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A few months ago Susan nominated me for a “Green Lifestyle Award” that our garbage company was sponsoring. She saw the contest advertised in their quarterly newsletter (yes, my wife reads our garbage company’s newsletter, don’t ask) and the prize was a $50 gift card, not to mention the accompanying worldwide fame, so she wrote a short essay about how “green” I am. I’ve got a crew from CNN on the way to tape a segment about me but I do have a few minutes to share some of my “green” highlights.

Several years ago, at Susan’s urging, I built a compost bin in our back yard and we haven’t thrown away a single compostable food scrap since. And aside from generally being a religious recycler, during our remodeling project I directed our contractor to reuse as many of the old materials as possible. The original 50+ year old redwood framing studs were as good as new and we reused nearly every one to frame up the new walls. The old oak flooring was gently pried up and set aside. Any reusable building material or fixture from the demolition of the old structure that was not used in the new construction was given away (or, in some cases, sold) on Craig’s List or Freecycle. This included the aforementioned flooring, all the old windows and doors, blinds, lighting, ceiling fans, miscellaneous hardware, all the kitchen cabinets, sinks, the bathtub, shower door, and even the hideous old BROWN toilet from our bathroom. Everything was taken by someone. Often we were scratching our heads wondering who would possibly want this stuff, but that’s the great thing about Craig’s List, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Yes, it’s a pain to go through the trouble of posting on CL and subsequently dealing with the no-shows, flakes, and losers who back their truck down your steep driveway then roll backwards into your house when pulling out because they really don’t know how to drive a stick, yet they own one. (Not that that happened or anything.) But it’s more painful to have to move to Mars because the Earth has become one ginormous landfill.

Not only did we reuse or give away most of the materials but in many cases the “new” materials we used were actually reused materials. The chandelier and six sconce lights in the family room and dining room were purchased on Craig’s List from a woman who was remodeling her house in Orinda. (The house had just been remodeled before she bought it so the lights were nearly new, she just didn’t like them!) The laundry room faucet, kitchen pendant lights, bathroom vanity lights, and many other items were purchased used on Ebay. And finally, we tried to use environmentally friendly materials wherever possible: compact fluorescent lighting throughout the house, bamboo flooring in every room except the bathrooms and laundry room, and solid plastic HDPE lumber (made from recycled milk jugs!) for the lower deck are a few examples. We’re also seriously considering installing a solar power system once we’ve paid off a bit more of our home equity loan.

So obviously these things are important to us, and though Susan did not disclose everything above in her letter to the garbage company, I still won the award. (It was a hard fought campaign, rife with mudslinging, but clearly the best candidate won.) The funny thing is they wanted to present it to me in person and asked if I could come down to their offices somewhere near Martinez for the presentation, presumably so they could take a photo for their next newsletter. Susan asked them if they could just mail the award and the gift certificate, which they eventually did. We felt sort of ungrateful but a) I don’t have time to be driving out to Martinez to receive some silly certificate and b) I found it strange that a company sponsoring a “green lifestyle” award would encourage frivolous driving in order to receive said award. But this is the same company that didn’t offer auto bill pay until about a year ago and still doesn’t offer online paperless billing. But then I suppose if they did we wouldn’t have heard about the Green Lifestyle Award in the first place.

Here’s a funny story. Five years ago, just prior to our month-long vacation in Europe, I bought a fairly high-end Canon DV camcorder at the now-defunct electronics store The Good Guys. It was a great camcorder and though we didn’t use it terribly often we did capture many vacations and many hours of footage of Justin’s first two years. Then about five months ago it died during a trip to Maui. When I turned it on a warning bell sounded, the tape icon flashed on the screen, and when I tried to take the tape out it had been “eaten.” I tried some brand-new tapes and cleaned out the tape mechanism but the problem persisted. So the rest of the Hawaii trip had no video and I resigned myself to having to buy a new camcorder if I wanted to get any video of Chelsea as a newborn and Justin’s peak toddler years.

After the trip I put the camera aside and for four months I wasn’t able to find the time to research and buy a new camcorder. (Anyone who knows me well knows that I can’t make any significant electronics purchase without countless hours of online research and price comparisons.) Even as Chelsea’s due date neared and Justin’s antics got progressively more video-worthy, I still put it off. And then about two months ago I got a card in the mail from GE warranty services telling me that the extended warranty on my Canon camcorder was due to expire in June and offering me the chance to renew it! Wouldn’t you know it, I had purchased a five year warranty from Good Guys back in 2002 and completely forgotten about it, probably because I never buy extended warranties. I don’t know what I was thinking back then, especially in light of the fact that the warranty was $280 (!) which I discovered once I dug up the original receipt from my files.

So I promptly called the warranty company who directed me to package up the camcorder and ship it to Massachusetts to be repaired. I told them my daughter was due in a few weeks and they assured me I’d have it back in time. About ten days later I got the camera back (in the same box that I shipped it in) and when I fired it up several days later it ate my tape just as before! Furious, I called the repair company back and was informed that the camera was not repaired because it would cost $900! There was no paperwork or anything in the box to inform me of this. Then I was told that they were “awaiting authorization” from Canon to “buy out” the warranty at the current replacement value, which they do when the repair cost is prohibitive.

So I was very happy to be getting cash to put toward a modern camcorder… right up until they called me back a few days later to say that a) Canon had approved the payout and b) the replacement cost would be… $296! They arrived at that figure by finding an “equivalent” camera at Circuit City and setting the payout based on that. Well of course a camera with five-year-old technology is only going to cost $300, but I paid $1200 for my camera, and $280 for the warranty! I would have MUCH rather had them repair my old camera, which still recorded perfect video.

So if you’re keeping score, after subtracting the warranty cost and the cost to ship the camera to the repair center, I ended up with $7 and no camcorder. On the other hand, the $280 for the warranty was a sunk cost so I moved on and excitedly turned my attention to researching a new (HD!) camcorder. After several days and lots of Googling I settled on the Canon HV20 HD camcorder with a 3 mp still camera and 10x optical zoom and image stabilization. The hardest decision was whether to stick with a tape-based camera or go with one of the new hard disk-based ones. After what happened with the tape mechanism on my old camera I was really leaning towards a disk-based one but then I read some reviews online that made a good point: once you fill up the hard disk you have to download the video to your computer before you can shoot any more. If you’re at home this is a non-issue but if you’re traveling you have to have a laptop with you at all times, which just isn’t feasible. It would suck to be filming some special event and fill up the disk with no way to clear space on the drive. With tapes you can carry as many as you like and reload whenever you fill one up. And once you transfer the video to your computer you’ll always have the raw footage archived on the tape in case of a disk crash. And let’s not forget the possiblity of a disk crash on the camera itself. And the final reason I went with tape is that I still have dozens of DV tapes that I have yet to transfer to my PC. So the ideal solution would be a hot-swappable modular disk system so you could carry an extra disk or two, and then eventually NAND flash cards once the capacity gets big enough for the massive HD video files. But for now tape makes sense for me, though I’m sure my next camera will be disk (or flash) based. Let’s hope this one lasts longer than five years though.

Anyway, I ended up ordering the camera from Dell since their bottom line price was the best, but as it is a brand-new model it was backordered for weeks and it only just arrived today, exactly a month after Chelsea was born. So we have no video of her birth or her first month. But now I’ve got a new toy to play with and I’m looking forward to filming the kids this weekend. Then I’ll have to figure out how to post some short clips here on Colevault. Let’s just hope that my four-year-old Dell PC can handle editing and converting HD video, otherwise I might just have to pick up one of those schweeeet new iMacs! Too many gadgets, not enough time, and definitely not enough money!

Jaundice is a common condition for newborns — Justin had it and now Chelsea has it too, though hers is a bit more serious than his was. Justin blew a 16 on the Jaundice-alyzer while Chelsea hit 18, well above the legal limit in California. Her skin does look a bit yellow but not any more yellow than Justin’s did at one week.

In most cases Jaundice goes away naturally after a week or two with exposure to sunlight but Chelsea’s pediatrician decided to err on the side of caution and prescribe a phototherapy “bili blanket” in order to speed up the process. A bili blanket is a device that looks and sounds just like a portable video projector. It has a thick fiber optic cable protruding from it which is connected at the other end to a thin flexible mat with a web of fiber optic cables criss-crossing it. The fibers emit a very bright blue light and when the mat is placed against the baby’s skin the light helps speed the breakdown of bilirubin in the body, which is the cause of Jaundice.

On Monday night a medical courier delivered the bili blanket to us and gave us a quick tutorial. Later that night we wrapped it around Chelsea and and then wrapped her up in her trusty Miracle Blanket. When we fired up the machine Chelsea looked like a neon-blue glow worm! It was both cute and sad, though she didn’t seem to be in any discomfort. While she was receiving her treatment I looked through the user manual to see how long we were supposed to use it each time but of course it only said to check with your doctor, which we couldn’t do because it was 9:00 pm. So I guessed that 25 minutes was a good amount of time. It was only when Susan called the doctor the next day that we learned we were supposed to use it 24/7!

So she’s been a little glow worm ever since. As I write she sleeps peacefully in her bassinet surrounded by an ethereal blue light while the phototherapy unit gently hums on the floor below her. We had a pediatrician appointment today and were told we still need to continue the treatment. They took another blood sample at the lab and we got the results earlier tonight: her level is now down to 12 so clearly things have improved. We’ll be talking to the pediatrician again tomorrow morning and hopefully she’ll say we can retire the glow worm machine post haste.

So Jaundice is not terribly serious but not much fun either. I mean, you wouldn’t want to name your kid Jaundice or anything right? Well, believe it or not, for one unfortunate little girl, that’s exactly the name she was given. Many years ago my sister-in-law Loraine was teaching first grade in a low-income school district in Hayward, California. The company I was working for was replacing some PCs and I convinced them to donate the old computers to Loraine’s school. I dropped the computers off one afternoon and as I was transferring them into her classroom I stopped to look at some of the students’ artwork which was posted on the walls. While looking at one particular finger painting I happened to catch the student’s name scrawled in the corner. Not quite believing that I’d read it correctly, I asked Loraine “does this really say Jaundice?” Amazingly, some extremely ignorant or misguided parents had really named their daughter Jaundice. Unfortunately, Loraine left teaching not long after this so she never got a chance to meet Jaundice’s younger siblings, Anemia and Rickets.

So thankfully Chelsea just has a temporary yellowing of the skin which she will never remember, as opposed to being afflicted with the name of her condition for the rest of her life. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

So the first week as a four-person family has gone reasonably well. One of our biggest concerns was how Justin would react to Chelsea’s arrival but so far so good. Having said that, with all four of us home, things did get a bit crazy a few times this past week. Justin has recently started rebelling against napping, even proclaiming yesterday “no more naps for Justin!” (Needless to say we are not on the same page as our 26-month-old on this issue.) He also can’t sit still, can’t stop talking, regularly climbs out of his crib, refuses to let us brush his teeth, etc., etc. I’m certainly not complaining, he’s a fantastic kid (he’s practically potty-trained after all!) but I think the combination of being at home rather than daycare, plus the new baby, has got him a little out of sorts.

So it was good timing when our friend Victoria offered us a couple of tickets to yesterday’s A’s game. The weather was great and it was a perfect excuse for father and son to get out of the house and leave Mom and baby with some (relative) peace and quiet. Justin is already a veteran of 4 or 5 A’s games when he was just a few months old. Those were the days when I could drop him into a sling and he’d sleep blissfully for hours while I watched the game with Mark or Brad or both. But once he got a bit older it just wasn’t feasible. In a related story, the 2007 season is two months old and I hadn’t been to a game yet before this one.

So yesterday was Justin’s first game in almost two years. We packed sandwiches for lunch, some chips, Goldfish, and Gatorade. And sunblock. Before leaving I searched high and low for his sun hat, which has a baseball-type brim and flaps to cover his neck and ears. I couldn’t find it anywhere so I tried his old baby A’s cap but it no longer fits his huge head. We were running late so we left with no hat for Justin, despite the warm sunny day and seats right behind the A’s dugout, with full sun exposure.

So imagine my delight after passing through the Coliseum turnstiles when I was handed a very sharp looking green and white A’s cap! What made this even funnier was when I asked for a second hat for Justin but was told that he already had his — it was ME who wasn’t getting one because it was only for the first 10,000 fans 14 and under. The serendipity was amazing, and Justin loves his new A’s lid!

Once we got to our seats we lathered on the sun block and Justin proceeded to walk up and down our row (we had some empty seats next to us) and make friends with the people sitting around us. When one woman asked him his name he said “Baby Chelsea!” which confused the woman but had me cracking up. It quickly became clear that he wasn’t going to have much interest in the game, despite the fact that Johan Santana was pitching for the Twins and Chad Gaudin was going for the A’s (2nd best ERA in the AL after Dan Haren). Justin’s frame of mind at the time could best be described as “when are we eating?”

I only managed to delay lunch until the 2nd inning. I didn’t want to eat too early because then I’d have nothing to distract him with for the rest of the game. But when he started getting restless right away I had no choice. He ate half of his PB & J and I ate my turkey sandwich. Then he had some Goldfish until he saw my salt and vinegar kettle chips, and everyone knows that whatever someone else is eating is better than what you’re eating. We washed it down with some Gatorade, a large amount of which he spilled down his A’s jersey leaving a nice red stain.

So lunch took about an inning and half, it was now the 3rd inning and he was clearly not going to last 6 innings, let alone 9. Over the next few innings we took some photos, had a bathroom break, ate some more Goldfish and a box drink, and managed to watch a bit of baseball. By the 5th inning Justin was really melting down, thumb in his mouth (meaning he’s ready to go to sleep), sitting down on the filthy floor under his seat, slumping in my lap, etc. It was hopeless. I called Susan to let her know we were coming home.

The A’s were up 4-2 when we left and went on to win by that score so we didn’t miss much. We ended up watching the rest of the game in HD later in the afternoon, after he had climbed out of his crib several times without ever napping. Just to recap, he basically sabotaged the game by practically falling asleep on the floor of the stadium, even telling me how tired he was on the way to the car, and then he refused to nap once we got home. Gotta love kids!

So it was a fun day despite being cut short. It’s better than not going at all and Susan at least had a couple of hours without the boys, but I think it’ll be another 6-8 months before Justin can appreciate going to a game. He’s already got a ball and a glove, thanks to Uncle Jimmy, and he definitely likes to play catch, and he does like to watch a game on TV once in a while, so it’s just a matter of time before he’s an A’s fan like his Dad.

Big thanks to Victoria for the tickets, we had a great time!

OK, so if the birth of my daughter isn’t enough to spur me to write a blog post I might as well give up and shut this thing down right now. So here goes. After writing in my most recent post that I would be posting more often, and then not posting anything for 11 months, I am finally putting fingers to keyboard again. And the reason is Chelsea Naomi Cole. She was born on Memorial Day, May 28, at exactly 3:30 in the afternoon. She could not have chosen a more convenient date and time. Susan’s parents own a small grocery store in San Francisco and they are closed about 8 days of the year, Memorial Day being one of them. So Susan’s Mom was able to meet us at the hospital right as the labor was ramping up. And because of the holiday we were able to initiate Plan A for taking care of Justin during the birth, which was Uncle JJ, who had the day off work. (Plan B was to drop Justin off on Telegraph Avenue on the way to the hospital with $10 and a sippy cup of milk.)

Susan’s water broke at about 2:30 in the morning and 15 minutes later Susan is kicking me. But not to tell me her water had broken. Justin had climbed out of his crib and was standing in the hallway outside our bedroom door. (Did he somehow sense that the baby was coming?) Susan was awake because she was enjoying a pleasant soak in amniotic fluid, so she heard Justin open his door, and since I am the official “put Justin back to bed when he climbs out of his crib” parent she woke me up so I would handle it. Apparently I wasn’t too happy about being woken up and in my comatose state I told her to “stop it” and “leave me alone”. Once I figured out what was going on I took care of J-Bug and came back to bed. That’s when Susan told me that she “thinks” her water had broken. Not very interested, I went back to sleep.

Fast forward to 7:00 am, I wake up and Susan is breathing heavily. “Are you having contractions?” “Yes, quiet, don’t talk to me!” OK, it’s go time! Time to mobilize! Email to Jason telling him to call me as soon as he wakes up. Email to work saying I ain’t coming in this week. Phone call to the doula telling her to cancel her Memorial Day plans. Emails to family letting everyone know today is the day.

It turns out Susan never went back to sleep after the water broke, even though the contractions didn’t start until around 4:30. She was too excited and not terribly comfortable. But she let me sleep while she was starting to labor. If the roles were reversed I’m sure I would have kicked her and/or moaned loud enough to wake the neighbors, while screaming “Help me! I’m dying!” Thankfully, unlike me, Susan is not a complete coward.

Anywho, Jason calls at 7:40 after getting my email. He has inexplicably woken up early after a long day at Sam’s in Tiburon and a late night out in SF. Needless to say, babysitting a 2 year old all day is not on anyone’s short list of favorite hangover remedies, but Jason valiantly arrived by 10:00 to whisk Justin away. Justin was already getting anxious seeing Susan in pain during the contractions so we were happy to know he’d be blissfully unaware of the day’s events while enjoying a fun day with Uncle JJ. They ended up going on a hike in the Oakland Hills and enjoying a pediatrician-recommended lunch of Nation’s cheeseburgers, fries, and a milkshake. Thanks Jase!

Our awesome doula Virginia arrived shortly after Jason left, which meant that I was suddenly good for nothing other than making sure all our stuff was in the car. I had been timing the contractions and by that point they were pretty consistently 5 minutes apart and getting stronger. Virginia was here for less than half an hour before we decided we had better head for the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital around 11:00 am and by the time we were through triage and in the delivery room it was 11:45. The labor was obviously difficult and painful for Susan, seemingly more so than with Justin, possibly because it was much shorter and therefore more concentrated, but like with Justin Susan again did it without an epidural or any medication at all for that matter. It’s tough to see your wife in extreme pain but we had the same team in place as with Justin (sans Auntie Loraine) and I knew we were going to get it done and I knew Susan was going to do it completely naturally again, despite the one moment when she looked right in my eye and said “I need help, I can’t do it, I want an epidural.” I asked her if she would regret it later and she said yes, and then I joked that if she really wanted help we could wheel her right down to the OR for a C-Section. At that point Jeri the midwife was not in the room and we had to frantically track her down in order to get the ball rolling on the epidural, but by the time she returned that particularly bad contraction was over and Jeri’s presence and confidence-instilling coaching was enough to get Susan back down off the ledge. We continued without drugs. And I’m pretty sure my C-section crack did nothing to help the situation.

So there was some more pain, more contractions, a long hot shower, some pushing, some screaming, more pushing, more pain, the appearance of some baby hair, more pushing, excruciating pain, then a head, then one last big push (and scream) to get the shoulders out, and finally a slimy Crisco-covered blob lying on Susan’s chest. Hours of intense pain were instantly wiped away and replaced with a huge smile and tears of joy. We had a daughter!

As with Justin I cut the cord, gave her her first bath, put her on the scale, and put her first diaper on. She weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces and was 20 inches long, the IDENTICAL measurements as Justin two years previous. They were also both born on minor holidays (Justin on St. Patrick’s Day) and Chelsea looks a lot like Justin did at birth, but with less hair. (Although it’s fairly universally agreed that Chelsea is cuter than Justin was at birth. )

If you’re having a baby and are on the fence about hiring a doula, let’s just say that hospital food sucks and after a long day (or night) of birthing a baby everyone will be very hungry, and guess who volunteered to run over to Whole Foods to pick up a bunch of deli sandwiches and salads for everyone? Thank you Virginia!

And of course between the doula and me, about 400 pictures were taken. Check the Chelsea gallery link at the top of the page, and don’t worry I’m not posting any of the nasty ones, though I did get some nice ones of the midwife holding up the placenta if anyone wants to order an 8 x 10. Mmmmmm, yummy!

So just another day at the office for the Cole family. We’ll remember Memorial Day 2007 forever. Big thanks to Virginia, Jeri, Grandma Park, Uncle JJ, and all the nursing staff at Alta Bates in Berkeley who helped us bring this baby home. Susan and Chelsea stayed two nights at the hospital and now we’re all home and the baby is eating and sleeping very well.

And Chelsea, welcome to this crazy thing called life. Susan, Justin and I will do everything we can to help you through it and make it fun and fulfilling. We are so glad you’ve joined us.