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:

Less than a week ago Sebastian turned one year old.  Crazy.  Hard to believe that a year ago he looked like this.  He was a tiny (well, 9+ lbs tiny) little guy who couldn’t really do much of anything but pee, poop and cry (and, once in a blue moon, sleep).  Now he’s walking around the house, signing all his signs (15 or so, at present count), babbling away, and seeming more and more like a human being every day.  He pushes his new shopping cart around the house, back and forth, around and around, inside and outside.  He gives Misha hugs and kisses (sometimes more than Misha can take).  He is very helpful in the kitchen, helping his mom and dad with the stirring and mixing and emptying the dishwasher and putting things in the sink and taking things out of the cabinets.  He tells us when he’s pooped and it’s time to change his diaper.  He points to specific foods that he wants to eat.  He loves taking his baths and climbing the stairs at bath time and playing with his bath toys.  He loves playing boomie at bedtime.  He asks for music when there’s no music playing.  He helps clean up his toys before it’s bedtime.  He listens intently (sometimes) when you’re reading him his books.  He gets super excited whenever he sees a dog (we were looking at a house and there was a Pomeranian and Sebastian was laughing HYSTERICALLY at it for a good five minutes).  He has caught on to the things that he’s not supposed to do and usually stays away from doing hem – play with the stereo, for example – but he still insists on playing with Misha’s food and water dish, oh, and climbing on the dishwasher.

Yesterday we took him outside with his cart and he was pushing it up and down the sidewalk with a huge grin.  Ever since Chanukah, when we were lighting candles every night, he’s come to expect us to light a candle up in the window.  So every late afternoon/evening, Sebastian looks up at the candle and signs ‘light’.

For Sebastian’s birthday, we made pancakes for breakfast and a fancy fruit/yogurt parfait that Juliann made for him.  After some technical difficulties we hooked up with his aunt, uncle, cousins and grandparents back in Georgia for some video present unwrapping.  He’s been playing with his new toys ever since.  Oh yeah, he also took a 2-1/2 hour nap in th morning/afternoon, is longest midday nap, I belive, ever.

I’ve attached some photos below.  You can go and see all the birthday photos on the photoblog.  There are also some new, non-birthday photos starting with this one on the photoblog.

Wow, that was fast.  It seems like 2008 zoomed right by.  Since it’s the first day of the new year, I thought I’d give everyone a quick update of where we (mostly Sebastian) are at.

Walking:  He’s almost there.  We’re pretty sure he can if he really wanted to, but he’s pretty content to stand, cruise and crawl.  He loves to play what we call the ‘boomy game’ where he stands up, raises his hands over his head, and then slams himself down on the ground/bed/parent.

Teeth:  Done.  His first tooth – bottom left front – popped out from the gum last week.  One down, a lot to go.

Playing:  He’s on an empty-everything kick – books from the bookshelf, pots from the kitchen cabinets, etc.  Unfortunately for us, he hasn’t figured out how to put everything back the way he found it yet.  His newest favorite toy is the soccer ball; he’s really good at rolling it and catching it.  He also loves his wooden sushi set and his bongos that he got for Chanukah.

Food:  He loves oatmeal, turkey, cheese, zucchini, red peppers, pancakes, butternut squash, peaches, mango/banana smoothies, blueberries and many other things.

Travel:  We just got a new carseat for him. He started to outgrow his original car seat, so we bought the bigger, front-facing seat.

Sleep:  He’s slowly getting better.  He has been getting some four hour chunks of sleep lately, mixed in with some threes and twos.  He typically has one nap in the middle of the day, and when it’s time to go to bed, he almost always goes to sleep very easily.

Housing:  Our lease is coming up for renewal in April, and the housing market has tanked and mortgage rates are dipping down towards 5%, so it looks like, if we can get a mortgage, we’ll be looking to buy a house.

War & Peace: Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to read as much of it as I would have liked, plus it’s difficult to read to him in the mornings now that he’s so mobile and he doesn’t really sit still for more than a minute or two.  I think we’re up to page 179.

That should be it for now.  If I’m missing something, leave a comment and I can add it in.

If you ask anyone who has lived in Portland, they’ll tell you the biggest problem with the city is the winters – they last for 6 months and all it does is rain.  Our first experience with a Portland winter was quite the opposite.  It started off realtively warm and sunny.  Native Portlanders commented how it was so unusual for the weather to be so terrific.  Then something happened as the nights grew longer and longer and the winter solstice approached – it got colder, and colder, and colder.  Then the snow began to fall.  The first snowfall was on a weekend and we got an inch or two and I was hopping around the house, ecstatic.  Then, about a week later it started to snow again.  And snow.  And snow.  By the end of the storm we had somewhere between a 15″ and 18″ of snow on the ground.  The entire city was covered in a blanket of white.  Long icicles hung from the eaves.  We took Sebastian outside for a walk every day, but it was cold, and we didn’t stay out too long.  One day I bundled up and walked the mile to the supermarket to pick up some necessities and there were people out and about walking around in the middle of the street (the sidewalks weren’t walkable, and the streets weren’t really much better), kids playing the snow, dogs running around all psycho.  It was a winter wonderland.  Everyone was smiling and happy and having fun.

I hadn’t been in a storm like that in, well, I don’t know how long.  Never in 17 years of living in Atlanta had I seen that much fall.  Maybe when I was visiting the Northeast after moving to Atlanta?  Maybe, there was snow when I was in New Hampshire, but I don’t think it was a foot-and-a-half because I drove my Hyundai to Vermont in it.  Like I said, I don’t remember seeing that much fall in a long, long time.

Snow this past weekend meant one thing:  a White Chanukah!  It was my first Chanukah away from my immediate family in, well, I don’t know how long.  Ever?  What to do?  Technology to the rescue!  My brother-in-law setup a webcam at their house, I turned on my laptop cam, and we connected via Skype in order to have a Video Chanukah.  We ate dinner together and we opened up presents together.  It was great seeing everyone, and it I’m sure they really enjoyed seeing us, especially Sebastian, who loves looking at the computer and interacting with the video.  We made homemade latkes and no-so-homemade matzoh ball soup.  Sebastian got bongos and wooden dinosaurs and other wonderful toys that’s he’s been playing with all week.  He was totally mesmerized by his very fist dreidel.  Even better were the candles that we lit in our homemade menorah (my grandmother’s glass candy dish filled with kosher salt with Chanukah candles stuck into it – out real menorah is still in a box in our basement and we couldn’t find it after an hour of looking).  One of Sebastian’s favorite signs is for ‘light’, and whenever he looks at the burning candles he signs ‘light’ with both hands.  Then I combined the signs for ‘fire’ and ‘light’ and he started using both of them when looking at the candles.  Booyah!  Then I showed him the sign for ’snow’ and now whenever he looks outside at the snow he signs ’snow’.  It’s great to see the sign language that we’ve been using with him for the past several months start to sink in.  He regularly uses the signs for ‘light’, ‘milk’, ‘more’, ’snow’, and sometimes ‘cat’ and ‘ball’.

Sebastian is also very close to taking his first steps.  He stands easily now, cruising along the furniture, hobbling around the house holding our fingers.  You can see that he thinks about doing it, but so far he just either falls forward or drops down into a crawl.  All his teething is finally going to pay off – two front bottom teeth are just starting to appear.  They should be out any day now.  His eating has progressed beyond the puréed foods.  He loves pancakes (no syrup), spaghetti, hummus and pita, and lots of other foods that we eat.  He still gets his daily dose of fruits and veggies so that he gets nice balanced meals.

Below are some new photos.  You can see all the snowstorm photos here, or all the newest Sebastian photos here.  Also, Juliann joined Facebook, so if you want to go visit here there, she would be happy to have you visit.  And now, what you’ve been waiting for, the photos (sorry for the weird photo sizes, the new version of Wordpress 2.7 changed the default image sizes).

Our car in the driveway:

A view down the street before the snow finished falling:

Juliann and Sebastian talking a walk in the snow:

Sebastian playing dreidel:

Sebastian eating breakfast:

For the first time, Sebastian only woke up two times during the night.  He slept for about 12 hours and woke up twice.  You have no idea how incredible that is (unless, of course, you’ve experience the same child-induced sleep deprivation).  He’s done this two night in a row.  He’s in his own room in his crib and sleeping for 5 hour chunks.  Hellelujah!

If you remember, the first month or so, the three of us went on hike after hike – Columbia River Gorge, Sauvie Island, Columbia River Gorge again.  For whatever reason, the hikes went on hiatus for a while, but now they’re back!  We went to Eagle Creek Trail in the Columbia River Gorge last week.  Apparently it’s a very popular hike…in the summer time.  It’s a wonderful hike along Eagle Creek – gentle incline, fantastic views, serene solitude.  When we got to the end of our hike (though not the end of the trail) we found out why it was such a great summer hike: a fantastic wading/swimming area at the base of Punchbowl Falls.  We’ll need to head back there when the weather warms up next year.  A picnic and a bathing suit would be perfect.

As far as Sebastian goes, he’s slowly learning how to stand on his own.  He’s not free standing for more than a second, but he’s definitely experimenting with it.  He’s also cllimbing a lot more; he’s figured out how to hitch his knee and leg up on things and pull/push himself up on things.  Sebastian is also starting to sleep a little better.  We took him to the Sleep Clinic at OHSU because he’s been sleeping so incredibly poorly for so incredibly long.  We had a consultation with some of the doctors and when we got home we started working on their suggestions.  We moved his crib into his own room and we tweeked his bedtime routine a little bit.  The results?  Instant progress!  To get an idea of how poor a sleeper he was, the first night he was in his room he woke up 9 times during the night, and that was his best night sleep, well, pretty much ever.  The next night he slept for a 6 hour stretch – his longest ever!  That night, unfortunately, seems to be an aberration, but his sleep patterns have definitely improved to the point where he is now reliably (knock-on-wood) sleeping for 3 hour stretches.  He’s asleep by 7pm and he wakes up at 10pm, 1am and 4am, with minor variations every night.  Sebastian is also slowly learning to put himself to sleep by himself, which, according to the doctors, is a learned skill, so we’re trying to help encourage him in every possible way to do so.

Portland update! I discovered something here in Portland that I never found in 17+ years in Atlanta: zeppoles!  For those of you who don’t know, zeppoles are fried balls of dough covered in powdered sugar, not unlike bengiets.  When I was a kid on Long Island, we would go to the Italian Festivals (does anyone know what the festivals were for?) and they would have zeppole stands where you could get a bag of zeppoles smothered in powdered sugar.  I found an Italian bakery not far from us that sells zeppoles on the last Saturday of every month, so we swung by yesterday on the way home from the farmer’s market and I got 6 zeppoles for $2.  Delicious!  I almost went back for more, but I decided to wait until next month – it’s best not to overdo a good thing.  That’s about it for Portland, other than the fact that we had a really nice November – much less rain and much more sun than usual (or so Portlanders have been saying).

The photos today are courtesy of Eagle Creek Trail.  Please visit the photoblog for all the photos.

Eagle Creek, towards the beginning of the hike:

Punchbowl Falls, from the overlook point along the trail:

Sebastian roaming around the overlook:

He found a boulder to climb:

Very intense:

Dad making sure he doesn’t take a tumble:

More mushrooms!  By now, you should know I’ve been on a mushroom kick:

More of the creek:

This is at the bottom of the trail that leads to the base of Punchbowl Falls.  If you walk up the creek and around the bend, the falls is right there.  This is a fantastic place to go swimming/wading in the summer time:

More rushing creek:

One of the other falls a short way downriver from Punchbowl:

It seems that Sebastian is learning new things every day.  His newest thing is scrunching up his nose when he’s happy or excited.  I’ll try and get a photo of it sometime soon before he grows out of it.  He’s feeding himself O’s.  Whenever he gets one in his mouth he gets SO excited!  He’s gotten very good at throwing the ball (and other toys).

The big event is that we moved his crib into his own room.  This should hopefully be helpful with getting him and, just as importantly, us, more sleep.  We’ll see how it works.  Wish us luck.

A couple of photos.

Sebastian playing with his shadow:

Sebastian at the Farmer’s Market with a leek:

Fig Tree in Autumn:

I know, I know.  Again.  It’s been forever since I last updated the blog and provided everyone with much anticipated photos of Sebastian.  Sorry about that.  So here we go.

This is our first autumn in Portland.  I didn’t realize how much I missed this season until we moved here.  Atlanta doesn’t really have autumn.  Sure, leaves change, but for the most part they change from green to brown, and autumn usually only lasts a couple weeks or so.  The colors here in Portland are amazing.  Everywhere you look there are yellows and oranges and reds.  The whole city is alive with color.  There are so many elm and birch and maple and beech and japanese maple and so many other kinds of trees with wonderful leaves that you can’t help but be in awe.  We have a couple of maple trees right out front of the house and there was nothing better to wake up in the morning and open the blinds to see bright reds and oranges filling our view.

Of course, with the beautiful trees comes the weather.  Ask anyone in Portland about Portland and you’ll get the same response:  best city to live in…except maybe in the winter.  Gray and rainy is how it is aptly described.  This week is supposed to be beautiful – 50s and sunny, but earlier this week it was quite gray and rainy and pretty cold, too.  It’s something that I’ll have to get used to.  No more shorts and t-shirts in January.

As far as Sebastian goes (you didn’t think I was going to get around to him, eh?), he’s doing great.  He’s somewhere around 21 pounds now and he’s eating three square meals a day, all hand prepared by us (mostly Juliann).  He’s been eating eggplant, sweet potato, beets, apples, pears, grapes, oatmeal, rice cereal, carrots, peppers, pumpkin, squash, and other things, I’m sure.  Besides the fruit, his favorite is golden beets.  I think he takes after his mom when it comes to food likes (most things) and dislikes (few things).  He’s crawling up a storm.  He flits around the house like a hummingbird looking for nectar.  He cruises while holding onto tables and chairs and couches.  He loves playing giddyapp-horsey, which is pretty much him just bouncing himself up and down chaotically while standing up (or being held).  He’s been teething something fierce lately, but still no teeth.  Any day now, I’m sure of it.

I haven’t taken as many photos as I would have liked this past month, mostly because all three of us were sick for a couple of weeks each.  It was a pretty bad cold, but I laid up for a while, and I just didn’t have the energy to get out with the camera.  Luckily I got a couple nice shots of autumn in Portland.  I haven’t taken as many of Sebastian lately, but I am planning on getting some of him real soon and I’ll post them when I do.

[War and Peace update: page 160 out of 1455 - completed Part 1]

As usual, a bigger selection of photos can be found on my photo blog:

• Autumn in Portland photos
• Hoyt Arboretum photos
• Mushroom photos
• Sebastian photos

Sebastian in the Ergo Carrier at Hoyt Arboretum:

Sebastian looking a bit like a faerie in our backyard garden:

Sebastian being very excited:

Portland’s autumnal colors:

Ginkgo:

Late autumn at Hoyt Arboretum:

Cool root fan:

Fern in the setting sun:

Mushroom at Hoyt:

Earlier today we were all hanging out in the living room and before we knew it Sebastian was playing behind the open door to the stairs that lead to our second floor.  Juli and I got up at the same time and peaked around the door and there was Sebastian already climbing up the stairs!  We sat ourselves on the stairs and made sure the he wasn’t going to fall and he kept climbing higher and higher (photos below).

The other things that he did this weekend was go down the slide at the playground almost by himself.  At first I laid him down halfway up so he could slide down on his back, but he really wanted to sit up and go down the slide, so I held his hand and let him slide most of the way down the slide just holding my hand.  He loved it!  He went down a bunch of times smiling and laughing the entire time.

Sebastian has also been doing more and more cruising.  For those of you who don’t know the baby lingo, that means that he stands around holding onto things and shuffles around while standing.  Essentially, walking around while holding onto things.  He’s a little tentative, but he is getting around more and more.

Here are the latest photos.  I’ve been a bit lax with the photography, so I apologize.  Here are the links to all the photos:

http://literalshore.com/zenphoto/sebastian/

http://literalshore.com/zenphoto/sebastian/2008-09-29/

[War and Peace update: page 127 out of 1455]

We went to the Saturday Farmer’s Market at PSU like we always do first thing Saturday morning, and it was cold this weekend, so we had to bundle Sebastian up.  He was the most popular kid at the Farmer’s Market.

Here he is climbing the stairs:

Sebastian LOVES our friends’ kitten, Calvin.

Climbing the stairway to heaven:

He’s so sweet when he’s sleeping:

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.