Life and its little pleasures

Vintage toys rule

Lily and her ducklin

I see Kim!

From my office...

 

 

Lily, my ducklin

 

Flanders celebrates! But not when you have kids...

Every year, the Belgian American Chambre of Commerce organizes a great family event in New York to celebrate the Belgian national holiday on July 21st. This year, De Kreuners are performing, there is a Missbelgium election (!) and you can win cool prizes (Eddie Merckx bike, plane tickets etc.). Basically, it's a fun day out for the whole family and a chance to meet up with fellow countrymen.

So when I got an invitation last week from The Flemish House, announcing that they "requested my presence" (who writes this shit!!) at a reception on the occasion of Flander's Day on a boat, I thought that would be a fun early evening event, similar to the Belgian one. Drinking, laughing, eating, having fun with Flemish people and their friends and families. But when I rsvp'ed to say that I would love to attend with my husband and daughter, I got an anonymous reply from somebody at the Flemish House:

"Ik vrees dat het om een misverstand gaat. Deze 11 juli-viering is deze keer jammer genoeg geen familiaal evenement, maar een officiële diplomatieke avondreceptie.
Uiteraard is Lily wel van harte welkom op onze andere events!"

Loosly translated: It's a diplomatic event, no kids allowed... The invite indeed did say: you and one guest.

This is not the first time that I hear that somebody decides that kids are not welcome at a Flemish House event and I just think that this is ridiculous. What the fuck is "a diplomatic evening reception" anyway? Why would they even consider excluding families from an event that is supposed to be about celebrating a region? Honestly, I really do not understand the logic behind it.

Well, too bad for them, they will have to miss me at this "party". I hardly see my daughter enough as it is, so I will go on another boat some time with her, where she is welcome and that is probably a lot more fun than a night of "diplomatieke betrekkingen"...

Another reason why I think of myself as a Belgian and not a Flemish citizen.

 

Lily in the city

There are worse things in life than to have your first NYC Tribeca rooftop party at 14 weeks...

Check at 19 and 29 seconds...

30 State of Mind: The Aftermath from Pieter.

New job

Recently, I started my new job in Manhattan and as you can see below, the view is pretty spectacular. We are on the 60th floor right by Carnegie Hall and I can't wait to see this view change over the different seasons.

By getting back to work, I also had to start bringing Lily to daycare... And no matter how good it feels to be back in an office and having adult conversations every day, saying goodbye to Lily in the morning still hurts. She is still only 14 weeks old and so little... I hope I'm doing right by her by going back to work so soon. She seems to like it though and every morning when I drop her off at Mrs. Loayza's house, she is all smiles. Luckily she also smiles when we pick er back up!

Seven weeks to go before we all go to Belgium for a couple of weeks and I can't wait! Finally I get to introduce my daughter to my extended family. My brother is arriving in New York on Friday, so he will get to see her earlier.

For now it looks like we are going to spend one week in Riemst together with my brother and then have our big wedding celebration. After that Mike and I are going to Paris for a couple of days, call it our honeymoon if you will. While in France, mom and dad are taking Lily to the seaside where Mike and I will join them after our trip. If everything works out, my sister will be back from her vacation in Sweden by then and we all get to spend some time together, while my brother will be gone on vacation with his girlfriend. Lots of planning going on, but I'm just really happy I get to spend some time with everyone.

More on the new job later! Enjoy the view for now.

Empire State

Some of our Belgian and Dutch friends here in NYC had a birthday party last week for their 30th. This was the invitation:

30 State of Mind from Pieter on Vimeo.

The party was also fun! It was Lily's first rooftop party :-)

Lily

On February 7th, at 2.10am (after 20 ours of labor!!), our daughter Lily Karen Windsor was born.

More on the experience later, for now, we are enjoying and getting used to our new family.

On hold

It seems like my life is a bit on hold now... Waiting for the baby to come and not able to do a whole lot of other stuff as I get tired almost immediately. Even just walking starts hurting after 15 minutes, so going to the mall up the street here is too much of an effort and I honestly can't be bothered...

My ankles have decided to disappear completely now. All that is left is fat, water-filled stumps. I haven't gained any weight in the last 10 to 12 weeks, so that is actually making me feel quite good. All in all, I gained about 30 pounds or 13.5 kilos. Could have been much worse, I guess, but I have an extra 6 kilos to lose that I gained from quitting smoking last year. But I'm not going to worry yet about loosing the weight, I know I have 5 months until my big wedding celebration in Belgium... So that gives me a good goal to work towards.

Although I have another 2/3 weeks to go, I am considered full time now. So it's totally up to baby dear to decide when to join us. If only I could do more to get him/her out besides forcing my husband to have sex with me...

Any tips?