Sebastian’s Quiver

I got home from work yesterday and Sebastian was playing on the living room floor.  He saw me walk in and usually he’ll just get a excited and I’ll come over to him.  But now, he realized, he can crawl. So he got on all fours and quickly crawled across the room to me.  What a great feeling.

Having sold our house in Decatur, we decided that it was finally time to take a weekend off and head to the coast.  We chose Manzanita, which was both pretty close (only a two hour drive) and also highly recommended by everyone.  We found a nice house across the street from the beach at the last minute and headed out there on Friday afternoon.  We had a great time just hanging out, reading, and taking walks on the beach.

While we were hanging out inside, Sebastian finally did what he’s been trying to do for two months now:  crawl.  He took his very first official crawling steps.  He FINALLY figured out how to, when on all fours, to pick up his hands and move them forward.  Up until now his hands would remain stationary and he would move his butt up and down and back and forth trying to locomote.  First, one hand move forward, then a leg.  Then he did it again.  He was crawling!

That was a week ago, and now he’s crawling all over the place.  He chases Misha; he crawls to the speaker wires (he LOVES wires and cable); he crawls here; he crawls there; he crawls everywhere.

The other thing that he’s figured out is how to stand himself up!  He can go from sitting or crawling, to pulling himself up on things into a standing position.  He’s done it on both of us and he’s done it on the open dishwasher (which he loves).

Every day it’s something brand new.  It’s very exciting.

Here are some photos from our trip to Manzanita.  As usual, all the photos are on the photoblog (and there are a LOT of them).

[War and Peace update: page 96 out of 1455]

Little dude LOVES playing in the sand:

Enveloping mist:

All dressed up for the cold, windy evening:

Solitude:

Enjoying the sun and the surf:

This photo was an accident.  I didn’t expect the different colors:

Colorful sunset with a crescent moon:

After over a month of back and forth and waiting and edge of your seat anticipation, we have FINALLY sold our house in Decatur, Georgia.  I’ll certainly miss it - I was there for over 7 years - and selling it in a down housing market certainly sucks, but overall I’m glad to be rid of it.  It was on the market for 8 months even though the Decatur market wasn’t that bad.  Problem was the house is a two bedroom, and apparently in the current market, they are a lot harder to sell.  But now we are free and clear of it and we don’t have two house payments.  I don’t know if I’m going to know how to live in Portland and not pinch pennies.

One of the most exciting things is that we can now start looking at houses here in Portland.  True, our lease isn’t up until April, but we already paid last months rent, and first month’s mortgage is free, so if we buy a house in February, the month of March is totally free for us.  We’ll probably start looking in earnest in December, if we can last that long.

Taking a hit on the house in Decatur certainly sucks big time, but the housing market in Portland, which has been totally ridiculous for the past several years, is finally coming back down to earth.  Any money that we didn’t make on the house in Decatur should be made up by the housing drop here. (That is what we call the silver-lining-analysis.)

For your patience with the blog, I’m throwing in some extra photos for your enjoyment.  I dug deep into the photo archive to come up with some special photos that have yet to see the light of day.  These are photos from Sebastian’s six month birthday.  I was supposed to have a separate, exclusive post for these, but that never happened, so I’m tacking them onto the end of this post.  Here, in all their glory, are the photos of Sebastian’s first meal of solid food (rice cereal).  You’ll see that he wasn’t too enamored with the flavor, which he has since come to enjoy (those photos will be posted at a later date).

I thought that I would share this bit of cuteness:

Sebastian Being Cute

If you can’t view it, let me know.  It’s a Quicktime movie, so you might need to install Quicktime if you don’t have it.

Over the past week Sebastian has really improved his motor coordination.  His hands are in a constant state of clinching and unclinching, trying to grab onto anything possible.  He’s also an expert of bringing things to his mouth.  Bunny ears?  Check!  Abima head-nipples?  Check!  Books?  Check!

The other things Sebastian has learned how to do is squirm.  He hasn’t figured out how to roll over or crawl yet, but he’s a top notch squirmer.  This morning he squirmed halfway across the bed and almost pushed me off.  That means we now have to be careful where we put him down and where we let him nap.  He’ll be turning over in no time.

I thought I’d snap a couple photos this morning while he was at his most peaceful: napping in his chair.  You can see his Bunny-Fo-Fo in the second photo.

Finally.  Sebastian FINALLY started laughing out loud while he was awake.

Normally, Juliann does the paddycaking with Sebastian, but this morning we were in the kitchen and he was sitting in his vibrating chair and I decided to give the paddycake a try.  As soon as I started he started to crack up!  A huge grin instantly appeared on his face and he could not stop laughing for two rounds of paddycake.  His laughter was raining down upon us, wave after wave.  What a wonderful   I have to admit I was getting a little worried about his lack of laughter, but I can rest easy knowing that he has a lot of laughter inside of him.

We also are pretty sure that Sebastian has started teething.  Today wasn’t bad, but the past several days he’s started drooling a LOT and he’s been wanting to chew on things, which seems to bring him relief.

In case you were wondering, Sebastian is about 16 lb and he’s about 24.5 inches long.

We are most probably going to go hiking on Sunday, and I took some photos of him this evening, so I will probably be posting more photos shortly.

UPDATE:  upon further measurement, Sebastian is actually 26 inches long.

Sebastian turned 3 months a several days ago and he’s doing more and more every day.  He’s ALMOST rolling over now.  When you put him on the floor on his back he likes to do crunches with his legs.  Sometimes he’ll throw his legs over to one side along with his arm and he is SO close to rolling over.  We cheer him on every time he does it, but his underneath arm always seems to stop him.  He’s not strong enough to move it into a position where he can get the rest of his body over it.  It shouldn’t be long now.  My uneducated guess is within the next week.

He’s also babbling a lot more.  He does a lot of variations of “ahhhhhhh” sounds and sometimes he’ll do it for 10 to 15 seconds.

Sebastian is also sleeping more.  His normal bedtime is around 9pm or so and last night he slept 4am, which is his longest stretch of uninterrupted sleep ever.  He’s also starting to go to sleep on his own.  Juli drove down to visit her grandmother in Eugene last week and he slept for the entire two hour car ride.

He has also gotten really grabby.  He loves grasping clothes and fingers and books and papers and toys.  He still loves his Abima and his bunny and now he’s starting to talk to them.  He loves it when his mother plays paddycake with him - whenever the song starts he gets super smiley and his eyes get really big.  Speaking of smiling, Sebastian laughed out loud while he was awake for the first time!  It was more of a giggle, but he did it a couple of times within a span of a minute or two.

Sebastian has been getting out more and has been much more social recently.  Juli takes him to mommy/baby yoga and storytime at the library and he loves watching all the other kids and he loves it when the older kids pet him on the head.

Juli and I took Sebastian on his very first hike on Sunday.  We drove out to Sauvie Island (a whopping 20 minutes away) and we went for a hike near the big lake on the island.  It was BEAUTIFUL. (See below to see some photos of the wildlife that we saw.)  Yet another reason why Portland is a fantastic place to live.  The very same day we went on a wonderful two hour hike in 65 degree weather with the sun shining, a guy I work with (Mark) went skiing about an hour outside Portland.  Oh, and on Saturday we went to the farmer’s market and picked up some freshly laid eggs, just-picked butter lettuce (amazing!), picked some Swiss chard from our backyard, and got a fantastic espresso from Ristretto Roasters.  All in all, a wonderful weekend.

As always, more photos can be seen on the photoblog, complete with descriptions.

Click on the last photo above to see a larger version so you can see what the bird is carrying in his talons.

We went to a children’s store in the Alberta Arts section of Portland the other day (for you Atlantans, think Little Five Points, but more shops and restaurants) and they had tons of toys and brands that Juli and I really like (Plan Toys, blabla, Haba, etc.). Juli was talking to one of the women who work there (there were four people working there even though the store is less than 1000 sq ft) about how we were looking for a rattle for Sebastian. The woman asked how old he was, and when we told him that he was almost 3 months, she pretty much told us to forget about it because they can’t comprehend anything at that age anyway, and they can’t really see anything or DO anything with stuff. Ummmm….really? And you work for a children’s store? And, oh yeah, you’re wrong. Sebastian loves his rattle. And he loves his Abima.  So, Lady Who Works In The Children’s Store, maybe you should learn a little something about children before you decide to sell toys to their parents.

As for Sebastian, he’s getting more and more expressive with every passing day.  He does his share of babbling and grunting.  His manual dexterity is light years ahead of where it was last week - he’s grabbing on shirts and cat fur and toys all the time.  He does a pretty good job of trying to manipulate Abima’s head nipple into his mouth.  He definitely prefers some toys over others.  The other day I put him on the bed after a diaper change and I found Abima laying around so I picked him up and showed him to Sebastian and Sebastian started flailing his arms and legs in happiness to see Abima.  It wasn’t long before he was sucking on Abima’s head nipple.  I also found a wooden song flute and Sebastian loves it when I play it for him.  Of course the only song I can really play is Michael Row Your Boat Ashore, but I’m not a bad improviser (though I wouldn’t classify myself as a good improviser, either).

So here are some new photos.  As always, there are more photos on the photoblog.