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Scooter Finally Takes Some Steps

Scooter Finally Takes Some Steps

Our 16 month old son was taking his sweet time walking. We nicknamed him “Scooter” because he was fond of scooting across the floor and not interested in walking at all. So when daycare sent a video yesterday of him taking his first steps, it was momentous and caused tears of joy (and jealousy) in the Taylor household. It’s hard as a parent to feel like your kid is behind, and it didn’t help that…

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Pandemic Parenting and Inequality

Pandemic Parenting and Inequality

We now have 3 children. The third came over a year ago. All the males in the Taylor household were born within a week of each other in late August, and all the females were born within a week of each other in mid-May. What does this mean? Hard to derive much meaning in anything these days, except to say it’s a strange coincidence (and perhaps there is something about tryptophan that creates XY…

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Whoops I did it again....

Whoops I did it again….

I feel like I may be recycling this title. Dejavu and short term memory loss are like…. and what not. Oh well, I can’t remember much these days anyway. Fina is due on 8/17, so the new baby will arrive any day now. We are “going blind” on the gender and don’t have any names really picked out. I recall something about needing one of those for the birth certificate they have you sign right after the…

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Let's blame the children

Let’s blame the children

I haven’t written anything for a long time and that is based on a combination of a couple of factors/excuses:

My personal laptop is dead.

Work is busy.

I’m lazy.

We have a 8 month old and an 8 year old (who acts like she’s 16).

I’ll unpack each of these, but want to put it out there at the outset that my lack of writing spring’s mostly from #4. I can appreciate that having children is a gift and…

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I’ll preface this post by saying, yes, I agree, I’ll call the “waaaaambulance”.  There are people really suffering right now with this housing crisis, so by contrast, our problems are quite insignificant.

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August 2016 – Excited to move into our new house

Owning a house means space to build stuff, like this bench.

Work bench setup outside, even in the snow

what the back yard used to look like

We removed 2,000 lbs of blackberry, bramble, and debris from a small homeless encampment

The backyard is still a work in progress, but we’ve been enjoying it

Pregnant cornhole at Summer Solstice

9 months pregnant – good luck getting yourself out of that hammock!

New addition to the fam as of August 2017

I have railed in the past about how the real estate market is another bubble and how I wouldn’t make the same mistake I made in 2007 when I bought a house at the last peak of the real estate craze… well obviously I’m full of shit. We bought the worst house in the best neighborhood of Seattle in August 2016. This is the house in the neighborhood that is currently being torn down at a breakneck pace and replaced with a beautiful/modern/million dollar box. It’s small and beat up, but we love it.

When we bought it we didn’t have much leverage. To say it was a seller’s market is a massive understatement (we put 7 offers in before this and lost every single one). Sure the foundation was sloping 8 inches in the front; and in the words of our inspector, it had “the oldest working furnace” he had ever seen (in 40 years of doing business), but the sellers basically said, “take it or leave it” and we took it. They on the other hand took a 160% return in less than 4 years of owning it.

Recently we’ve been doing things to make it either nicer (adding an external dwelling) or routine maintenance that comes with an old house (backed up drains from years of buildup). In both cases we’ve been dealing with a ton of “take it or leave it”. There isn’t an opportunity to “leave it: when it comes to plumbing issues, so I’ll start there.

Fina called a bunch of plumbers and all of them are so busy that they either a) wouldn’t  commit to coming and giving a quote or b) wanted a ton of money just to come out and give us a quote. It was unpleasant to say the least. So she went on the Nextdoor app to see if there were any recommendations from neighbors or amateur plumbers looking to help us out.

Jim’s wife contacted us letting us know that he was a recently retired plumber, doing a little daylighting and he’d like to help us.

Everything started out fine. Jim came and checked out our place and was able to figure out that we were totally screwed, but fine, he could help us. This was after quite a bit of time spent by me trying to plunge the sink-in-question, and I was not about to try any more DIY. Fina is home on maternity leave so she had been dealing with him and there was something a bit off – so she asked that he call me.

“Jim hereereree. The plumber.”

“Hi Jim”

“So, I fsjdlkfsdklfj took a looook. Loooook it’s real bad. It’s gonna be $680. Take it or leave it.”

“Uh, hi Jim. Nice to meet you. Can you explain a bit more about what  you found out.”

“Oh, sure kaj;fjsdfkljsdaklfjsd (incoherent mumbling – sound of a juke box in the background)…. and the pipe is completely backed up. And you gotta lot of problems. So it’s gone be a LOT more than $700.”

“Wait, Jim, you just said it was going to be $680.”

“Fine, I’ll do it for $675. Whaddaya want to do (more incohherent mumbling)?”

I had been out of town on business the week prior and our bathroom sink had been out of commission for over 2 weeks, so I said: “Jim, do you mind coming by so I can meet you in person and you can show me what you plan to do?”

“sdjaflksdjfaklsdjflasdjklfajsdlf (which I took as an affirmation”

Jim and his wife, Sonja showed up reeking of cigarettes and only mildly less incoherent than he had appeared on the phone. For most people, that would have been when conversations ended, but I was feeling desperate and hired him anyway.

Fast forward 3 days, he appears to have done great work and everything is fixed. Sure, he may have left the job site both days by noon to go get drunk, but he fixed it for the price we agreed to, and after a couple of days feeling like I’ve made a huge mistake and endangered my family, it seems resolved. Not pleasant, but resolved.

Next, I’ll tell you about the time we tried to build a sleep shed/guest house, hired a “fixer” to get us the variance so we can keep it when we eventually tear down our house like everyone else, and it ended up costing 3 x as much and taking 5 x as long as our “fixer” said. We are still dealing with it, so those numbers are just preliminary estimates and will probably take waaaay longer. Again, I realize this is some first world problems.

“Take it or Leave it” – Joys of Home Ownership I'll preface this post by saying, yes, I agree, I'll call the "waaaaambulance".  There are people really suffering right now with this housing crisis, so by contrast, our problems are quite insignificant.

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We are scheduled to go into the hospital tomorrow morning to start an 8 am induction process. The boy is a week “overcooked” and Fina’s provider recommends either inducing at that point, or ultrasounds and other tests to make sure he is ok. There ain’t much space in there, and Fina is done with being pregnant. We planned on this if he was a week late, but I know it feels a bit odd to her to schedule a time to come in to give the birthing process a push out of the nest.

We went for our regular evening stroll through the neighborhood last night and happened upon a woman just as she was leaving a house that we had spent some time in. A friend/one of the instructors at our grad school program rented this house to Fina’s family the first time they came and visited, and they stayed for a month. This was our first exposure to the neighborhood we live in now and it is always a bit bizarre to walk by the house and not know the people that currently occupy it. Anita sold the house probably 4 years ago.

This woman was very friendly and excited to say hi. It just so happens, that she is a doula, who was visiting her clients 8 weeks after their baby was born.  My experience with doulas, including leading up to, and at the birth of my daughter, was not always positive. Doulas are not medical professionals, they are consigliere’s to the mom during the birthing process, and ostensibly I like the idea of a doula acting as a trusted advisor. They can help to ensure that the birth plan is adhered-to as much as possible, and that the OB/GYN’s that may have a tee time to get to, don’t rush you into the operating room.

Unfortunately in my experience, I have found them to be kinda judgmental. “OH, YOU AREN’T SURE WHETHER OR NOT YOU WANT A COMPLETELY NATURAL CHILDBIRTH? YOU SHOULD MAMA!!! IT’S BEST FOR MAMA AND BABY!!! YOU ARE A NINJA WARRIOR! PAIN MEANS NOTHING TO YOU!!!  DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT WHETHER YOUR CHILD GROWS UP TO HAVE A FULFILLING LIFE? And the doula we ran into last night reinforced this.

When she saw Fina’s belly, I could smell the sales pitch coming and she eagerly asked, “so mama¹, when are you due?” Fina said that we have an induction scheduled for Friday morning. OH NO! THAT’S SOOOO PAINFUL. DON’T DO IT. IT’S REALLY THE LONGEST AND MOST PAINFUL WAY TO GIVE BIRTH. CAN YOU CANCEL IT? OH GOD!!! PLEASE NOOOOO. JUST START HAVING LOT’S OF SEX, OK? DON’T DO IT.

As you might imaging, this really upset my already pretty distraught wife. We had just been with her OB who walked us through the options and we came to the conclusion that was what was best. Why did the doula say this at that point? Regardless, we are excited to meet our new little guy this weekend and will keep you all posted.

I have seen a pregnant woman chain-smoke, and I am by no means advocating that.  Doulas may recommend it though, to take the edge off.

I have seen a pregnant woman chain-smoke, and I am by no means advocating that.

¹Why do Doula’s call pregnant women who have not yet given birth, Mama? She is not your mother.

Countdown: Less than 24 hours We are scheduled to go into the hospital tomorrow morning to start an 8 am induction process.

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Dragging his heals

This baby is really dragging his heals, mostly into the side of Fina’s insides. I’m no medical expert, but it feels like the waiting game is bad for my health, and it’s possible he is doing this to torture us. Uncertainty and fear of the unknown shouldn’t be weighing me down, not because I’m the World’s Best Daddy™ with experience in both child-rearing and child-birth-observation, but because…

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Oh Boy

We found out a couple of weeks ago that your humble-blogger, WBD, will now be the father of a boy. I’d like to say that I wasn’t extra excited about the prospects of teaching this unformed XY chromosomer how to throw a curve ball, but then I remembered that I’d have to learn how to do that myself. For someone that thinks of themselves as a jack of all/master of none, this was going to provide…

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It's Mourning in America Again (Or, when is it ok to go back on tinder?)

It’s Mourning in America Again (Or, when is it ok to go back on tinder?)

For students of history, they know that Ronald Reagan’s famous commercial in the 80’s titled “It’s morning in America again” was really veiled racism and what Donald Trump styled his whole Make America... blech…. We are all tired of hearing about how upsetting this week’s tragedy is, and I really want to find a way to move on — which I know is completely ridiculous. It’s way to soon and raw to…

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How to be Good, the Inspirational “Velfie” In this installment of steal-your-dad's-phone and record an inspirational velfie (video-selfie), AT provides some words of wisdom on how to be good.

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The #vibe at @altay10r (at Vibe Apartments Fremont)

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Rising to 1st Grade Ceremony #goodbyekindergarten (at John Stanford International School)

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Don't you know I'm #Loco ? #marinationstation (at Ma Kai - Marination)

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#whipnaenae

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Happy Birthday to the love of my life. These past 4 years have been the best. Thank you for being the best partner, stepmom, and partner in crime. Ja Elsker Dig! (at University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden)

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Hot tub pong at #finas20sfinale (at Lavender Lake)

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Hot tub #chambong at #finas20sfinale (at Lavender Lake)