Baby Bunting

This block is called Baby Bunting and was an easy choice for my Zach. I still remember bringing him home from the Dutch hospital where he was born. Steve and I put him in the car seat and strapped him in...it seemed strange to put such a tiny baby in such a big chair, his little head flopped over...Its a good thing that one of the shower gifts we received was a little cushion to put in car seats to support newborns over sized heads. I found out only recently that he was born in the shadow of the church where a pair of his ancestors were wed well over 400 years before. I wish I had known that then...

Thank goodness we had friends in the Netherlands, the Van De Glinds, the Paardekoopers, and our American friends the Polings, all who had experience with babies, something neither Steve nor I did. Both being the youngest in our own families, this was as up close and personal to a baby we had ever been! There is nothing like being thrown in the deep end to teach you how to swim and we were in well over our heads! But we managed and I think on the whole did a pretty decent job. We did it with a minumum of gadgets too. We bought a second hand crib before we left Clovis, we were given a second hand high chair and an old fashioned baby swing that you crank up by hand. The only things new were the play pen, the stroller and the car seat. Our shopping for baby stuff was severely limited. The BX on Soesterberg was small and had very little in the way of baby goods, and the Dutch stuff was out of our price range, so we did without all the bells and whistles. I did not even realize it until we moved back to the States and I saw all the baby stuff we had gotten by without. At the time I was a little disapointed to not have been able to play with all the gadgets, but you know instead of waisting time on baby gadgets I got to play with the baby instead and that was deffinately the better deal.