Orrszívó Porszívó - Nose Vac

Sorry for not writing since the birth of the baby! He's beautiful and wonderful - praise the Lord!
In case you don't know yet, he was born on September 1st and his name is Nathaniel Nicholas Cady.
Well, Nate got his first cold (from his dad it seems), and today we took him to the doctor because of it. And her recommendation - buy an attachment for our vacuum cleaner that sucks out his brains, I mean mucous!
Anyways, I knew that Hungarians use this product, and I must admit that I was a bit skeptical to use it - not to mention that it didn't help when the doctor told us, "Don't be surprised if he bleeds a little from it!"
But we gave it a shot, and his brain didn't get sucked out or anything! Its still fully intact.
Anyways, I have to admit that I am totally impressed with this thing! I was totally convinced that this is some sort of torture device, but now I'm fully converted - I'm a fan. I vacuum out his nose every chance that I get, and I'm pretty sure he actually likes it, because he gets super calm and just lets me do it.
I can't wait until I have a cold, so I can use it on myself!

Oh, and I found this awesomely bad video - an official advertisement for this product. This is one of the worst commercials I've ever seen! Among the things that make this video so bad its good, my favorite parts are: 1) the horrible background music, 2) the part where the kid takes it and uses it on himself, 3) the close up of the snot fluttering as it is sucked out of the kid's nose.

Enjoy!

Birth Announcement

What I am looking forward to

Junior is due tomorrow!
I honestly thought he would come early, but it seems like Junior is going to keep us all waiting. Being at the end of the pregnancy, I can look back and say that it has gone very well for me and I have enjoyed being pregnant and have this amazing thing happen in my belly. This is really a blessing from God because no woman can know what to expect, and we have enjoyed the phenomenon of Junior growing inside and not having any problems for either of us. My life usually has difficulties and I have learned through it not to worry and know that God is One to be trusted, and this has carried into the pregnancy.

At the end of being pregnant with Junior, it has gotten more difficult these last 2 weeks. Being at the end of a waiting period, its natural to get impatient and want it to be over, and this is where Nick and I are at! Also, it's gotten uncomfortable, and I am thinking about things I miss and what I want to do once Junior is out!

This is what I have been thinking about:
1. I love sleeping on my back, and it has been painful to sleep on my side. I wake up in the middle of the night on my back, and the weight of the baby pushes down all my guts and major blood vessels, making me feel like throwing up and my feet are asleep from lack of blood.
2. I would like to get dressed without needing to lean against the wall because I cannot bend over to pull anything up or put my shoes on.
3. I remember being able to bend over at the waist and pick something up. Being pregnant, I have to carefully squat and not fall over because I don't know my center of gravity.
4. I miss being able to cuddle with Nick. The belly gets in the way-obviously. He sits on a separate chair now because we cannot cuddle on the couch and I cannot just turn any which way to get comfortable.
5. Something I never thought would be hard is to get into bed. Nick laughed really hard when he saw my procedure of having to back up into place, sit down in just the right spot so my head will land on the pillow when I lay down and far enough back on the bed so I won't fall off. Then, I fall on my side to make it to the pillow. Its so hard to roll over in bed-I have pulled muscles in the belly doing it.
6. Did you know that with all the hormones is one that relaxes the ligaments for pregnant moms? With this, I have experienced quite a few serious choking episodes as my epiglottis is too relaxed. I choke a lot anyway-but its been scary while pregnant to choke so seriously that I barf.
7. I miss being able to lay down without acid rushing into my throat.
8. Taking a shower is another experience with a big belly that I have had to learn. The first one is climbing into and out of the tub without losing my balance-and remember, bending is not easy. This means also that washing my legs and feet are a challenge.
9. My toenails have grown so long being pregnant because I feel like barfing every time I bend over and try to cut them. I have tried squatting and cutting nails, but that is very hard too, and the deed just gets neglected. The other problem is that they grow so fast with all the hormones, and I wear flip-flops since I won't bend over to put shoes on.
10. In the past 2 weeks, I have started itching a lot on my ankles and wrists and hands. Part of the reason is my teno-synovitis which causes swelling anyway, and the other reason is hormones, oh and also, yes, because I am pregnant with so much fluid everywhere anyway. I look forward to not having weird pregnant things happen to my body anymore, even though it is interesting how God made the woman's body to do all this.
11. I look forward to walking up the hill to my house without dying because now I am carrying a big belly and the baby pushes my lungs up, decreasing my breathing capacity.

There are many more things that can be added to the list, but I won't state the obvious nor make my first blog too long.
The thing we look forward to most is having Junior and holding him.

Hot, hot, hot!

Its been crazy hot here for the last two weeks. This article should give you an idea of just how hot its been:

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 12:25 AM

BUDAPEST (AFP) - The heatwave in central and southern Europe killed an estimated 500 people in Hungary last week, the country's chief medical officer announced yesterday.

Ferenc Falus said that during the week from July 15 to July 22 the heat in central Hungary "contributed to the early death of 230 people, which nationally means about 500 deaths".

The announcement of hundreds of deaths comas as heavy rain and extreme temperatures continue to batter Europe.

Britain was experiencing its worst flooding in living memory, while across the continent in the Balkans people were warned to stay indoors to avoid searing temperatures with deaths reported in Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, and Romania.

Temperatures in the region were recorded at 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and above, with Greece expecting a high of 45 Celsius on Tuesday and Italy just behind at 44 Celsius, hours after Rome recorded one of its warmest nights ever on Monday at 27.1 degrees.

Bulgaria has also experienced its hottest temperatures since records began with the mercury shooting above 45 degrees Celsius in parts of the country, and more than 860 people reportedly fainting in the streets in Romania.

Magyar vagyok, nem turista!

After many months of bureaucracy, my perseverance has paid off, and I now have my settlement papers in Hungary (like the equivalent of having a Green Card in the US)! Until now I was here on a Missionary Visa, which prevented me from being able to do many things, including getting a job or signing certain contracts.
Today I got my Hungarian Identification card in the mail, so now I don't have to show people my Colorado driver's license anymore - which is always met with confusion and 5 minutes of discussing with the colleagues about whether or not that is acceptable as a form of ID.

Although things are coming together, although I still have to get 2 more important documents before I am finally finished with all the paperwork, and I am having a lot of difficulty getting these papers. For example, you can't get the TB card (National Insurance), unless you have a job; BUT you can't get a job unless you have a TB card! Lovely!
Then the office that is supposed to give the TB card told me that I need to go to the Unemployment office to get my TB card, but at the Unemployment office they told me that they can't help me with anything until I get a TB card.
Anyways, please pray that God will put it on someone's heart at one of these offices to actually help me out!

New Belly Picture

Here is the long-awaited belly picture - taken June 26th.
We have only 8 weeks to go now! That is,unless Junior gets silly and decides to come out early-which we are hoping he doesn't!

Another amusing sign

This is a street sign in Eger. We always have a good laugh when we drive by this street.

Puky = Fart. Miklós = Nicholas.

Today we were laughing and taking pictures of it, and 2 old people stopped to look at us, totally not able to comprehend why we were laughing - as if living on Puky Miklós street is the most normal thing in the world!

Picture of the baby!

Here's a picture of Rosemary's belly that we took today. I think if you look really closely you can even see an image of Junior!

Kis Kuki

Junior let us look between his legs last week, and we saw a kis kuki - for those of you who know what that means!
Anyways - in case you don't know what that means - it means that Junior is a boy...well, probably! The doctor did look 4 times, so its pretty sure.
Now we're trying to figure out names, which isn't really all that easy. I wanted to name the kid Zorán (I'm totally serious about that), but I'm having trouble talking Rosemary into it. Maybe she'll have a change of heart. I hope so.
The only problem with naming him Zorán, would be that there is a bad Hungarian musician by that name:
But, I guess you could argue that if his music is bad enough, then that would make it awesomely bad, thereby giving a basis to my argument for why we should name him Zorán!

Confession

For years I refused to watch the movie Zoolander, because I thought it was about animals.

Not just one of the Jackson 5

We love former Yugoslavia!


We just took a short trip down through Croatia and Bosnia to Montenegro and back.
Its more than just bombed-out buildings, like many might think!

Palm trees, ancient walled cities, Turkish mosques and bridges, and lots of greasy chevapi, burek, and baklava does the body good.

Oh, and our favorite Communist dictator of the 20th century would have to be Josip Broz Tito (Gorbachev is a close second, but he disqualified himself from the #1 position because of that whole arms race thing; Nagy Imre {nem az egri polgármester} is biztos jó lett volna, csak nem volt esélye...).
You could argue over how good of a guy Tito was, but as far as dictators go, I don't think you could find a better one. Who else could keep such a diverse and mixed up group of people in total peace (and prosperity, compared to the rest of the Communist world) for 35 yrs?
It was only after Tito's death that things got all crazy down there - which I guess shows Tito's greatest failure as a leader: that he failed to raise up people who would successfully continue what he had started.
In fact, Tito did more than just keep the peace in Yugoslavia, he actually unified the people. To this day, in all the countries of former Yugoslavia (especially Bosnia), you find streets and squares and memorials commemorating Marshall Tito.
The real shame is that in the West, the name "Tito" will only be remembered by most people as the name of Michael Jackson's unsuccessful older brother.