01-Apr-2010 8:54 AM
Big things are happening around here. Well, big things for a baby anyway. Ouest rolled over from her belly to her back this morning. Not once, but three times, before becoming too exhausted to pick her head up off the floor anymore. It was pretty cute to see how surprised she was at ending up on her back staring up at the ceiling fan each time. Lots of cheering and applause ensued, further surprising her.
We’ve also confirmed the emergence of a tooth. It’s a lower front tooth and it’s not fully poking through the gums yet, but we can see it clear as day when she’ll stop rolling her tongue over it long enough for us to catch a glimpse. She’s been drooling like a rabid dog the past week or so, so we had a pretty good idea this was coming. I already feel like my baby girl is growing up too fast. Three weeks ago I was counting the days hoping to get over the hump and past the colicky phase. Now that we’ve emerged from that bit of hell I feel like things are moving a little too fast. Slow down baby.
02-Apr-2010 9:29 AM
We just returned from Ouest’s third laser treatment. It’s hard every time. She was out of our arms for twelve minutes and I looked at the clock twelve times. We really can’t wait for the day that this is over with. At the same time we are very thankful that this is happening when she is so young. I don’t think either of us can bare the thought of having her eyes stare into ours knowing what is coming. The feeling of betrayal is bad enough now.
But of course, she is fine. The procedure went well. The doctor said there wasn’t as much hemangioma to treat this time, meaning we are making some progress. Her little nose isn’t burnt nearly as bad as last time either so within a few days she’ll be good as new. It always feels better when that is done with. The picture below is from yesterday, before this latest laser treatment.
So now we’ve got ourselves a full month before the next one. We’re heading out to Portland to visit my mom in a few days. While we’re out there we’re going to hop up to Seattle to hang out with my cousins and have a look at a boat as well. Should be a fun couple of weeks.
02-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Seriously, what could be better than waking up to this?
03-Apr-2010 9:03 AM
With the tooth coming in Ouest has been having a heck of a time staying asleep for more than a couple of hours, making the past couple of nights possibly the most tiring for us of her short life. We’re hoping that now that it has popped through that we’ll slide back into routine.
03-Apr-2010 12:53 PM
We drove out to Woodbury to run some errands today. When Ali and I lived there in 1999 the city was ranked as the fastest growing suburb in the U.S. Or some god awful thing like that. At the time though, we actually thought that was a good thing. Now it makes me wish I had a gun to stick in my mouth. We must have sat at four hundred stoplights in the course of our three mile drive from one end of giant-box-store-land to the other. And at each one I could feel myself getting one step closer to exploding.
In order for us to live on land again I think we’d either need to be smack dab in the middle of a city where we could walk everywhere, or way the hell out in the sticks where we could drive from Point A to Point B without slowing for traffic. At the moment neither of those sounds too appealing though, so the land home is going to have to wait.
03-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
We’re starting to really like the Once Upon A Child used baby stuff store. We bring in a bunch of crap we no longer need and take home something else that we don’t really need. We bought this bouncing chair thing today knowing Ouest was probably still a little small for it. The directions said, Do Not Use If Armpits Are Below Rim. So yeah, she’s got a ways to go on that one.
04-Apr-2010 8:19 PM
Today was Easter dinner for the whole family. Ostensibly this would consist of a big ham and potato meal, but in reality what it amounted to was an incredible amount of jelly beans, cupcakes, cookies, and strawberry shortcake being eaten. Ouest couldn’t eat a bite of it, but she didn’t come out empty-handed as her Aunt Toni delivered with new toys and books.
04-Apr-201 our life. daily.
Ali’s mom may just disown me for this one. She decided to baste the ham today. The recipe called for scoring the ham every two inches. She misunderstood it as score the ham two inches deep. The result? A blooming ham very similar in appearance to a blooming onion. I do have to shoulder some blame as I stood right next to her while she did it, and even told her how deep two inches was. Miraculously the blooming ham was delicious.
05-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
She couldn’t stop staring at those bare feet of hers in the pebbles. We really need to get this girl to a proper beach again.
06-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
The cheap dad’s mobile.
07-Apr-2010 6:20 PM
This morning we flew out to see my mom in Portland. Ali and I went into this, Ouest’s third flight, slightly overconfident. We had everything timed out perfectly at the airport. She was due for a feeding right at take-off time which would help keep her ears from hurting and then as we leveled off it’d be time for a nap. This was going to be a breeze.
But of course minutes before boarding the plane they announced there was a water leak and we’d have to wait for maintenance to fix it. Thirty minute delay and our entire plan fell apart. That’s how razor thin our margin of error is with this baby stuff.
She had to eat early, which then caused us to overfeed her at take-off, which resulted in throwing it all back up on Ali’s lap, which snowballed into general mayhem as we tried to maneuver in our tiny inside seats. Before we knew what was happening our little angel, who hadn’t had a bad day in weeks, was in the midst of a full on ear piercing scream-a-thon. From our vantage point in row 9 not a single passenger on the plane was spared.
The only thing that worked in calming her was to walk the aisles, which meant I got to take the walk of shame with two hundred sets of eyes staring at me. There were the unhappy business looking types, the twenty-somethings bothered because I was interrupting their miniature iPod movie watching, and then the worst of the lot, the well-meaning grandmothers. I could have killed that bunch, with their pouty “I-could-fix-it-honey” looks. All right, I didn’t want to kill them, but it would have felt good to yell at them to, “Quit staring! It’s just a crying baby! Big f-ing deal! And no, you couldn’t make her stop crying. I know, because I’m her papa and I’ve perfected the art of making this particular baby stop crying!”
And I did get her to stop crying and fall asleep in my arms as I made my victory march up and down the aisle before turning her over to Ali’s waiting arms to continue her nap until landing. I expected some applause but instead all we got was the comment from one of those grandmothers on the way off the plane that, “Well, she’s quiet now.”
07-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Needless to say my mom never had a girl and has been waiting many a year for the chance to dress one up in all manner of over the top frilly girl clothing. This hat awaited Ouest at the airport to combat Portland’s wintry sixty degree weather, not for her to attend the Kentucky Derby.
08-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
09-Apr-2010 2:05 PM
Pretty much just hanging out around grammy’s house the past couple of days. Ouest being cute and my mom going, “Oooooooooh look at her smile. Oooooooh. Oooh. Oh she’s the sweetest thing ever.” Ouest is going to have her way with Grammy.
11-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law. Actually the sign should have read: Warning: Toys placed too close to your child’s face may cause her to become cross-eyed.
13-Apr-2010 ouest lill. four months.
Ouest, you are truly a joy to be around. Every day that goes by is more and more fun with you. I guess by our standards this has been sort of a boring month. We did a lot of hanging around the house. Both grandma’s houses I should say. And no, I’m not saying grandmas are boring, but that because of the cold weather and the need to stick around for laser treatment number three, we have lived a rather sedantary life. On the plus side you have gotten to meet a whole bunch of cousins and spend a lot of time with grandmas and aunts.
You’ve blossomed during this boring period however. You rolled over for the first time, you got your first two teeth, you went to the pub with us and didn’t cry, twice, and had a whole host of other less exciting firsts.
In four months now you’ve racked up about 12,000 air miles and 4,000 Porsche miles. Not too shabby. Now your mama and I are trying to find a place for us to settle down as a family. By settle down I mean we’re looking for a boat for the three of us to bob around in for a while. The ocean will be your backyard. You’ll love it. Trust me.
I said the same thing to your mama a few years back.
You’ve been great and we’ve really enjoyed having you around. We’re 90% sure now that we’re going to keep you. My favorite time of day this past month has been our mornings together. You start to fuss in your crib, I come get you, you give me a shy smile, and then we lay in bed and watch the opening bell on CNBC and contemplate our trades for the day.
We haven’t gotten a good true belly laugh out of you just yet, but we’re getting very close now. Peekaboo with a blanket over your head is a really good one, as are the belly and neck kisses. All of which get huge gummy smiles and loud yells. And let us not forget our time right after your bath when mama and I smother you in a blanket and chant, “Dry her off, dry her off, get her nice and dry.” Man do you love that.
Anyway little one, it’s been a fantastic month. We love you, and we hope you’ll learn how to swim quickly.
14-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Well we’ve taught Ouest something finally. Her aunt Katy and her grammy have been hard at work the past few weeks repeating the lesson over and over until finally today she repeated it. And repeated it, and repeated it. What is it? It is sticking her tongue out and blowing motor boat noises with it. She loves to do it now and will repeat it back to anybody kind enough to do it first. Or if nobody is around she’ll just do it to entertain herself. Nope, no Baby Einstein toys for this kid, no Beethoven music or simple addition flash cards, none of that nonsense. She’s got motor mouth spitting to learn.
15-Apr-2010 10:51 AM
This teething thing sucks. Ouest’s two tiny bottom teeth are cute and all, but the teething pain that has come with them is hardly worth it for a four-month-old whose only solid food has been a bite of banana the size of a pin head. One or two times a day now we get full on painful screams that throw us into a good parenting panic. We’ve learned to see the signs of it coming on; the sudden fussing, choking on drool, and voracious attacks of the hands in the mouth. We use those signs to head it off with a shot of Tylenol, but man when it hits, it hits hard. We now know for sure that a child’s pain is most painful on us parents.
15-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Apple stock has been very good to us but up until now the only product of theirs that we ever owned was a first generation iPod. Today I finally gave in to temptation.
16-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Some women collect purses. Some guys collect ties. We collect baby slings. This is just the latest in a long line.
17-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Year-round showers bring April flowers. Or something like that.
19-Apr-2010 8:08 PM
Yesterday we drove up to Seattle to visit my cousins and their passel of little girls. We stayed with cousin David who lives right on the waters of the Puget Sound with a view of Mount Rainier. Spectacular. We had a great day with perfect weather and plenty of beach combing and backyard barefoot games with our collection of girls all cute and pink. It was hard to watch the girls and not wish our little baby was big enough to join them.
Then this morning we took the ferry to downtown to check out the boat we’ve been eyeing online for a while now. There’s been a lot of speculation about just what kind of boat we might be looking for this time around, and I think it’ll come as a bit of a shock to many that it only has one hull.
It’s a motorsailer. Emphasis on the motor. Ali and I weren’t far into our last sailboat trip when we realized that we were not exactly die-hard sailors. We liked our motors. A lot. If we could have carried an infinite amount of diesel I doubt we’d have ever raised a sail. But alas, if you want to cross oceans you either need a sail or a very large motor yacht.
As for the multihull versus monohull debate there is still no doubt in my mind that catamarans are far superior. So why the single hulled motorsailer?
There is simply no denying that monohulls are grossly more affordable than cats. Looking at cats now there isn’t a single one on the market for under $175,000 that I would even consider owning. And even that would be a decade old well worn 38 footer. You can buy a hell of a lot of monohull for that much money. One of our financial tenets is that we won’t own something that we can’t afford to lose. There was a time when that number was well into the hundreds, today it’s not. And not necessarily because we can’t afford it, but more because we no longer want to afford it. We don’t want to own something expensive. We don’t want to own something we need to worry about. We just want to go cruise, have fun, be carefree, and not concern ourselves so much with our boat.
So why this motorsailer as opposed to a typical monohull? Because we like it. It’s not like a dungeon-esque monohull. It sits up high with big windows and a huge saloon only one small step down from the deck. It’s got bulk. It’s over fourteen feet wide for crying out loud. Stepping onto it today it felt like we were stepping onto something formidable. Not like a boat that would have us dipping the rail in the water with a ten knot breeze. Granted that’s why this boat will never win a sailing contest. This baby needs its engine. A lot. All hundred and thirty-five horses of engine and three-hundred gallons of tankage to feed it.
Anyway, we got on the boat today. There were good and bad as with any boat. The teak handrails have been long neglected. There is no dinghy or davits. The electronics are dated. And the windlass is a manual. Those were bad. The interior was dry. The wood was gorgeous. The engine fired right up with a throaty purr. There was acres of storage. Ali stood in the kitchen and exclaimed, “It’s huge!” There is a shower and tub in their own room. Ouest would get her own room. And again, it just felt big and strong, and the deck was miles high. Those were the good.
Overall we really liked it. By our terms it’s a project. We’re more accustomed to starting our adventures with a sparkling clean new slate. This boat is more weathered. But we’re sort of determined to try and be more “hippie-ish” about our life and possessions. Cruise and be happy.
So at the end of the day, after talking it over we’ve decided to go ahead and try to make this happen. We’ve got to crunch some numbers and throw an offer at this boat. For all we know that number won’t be in the ballpark and we’ll be back to square one. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Oh yeah. Our plans for the boat. The only real public plan at the moment is to continue working to get Ouest’s nose all taken care of while at the same time cruising down to Mexico for a bit. Beyond that there are lots of plans, just none that we’re sharing.
20-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
21-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
I occasionally get scolded by friends and family for not having enough pictures of Ali on the website. So today I made a special effort to grab the camera and get a good shot of her.
22-Apr-2010 7:09 AM
We’re still doing the math and trying to figure out how to make this boat work. It’s overpriced, there’s little doubt about that. It’s just a matter of deciding how much. The boat is really poorly equipped for a cruising sailboat. In fact an eight-track (or maybe a tape) player wouldn’t look out of place perched next to the 1980’s radar. All of the electronics are a joke and would need to be upgraded. Even if we didn’t care and used the old stuff we’d still have to upgrade them at some point in order to ever sell the boat again. No dinghy or davits on a sailboat either? I don’t know if this boat just sat in marinas its entire life or what the deal is, but you couldn’t go anywhere but from dock to dock the way it’s set up right now.
Anyway, we’ll probably throw an offer at them in a day or two, and they’re going to have to be pretty open-minded and really want to sell this boat if it’s got any chance of working out. We’ll see. The one upside to this is that as the buyers there is absolutely no shortage of boats for sale out there to choose from.
22-Apr-2010 9:31 PM
23-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Uncle JJ arrived today. Josh is sort of like a bull in a china shop so I admit I was a little concerned how he’d handle a baby. He made a good start.
23-Apr-2010 7:50 PM
Just sent the e-mail with our offer for the boat. To be honest I don’t really expect that it will be accepted. But we think it’s a fair offer, and not even a lowball. We’ll see what the seller thinks. Hopefully he has half a brain and realizes the true cost of trying to wring out top dollar for a boat in this market.
24-Apr-2010 3:06 PM
Talked to the boat broker today and found out that there was a previous offer on this boat at the exact same price we just put out there. The owner thanked them and declined. The broker sent over some paperwork to make our offer official though and will present it to him again, along with a little chat that maybe there is a reason two people have offered the same price for his boat. Because that’s what it is really worth. Doubt it will make a difference though, so it appears we may be walking out on this one.
That more than likely means a trip to the opposite end of the States to begin anew. While talking about it today Ali and I thought it would be fun to R.V. our way from Minnesota to Florida for a couple of weeks worth of boat shopping. Of course the problem with this plan is that we don’t own an R.V. or know anybody who does. Or maybe we do. So I’ll just ask; do any of you have an R.V. you’re not using in May and would be willing to rent to us? Preferably someone in the MN, IO, WI, IL area. We’d of course be willing to pay a small amount for the pleasure. Pass the word please.
24-Apr-2010 7:22 PM
One of the things I am amassing as I get older and older is an amazing collection of useless facts. Just in the last couple of years I’ve found myself answering a substantial amount of Jeopardy questions. Ali and I just teamed up to win a game of Trivial Pursuit last weekend as well. And then of course there are the crossword puzzles. When Josh showed up yesterday I suddenly found myself in a three-way battle for crossword domination. And cared. And so did Ouest.
24-Apr-2010 8:52 PM
Ouest has really been finding her voice the past couple of days. Now instead of loud screeches or soft coos we are getting an almost conversational tone out of her. She’s also coming ever closer to her true belly laugh. We get really close every night before bath time. Today grammy came as close as ever just by talking to her in the same voice she’s been using on Ouest for two weeks. Everything is new every day with her.
24-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
For all the pictures we take of the three of us separately we’ve found it exceedingly hard to take a family photo. Today we were standing around when we realized there was a bookcase to set the camera on. And there we are.
25-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
I might have to fire my plumbing apprentice.
26-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
It’s not often that we’re all together, so a family picture was a must.
26-Apr-2010 6:19 AM
Lately Ouest has decided that perhaps 4:45 – 5:00 o’clock would be a good time to get up for the day. She goes to bed at six p.m. so I suppose it makes sense, but when we’ve experimented with keeping her up later it hasn’t made any difference in when she wakes up. It seems stupid to be putting her down for a nap at 6:30 in the morning but that’s when she’s ready. It also seems stupid to say goodnight to Ali at 8:00 at night, but that’s when she’s ready too.
27-Apr-2010 9:52 PM
Travel day. So this morning we said goodbye to Grammy and headed to the airport. After the last flight we were slightly nervous, but hoped that another three weeks of growing up would have snapped Ouest out of it. At the airport I was up ordering our post-TSA/pre-flight beer from the bar and when I turned around I found Ali being picked up by a pilot.
Turns out she was standing there with Ouest when this guy walked up and asked, “Ali? Ali Bumfuzzle?” I was hoping a stewardess would recognize me later on, but no such luck.
While waiting for the flight we ran into a couple of mothers waiting with their four-month-olds. Three babies with about two weeks between them on one flight. What are the odds? Now it felt like a competition. Our daughter was bound to be the loudest.
She did great though. We left on time, we scored our own row, and we were landing before we knew it. Piece of cake.
Ali’s sister and kids were at the airport waiting for us and made us feel like we’d been gone for three years instead of three weeks. And the weather was beautiful. All was right in the world.
28-Apr-2010 4:33 PM
Beautiful day. Beautiful family. What more could a guy want?
Ali and Ouest: Bliss. Pat and Ouest: Giant incomprehensible crocodile tears.
28-Apr-2010 7:12 PM
We received a counter-offer today, and as we sort of expected it wasn’t good enough for there to be any light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t really blame the guy as it is coming up on the high season for boats in that area of the U.S. There’s a good chance someone will come along and not care about the lack of cruising outfitting on the boat and will be happy to sail near home on weekend jaunts only.
We did go ahead and make one more offer, talking to the broker about possibly adding the equipment that we want and upping our price based on that. But I doubt the seller will see that as a benefit to him.
The boat search continues. Time to tune up the Porsche. I see road trips to the coast in our future.
29-Apr-2010 1:07 PM
Yeah, total Rock Star. She has to be if she’s gonna wear that hat around the house while having a morning cocktail.
29-Apr-2010 9:30 PM
The boat deal is officially dead. It’s a bummer because we really haven’t found anything else online that is turning our crank. There’s a few that might be worth a look and that we might like better once we get on them, but that requires a trip to the NE or possibly Florida and right at the moment neither of us is sure it’s worth it for this selection of boats. We’ll sleep on this decision for a few days.
29-Apr-2010 our life. daily.
Aunt Toni bought this Bumbo (aptly named) chair for Ouest a while ago and we’ve been waiting and waiting for that neck to finally be strong enough. We are so there now. No more laying on your back twenty hours a day kid.
30-Apr-2010 9:10 PM
Ouest had an appointment with the laser doctor today. He was happy with the progress we’ve made, and for the moment at least, so are Ali and I. Her hemangioma has shrunk up a bit and the coloring hasn’t been too bad lately either. For the time being we’re going to continue with the monthly treatments and keep our fingers crossed that we stay ahead of this thing.
While in the waiting room we met a young couple with a beautiful little daughter who unfortunately had a huge hemangioma on her lip. She was too young still to realize that she couldn’t even close her mouth. Ali and I know what we’ve gone through with Ouest but can’t even imagine what these folks are dealing with. The toughest thing is that their family doctor had them just sitting around watching this thing grow and by the time they realized this was a terrible approach, it was too late. Their daughter will now have to undergo a series of surgeries to remove it. Their anger was palpable. We feel very fortunate.
2 Comments on “April 2010”
Hi, my name is Aida and i’m from Malaysia. I have a 4 month baby girl that i think she is having Hemangioma just like Ouest. How is he now? Is laser treatment is the only way to cure this?
Should i wait or just straight to see doctor. Cause i think the thing is growing bigger on her nose
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