Tag: Christmas

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News

Baby Max is here!

This morning, December 26th at 8:12am, Kelly and I welcomed our son

Max!

to the world. The stats for those who like that stuff: 21.5″ long, and weighed in at 7 lbs 10 oz. Both Kelly and the baby are doing well despite an unplanned (but entirely warranted) cesarean after 9 hours of rough labor. Kelly is resting comfortably, and the little man is chilling out (when he’s not being prodded and poked by the hospital staff over a concern of a chest infection or something).

Full story:

After getting up early Saturday for Christmas, going out to my folks, and then visiting some of Kelly’s family who are staying in Oregon City, we got home around 9pm last night. Around 10pm Kelly started feeling some early labor pains, by midnight had suddenly and intensely progressed, and by 2am we were in the hospital room and Kelly was in some seriously intense active labor.

Within two hours she had progressed from 3cm to 7cm dilated, all w/o any pain meds (Kelly is made of steel and lava and diamonds). Then the progress stopped, and for another couple hours of incredibly rough and painful labor w/o any progression Kelly decided to get an epidural (which was a relief for me to see her agony vanish). The doctor did some checking and realized that the reason the progression halted was that the little man was coming out a bit cockeyed (chin wasn’t to chest and was going through slightly turned) and Kelly’s pelvis was likely not going to be large enough anyway. Combined with some distress on the child (reduced heartbeat) when Kelly was going through a contraction and it was decided the best (and probably only) choice for the boy was to go under the knife.

I’d never been put in scrubs and walked into an operating room with my wife on the table before (and I really hope I don’t have to again) but the procedure was quick, and before we knew it there was a new little person in the world.

For the next couple hours we waited in the recovery room, and then around 11:30 were moved back to our birthing suite. Max has had some blood drawn and an x-ray of his chest taken (not sure the results yet) but his breathing has improved so it seems he’ll be fine (fingers crossed). I guess some respiratory issues are common in cesarean births, but the staff here at Good Sam aren’t taking any chances (and I really appreciate it).

After being up for 31 hours I finally dozed off for a nap on the sofa for a couple hours, and now Max is dozing happily on Kelly’s chest while we watch Trading Places on cable.

Anyway, I’m sure there will be more posts, but I’m going to try and avoid smothering my blog with stuff about my boy (for the same reason I’ll not be posting his every move on Facebook). I hope to give him a sense of privacy as he grows older. He’ll probably be considered ‘off the grid’ by the time he’s a teen if his every moment isn’t published publicly on the interwebs. Good. 🙂

Categories
Beer Food Music Travel Work

OMG it’s 2010

OK, so, I gave up for the past 3 months. Guess I lost the love. It’s not that I don’t love the 3 or 4 of you who actually read my blog, but I just lost the love for spewing out nonsense for no particular reason. It affected my Twitter-ing too. I just felt no need for it. I could barely keep up with consuming everything coming my way (outside of my work-related duties), and just didn’t care to add the burden to myself or anyone else.

But I’m back, baby. (for now)

Here’s a recap since my last post (when I was happily relaxed on the Big Island).

At the end of October I had a birthday, and I turned 25 (again), and had the good fortune of having friends and family over to celebrate. I had a great time (I think, can’t quite remember since it was so long ago). Looking at the photographic evidence there was a lot of time spent bowling on the Wii, drinking beers, and eating fondu and other delicious treats that Kelly (and others) had made. Again, let me reiterate, I turned 25. Not 35. Nosirree. Nope.

Around mid-November, my company sent the Engineering team down to Napa Valley and San Francisco for a day/night to celebrate the latest release of our software. Had a fun time, despite the fact that I don’t have any love for wine. However, some awesome coworkers had my back, and picked up some cans of Guinness and Boddingtons for me to gulp while on the bus. Thanks guys!

Shortly after the trip to Napa, I got sick with what I can only assume to be the dreaded pigmanflu (given the fever, aches, etc). It wasn’t much fun.

Guinness is back on tap on the Kegerator (yay!).

Christmas time! Kelly and I got a nice tree this year from a daycare up the street from our house (proceeds go to help the daycare, so that makes it extra festive). Our evil cat Arthur Guinness took to climbing it repeatedly. Stupid cat. We went out to my folks place on Christmas day (as is tradition) and ate too much and opened gifts. A couple days later we went to my aunts and exchanged white elephant gifts and again ate a bit too much, and got to hang out with some of my cousins.

A couple days later I got sick again, this time with a more common cold (I blame this on Kelly, since she had it first). Sniffles, cough, bleh.

The other day, out of nowhere, it snowed a bit in PDX. And this one was unexpected and caught everyone off guard. It started around 2pm or so, and by 5pm, there was a little over 2 inches of snow in our neighborhood. Watching the news of the rush-hour traffic, the roads were a mess, especially since nobody was prepared for the conditions and loads of people got stuck trying to get in or out of town. People, including my brother, spent 8 hours or more trying to get from point A to B.

That same night, Kelly and I attended a Squirrel Nut Zippers concert in Southeast Portland (at the Aladdin Theater) which she had bought for me as a Christmas gift. We weren’t sure if we were going to bother going out or not up until an hour before the show, however I’m glad we braved the roads because it was a really fun show. We hadn’t seen them in about 5 years (since their hiatus), and they put on a really good show, putting some stylistic twists some of their old songs, and performing them all with all the fun that I expected from a SNZ show.

Tonight we celebrated New Years at our good friends T & S’s place (who fortunately live just over a mile away from us) which meant for the first time in many years we didn’t host the party. This was good primarily since both Kelly and I are still recovering from our illnesses. However we came home pretty quickly after midnight, and here I am.

Here’s to hoping that 2010 will be a better year all around than 2009.

And for some Way Back Machine-ing, here’s a quote from the Counting Crows song ‘A Long December‘ (watch the video for a younger Courteney Cox, back when she dated Adam Duritz in 1997):

And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last

Happy New Years all!

Categories
Food

Christmas with the family (finally)

Finally had Christmas at my folks place today. The snow in Portland is pretty much gone, and it had finally melted enough in my hometown that the family thought we all might manage to get to my parents house safely. Even then, there was no way I could have driven my car up there (there was still over a foot of snow on the ground and lots of deep slushy roads) so Kelly & I met my brother C in town a few miles away and left our car. This year we’d all agreed to do a small Christmas, with the goal of making things more than buying things. This lead to some nice gifts (Kelly made jars of cookie mix with attached recipies, my mom knitted stocking caps, that kind of thing). It was very nice and relaxing. We also had a large brunch and I ate way too much. Still full.