slight scare getting checked in because they had to try a few times to add Eden onto Meghan’s ticket. Eventually I think they just brought somebody over that was more competent and she got things done. We also had a scare trying to get into Holland. Apparently Kenyans need a visa to get in…so they wouldn’t let us out of the airport. Luckily theres a few hotels attached to AMS and one had vacancy. (Unfortunately the other room I booked via Priceline.com is non-refundable.)

Eden did very well on the plane. She was cranky for about 10 minutes before her nap, but then settled down and slept for 3 hours! The rest of the time she played with her toys, practiced her standing skills, or showed off for other passengers.

The flight was operated by Kenya Airways. I’ve never flown out of NBO in the morning and so never flown this leg on a KQ plane. The other times I’ve flown on KQ they’ve had amazing service…and this trip was no exception. The food was 100 times better than KLM’s, the attendants were nicer, and the plane was not as crowded. In fact, because the plane was so empty we were able to switch up to the bulkhead seats so Eden had some space to play and a bassinet to sleep in.

I took a quick video of Eden sitting nicely and eating her breakfast on the plane: http://blip.tv/file/2917189.

We flew into NBO this morning without any issues. Our driver picked us up and took us to Mayfield, then to a mall where I met with some new OpenMRS implementers who wanted some “professional” advice. We ate a very non-Kenyan lunch at a little coffee shop, then went for our two o’clock appointment at the embassy. The embassy trip really wasn’t all that exciting, apparently all the hard stuff really was last week. Meghan and I were halfway through security (unpacking liquids, metal, coins, etc) when she asked if we were just picking up a passport. Apparently there is a little window where you give your “passport pickup ticket” and they just give you the visa-stamped passport back! Yep, that easy!

So, in conclusion, we’re coming home! We look forward to seeing you all very soon. We might post an update from our hotel in Amsterdam, but that all depends on how much sleep we’re needing at that point!