There are a few good things to come out of all this. We are forced to go out to eat a lot, so we are exploring the neighborhood, meeting people, and trying out a lot of restaurants. We will eventually have the kitchen that we want (if a bit small) with a kickass refrigerator, gas range, counters, butcherblock and fir floors.  The walls were painted and they are fantastic (let me know if you need a Portland painter).  We learned that just about everyone who lives around us had a friend or relative (or both) that was interested in buying our house, but we ended up snatching it up before anyone knew it was for sale. We’ve met more neighors and talked to more people (in restaurants, walking down the street, in the park, etc.) in the past couple of weeks than I met in seven years in Decatur. Sebastian loves the new house and has adapted superbly to the move. I think he might miss the stairs a bit from our rental, but we have lots of stairs outside the house for him to get his fill from. I can go on and on about how wonderful a place this is to live, but I don’t want to make you all TOO jealous. Did I mention the amazing refrigerator that I found on Craigslist?  I showed up to look at the fridge and I ended up talking to a complete stranger for almost an hour about kitchen renovations and refrigerators and countertops and a host of other things. Me. Talking to a stranger. I put a down payment on it (just as someone else was calling to set up a time to look at it), then showed up a few days later with my hauling/landscaping guy (who also builds fences, and does a whole host of other things, like play congas in some local bands). Well, I told the woman who I was buying the fridge from about how wonderful James is, so he gave her his card and now I got him some more business (after getting the fridge moved for chump change, because that’s how James is).  It’s a small world when everyone is so friendly.

So, the move. The Day of Dread. One day to move a house filled to the brim with stuff. And by stuff, I mean junk. We had probably 50 boxes in our basement that we never emptied out after our move from Atlanta to Portland. I went down there to tape up and label the boxes last week and I realized that most of it is just plain junk. Some time in my past most of these things were sentimental to me. I tend towards nostalgia. But after looking at all these things, I realized that I am the owner of 50 boxes of mostly junk.  Sure, the photos and mementos from my grandparents are very important to me and I’ll always keep and cherish them, but those things really are a small percentage of the whole. I know that when we finally start to go through them it will be difficult to throw a lot of the stuff away. How about my old bowling trophies from when I was in high school? My father kept his bowling trophies from when he was younger (oh yeah, I have those, too), so why shouldn’t I? I’ll probably keep them (on the off chance that my son will one day find them cool enough to want to carry them from house to house to house).  But crap from old jobs? Ancient, decaying paperbacks that I read in high school that probably weren’t even good back then?  Is there any reason to keep these things? It’s hard to throw away books, but I think a large majority of these will be taken down to Powell’s or some other used bookstore and sold off for 10¢ on the dollar (if I’m lucky). And it’s not just the sentimental stuff and books that are clogging the tubes, it’s every room in the house. How many pots and pans and dishes and bowls and knives and forks and glasses and mugs do two people need?  Whatever that amount is, triple or quadruple it and you’re approaching the number of that we have. Luckily our kitchen is small and the storage space smaller – we’ll be forced to make choices on what we are able to keep.

Oops, that was supposed to be about moving day.  OK, moving day.  One day to move a house filled to the brim with junk.  We did the best job we could to pack the house up. Of course, the more we packed, the more it seemed we needed to pack. The first half of the boxes are easy: books, LPs, clothes. But as you pack more and more, the stuff you have leftover suddenly doesn’t really fit neatly into boxes. Ugh, just thinking about it gets me angry (and anxious). Then there’s the piano. And the motorcycle that hasn’t been started in over a year (since Atlanta) that doesn’t have any brake fluid. Thinking about those two things kept me up a number of nights. I’ve had the piano moved a handful of times and every time I tell them that it’s probably the heaviest upright piano that they’ve ever moved.  I get the same response from everyone: “Pianos are our specialty! It won’t be a problem. We move heavy pianos all the time!”  Then they try and move it.  Oops. “Wow, that’s the heaviest piano I’ve every tried to lift.”  No duh.  This time, the mover’s ramps didn’t extend all the way to the top of the stairs so six of us (SIX!), only four of which were movers (James was the fifth and I was the sixth) managed to lift the piano up several stairs. Twice. A piano that probably weights close to 1000 pounds. Crazy. But we did it. It will never move from it’s living room position for as long as I am its owner, which is as long as I own this house. I’m through lugging this piano from house to house to house. It will be sold with the house (and probably the humungous safe in the basement, too, since that probably weighs about the same, if not more). I was also worried about them not finishing in time, since we had to be out of the house the next day. Little did I know that they worked until they were finished. The movers said that they’ve worked past midnight on occasion. “We work till we’re done,” is what they said. I wish I knew that before I spent nights worrying about it. They showed up at 8:30am and wrapped up by 7:00pm. They ended up making two trips, which actually was a huge boon, since I got them to put the motorcycle on the truck with the second load so I wouldn’t have to spend all day Sunday trying to get the brakes working and then have to drive the four miles with an expired Georgia tag. Crisis averted! Then Juli spent most of Sunday cleaning the house and packing the last things that were strewn around the house. After the landlord had the gall to complain about a little shmutz in the oven (after they didn’t even clean the house before we moved in), Juli talked her into giving us our full security deposit back, all thanks to her single-minded cleaning frenzy and her ability not to curse at the landlord (two skills I have yet to master).

Slowly but surely things are shaping up. I will celebrate the day when we’re done with this initial phase and we can settle in and start unpacking in earnest. It’s a wonderful house in a fantastic neighborhood.

And one last thing: we have three new additions to our family to announce: chicks!

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:

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:

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:

Sebastian and I have been reading the classic Goodnight Moon most nights at bedtime.  He loves looking at the drawings and the more read it, the more he pays attention to it.  We’ve also been reading Lord Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon, which we just finished this evening.  It’s quite good; I recommend it to everyone.  Several weeks ago we also started reading War and Peace.  Yes, that War and Peace.  We got through Chapter 1, but we haven’t yet started Chapter 2.

Juliann, Sebastian and I loaded the car up on Sunday and headed out to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden.  This week’s trip was quite a bit closer than the previous few – it was a 15 minute drive to the park in Southeast Portland (we live in Northeast).  I expected it to be nice, but it was even nicer than I had expected.  It was different levels (all stroller/wheelchair accessible) with very nice bridges and waterfalls and great landscaping.  I heartily recommend it to anyone willing to pay $3 to spend an hour or so walking around some really beautiful rhododendrons and azaleas and other nice flowers and trees.  Sebastian stayed awake for the entire excursion and he enjoyed the brightly colored flowers and the wildlife and the ponds and waterfalls.

This past Thursday, one of my oldest and dearest friends just happened to be in Portland on business so we got together and hung out a bit.  I’m glad he got a chance to meet Sebastian (and vice versa).  We got a chance to eat some Thai food, drink some fancy beers (some too wheaty, some too stout) and talk about fatherhood and recommendation engines and Shanie and her sheets.  A grand time was had by all.

So here are some photos of various things.  As usual, please visit the photoblog to catch up on all the photos, the below which are just a sampling.

Juliann, Sebastian and I took off to Multnomah Falls, the biggest, touristy falls in the Gorge by a huge margin.  The reason why we chose to do this hike was twofold:  1) The guide books said that the hike behind Multnomah Falls was one of the best waterfall hikes in the Gorge, and 2) it was cold and rainy and we knew few, if any, tourists would be clogging up Multnomah Falls.

We were right.  Few people were there.  Halfway up the very steep, mile long ascent to the top of Multnomah Falls (where the real hike begins) it really began to rain pretty hard.  Luckily, it let up and we got the top, though it was a tough uphill (1 mile with 800+ feet of ascent – that’s a lot).  Up behind the Falls it turned from a plain old uphill slog to a beautiful, verdant wonderland of cascading falls, rocky overhangs, and tall, old trees.  Juliann carried Sebastian most of the way in the sling, though I took him for about a mile in the middle and the last half mile out of the total 6+ miles.  We desperately need an Ergocarrier.

I’d like to point out how wonderful Sebastian was on the hike.  There was a short time when he was getting a little cranky, but that didn’t last long at all.  He slept for the beginning of the hike, but he was awake for most of it.  He was looking around at all the trees and water and falls.  When he was awake he never stopped gazing at everything around him.  We (i.e., Juliann) did a great job of keeping him dry when it was raining, but when he did get drizzled on, he didn’t mind it at all.  The only thing that he didn’t like was when his view of the scenery was blocked by the raincoat.

I’m not sure what else I can say about how beautiful this hike was.  I think it was one of the most beautiful hikes I’ve ever been on.  Oh yeah, did I mention that this was about a 30 minute drive from our house?

I posted about 45 photos on the photoblog with additional comments for most of the photos, but here is a taste of some of the better shots:

Multnomah Falls – this is what everyone comes to see.

Faerie Falls – this is one of the falls that is way back on the hike.

I know this looks tilted, but it’s really not.

The end of the hike!  We made it!

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.

As for Sebastian, he hasn’t missed a beat.  Juliann (Juli officially switched her name back to her full name with the move to Portland) has been taking him out for walks every day to see the neighborhood.

When we were still in the apartment we were getting ready for bed and Sebastian was all swaddled up and laying in between us.  Juliann and I were just laying around not yet sleeping when all of a sudden Sebastian started to smile.  Then he started to giggle!  He was just giggling away while completely asleep!  It was amazing to be able to see his first laughter.  What could he have been so amused about?  And why did his first laughter occur when he was asleep?  He doesn’t laugh or giggle when he’s awake.  He certainly smiles a lot, but no laughing.  What was he dreaming about that he found so funny?  Do other kids laugh first when asleep?  Was he dreaming about someone tickling his feet?  Or telling baby jokes?  Was he thinking how lucky he is to have Juliann and I for parents?  Was he thinking of all the great times he had with his best friend Julius?  Was he watching Monty Python?  Was he thinking about all those chump physicists who believe String Theory?  I guess all these questions will remain unanswered, but it’s certainly interesting to think about.

We’ve had a whole lot of people tell us that he has a very mature/wise face.  I find it interesting that many people on multiple occasions have said the same thing about him.  Is it the hair?  The striking good looks?  His mother’s eyes?  His father’s dimples?  You make the call.

Here are the photos.  Take a look at the photoblog to see some more photos of the set.

Let me start at the beginning, but since it’s late and I’m still a bit jet lagged, I’ll make it quick.  Our great friends Julia and Kathryne gave us, and lots of our belongings, a ride to the airport.  Easy as pie.  Once in the airport, the woman behind the first class counter (yes, you read that right, we flew first class) was most DEFINITELY not first class herself.  She was a bit short with a touch of rude and impatience, but compared to the woman at the security area, she was Florence Nightingale.  If I didn’t have my wife, my son and my cat with me, and if I weren’t a decent guy, I would have rung her neck.  It’s amazing that the government can hire the stupidest, rudest, pieces of crap to secure our airlines.  If anything, these people make our airports less secure.  Do some of these people even have high school diplomas?  Can they read and write?  They certainly can’t act civil to other human beings.  They couldn’t spot a terrorist a mile way.  OK, I need to get off my rant box now.

So we got to the airport and went to the wrong terminal.  No big deal, we got there early enough that we got to our real terminal with plenty of time to spare.  The silver lining in all that was that we got to see a wonderful sunrise, our last as residents of Atlanta:

Our flight in first class (did I mention that we flew first class?) was great.  Plenty of room, hot towels, drinks, snacks and anything else that we wanted.  I even got to overhear a WWII veteran talk to another guy about some of his experiences in Europe during WWII and all the reunions that he’s been to (he was on his way to his 65th reunion, I think).  Pretty cool.  Sebastian slept for almost the entire flight, but he decided to let go a HUGE poop as we were decending into Portland.  Luckily, his diaper contained it all, but it was a close call.  Misha also did really well.  He rode in the cabin with us and he didn’t meow once the entire trip from Atlanta to Portland.

We got to Portland and you know what?  People we nice to us!  Waiting for our baggage some guy just started talking to us AND HE WASN’T RUDE!  He was just a nice guy chatting with us about our cool stroller.  And later that day more and more people were nice!  NICE!  And friendly!  FRIENDLY!  I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing.  Is this how Portlanders act on a day to day basis?  I found myself striking up conversations with strangers.  ME!  Talking to people I didn’t know for no other reason than to talk to people I didn’t know!  ME!  Can you believe it!  This friendliness, I found, was contagious.

So, in summary, we are all doing great.  My first couple of days at the office were great (everyone was, you guessed it, friendly and very happy for me to be there).  Thursday there was a bit of a party at the office and we were all eating cake and drinking wine.  Friday was Happy Hour and everyone was drinking wine and/or margaritas by 4pm.  Not bad for a first week.

Juli and Sebastian are both doing fantastic.

So, to re-summarize: Portland rocks.  I’ll take rainy winters in a great, vibrant city with wonderful people over blazing hot summers in a drab, rude, crappy city any day of the week.

I know that living here won’t be all wine and roses all the time, but it was time for me to get out of Atlanta.  I will miss my family and friends immensely, but I think I overstayed my welcome in Atlanta.  I’m loving Portland after only 2 days and we haven’t even gotten out of The Pearl district yet.  We haven’t even gone to the beautiful coast, or gone hiking or visited the wineries or brew pubs or parks or the river or the gorge or Mt Hood or really anything.  I’m excited.