Day 24-- Snowbeard

After taking Sabrina and falling asleep on the couch last night, I woke up and brought her into bed. Between the two hours screaming and an amazing 6 hours sleeping, we gave Jen a continuous 8 hours of sleep. I'm pretty proud.


Yesterday morning, Jen said: "Edgar, today is Sunday. What do we do on Sundays?"

E: "Swim Hotel! Swim Pool Hotel!"

Needless to say, that's what we did yesterday.

That's also the first thing we did this morning. As we were getting ready for our big day, Edgar started unzipping his pajamas. "Edgar swim! Edgar swim hotel!"

Me: "Leave your jammies on. We'll change you at the hotel"

E: "No. Leave jammies OFF!"

Edgar then left the room and proceeded to haunt the bathroom door while Jen was occupied. She says his monologue went like this:

"Mommy! Help zipper. Can't do it. Zipper. Edgar DID IT!!! Mommy, help feet. Edgar need help feet. Edgar DID IT!!! Mommy, help arms. Need help arms. Edgar DID IT!!! Edgar take diaper off. Edgar throw diaper away. Edgar sooooo naked!"

Jen emerged to find a stark naked edgar ready for swimming:

SO excited.

We're having at least as much fun as it looks like we're having.

At the hotel, I bid adieu to Jen and the kids and grandparents, and they went and drove to Seaside to spend some time there. They walked on the beach and visited the cool aquarium there. Edgar and his grandpa got splashed by the seals. This is Edgar exploring one of the touch pools:

I was able to escape all the family stuff today, and instead went skiing.

I guess this is one of the advantages of living in the northwest. we can do skiing and the beach in the same day-- at least if we split up.

First, after everyone left, I cleaned out our car, which hadn't had that happen since kid #2 arrived. It was pretty bad. I somehow managed to get the wrong headrest stuck in the back seat center headrest position. Now, we've got one weird headrest stuck way up in the air, and try as I might, I can't force it out for anything. I was pretty annoyed with it until I learned that it blocks out the headlights of the car that's directly behind you. That helps for night driving.

Niece Greta showed up at our house, and we were off on the looong drive to Ski Bowl for night skiing. I grew up closer, so I resented the fact that it took so long to get there from Salem.

The snow was icy and rock-hard, but it was snowing soft snow hard, so the new stuff was quite nice. Although the snow wasn't great, the night was cold and clear, and we had a blast zooming down icy runs.

In perfect snow and weather conditions, you just can't beat Skibowl. Unfortunately, Skibowl is also the least likely place in Oregon to have perfect snow and weather conditions. I've been told that skiing on the east coast is much like our experience today.

Ah well-- it was fun. I got to break in my new boots, which still were a little tight around my impossibly-huge calves.

Came home exhausted, and Greta got to spend some time with baby Sabrina;

I should get some sleep.

To unwind, I figured out how to play one of my favorite Built to Spill songs, first on Moog, then on quiet midnight piano. We've got a big day planned for tomorrow. I hope that I'm up to the challenge.

The following are some photos from the last few days:

Edgar using his toy shark as a utensil at Mo's. We can't take him anywhere, can we?

Uncle Brian (upstairs) enjoying a little time with the Sabrina.

Day 20-- A Serenade / The Grandparents Arrive

I'll start today off with a video shot this morning of Edgar serenading us on the piano with "You Are My Sunshine." I find the piano technique reminiscent of Gastr del Sol.

Jen's parents showed up today! They flew in from Utah and rented a car, and we have adventure on the horizon.

Here's us all pretty this morning, ready for Grandma and Grandpa. Edgar is in this rad 70s corduroy jumpsuit that our niece found at a garage sale. He picked it out himself today.

We spent the morning cleaning the house to not-quite-as-clean-as-we-hoped. Jen and Edgar had vacuum wars.

And Grandma and Grandpa were here! This is Grandma first meeting Sabrina.

(Trust me, they became better friends).


After getting acquainted, grandma and grandpa got acquainted with their hotel, and we all got acquainted with a nice long nap.

Upon waking, we paid a visit to the Salem Carousel, and spent some time on the playground. Grandma was convinced that the 50+ degree weather (absolutely balmy for the northwest) was too cold for a bundled-up Sabrina, so they cuddled in the car.

I don't have any pictures of that (Jen forgot the camera), but be forewarned: Grandma and Grandpa are photo-happy. What this means for the blog is: if you're facebook friends with grandma, you'll get lots and lots of pictures. If not, we generally don't take pictures when grandma and grandpa are around because with both of them taking pictures, any other shots seem superfluous.

Dinner was at Jen's favorite restaurant, and Edgar got to show off why he's more difficult to deal with than the new baby, screaming, hitting, and generally being a menace throughout dinner. Two trips to a cold bench outside with dad did very little to curb his craziness.

After that, Jen's mom and dad were worn out.

Over the course of several years of marriage, Jen and I have come to realize some hard truths about visiting her parents: Her parents keep very early schedules. Usually, they are awake by 4 AM and in bed by 7 PM every day. Jen and I do not keep early schedules by any stretch. Add to that a 1-hour time zone difference, and, regardless of if we visit Utah or if they visit Oregon, we are 4 to 6 hours off their schedule. This means they are awake for 4-6 hours every morning before we get up, and we are awake 4-6 hours after they go to bed. Every visit.

This means that a day with grandma and grandpa is much shorter than usual. It also means that when we spend time with grandma and grandpa, at least two of us are very tired. It's a lot like Ladyhawke, except without the fantastic magic or epic romance... which means it's not at all like Ladyhawke.

This is why Jen made an appointment to tutor a student at 8:30 tonight... which is where she is right now. I'm at home, with a sleeping Edgar, and a fussing Sabrina on the hands-free:

Tonight will hopefully bring the conclusion of the season of 24 we have been watching, and hopefully with that, a return to normalcy rather than this manic have-to-watch-one-more-episode-before-we-go-to-sleep thing.

Day 11-- Visit to Grandma and Grandpa's

Day 11--

Today was Sabrina's postpartum checkup, so we trundled into the car and headed north. First stop was to buy Edgar some new shoes. They've got firetrucks on them that light up when he steps. He's really proud.

Baby appointment went fine. All the midwives wanted to do was hold Sabrina, which is understandable, because that's all I want to do, and all anyone wants to do.

After that, Grandma and Grandpa's house. This was Sabrina's first real trip outside the house, first time at my folks', and first lots of things.

At the grandparents, we spent hours with Grandma holding baby Sabrina, and the rest of us not doing much, although everyone except Edgar managed to get a nap out of the way.

Here are lots of pictures:

Grandpa and a captive audience.

That's a proud grandma.

I just liked this picture of Edgar.

We had to convince Grandpa that he wanted to hold Sabrina, but he really enjoyed it. Can you see some family resemblance?

Edgar wanted to hold the camera, and shot this inspired little video: 

Some aunties and cousins stopped by. This is cousin Yoyo.

Chocolate brownie earthquake ice cream. A hit.

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Before we left this morning, Jen downloaded several months worth of photos off her cellphone. The following pictures are a potpourri of fun stuff stretching back at least since last thanksgiving:

Edgar at Jen's folks playing on Grandma's laptop. Edgar went through a phase around thanksgiving where he watched Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ticking Noise about thirty times a day.

Edgar and his best friends. This is Johnny, the upstairs neighbor, and Maya, who does daycare upstairs. These three are thick as thieves.

Edgar and Stitch watching one of Stitch's many adventures.

Andaluz has this tree with a leaf for every child born there, We found Edgar's on there. Can't wait to see Sabrina's.

This is a picture of Sabrina just minutes old. I believe this is the one she sent her family from her phone the night of Sabrina's birth.

Sabrina at one day old.
Jen: "Her lips look like the Batman symbol."

If you look closely at this picture, you can see the results of us not trimming Sabrina's fingernails immediately after she was born. She scratched up her face her first night in the world.

This is a proud (and tired! and ugly!) daddy.

This is a confused big brother. I believe this photo was taken last Sunday (by Edgar's outfit)

Jen's phone was FULL of these kind of pictures. Just mommy staring at the expressions on Sabrina's face, and taking as many pictures as possible. I may post more later.

Sabrina relaxing in her bouncy seat, getting mobbed by an affectionate older brother.

...and some recent candid pictures of the two of us. this is us enjoying pizza monday night:



Well, Edgar gets up early (too early) in the morning, so I'd better get off the internets and get some sleep.

Day 7 -- In his father's footsteps

Baby Sabrina is a week old today! She gave her mom a rough night last night. Not rough by Edgar-standards, just by new-baby-I-wanna-be-awake-right-now standards.

Everybody slept in... except me. That's a bit weird. I was up at 8 AM (yes, I know,,,) and playing Wii and waiting for the rest of the house to wake. Edgar finally stirred at 9:30, and I fed him breakfast and fended off a few telemarketers.

After saying good morning to his mother, we were out the door for a short visit to my folks'. Grandma and Grandpa took Edgar when Sabrina was born, and while I imagine it was a hard time, I can tell he melted a few hearts as well.

Typically, I didn't take the camera along. I was more interested in adventures than documenting the adventures.

Anyway, with an afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa, we did an activity that I fondly remember from growing up. We visited the fish hatchery.

For those of you not from the northwest, this is a pretty typical day-activity for kids. When I was a kid, it was the old Vancouver Trout Hatchery on the old Evergreen Highway. Apparently, in the years since I was a kid, the hatchery closed, and then was bought by the city as an education center. Now, it's renamed the Columbia Springs Education Center and Hatchery.

With some sprucing up, and some very mid-90s environmentally-themed architecture and landscaping, it's still very much preserved as I remember it. One difference is that the old parking lot is now some weird interpretive plaza with inscriptions on the lifecycle of a salmon, so we had to walk farther to get to the ponds. We visited the hatchery ponds and looked at the fish. We fed tortilla chips to the ducks in the pond downstream from the hatchery. I didn't see any fish in the pond--they used to come up and nibble my toes when I dangled them in the water while feeding the fish, but it could be the wrong season.

There are more fences and barriers up, so Edgar couldn't go running on the catwalks that overhang the fish ponds, but as a parent, that's a bit scary anyway. I sure loved it as a kid, though. I'd run around and over each pond and see how big the little fish were in each pond. Usually they were different sizes, from tiny little things the size of a kid's pinky to 6-8 inch fish ready to go into the big river. I did a little bit of that today, and wasn't disappointed.

One of the old hatchery ponds has been converted to an interpretation of what the fish are like in the wild. Apparently, that's code for: These are grown-up fish as opposed to the babies in the other ponds. They were big lunkers, about the size of Edgar. The other cool thing is that there was a bucket of free fish food sitting next to the ponds. They asked that everyone take no more than a handful, but this was way better than feeding moldy bread to the fish.

Edgar loved throwing the feed in the big fish pond and watching those huge guys thrash around to get the little pellets. I loved throwing the feed in the little-fish pond and watch the water roil and seethe as thousands of fish battled over those pellets.

Anyway, Edgar had a fun time going to see some fish. I had a blast watching Edgar discover all of my favorite sights from when I was his age. His grandparents had a great time, too, even if grandpa won't admit it.

We drove home and went to upstairs-neighbor David's 7th birthday party. We got him scotch tape and pencils. He was pretty pleased. Tried to watch Despicable Me, with four 7-year-olds who had already seen the movie commenting on it throughout, while trying to keep Edgar and the older kids from hurting each other.

It's been a pretty hard week, but I think things are going to rule from now on.