Goonies Never Say Die!

A few weeks ago we took a little road trip up to Astoria and saw the Goonies house.  It was fairly uneventful.  The house looks a bit different now but there was a nice sign down the gravel driveway that we got a picture in front of.  We could have gotten all three of us if we'd remembered to bring the little portable tripod.  We drove down the coast and around back home.  Elliott slept through a lot of the ride and it was nice to just get out of the house.

Elliott is growing fast.  He's wearing 9 month clothes and he loves food.  Krystal has been pureeing his carrots and peas and apples and pears.  So far he will eat anything.  He wasn't a big fan of broccoli but I think it's because of the texture and if we just cut up some stems and puree them he would probably be fine with them.  Even if he makes a "i don't like this" face, he still lets you put the food in his mouth though.  It's really funny.  I have a DVD full of videos and pictures to send to our families but our DVD burner in the computer is not working right.  I'll have to figure something else out.

Day 150: The Damn Dam

We decided to take a random drive yesterday and ended up at the Bonneville Dam. We had never been there before so we took a look. The bonneville Dam doesn't really "dam" the water. So there's no backup of water creating a lake. It's just there to let water pass through and create energy. Inside was not too exciting. Mostly we just went outside and found a nice spot for some pictures.

Day 127: Advancement

We've been plugging along doing the same thing every day. Elliott is getting big fast. He's about 17 pounds. He's sitting up on his own pretty good and he can stand up with some support. He's rolling over a little bit and not really crawling at all. He scoots when he's on his stomach but hasn't figured out crawling. I'm wondering if he'll be one of those babies that never really crawls. He just starts pulling himself up on stuff and ends up walking. We'll see. We've been feeding him oatmeal and he really enjoys it. The pediatricians said that he is growing fast enough that we can start feeding him real food soon. Krystal has a few books with recipes for homemade babyfood.

I've been fairly absent from work lately. Always mentally and sometimes physically. It just doesn't feel like my heart is in it anymore. I enjoy building and working with my hands, but it's something I think I'm more suited to do on the side. Like fixing up my own house (if we're ever able to buy one) or making furniture and selling it. All the dealings with the city and the customer and figuring the bids and the materials is taking a lot out of me. Plus things have changed since we had Elliott. I'd rather be at home with my family so I don't put in as many hours on the jobs. Also I've become less willing to take risks. Simple things like being on a roof are uncomfortable to me. Right now I'm working a job where there's a big hole cut in the upper deck and when I'm up there all I can think is that I'm going to trip and fall in the hole and fall down to the bottom deck and break something or die. So I'm much slower to complete jobs because of it.

I know I tried to change jobs before and it was not the right move, but that was because I jumped at the first random offer of employment that I had without thinking it through. So right now I am trying to take my construction work down a level: sticking to smaller jobs, building sheds or doing finish work. And I'm taking a couple of freelance writing classes at Portland Community College this summer. So I've been using little bits of free time to reorganize all my writing into a new portfolio and design a new website. I'm going to gradually incorporate freelance writing into my income and see if I can get it up to a full time income. Which is what I should have done when I wanted to switch careers before since being a freelance writer has always been my dream. I really don't enjoy what I do right now and I really want to show Elliott that it's important to find something you love to do as a career. I don't know. I guess I'll just take it slow and see what happens.

Day 110: Laughter is the Best Medicine

I work a lot and I have a good deal of stress with owning my own business and dealing with clients and subcontractors and financial matters. It all goes away though when I hear Elliott laugh. When I come home and finally have a chance to sit down with him, I do whatever I can to get him to laugh. I get a lot of smiles, it's easy to make him smile, but eventually I'll hit the sweet spot and I'll get a whole bunch of little laughs in a row. And every once and a while Ill just crack him up and he'll really get going. That just makes my day. I feel like if we were living on the street with no food I would alright as long as I could hear him laugh.

Day 108: Get In My Belly!

Yesterday was Elliott's first solid food. He has been hungry more often so we thought it was time to get him a little rice cereal. Krystal mixed it up and we gave him just couple spoon fulls. We're starting with very small amount to let his tummy get used to it and to see if it upsets his stomach at all. He's at the age where his digestive system might not be fully ready, but he's grown so much faster than what is average I was pretty confident that he was ready.

He got the food off the spoon pretty well. He still has the reflex to push things out with his tongue but he eventually got the rice cereal down. He seemed pretty happy about trying something new. After a few spoonfuls he never developed any signs of an upset stomach so maybe today we can step it up another spoonful.

It's another activity that is adding a whole new series of little funny facial expressions to his repertoire. It's so crazy that he's a little mini person with little mini expressions and gestures. So he'll be eating more real food and then crawling and walking and talking and those will add so much more.

Day 101: Same 'Ol Situation

Not much new activity has been happening. I've finally got jobs caught up and am taking weekends off. It's finally getting nice out so I've been able to work on cleaning up the house more. I took a load of stuff to the dump yesterday. I still have more debris in my trailer from past jobs. I need to take that to the dump and then clean out the garage a bit. I bought a weedeater not too long ago and was finally able to tame the back yard. Normally I would mow but there would be a bunch of longer grass around the fence and the cinder blocks that separate the two levels of our yard. Now I've got it all clean. Some day Elliott can play in this yard maybe.



Elliott is growing fast. He's already wearing six month old clothes. We've been getting boxes of hand me downs from our friends Brian and Erica up in Seattle. It's nice because we don't have to buy clothes, but also the clothes they've been sending are really cute. Thanks guys! He is looking at stuff and grabbing for it now. Still holds his head up fine but hasn't quiet got the hang of sitting up on his own. He's pretty good with a little assistance. He's still a generally happy baby. He thinks I'm freaking hilarious. All I have to do is look at him and he starts laughing. Is that a good or a bad thing? I don't care.

Day 83: What I Don't Miss

There are a lot of people who, when you tell them you are having a baby, and then tell them something like, "we're using cloth diapers" or "we're not buying a stroller", they go, "Oh you'll get tired of that." Basically because they are idiots who think, just because they can't make a decision and stick with it, nobody can. So here are some things that I don't miss. And I know it's only been three months, but I don't feel any of these items would make my life any easier.

1. Stroller - We take the baby out and Krystal puts him in a wrap or I put him in the Jeep carrier. I couldn't imagine folding up a big ass stroller and loading into the trunk and then pulling it out when we go on a outing where we'd be walking around a bunch. It seems backwards. It seems like the stroller would be more work than just having the baby in a carrier.

2. Disposable Diapers - I don't get disposable diapers. And people going, "Oh, it's so much more work to use cloth diapers. You'll get tired of that fast". Those people are crazy. First, how much money do you waste on disposable diapers? And, no, cloth diapers aren't cheap. But when he outgrows some, we sell the small ones and buy some bigger ones. Can you sell your used disposable diapers? No. It costs WAY more to use disposables. Plus the clothes diapers are SUPER easy to use. A lot of times you open up the outside diaper and just change out the pad inside. Some extra loads of laundry, big deal. Plus, since the invention of disposable diapers, the percentage of babies with diaper rash has gone from 7% to like 84%. Because disposables are to absorbent, cause two problems. 1) the baby doesn't feel wet as fast, keeping the pee (which is ammonia) on it's skin causing diaper rash. 2) making the baby not feel wet as often (ie. making the baby uncomfortable) which makes it more difficult to potty train. Not to mention the sheer wastefulness of disposables. I know the "most of our garbage is disposable diapers" idea is a myth. They account for only 1% of our garbage, but it's still a lot of waste considering how much we make in a year.

3. Changing Table - We have a couple changing tables. One's called the bed, another is called the co-sleeper. I need a whole other piece of furniture for that?

4. Baby Monitor - He sleeps in our room in a co-sleeper. So when he starts stirring, Krystal hears and tends to him. It seems funny to me that people put their baby in a whole other room, close the door and then put a microphone next to it so they can hear it.

5. Nanny / Daycare - I know that a lot of people I know don't have (or are planning on hiring) a nanny. But to the people who do, why did you have kids? The kid is so in the way that you need to hire someone else to watch it all day so you can go back to your 'normal' lifestyle. Just like daycare. I'm going to have a child, then hire someone else to watch him all day so I can try to go back to how my life was before I had a kid. Why am I one of the few people that thinks that's ass backwards? If you want your life to be exactly the same as before you had kids, you shouldn't have kids. It's a big change that you need to make adjustments and sacrifices for. It's much harder financial in our family with Krystal not working and she liked working, but we make sacrifices that benefit the baby.

6. All The Other Unnecessary Items: Breathing monitor: you're paranoid. Bath tub temp gauge: You can't touch the water and tell how hot it is? You might need to see a doctor because you have nerve damage or something. Pacifiers that say "Reduces SIDS": How? How does the company know that and how could a pacifier possible reduce something that the doctor's can't figure out what is causing it. They just print that shit on there to scare you into buying their pacifiers.

Basically, we're sold a lot of unnecessary stuff all the time and number 6 is an example of that stuff. But there are some things that are so ingrained into people minds that you have to have for your baby that I think some people don't realize how easy it is without these things. Even easier some times I think. So they get all shocked that you are going to not use this common item that they have no problem displaying their lack of confidence that you will stick to your decision. And it's not like I'm forcing myself to not use some of these things out of spite, I had to really think to come up with these items because I had forgotten all about them. Imagine someone with a baby that forgets about the use of a stroller. It must not be as important as people make it out to be.

Day 76: The Baby is a Tool

I mean the baby is a tool for my entertainment. Not like my baby is a tool that's on that reality show Jersey Shore. We were playing with Photobooth on the Mac.

Day 76: All's Well

Things are going pretty well with the baby. Krystal spends the days encouraging him to sit up and roll over and he's doing really well at it. He was able to hold his head up on his own fairly early. Of course that's compared to what the "norm" is which I think is a bunch of bologna. I think a lot of parents just wait for that certain age to start teaching their child to do stuff. If the norm is 3-4 months before it can hold it's head up completely, so that's what you wait for. Well, we did things to encourage him to hold his head up and his muscles developed faster and he holds his head up fine at 2 1/2 months. Kids start school around 5 years old. Why? Who decided that? Why not start teaching you kid as soon as you can? But people wait for those "milestones". They're just arbitrary numbers that baby industry made up. That's why we want to home-school. We will have complete control over when we teach our kid what. And we'll be able to make sure the information he is taught is accurate, which unfortunately in public school it isn't.

We have a while until then, but for now we just keep helping him on his way and he's taking to it with surprising ease.

Day 72: Share the Love

I'm working on a DVD to send out to family members with some videos and a picture slideshow on it. I got one that works well in our DVD player, but then I tweaked a few things and burned another one and it doesn't work right. I hopefully have the problem solved and can make some copies. I'm downloading a new version of iDVD so I'm ready for the next time I want to make a DVD. Hopefully the newer version will work better.

Day 71: A Day at the Beach... And the Cheese Factory

We drove out to the Tillamook Cheese Factory today. The tour was short, but interesting. I got a bag of fresh cheese curd which is the tastiest thing in the world. I don't like plain cheese. I put cheese on stuff but I can't eat just a chunk of cheese. But this fresh cheese curd they had was fantastic. And unfortunately I think you can only get it there. They don't sell it at the store so we'll have to go get more some day.

After that we drove up 101 and stopped in Cannon Beach. We got some pizza and walked down the little main drag with all the shops. We got some candy in a decent sized candy shop. I also got a sweet business card holder that has a picture of Spock on it and says "Live long and prosper". Too bad I'm out of business cards, but it reminded me to order more when I got home. I can't wait until they get here.


Then we walked out toward the beach where a friendly bunch of ladies took our picture for us.


Elliott was really good on the trip. He napped in his car seat a lot and rode in the Jeep carrier pretty well. He seems to be a pretty mellow baby, which is nice.

Day 46: Baby Time!

It's baby time. Most of the time it's a constant investigation into what the baby wants and how to make him happy but occasionally he settles down and lets me snap a picture.

Day 9: And a Baby Makes Three

Things are going well with the baby. He's still in that stage where he sleeps a lot so we've been able to catch up on sleep after our week long ordeal. HE's also really calm when he's awake. He's not a big crier. He cries a little when he's hungry but otherwise he just sits there and stares at everything. I think he's fascinated by my beard. I think he thinks he has a mom and a grizzly bear as parents. Then sometimes the dog gets in his face and I wonder if he thinks it's me. Babies don't have very good eye sight so you never know.

We did take the baby back to the hospital for a jaundice follow up because his yellowness was getting worse but they told us his bilirubin levels were actually lower so that's good. Thank god for Oregon Health Plan. I can't imagine if we had to pay for that out of our pockets. I mean, we really wanted a natural birth but you can't predict the future and I'm glad we are covered for what happened, plus the baby having jaundice. I mean even if the natural birth happened without a hitch he would have still had jaundice, had to go to the hospital and go under the lights. So anything can happen. Not to mention if there is some complication before the baby is born. It's just better to be safe than sorry. I'm not one to take government assistance, but at least I've paid into that system. Not like a guy I knew who's family just lived off the government and never really contribute to society. He said "They can't get a job, then they will lose their assistance." What a bunch of leeches. At least Krystal and I have worked hard and contributed to society.

I found the cloth diapers very very easy to use and they are not much work at all to wash. I don't why more people don't use them. We do have a big utility sink right next to our washing machine so I guess I will give other people the benifit of the doubt if they don't have that. I'm sure it makes it easier, but still, not that much work. I couldn't imagine paying disposable diapers. We'd be broke... Or broker than we already are. Seriously we'd be bankrupt.

We also bought a jeep baby carrier (baby backpack) to replace the piece of shit Baby Bjorn we had. Why are those things so popular? That thing had to be the most poorly designed piece of garbage I've ever owned. There were buttons that you pushed to release straps under the baby while it was sitting in it. I couldn't stand it. It was nearly impossible to get the baby in and out of it. It sucked. So we got a Jeep baby carrier and I love it. All the adjustments are easy to get to. the baby sits in it really well without it squishing the baby into my chest. Very happy with it.

It looks like things are going to start getting very busy at work. I have a few upcoming jobs now plus a couple bids out plus an engineer working on a couple plans for future jobs. So it's time to work a couple weekends and put some money in the bank and then we can go up and visit the family. If their good.

Day 4: Finally Home

He's finally home..

Day 1: He Joins the World

It's been quite the adventure. Krystal started contractions at about 6:30am on Wednesday. We stayed home and our midwife stopped by and checked her out a few times. Then we went in at about 2:00pm to the clinic only to be turned away because she was not dilated enough. Understandable. Tried to get some rest that evening and finally went back in to the clinic at about 3:00am Thursday. Krystal labored for a while and still wasn't dilated a lot so we left, got some breakfast (just a smoothie for Krystal) and stopped at home to let the dogs out of the kitchen. We went back to the clinic at about 2:00pm that afternoon where things just kept on not progressing. Krystal finally got almost fully dilated but couldn't really push. So there was a whole lot more laboring and she sat in the tub and they broke her water manually which made her cervix go back down to 6 cm. So we watched TV and tried to nap and eventually Krystal got back up to almost 10 cm at like 5:00am today (Friday) but still couldn't push. Remember that there has been virtually no real sleep and no food since early Wednesday. Now our midwife is suggesting that Krystal get back in the tub but I can tell that the poor girl doesn't have anything left in her. And Krystal finally gives in and asks to be taken to the hospital. The place we didn't want to go but by this point I just want the baby to be born healthy. I don't care how anymore.

So about 6:30am friday we go over to Legacy Emanuel and get admitted there. We get a new midwife from the hospital and a nurse and they give Krystal a mild painkiller just to get her relaxed. Then after talking with the midwife about our options with epidurals and pitocin, we decide to give Krystal and epidural and just let her get some sleep. which she does and it seems to help out tremendously. So after a tiny amount of pitocin and some laboring she is finally fully dilated and she starts pushing. To make a long story short, after 4 hours of intense pushing, the midwife and nurse come to the conclusion that the baby is not going to make it naturally. The midwife said she's never seen anyone push so well and there should be some progress but there just isn't. It's literally the story of the baby's life. So they bring in a doctor as a second option and he agrees that a c-section is the only way to go. Krystal is disappointed but after over 2 days of solid labor (contractions every 5 minutes sometimes 2-3 minutes the whole time) and 4 hours of pushing, there's not much else she can do.

Within 15 minutes we were in the c-section room and they had me sit next to Krystal's head, I couldn't see the operation due to the blue curtain. Finally they held up a wrinkly, blueish baby boy... Boy? Apparently the doctor was wrong about the sex, which we weren't completely surprised about. So I got to go around and I took some pictures and some video as the nurse cleaned him up and printed his feet and he peed on some of the nurses (which I got on video) and then I got to hold him and bring him over to Krystal. And nurses just assume that guys don't know how to hold a baby, I got lots of compliments on my baby holding skills. I've been around a baby or two in my day. Then they stapled Krystal back up and we went back to the room where she breastfed him and he did great at latching. Then Krystal took a nap and I just held him in my arm for the longest time. He would just look up at me with these pretty blueish/ grayish eyes.

No I'm back home letting our dogs out of the kitchen they'd been locked in for 21 hours. I'll probably watch some TV and just pet them for a bit so I don't feel like they're being neglected and then go back to the hospital. Krystal will have to be there until at least Monday. My sister is coming down tomorrow.

But I'm glad our baby boy is out and healthy. And Krystal did an amazing job that I don't think anyone else in the world could have done. She deserves her beautiful son she worked so hard to bring into the world. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Elliott Action O'Neal...