Kyler's One!

Kyler's officially a number old - he turned ONE yesterday. To help celebrate the event, we had a very special guest - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stopped by in Prague - just to help celebrate! She had to break away from the party a bit early to meet some Czech parliamentarians, sign a treaty, attend a state dinner, and run some other errands while she was in town. Dr. Rice did stop long enough to comment on Danna's Cinderella dress, meet Jad's friend "Panda", and wish Kyler a very happy birthday! Kyler, of course was much more interested in grabbing the hair of the kid standing next to him.

The second most exiting event of the day? The chocolate cake, of course! We have a tradition in our family - turn one, and you get to plant your face in a chocolate cake - stuffing it in your mouth whichever way works best. Kyler had no problems fulfilling his role as a our latest one-year-old-cake-eater!

A job well done, I'd say... only thing left for me was to help the special guest hop back on her plane this morning.

Kyler Pictures

I've finally gotten around to posting some more pictures of Kyler and his "fan club" (Jad and Danna).

Check out all the latest photos here.

Proud siblings

I got to wake up Jad and Danna yesterday morning with the news of their new little little brother. Jad's first words when I told him he had a new baby brother? "Yipee!" Overnight, "Baby Waby" transformed into "Baby Kyler", and Danna proceeded to prance around the house chanting "Baby Ky, Baby Ky, Baby Ky."

Danna assumed her role as a protective big sister right away. In the afternoon, after holding her baby brother for a couple minutes, it was time head home. She looked at her grandmother with big, concerned eyes and asked "Tayta, you take care of Kyler for me?"

More pictures on the website: http://www.rubesh.info/pictures/2007/Kyler/kyler.htm

Introducing... Kyler Kevin Rubesh

We're very pleased to introduce... all the way from Edmond, Oklahoma - and our first child born in the USA - Kyler Kevin Rubesh. Vital stats? Seven pounds, five ounces (3.4 kilos), and 20 1/2 inches (52 cm) long. Following in the example of his brother and sister, Kyler arrived a little early - at 37 weeks. In fact, while we were in the middle of debating his exact arrival date with the our doctor, he just decided that he'd had enough of the womb and wanted to get out and start having fun with his family!

Erin started having mild contractions yesterday afternoon, so we rushed her into the hospital to get looked at. Though the contractions quickly subsided and it didn't look like she was beginning labor, we decided that it would be safer for her to spend the night hooked up to the monitors at the hospital. Sure enough, at around 2:00 AM, Erin's water broke, the doctor was paged, and the race was on! Kyler made his grand entrance at about 4:00 AM, and both he and Erin are doing marvelously.

Thanks for all your prayers through this pregnancy, and continue to pray for Erin as she recovers from her cesarean section.

The day before

OK, so I'm cheating, but just a little bit. These pictures were actually taken on the 6th... the day before the day before. At the time, we had no idea that Kyler would be born in just a couple days.

What we did know is that we wanted to get a couple pics of Jad and Danna with Erin and "Baby Waby". These turned out too well not to share with y'all.

On the left, the kids are giving their brother a kiss. For the shot on the right, I told them that Baby Waby was trying to say something to them. They were listening hard to hear him!