Sebastian's Quiver

Some photos I took of Sebastian while he was watering the garden.

The 4th of July weekend was our first hot spell for the year.  Not bad. Prior to that it was in the 60s and 70s, and this coming week will also only be in the 60s (that’s the high temperature. In Fahrenheit).  Ah, Portland in the summer! Better yet, we bought a grandma house, which means only one thing: central air conditioning! Yes, we have one of the few houses here in Portland that has central air conditioning.

What else is going on?  Well, it was my birthday a few days ago – I turned 39 years old. Who would have thunk that I would have lasted this long, eh? 39 isn’t that bad an age because it’s divisible by 13. 37 was good, too, since it was a prime number. 38 not so good. 40? I haven’t made up my mind on that one yet, though my best, and longest lasting, friend and I are planning a kickass trip somewhere crazy.  I’ll keep you up to date as next year rolls around.

Sebastian is doing fantastic. He’s starting to talk (vocally) now.  He has a ton of signs, probably 40 or so that he understands, and then a handful of signs that he made up on his own that we had to decipher (we’re still working on one or two of them).  He’s as curious as a cat (a real cat, not Misha, he’s not curious at all).  He loves pushing buttons and turning knobs petting the chickens and eating strawberries and all sorts of other things.

As far as the house in concerned, we’re still waiting for our kitchen to be finished. We have a fridge and a range (YAY, natural gas!), but no cabinets. The main floor is pretty much finished except for some trim and the kitchen. Oh, and the bathroom. We need to finish painting the ceiling, and then we can decide what to do with the horrible plastic tile in the shower, the lack of trim, ad the mismatched door. We also will eventually start working on the basement (after we unpack most of the boxes and get rid of a lot of stuff).

OK, time for the photos.  Here you go:

I know that I might have mentioned this once before, but I just wanted to let everyone know that if you’re interested in more frequent posts from me, you should check out (and follow religiously) my Tumblr site: http://shawnb.tumblr.com.  My tumblelog is more of a rapid post mechanism that includes everything from interesting tidbits I find throughout my day, to photos of the house renovation, to photos of Misha.  I post to it several times a day, sometimes more.

We’re heading to the Coast for a day, so I should have some new photos to post shortly.  And, as always, check out the photoblog for some recent photos:  http://www.literalshore.com/zenphoto

Here are some photos that we took this weekend.  Nothing more to report.

It seems winter has set in early here in Portland.  Summer usually is hotter for longer, but yesterday it rained all day, was gray, and the temperature barely got out of the 50s.  Welcome to Portland Winter.

So, to celebrate, I thought that I would post a couple more photos.  Sebastian, for the first time, has moved from a laying-on-his-belly position up into a sitting position.  Pretty neat.  He was just skootching himself around on his belly, and the next thing we knew, he was sitting up.

War and Peace update:  pg 80 out of 1455

Yummy! Peaches, Sweet Potatoes, and Rice Cereal

Close up of the food face

See! I can feed myself! (He really can't)

The only use for the vibrating chair. Sebastian doesn't sit in it anymore.

I always try to end with a photo of my wonderful, beautiful wife.

My apologies.  It’s been almost a month since I last posted, and I know all you loyal readers out there are just clamoring for more photos and info on Sebastian.  Well, here you go.

One of the main reasons I’ve been lax is that we had family come to visit!  Yay!  My elder sister Staci, her husband Mike and their daughter Christie stopped by first.  It was fantastic to have them stay with us (better house guests than they will be hard to find).  Sebastian had a ball playing with them (especially Zombie Mike – see photoblog) and we had a ball showing them a bit of Portland (Powell’s Books, Japanese Garden, NW 23rd shopping and Yuki Sushi – YUM!).  It was great having Christie around, and her help roasting coffee and picking raspberries and getting the photos of the duckling will always be appreciated.

The weekend after that my parents came for a visit!  Yay!  Sebastian loved playing with Grandma and Grandpa.  The stayed for the weekend after a couple of nights in Las Vegas, and we showed them a bit of Portland, too – both rose gardens, some bridges (sorry Mom), and Fife (thanks Dad).  As much of the time was spent with them playing with Sebastian.

As far as Sebastian goes, he’ll be 6 months old on July 25.  Half a year, can you believe it?!  He’s getting very close to crawling; he gets on his hands and knees, but he’s not too sure what to do from there and usually starts crying.  His current favorite pasttime (besides not sleeping at night) is playing the piano.  I sit in front of the piano with him on my lap and he just goes to town on it.  He’s currently in his free jazz/experimental phase, so the music isn’t really for everyone.  There are currently plans in the works to record some of it and post it here so you all can listen to his musical prowess.  Sebastian is also very close to eating solid foods.  All the experts say six months is a good time to start introducing him to solid foods, so we are starting to plan his first foray into solids foods.  What will be first?  Bananas?  Avocados?  You’ll have to wait and see.  I’ll try to remember to get some photos of his first food eating experience, and if I do, I’ll post them here.

On a more adult note, Juliann and I are both doing well.  We are a bit tired due to Sebastian’s horrible sleep patterns (or, more accurately, non-sleep patterns).  My new job is going well – you can see the iPhone application that I helped develop, and you can download it, too.  Juliann is getting ready to take her massage therapist licensing exam.

OK, that’s probably enough.  You just came here to check out the newest photos, so here they are.  As usual, you can check out the photoblog: Family Photos, Sebastian Photos and Japanese Garden Photos.

Perfect shot:

It’s Grandma!  And the blanket that Great-Great-Grandma made!

Oooooooo, a new toy:

Staring contest.  High Noon.  In front of Kitty’s Saloon:

Drool!

Gazing off into the distance:

At the Japanese Garden:

Sebastian delivering the Baby Death Grip to his Uncle Mike:

And of course, one last one of my wonderful wife:

I apologize for the lack of updates for the past week or so.  I was out in San Francisco at Apple’s WWDC on business (I’ve been working on an iPhone application, so it actually was quite relevant).  So I’m now catching up on some photos that should have been posted this past weekend.  Some are of Sebastian, and some are of flora in our backyard.  Sorry, no wild trips deep in the back country this week, unless you count wading through masses of unhygenic, unkempt nerds with little self-respect a wild trip.

So, without further ado, here are the latest photos taken of Sebastian (all of which, I might add, were taken by Juliann except for the bath shot). As usual, check out the photoblog to see all the photos of Sebastian and the nature photos.

As you can see, Sebastian enjoys reading his book while sitting on the couch.

He also likes to take baths.  See how clean we keep him!

Watch Misha try and hog the spotlight (and the focus).

Flowers in our backyard.  Notice the primary colors of the flowers.

More flowers.  This time, secondary colors.

A double rainbow (look closely) seen from our back porch.  You might have to click on the photo to get the full size version to see the second rainbow.

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.

I apologize for not being as diligent at posting photos as I should have been.  Updates in general have been a bit scarce.  One photo that I’ve wanted to capture is Sebastian smiling.  Yes!  Sebastian is now smiling.  And it’s not those smiles that are a result of farting or pooping (he’s always done those).  Now he’s smiling at Juli and I in general when he’s happy (i.e., when he’s not farting or pooping).  I’ll try and get some photos of the smile.  Meanwhile, hopefully these will tide you over:

 One of the best things about having a kid is dressing him up in the clothes that you want him to wear.  I really like Oilily clothes because of all the colors and patterns, but it’s easy to mix and match clothes to come up with a kick ass outfit.  Check out our new favorite outfit for Sebastian – blue onigiri onesie, red & orange striped pants, and green argyle socks:

Isn’t  it cute?  In case you are wondering those are 2 onigiri (rice balls) on his onesie.

Sebastian has been doing a great job with his head and neck muscles lately.  He have him doing several reps of 10 on the nautilus machine along with crunches and some work for his lats.  You can see below how well he’s doing during belly-time:

And here’s one more pic just to show off how freakin’ cute he is: