2007 Christmas Letter

Executive Summary:
Big house remodel, had twins, launched a new on-line grocery service for Amazon called AmazonFresh and Tracy’s sister is pregnant.

Details:
2007 has been a very exciting year for Tracy and me. It started with us loosing about 25% of our roof in the ‘big wind storm of 2007’. It was actually quit scary, the winds hit about 80 mph, having never through a hurricane or a tornado it was amazingly noisy, at somepoint during the evening,Tracy and I ended huddle in the corner in the basement.

As a result of this storm we lost power for six days. It is amazing how adversity can bring people closer together, Matt and Anna and then Mark and Melissa were kind enough to host us for a couple of evenings, so we did not freeze in our 45 F house. Matt was kind enough to spend the better part of two days helping me patch the roof, towards the end Mark showed up to ‘help’, his first act of kindness was to throw the good shingles off the roof. At this point we gave Mark a hammer and sat him in the corner.

Soon after this Tracy and I decided that we should move forward with remodeling our house. The roof and gutters were trashed and it seemed pointless to replace these on a house that we knew we wanted to remodel. So after three years of me playing around with different designs for the house, we were finally going to be able to realize my true vision for a home. I thought this was going to be so much fun…

Soon after we made that decision we got the most exciting news of the year, Tracy was pregnant and then soon after we found out that news we found out she was pregnant with twins!!! This was clearly going to put my project management skills to the test. We had a truly ‘hard deadline’ with my limited knowledge the only thing I was sure of was that the gestational period was fixed on the long end and could be significantly shorter – gulp. With all of this and trying to launch Amazon’s foray into the home grocery business we took the plunge.

There is no reason to regale everyone with home remodel stories, anyone who has been through one knows how they go and everyone knows someone who has been through them, let me just say that the house was not done by the time the babies arrived and we are still trying to get things finalized. I am truly amazed that an industry can operate with the level of incompetence that seems to be pervasive, but I digress.

I have to say a big thanks to Anna’s mom and dad (Mr. and Mrs. Phillips). They were kind enough to let us stay in their apartment while the house was getting finalized. The only rule was no giving birth in the apartment, which was a rule to which we were able to adhere.

Clearly, the biggest news for us this year was the arrival of Owen and Ava (check them out at http://owenandava.blogspot.com/). I was (and am) very excited to have twins, it is interesting to note that all of my father’s brother’s (he is one of three brothers) first children have all had twins. Owen and Ava are now 11 weeks old and starting to smile, coo and generally interact with the world. They are very cute, but a tremendous amount of work (I totally under estimated how much work). Our families have been out to meet them and my mother has been out for almost six weeks since they have been born she has been a tremendous amount of help, she claims it is a labor of love, which is great!!!

I don’t think that our lives will ever be the same again, I have been told that we will in fact sleep and that it does get easier. We have a made a new group of friends that we fondly call ‘the people we meet at the University of Washington multiples classes’, which we have shortened to the ‘dub club’. If you are interesting in more of musing about being a parent check out their blog.

As if all of this excitement was not enough Tracy’s sister is due in May. After having waited to become grandparent Tray’s parents will be grandparents three times over in less then a year. So not only did we become a Mom and Dad we will also soon become an aunt and uncle.

There you have it, a whirl wind update of our lives. Many of you we see on a regular basis and many of you we don’t; we love you all and wish you all a very happy holiday season.

The Clarkson’s (Ian, Tracy, Owen and Ava)

Sleeping

I never knew how important this was until I could not do it. With this in mind we have decided to give our children the 'gift' of learning how to put themselves to sleep. This is 'parent speak' for we are going to let them self shooth, which is 'parent speak' for crying.

On a related note, but somewhat tangental, I was thinking about the following facts - a baby sleeps between 16 - 18 hours a day and every parent I know is tired, it just does not seem mathmatically possible, but working through the math, I guess it is. To make the math easy lets assume that a baby sleeps 2/3rds of a day and an adult sleeps 1/3rd of a day the probability of both adult and baby being a sleep is 66% * 33% = 21.78% when this is multipled by the number of hours in the day means that there is roughly 5 hours that both parent and baby should be sleeping at the sametime. Clearly the above is assuming that the chance of sleeping is evenly distributed, given that there are two care givers it seems to be that parents should be able to get more sleep, but clearly this not the case (just look at that picture of me below). I think that this has to do that the probability of an infant is actually evenly distributed throughout the day, but this is not true for adults... Glad I got the chance to think through that.

The summary version is that Owen does not seem to care about this and Ava seems to be very opinionated about it and her opinion is that this sucks!!!! The first time we tried this (this was about two weeks ago) Ava worked her self up into such a tizzy that she vomited, which would have been really sad, but OK, if she did not immediately inhail the vomit and start to choke, which is really not good. Needless to say (or maybe not) after this we took a break from trying to give them this 'gift'.

About a week later we decided that we needed to try this again. Given the disaster of the first attempted were appraoched this with a little more caution then we did with the first attempt. We were in fact so nervious that we had a rule that one of us had to be in the room to watch them cry, which is really really not fun - I think that for Tracy this is the equavant to a form of torture. The frist night of 'gift' v2 was really hard. I think that Ava cried on and off for about 2 hours and finally cryed herself to sleep, fourtunately she seemed to have forgotten about this when she woke up for her next feeding and was all smiles when we showed up (I am sure that this will come back to haunt us at some point).


Fast forward two weeks and this actually seems to be working. Both the kids have gotten a lot better

Videos?

This week has been a tough week. This is somewhat ironic as the kids are actually doing pretty well. Owen seems to have gotten over the acid reflux problem or the medicine is working, which is great. And Ava seems to have gotten over her night time fussiness. This really only lasted about 5 days, but she would cry and cry and cry for about 3 hours, which was really not that much fun for Tracy and I and I am guessing not all that much fun for her. (Her in this case means Ava, which I guess is pretty obvious as I already mentioned Tracy, but I think leaving the her at the end of the sentence is an unmodified something or other)

So what is wrong? They are not sleeping all that well, neither one of them wants to go down at night (this used to be Owen's strong suit) and they don't want to stay down. So that combined with the fact that we have not had any help this week means that Tracy and I are both extremely tired.

Fortunately for us my mom is coming back Saturday, so that is really really good.

On a completely unrelated noted, it snowed in Seatte last weekend and I was able to convince Tracy that it was a good idea to take the kids out in their first snow storm, sooooooooooooooo Tracy, Jill (Tracy's sister was here and visiting), Owen, Ava and I all went down to the park and meet up with Kristen and her two kids to 'go for a walk' in the park. There was a ton of parking available, which was unusual for a Saturday :-). It was fun, but honestly maybe not the best idea. I had a good time chasing Kristen's kids around. Everyone got outside for a bit and it felt nice to be back in the house when we were done.

Not sure how these will do on the web, but here are a couple of low quality video's of the kids playing, plus some other pictures. I have been told that there can be no good blog posting without pictures.

Baby Pictures

I know that it has been along time since I have posted anything witty or interesting, but my fans are going to have to wait. Between trying to get back to work and helping out with the kids, life (as all of my friends told me and yes you were right) is very busy right now.

So a brief synopsis:

Highs:

- They are both starting to smile. Everyone is convinced (by everyone I mean my Mom and Tracy) that they are smiling. They do appear to be smiling, but I have no idea what they are smiling at. Personally, I think that if you stare at a kid long enough they are going to smile when you face happens to be in front of them. Regardless of the reason, it is REALLY sticken cute, so that gives us hope.

- clinging on - they have both started to hold onto cloths, etc... when they are being held. Again, I think that this is more like they happen to find something in their hand and hold on, but it makes one (at least for me) feel like they want me to hang around, so that is good.

- less random acts of arm motion - both Ava and Owen appear to be starting to understand that those things they flail around can actually be used for something. Owen has started to pull the bottle towards his mouth and Ava appears to be pushing the binky back into her mouth.

Lows:

- Owen has some form of acid reflux (or something like that) which basically means that every time he eats he gets really bad heart burn, so the cycle goes something like. He gets hungry, he wants to eat, he eats about and oz, the acid in his stomach backs up into his throat, which burns, so he cries, but he is still hungry, after about 2 min the burning stops, after about 3 min the crying stops, Owen forgets about the burning, he is hungry, he eats about 1/2 an oz, the acid in his stomach backs up into his throat.... He was taking baby Zantack and is now on his second medication, nothing really seems to be helping. This totally sucks for him and for us - mainly b/c it is heart breaking to see him so clearly in pain. The ironic thing is besides this he is a very happy baby, but since he can not eat a lot he eats 11/12 times a day, so this dominates what is going on with Owen :-(

- Ava: she has actually turned into pretty good kid (she was he fussy baby), I am sure that this award will go back and forth. The big dealio with her has been sleeping. If she does not get it she is a REAL pill. The other day she missed a nap and look out. She was crazy cranky for the next five hours, so we have decided that we don't want to do that any more.

So in the absense of anything interesting to say here are some pictures of the kids.

Retrospective (1 month)

So it has been a month, that is 30 days. It is amazing how quickly the little people become a part of your life. I honestly could not imagine life without them. My entire house smells like baby shit now, most of my cloths have been spit-up on and there is baby stuff every where, isn't that nice?

I was able to take three weeks off, which was great, so as I write this I am starting my second week back at work. So far my mother has been out to help for two weeks (she was great - so much help) and my father came out for a couple of days to meet the kids. Tracy's folks will be out next week, so we are in the beginning of our first week alone while I am back at work - gulp.

So what have I learned so far?
- Taking care of kids is the hardest job I could imagine. So to anyone who does this full time and if I have ever dismissed the effort, please accept my sincerest apologies, it was pure ignorance on my part. To my beautiful wife who is going to stay home and do this, I am truly amazed. Prior to this experience, I had said numerous times that I could be stay at home dad, I had the visions of hours for training, working on my wood working, doing countless projects around the house, working in the garden, etc... OH MY GOD I COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG.
- I had no idea that you could stare at a babies face for hours. I have found myself staring at both Owen and Ava and watching them make faces countless times. It is rather fun.
- Sleeping with a baby on you, this is great. I really really love this.
- As people told me, but of course once can not understand, it one of the most rewarding and exhausting experiences ever.
- How much I miss Tracy, this might seem odd and I am not sure if this is a twin thing, a baby thing or and Ian and Tracy thing, but it seems that we don't see each other anymore. Now that I am back at work everything is shifted, so we see each other for 30 min in the morning while I am getting ready and maybe an hour in the evening - we really miss each other - which I guess is nice, but it is hard.

We think that both of the kids are getting bigger. Of course the only empircal evidence that we have is from their two week Dr Apt (same nice Dr. man from the last one) where Owen weighed 6 1/2 lbs and measured 19 inches which adjusting for their young gestational age put him in the 50th percentile for head circumfrance and height, but only in the 20th percentile to weight. Ava weighed 6.0 lbs and measured 17 1/2 inches which again ajusting put her in the 20th percentile for hieght and the single digits for weight and head cicumfrance. I guess if you are going to have a boy and a girl you would want the percentages to be in this order.

One month pictures:
1 Month 5 days






(It is amazing how quickly they grow! I guess they are finally fitting into those onies now.)

(Mom and Dad trying to work a couple of things out.)

Diapers (and what goes along with that!)

As you all know, I am a pretty big fan of the environment and all that goes along with that. I hug trees, rummage through the garbage to make sure that the last shred of recyclable material has been put into the appropriate tub, we drive a hybrid car, I bike to work, I save worms, and now that we can put food scraps in our yard waste the rummaging can go on for days. On my to do list prior to having the little people was to build a compost heap, still on the list, just below some other stuff. But I digress....

So diapers, these are somewhat the bane of the environmentalists existence, lets just face it there is nothing good about them. By their very nature they are designed to withstand degrading, which is pretty much the anti environment. Me being me, I have done research on this and basically came down with the following conclusion, there is no good answer. I found this interesting site while trying to figure out what to do. (http://www.perc.ca/waste-line/articles/diaper.html). Honestly I don't know how influence I would have over this decision anyway, Tracy was pretty insistent that we were using disposable, so there you go.

As a complete aside, I also came across this http://www.ilea.org/lcas/hocking1994.html - which basically calculated how many times you have to reuse a reusable cup to make it better for the environment. Honestly, what did people do before the internet?

So back to diapers. At the end of the day I have come to the decision that you have to use something. This obvious conclusion came into very clear focus one day when I was trying to sooth a crying Owen. Let me set the stage:

It was about two weeks into being a dad and about two days into being back in our recently renovated house, the nursery is newly painted, the changing table is nicely set-up, the carpet is new, I think that you get the picture. So I am there changing Owen and he is having a massive sense of humor failure. I have this vague recollection of some telling me that 'babies like to be close to your skin', so I think this sounds like a good idea, Owen has just peed and pooed, this is going to be great bonding time. So I proceed to hold Owen's naked body against me and in no more then 30 secs he power shits all over me, somehow managing to shit all over of my stomach, on my shirt and down onto my pants, the impressive thing is not that he got it all over me, but he also managed to hit the changing table, all down the front of the dresser (of course drawers were open) and the floor, please keep in mind that at this point the kid only weighs about 6lbs, he must have shat about 20% of his body weight. Ironically, Tracy then walked into the nursery to change Ava and seemed to take tremendous pleasure that I was covered in baby poo. As she was changing Ava, somehow Ava managed to pee all over Tracy :-) So after this experience I have decided that diapers are a good idea.

There are really not very many baby pix that one can post relating to this topic, but I am obligated by our families to post some pictures on every entry:

Coming Home (for real)

We are back in the house. I can not express (hardy har har) how happy we are to be back. We officially moved back in Tuesday (Oct 9th) and have spent the last 5 days unpacking and moving stuff back into the house.

Prior to this (post babies, but pre moving back in), we had moved all of the heavy stuff back into the house. Thanks so much to all of our friends who helped during this time. The construction is still actually not complete and it definitely was not complete two weeks ago when we moved most of the heavy stuff back up into the house, but we had to do something, maybe we didn't, but we had to convince the contractors that we were moving in no matter what. At this point the house is still not fully complete, but it is close enough so we could move back in and we can begin our work.

It is quite disappointing, but Owen and Ava really don't seem to care that we are back in the house, they seem to perfectly happy in Anna's folks apartment, it is a very nice place :-)

All of my friends have told me how time consuming it is having kids, but of course I did not believe it. It is amazing how long it take to do ANYTHING. I don't mean the expected stuff like - actually leaving the house, that does take a long time, but actually doing stuff around the house. It has taken me three days to install a shower rail, two towel holders and robe hook. Now I know that I get distracted, but that is CRAZY, three days is 72 hours, I am guessing that the actual work involved was about 2 hours so my effective work ratio is 2/72 = 2.8%, that is not very good. Hopefully it will get better over time.

Here are a couple of pix of the kids coming home:

Feeding

Let me start by saying, intellectually I knew that infants had to eat, this is pretty obvious. I am sure that someone told me prior to having kids that when they are really little they have to eat something like 8 times a day and I am sure that I thought something like, I eat 8 times a day, that ain't no thing. And maybe even with one baby that would be doable, the issue is with twins it is 16 times per day (at a minimum - look out for when they go through a growth-spirt), so lets say best case each feeding currently take about 30 mins (actually baby holding time, between convincing them that it is time to eat, doing the pre-burp, feeding them some, burping them (this is REALLY important we found out today, much to Ava's outrage :-( ). Doing the math that is 8 feedings per day, times 2 kids, oh! that is the aforementioned 16 feedings, now at 30 min per that is 8 hours! WOW that is a lot of time feeding something (s). I guess that is also bonding time - right?

Now all of this is well and good if the other baby is sleeping or the other 'adult' is around; however if both of these conditions are not meet it is all about triage and for Tracy and I this is happening sometime between 8pm and 1am (for me) and 1am and 7am for her (looks like I should either get-up earlier or stay up later). Which you can imagine is not when we are at our best. Last night I tried to write down what happened during a feed, needless to say that I am now doing this off of memory:

9:35 Start feeding Owen - 2 oz formula
9:36 Owen decides he is not hungry
9:36/ 15 sec some how he has manged to pee out of his diaper
9:37 Change daiaper
9:38 Put owen on bed to put on new onesy
9:39 Owen desides to spit-up on bed, of course i put his head off the protective water super cloth, luckily tracy thought ahead and put an washable blankrt on the bed, over the dry clean only
9:58 Just over 1 oz in owen gets the hick-up poor kid
9:59 Try 'normal' ways to get rid of hick-ups: scare the baby - (that was not a good idea - please don't tell Tracy); drinking upside from a glass (would that work with a bottle? - no is the answer); honey on spoon (I had this vague recollection of honey being fatel to infants so we are going to skip this one. I am out of ideas
10:00 Ian does research on hick-ups:
First off I realized that hicks-ups are actually spelled hiccup (huh)
If you are interested in what I found check it out (http://www.burpingbaby.net/baby_hiccups.htm)
Basically it is normal and they don't mind
10:14 Start again
10:15 Finish 2 oz still hungry, but his sis is fussing now

That is the last thing that I wrote. I have this vague recollection of sitting on the floor with one half burped Owen (who can not hold his head-up) propped up against my leg while I am holding Ava trying to feed her and wanting to ensure that her brother's head does not snap-off. I think that I got everything 'back under control' around midnight.

As bad as I have it Tracy has it worse, she has the added pressure of trying to express (this is such an odd word for this) her milk on top of dealing with the same stuff I have been doing. She is so great - I love her so much!

Feeding Pictures (mostly)
(Just because they are so stinkin' cute)












(Feeding infastructure)












(awe!!)












(Photos courtesy of Conrad who was helping move stuff back into the house, but we needed to feed the kids and the rugby world cup happen to be on)


























































(Talking to Auntie Lisa)