Sebastian's Quiver

Before you comment on how big a slacker I am, remember that I’m one of the core constituents of Generation X.  Slacking is woven into the very soul of my being.  My default setting is ’slack’.  That might explain why it’s been months since my last update.  Then again, it could be because we’ve been busy.  Apparently, once a kid starts walking you have even less time to relax than before.  Who knew?  The other thing that we’ve been up to is house hunting and house buying.  As of this very moment that I’m typing this, we are the proud new owners of a new (old) house.  More on that in a bit.

Sebastian update!  He’s walking like a crazy man.  He has four teeth and he’s cutting two more.  He love eating blueberries, Swiss chard, Italian kale, risotto, beets, oatmeal, bananas, sand, turkey pastrami, pancakes, and, most of all, peaches.  Food he doesn’t like: mashed potatoes, any turkey that isn’t turkey pastrami, chicken, beef, and fish.  He still has his mother’s eyes and his father’s dimple.  His light brown hair is starting to get curly in the back, but it’s still mostly straight like his mom’s.  He got totally freaked out by a couple of ants that he saw while he was taking a bath and he occasionally gets offended by a stray piece of food that is sitting too near his foot.  His signing vocabulary is around 30 words or so, but he hasn’t spoken anything more than mamamama and dadadada.  His tormenting of Misha has picked up of late, much to Misha’s chagrin.  He loves playing ball, which consists of him running around with a ball and sometimes handing it over to one of us, or sometimes just swatting at it randomly around the room.  He gets very frustrated very easily when he can’t do something on the first try (I have NO idea where he got that trait from…).  He has slept through the night several times over the past month and has been better in general about sleeping, but with him cutting new teeth, his sleep progress has been interrupted.  He is definitely moving in the right direction when it comes to sleeping, but it’s a slow process.  He loves airplanes, and signs ‘airplane’ and looks up at the sky every time he hears one (which is often, since the airport isn’t more than 15 minutes away).  He’s pretty good at sharing with other kids, though he also thinks it’s totally within his right to go up to a kid and take whatever they have away from them.  Sebastian is a very active kid; he doesn’t sit still for too long (remind you of someone?) and he has to touch EVERYTHING.  He is, as the music teacher noted at the music class that he goes to, a kinesthetic learner.  If you look at the traits of a kinesthetic/tactile learner, it pretty much describes me to a tee.

For the past four months or so, Juli and I have been house hunting.  The housing market crashed, the interest rates dropped through the floor, and we had already sold our house in Atlanta and renting in Portland.  The only way we could have timed it better was if we sold our house 6-9 months before we did, otherwise, it was prefectly timed.  The houses we were most interested were in the worst school districts, so we started looking in SE Portland (as opposed to N or NE Portland, which were our first choices).  The only reason why we weren’t looking in SE is that we weren’t familiar with it.  It’s not like it was far away, it was only one mile south of where we live now, but if you lived in Portland, you would understand about how the five different quadrants of Portland are very different – North, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest.  East and West are separated physically by the Willamette River, but also separated by a lot more psychically.  So we started investigating SE and found out we really liked it.  In addition, it seemed that all the school districts were top notch, plus they had some great charter schools (an environmental charter school and a Japanese charter school, for example).  We eventually found a house in a nice, quiet neighborhood that was owned by the same woman for 40+ years.  The main floor is about the same size as our house in Decatur.  In fact, there is a lot about this house that is reminiscent of our house in Decatur, except better.  For you geeks out there, it’s Decatur++.  So, the main floor is about the same size, but it’s a three bedroom, one bath.  The kitchen is smaller and crappy, but we’re tearing it out and renovating it before we move in.  It has sliding glass doors onto a concrete patio in the backyard.  The living room is much bigger than our old one, and the flow of the house is much better than the Decatur house.  The big bonus to the house is that it has a full basement with excellent height (7′6″ or so).  It has a two car drive under garage, but one of the garages was turned into a workshop, so there is no garage door there anymore.  The rest of the basement is partially finished, but our big plan is to tear everything out and renovate the basement into an office, a bedroom, a media room, a bathroom, and….drumroll please….a sauna.  We should be able to get 900 sq ft or so out of the basement.  The office will be where the old garage was and we’re actually going to put a garage door back into it (since the opening is still there, but just roughly closed in with plywood and framing), but we’re planning on putting a glass garage door that will eventually open onto a little garden area.  That’ll be my office (since I work from home).  The yard is smaller than the one we had previously, but we’ll have room for the chickens that we’ve been wanting and a nice vegetable garden and space for Sebastian to be able to play.  The other great thing about the house is the neighborhood.  The Decatur house was half a mile from Oakhurst village and a mile and a half from the Decatur square.  This house is 1/4 mile from an area like Oakhurst, but with shops and restaurants that we’re actually interested in going to.  And best of all?  Two record shops!  LPs!  Vinyl!  BOOYAH!  Another 1/4 mile past that is another group of shops, including the best grocery store in town (New Seasons) and a grocery co-op with a weekly farmers market that goes all year round.  The house needs a little work (thick carpet and crappy wood paneling abound), but it will be fun to shape this house into Our Home.  (Did I mention the carpeted bathroom? CARPET IN THE BATHROOM!  That’s up there in Top Three Disgusting Things You Can Find in a House.)  The bones of the house are excellent – thick 6×6 beams, solid concrete foundation, and one of the driest basements I’ve ever been in.  We even had the sellers put on a brand new roof as part of the sale.  I’d post photos, but until I have before and after photos, I think I’ll hold off – with the carpet and panelling, it’s pretty scary looking.

Oh! I almost forgot the two most important things about the house!  The semi-finished basement has a built in bar!  We need to spiffy it up a bit, but it’s a bar!  It’ll go in the media room.  The other thing is that I got the sellers to throw in the safe that is in the basement.  Safe, you say?  Yeah.  A 120+ year old large steel safe with hand painted interior doors.  It doesn’t lock, but it is COOL!  I included a photo at the end of the below gallery.  After I extricate it from the closet, I’ll take some better photos.  Well, I’m going to remove the closet from around the safe – I don’t think that safe is really ever going to be moved.  I think we’ll build the office around the safe since it’s pretty close.  The thing probably weighs well over 1000 pounds, but that’s just a wild guess.

That’s really about it.  We went hiking a couple weeks ago (photos below), but we’ve mostly been staying close to home.  The next month will be taken up by house renovations and packing, with maybe a weekend trip to the coast to celebrate our May 9 anniversaries (6 years since we met, 5 years since we got engaged).

Here are some photos: