We never had much trouble finding names for girls but from the beginning we were always more torn on boy names. Christopher was not named until several days after he was born and it was something that literally came to me as I was eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria. I popped into my head and I liked it right away. Lisa took a little longer to warm up to it but eventually it seemed to fit him perfectly. Welcome to the world Christopher.

The labor and delivery of Christopher was crazy enough. 36hrs for the whole thing which included incorrect doses of petocin, a bag of water that didn’t quite break, contemplations of c-section and finally an incredibly intense, manic and painful hour and fifteen minuets for the complete dilation and birth. This is our third chid. I have experience in these things. I’ve never, ever, experienced anything like that in my life. It’s just nothing like the videos tell you. It never is.

Despite it all, Christopher was born and is fit as a fiddle. We walked out of the hospital, no wheelchair needed. Lisa felt great.

24hrs later Lisa has the chills and a slight fever. Nursing is not going so well. The fever and chills get worse. By the next day things are falling apart fast. Now Lisa develops a strange rash on her hands that looks like hand foot and mouth disease.We have a baby visit with the pediatrician who says he has lost more weight than he should and he’s jaundice. It’s from not nursing well which is due to Lisa’s sickness. So we start supplementing immediately.  It’s the weekend, of course, and our ob is not on call or available. The on call doc prescribes antibiotics. Seems sensible enough but we are worried about the rash so we go to a clinic on a cold, wet Portland night. The clinic doctor takes one look at Lisa and says she has no idea what the rash is but thinks we aught to get ourselves to a hospital right away. The baby is on the bottle now and is already looking better in good hands of  Lisa’s mother so off to the hospital we go. Lisa’s not looking so good.

It takes them awhile and many scans/tests but the hospital docs and our regular ob do decide that Lisa has a viral phenomena. She is having trouble breathing by this time and is clearly retaining too much fluid from the pregnancy. We end up spending the better part of three days in the hospital recovering from the phenomena.  Lisa feels terrible and misses the baby too. Finally she is well enough to go home, again.

By the time we get home our oldest daughter (12) has a bad case of the flu. She is as sick as I’ve ever seen her and she ends up missing an entire week of school. Now we’ve got a post pardom recovering mom who is also recovering from phenomena and a kid with the flu. By the end of the week our daughter is starting to feel a little better. I am putting our 2yr old to sleep and my stomach is killing me. I can’t stand it anymore and I puke, hard and heavy. It’s bad. I don’t leave bed for the next day and a half. I am nauseous when I stand and I have body aches and a headache like I’ve never known.

By the time I am able to be somewhat functional although still feeling bad, Lisa’s mom starts feeling it. She has the chills and feels sick. Her dad goes home that night and pukes all evening. It’s spreading and we’ve all got it. By the next day Lisa’s mom is slightly better but now Lisa is in full nauseous, body ache sick mode. Lisa stays in bed for a day and a half.

Today, Lisa made it out of bed. Her mom and dad are looking much better and I’m feeling better than I have in days. I think today we are breaking through the last layer of hell and are seeing a bit of daylight. Christopher, you are a beautiful child; perfect in every way, but the story of your birth and postpartum is a thing of legend.

Even though Equal and Splenda have been around for many years, you can still find Saccharin at many restaurants and especially low quality gas stations. I have a long running problem with establishments that provide Saccharin exclusively. I know it’s probably much cheaper but no self respecting diabetic will eat that crap. I’m not saying you cannot have Saccharin, but you have to provide one of the other alternatives as well. I can’t tell you how many times I have found myself in a situation where there is only Saccharin available. I do try to carry my own but that’s not always convenient and dammit I shouldn’t have to. There are millions of diabetic customers in the world and as one of them I have to tell businesses that when you only offer Saccharin it feels like a slap in the face. I feel like you don’t care about me at all and you are not willing to a make a little extra effort to make me comfortable. It’s a subtle point of business but an important one.

I proudly announce my new project, New Guy In Town.

Moving to and adjusting to Portland is going to entail lots of new discoveries and adventures and I want to invite you all along for the ride. This will be both a blog and a podcast following my first year in Portland. All the new places I discover; places to eat, play and see. I’ll share it all. It’s my take on Portland from a newcomers and ex-California perspective.

Come along as I introduce you in text, sound and pictures to my new home town, Portland OR.

On the web at http://www.newguypdx.com

Other than that, it’s been an adventure a minute. Our furniture, which was bought when we had a very large house, doesn’t fit the same in this smaller house. I knew we were going to face this kind of a problem but it’s another thing to see it first hand. The headboard for our bed still isn’t in our room because it’s too large to get up the stairs. Now we are having to literally saw it apart and then put it back together once it’s in the room. We love that bed and we’re not going to spend more money buying a new one, so whatever it takes, that bed is going in.

After the first week we all got killer colds. Maybe part stress and all the effort of unpacking, but Lisa, Virginia and I were all laid out. Only Capella came through without a scratch. Now we are finally healthy again and are making decent progress bringing the house together. It’s feels a lot less like a disaster area and more like an actual comfortable home.

In the middle of all this, through in a heat wave of 93 degree plus temperatures. I expected many things in Portland but never heat like this. The house has no air conditioning and has been brutal, especially at night when trying to get to sleep. Of course, the worst room is the kids room.

In general, I love being here though. Portland is just great. Our neighbors have been very nice and welcoming. Plenty of great, fun places to eat and a nice mellow vibe. Lots and lots of bikes, per the legend. One of the things I like most about this house, every window I look out of I see green.

As you know if you’ve been following along, our family has been basically vagabonds since selling our old house and waiting for our new Portland house to be available to move into. We’ve spend time in various places and Memorial Day weekend we were at an Embassy Suites in Irvine, CA. We love Embassy Suites and we stay there whenever we can. We are Hilton Hhoners members at the Silver level. Don’t get too excited, it doesn’t get us squat but it sounds nice.

On this fair weekend, there was a massive youth baseball tournament going on in Orange County and hundreds of these baseball kids were staying at the E.S. The hotel was pretty much overrun with 10-12yr old boys and girls. It might have been ok if not for the fact that these were some of the most misbehaved kids I have ever seen and their parents, completely out to lunch. Kids were running around the hotel, going up and down elevators constantly and generally making far too much noise. I would have expected their parents to reign them in a little, enforce at least a modicum of reasonable public behavior. But some of the parents were as loud and obnoxious as their kids.

At one point there were around 10 girls sitting directly outside our room door having a loud and boisterous conversation. Just sitting outside our door. That’s when I finally picked up the phone and called downstairs. I’m trying t0 have a nice relaxing weekend and these kids are driving me nuts. Add to that all the elevator hijinks, and getting downstairs at times involved waiting up to 10min for an elevator. There are many other little things I could gripe about but these were the big ones. I was never so happy to leave a hotel in my life. I’ll still go to Embassy Suites as they still have by far the most bang for the buck of any hotel chain I know but boy did they drop the ball this past weekend.