Help with exposing window

[Talguy <talguy385 gmail com>]

So I have only been messing around with gtk/gtkmm only for three months and it has only been the drawing area part.  What I am trying to do is create an interface for my senior design project where we are utilizing cairo's vector drawing skills to to draw gauges that will be manipulated with the data received from out data logger hardware.  

The one problem out of a couple problems that I am having right now is that when I want my objec to display the window and the initialized drawing then enter the main loop that checks the data logger for data and draws it to the screen.  I tried to draw the window while  i was still in the constructor and then enter the onject's main loop while in the constructor.  When I do this the window is not displayed and it stays in the main loop forever.  I realized its because I never left the constructor

I know in int main to get the program running you have to added it to gtkmm's main loop. so my question is: how would I be able to enter into my main loop after the window has been created.  

  Evan