Left Coast Floyds

Pics, pics, pics

Anthony — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:04:44 +0000

Gwen has taken over 300 photos over the past two days. Here are a few of the keepers. The pictures of Aidan in the elephant costume are photos are about the only pictures that we have of him in his Hallowe’en costume (other than the few from the actual night).

Quinlan: Day 1 + Day 2

Anthony — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:07:19 +0000

Since the birth was so quick, we were able to bring Aidan and Gwen’s mother Lorraine up to visit later that evening. Both were quite eager to meet Quinlan, but Aidan’s excitement was palpable.

Of course, he wanted hold his little brother.

I spent the night at home with Aidan and Nana while Gwen and Quinlan spent the night in the hospital. When I returned the next day, Gwen had her blood sugar level tested and it came back a little high. As a result, we were led to believe that they’d be spending another day. When the doctor came in, though, and reviewed Gwen’s chart she was pretty enthusiastic about getting us out of there! So, we gathered up our stuff and took some obligatory photos:

We have a picture just like the next one but of Aidan:

We got Quinlan and Gwen home — less than 24 hours after he was born! — and there was more brotherly love:

And, even the next day (ignore the wild hair please), Aidan was interested and helpful:

I think we’re off to a good start.

Hallowe’en 2008

Anthony — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:31:35 +0000

This year Aidan ‘got’ Hallowe’en.

He picked his costume out with his mother several weeks ago while they were at Old Navy … he wanted to be a bat, but they didn’t have any in his size. Instead, he chose to be an elephant. And, was quite happy to be an elephant.

Nana and I took him down to the False Creek Co-op to Trick-or-Treat since our neighbourhood here in Fairview is *awful* for Trick-or-Treating. Case in point: we got a total of 4 kids all night long. Listening to some of the people down at False Creek, by 7:30 pm some of them had gone through 150 or more.

Anyway, Aidan had a grand time, knocking at the doors (yelling “Knock knock!” each time) and mostly greeting everyone with a “Trick or Treat!” and a “Thank you!”. There were a few occasions of raiding the candy bowl before the person actually offered the bowl, but it was pretty good. And, he was pretty excited to be getting candy, often telling me “Look at all the candy I got!” as he left houses.

The rain held off and it was pretty warm to boot. By the end of our hour out, he was getting tired and spooked by some of the costumes and decorated houses. The excitement was wearing off and his toddler mind was starting to process some of what was happening around him. There were a few houses with ’scary’ music playing that he shunned, and by the end of it, any moderately sinister pumpkin was enough to disqualify a house in his mind. No matter, he had plenty of fun and got more than enough candy.

The door of last house we went to was answered by a cute little girl about his age wearing a bee costume. He just stopped and stared at her. I don’t think she even got a ‘Trick or Treat!’. She looked at him and happily gave him some candy. He continued to stare. She gave him a big smile and asked “Want more?” and proceeded to give him more. I had to pull him away. After the door shut, he turned to me and said “That was a very pretty bumblebee!”. We headed back to the car for a short drive home and in addition to admitting he was tired (he never does that!) he also told us about the pretty bumblebee. Very cute!

A Birth Story

Anthony — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 02:58:18 +0000

One week ago, Quinlan made his entry into the world.

The day started off pretty hectically. Gwen was trying to get to a conference down at the Wall Centre for 9am and Aidan was supposed to go to the Preschool Curiousity Club at Science World at 10am. Gwen’s mother was scheduled to fly in at 1:30pm. It was shaping up to be a busy day, but we didn’t anticipate just how busy.

As we were getting going in the morning, making sure all the bodies were up out of bed and on their way to being presentable and less hungry, Gwen came to me with one of those looks on her face. Immediately I knew what she was going to say:

I think my water just broke.

That was 8am. With Aidan, Gwen’s water broke the night before she actually gave birth the next night, so we didn’t know how much time we had until things got interesting.

She tried to convince me that she could still go to the conference (she had won a free pass) but I wasn’t having any of that.

At 9:30am, she tells me:

I think I’m having contractions, but I’m not sure.

With Aidan, the contractions were pretty obvious. And painful … a lot of back pain. The idea of not being sure about contractions was confusing at best. So we started timing the contractions. And we called our friends Tomer & Carla to put them on notice that we might need them to come and watch Aidan while we went to the hospital.

Now, I’d been stressing out over this for the past week. It was literally keeping me awake at night, worrying that we’d have to go to the hospital in the middle of the night and scramble to impose on someone to watch Aidan while we were there. We had a list of people to call, but I was hoping that we wouldn’t have to call anyone and instead Gwen’s mother would be able to watch him. Of course for that to happen, the hospital trip had to happen after 1:30pm on the 25th. Which was 5 days before Gwen’s due date. Aidan was earlier than that and I’d heard that the 2nd came quicker.

Which brings us to 11:30am on Saturday the 25th. Gwen’s contractions were coming at 8 minute intervals. At 11:40am, that had shrunk to 5 minutes, the magic number for going to the hospital. I called Carla and asked her to come, and um, could she come quickly please. By 11:50am, the interval had shrunk to 3 minutes.

We rushed to the hospital (a pretty short drive up the road) and entered the maternity admissions of BC Women’s Hospital at noon. It took us an hour to get through admissions and assessment, the whole time with Gwen’s contractions coming a mere 60-90 seconds apart. Assessment judged her 3 cm dilated (10 cm is the magic number when the tell you to PUSH!) but the baby’s heart rate was dropping (and recovering) with each contraction so they decided to not take us to the Cedar maternity ward with its primo private rooms where you deliver and recover in the same room. Instead we were taken to a standard delivery room on the maternity ward. At 1pm.

The nurse got us to the room, and started to get things sorted out. Then she checked Gwen again. 8 cm, and Gwen was involuntarily pushing. So much for the epidural. So much for the doctor that was supposed to deliver the baby. Instead there was a flurry of nurses and a resident paeditrician (the doctor made it for the very end).

At 1:10pm, Quinlan was born.

I knew #2 was supposed to be quicker, I think this was extraordinary.

For the next hour, the doctor busied himself with suturing.

And, keeping up with the theme, we were released the next day and were home less than 25 hours after leaving for the hospital!

Quinlan James Floyd

Anthony — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:30:53 +0000

Announcing Quinlan James Floyd, born at BC Women’s this afternoon at 1:10pm PST, 7lbs 5oz. Mother and baby are healthy and happy!

Baby Pool

Gwen — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:22:59 +0000

On Monday we had our friends over for Thanksgiving. I know it seems a little silly for some one a couple of weeks from her due date to host Thanksgiving. That being said, I love dinner parties. Having the dinner at our house means that we can have a good time with our friends and still get the boy to bed close to his bedtime. He went to bed a little later than normal but he had a long nap in the afternoon.

We decided to have it buffet style with as many disposable parts as possible to make the clean up easier. There was still quite a bit that need to go in the dishwasher, but without the plates and roaster it made clean up a lot easier.

What does this have to do with a baby pool do you ask? Well, I had been joking about a baby pool with Tammy for a little while. She is the only one convinced that this baby is a girl. So we decided to start a pool. Three things were needed, the date of the birth, the gender of the child, and the weight. The one that gets closest on all three wins a bottle of wine and we get some guilt free babysitting. If we have the baby before my mom comes one of these lovely people will be taking care of Aidan while we are at the hospital.

So to keep everybody honest we are putting their predictions on the blogs. We will announce the winner when we announce the birth. If you would like to get in on the action (well with a hearty congratulations instead of the wine) put your guesses in the comments. You need to guess the date the baby will be born, the baby’s weight and whether it is a boy or a girl. The information everyone guessing had was this: My due date is the 30th October. Aidan was about 10 days early. The ultrasound technician didn’t actually say boy, but (after an hour of trying to get all the measurements that ususally take 15 minutes) she said things get in the way so I would say 80% and looked at Aidan. ( She wasn’t supposed to say anything because I was only 19 weeks 5 days instead of 20 weeks.) In the latest ultrasound there was no room to see. According to the last ultrasound the baby is short and has a solid body and a very big head. Care to guess?

Here are the friends guesses:

Tammy: 25 October, Girl, 9 lbs

Carla: 27 October, Girl, 8lbs 5 oz

Chris: 24 October, Boy, 8 lbs

Tomer: 23 October 8lbs 1 oz

Ali: 26 October, Boy, 8 lbs 14 oz

Noushin: 28 October, 8 lbs 6 oz

Anthony refuses to guess. I just want it to be soon. Good luck!

The Pumpkin Patch

Anthony — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:21:16 +0000

Eh, the election was last night. I don’t want to talk about it. If you follow me on Facebook, I’m sorry. You really should be on Twitter too, it makes more sense there. It was kinda like being at a bar, talking about the election results with 100 of your closest friends right across the country.

Life has been busy. We’re pretty much prepared for Beta.

This past weekend we followed Gwen’s own advice and visited the pumpkin patch. We decided to go to the Richmond Country Farm, down off of the Steveston Highway, on the advise of Cousin Vicki and others. It’s quite a production, and they’ve got it well set up. I bet that they probably get several thousand people passing through a day.

It’s a full package there. The price is steep ($10/person over 3 yrs old) but you get a hay wagon ride through their decorated farmland, entrance to a corn maze, and the pumpkin patch. You each get to take home any size pumpkin you’d like, and you get an apple each too!

Aidan liked tromping around the pumpkin patch and was pretty … um … discerning … in picking out his pumpkin.

After filling our bags with two large, heavy pumpkins and a few small pumpkins, Aidan and I left Gwen sitting on a hay bale while we went and explored the corn maze. He was pretty interested in it, but the further we went in, the more nervous he became.

He started asking if we were going to find Mommy, and the deeper we went, the more frequent that question came up. It seemed that he was genuinely concerned that we’d lost Mommy, so we short-circuited the maze and walked back along the outside. Of course, there were blackberry bushes (with *gobs* of berries still on them) along the route back to the pumpkin patch, and it took us quite some time to walk that stretch. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, the questions about the lost Mommy stopped with the intake of ripe berries.

Of course, we eventually found her.

Jury Duty

Anthony — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:55:14 +0000

A few weeks ago, Gwen called me at work:

You’ve got mail from the Sheriff.

And immediately I knew it was a Jury Summons.

So, today I reported to the BC Supreme Court. The first thing I noticed was that they weren’t really very friendly in how they handle prospective jurors. When I showed up at the 800 Smithe Street building and walked in the front door, I was confronted by a sea of people milling every which way. I stopped, looking at the various signs. There were signs pointing to elevators, to various courts and so on. Nothing said “juror” or “prospective juror” or anything like that. There was a desk in the centre of the lobby with a guy in full uniform being harassed by all manner of people. I wandered a little closer to that desk when the sheriff caught sight of a guy in a t-shirt and jeans who had entered just ahead of me and looked just as lost. The sheriff cut off the suit who was trying to talk to him and snapped “Jury duty? Fourth floor”.

The guy ahead of me looked at the sheriff, looked over his shoulder at me, and we slunk our way over to the block of elevators. And crammed ourselves onto the next car. Seriously? There were maybe 8 of us in the elevator and there was no room to breathe. I’m not sure if it was an elevator or a dumb waiter.

So, we arrived at the fourth floor and tumbled out into the hallway. And once again, we were completely lost. There were maybe 6 of us standing in a hallway that lead out into a nice atrium with a ceiling that was all skylights. If you’ve been at Robson Square, you know what I mean — and if not, the photo to the right (from Will Pate on Flickr) shows the atrium from below. Again, there were no signs. There were no people around to ask directions. As a group we wandered around, stumbling about as if we were trying to act out Brownian motion. Waaaaaay down the other end of the atrium, we spotted a kiosk and a cloud of people. As we were making our way down there, one of the sheriffs attending the kiosk bellowed at the hovering masses to form a line and have your papers ready. We hadn’t established that this is where we were supposed to be, but it seemed pretty likely so we fell into line too.

The floor was sticky. Really sticky. According the the older guy who was standing beside me in the line, it was the trees dripping sap onto the floor. And sure enough, he showed me one of the leaves and it seemed to be covered in dew … but the guy said it was sap. The floor was sticky enough that I believe him. We joked that it was to keep anyone from running away. It was *that* sticky.

Anyway, after getting our papers scanned in by a surly sheriff we were told to take a seat in the neighbouring lobby. This was fine for the first 20 or so people, but after that there were no more seats. As a result, most of us were left standing around or sitting on the stairs. For a half hour.

Eventually we were ushered into one of the court rooms. Second verse just like the first. The court room had 26 seats. We numbered 80 prospective jurors. We had people lined up against three walls of the court room, people standing along the rails separating the jury box from the rest of the court, people wedged into the doorway, people everywhere.

Next, one of the sheriffs explained the process. This was the first helpful information we had all morning. He explained that we were there to select the jury for A SINGLE TRIAL. 8 jurors. There were 80 of us there. Seemed a little excessive to me. And, oh, the trial is expected to last 5 days.

So, the process went like this: The lawyers came in, arranged all their books, laptops, gowns, etc. The judge entered the chambers and then explained the process to us again, reviewing what the sheriff had already told us. She told us a little bit of what the case was about (a car accident where the one party was allegedly injured and blamed the other driver … who denies fault). The lawyers were then told to read their witness list so that if any of the prospective jurors knew any of the parties involved, we could let the judge know. Then the court clerk drew names out of a box, reading names from each slip of paper. Eight names were called and these people went up to the side of the court beside the jury box. Next, each name was read out again, and this time each prospective juror had a chance to give the judge a reason why they couldn’t serve. If the judge accepted the reason (if they gave one) then that person was excused. If they gave a reason but the judge didn’t think it was valid, then that person was left to the lawyers. The lawyers, you see, have the opportunity to ‘challenge’ the suitability of the juror. No questions were asked of the prospective jurors (which was strange to me, given what I’ve absorbed from fiction about the American legal system) but the lawyers clearly had a list of the prospective jurors and some information on us. Every person who offered an excuse to the judge but were denied ended up being challenged by one of the lawyers, and so didn’t have to serve on the jury. Additionally one other person was challenged. Out of the first 8 called, only 2 were seated.

Another 7 names were called. This time all but one were kept and thus the case had its 8 jurors. 8 jurors, I might add, who get paid $20/day plus $13/day for incidentals. Companies are required to give you unpaid leave for jury duty, so it can be pretty crippling for some people.

At any rate, I wasn’t one of them. My name didn’t get called.

We were dismissed from the courtroom and once again left to our own devices. This time though, it was like bats scattering to the wind. Prospective jurors streaming to elevators and exits with no guidance required.

But, it’s not over. Everyone who didn’t get seated (even those who were excused) has to return to go through the whole process for a different case on October 14th. Woo-hoo!

© Anthony for Left Coast Floyds, 2008. | Permalink | One comment
Post tags: bc supreme court, jury duty, jury summons, prospective juror

Weekend Update

Anthony — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:09:07 +0000

I know, the blog hasn’t had a lot of activity lately. I’ve been spending some of the past weekend climbing Mt. Strachan again (and again) in order to set up a multi-cache. It still hasn’t been completed yet.

Anyway, that chewed up a few weekends. And, you know? Things get in the way.

This weekend past was pretty busy too. On Saturday, Aidan and I biked around the city — first to “PCC”, the Preschool Curiosity Club at Science World and later to Canadian Tire to pick up some screws in order to put up more shelving in our bedroom. Yeah I know, exciting right? But Aidan sure likes being on the back of the bike.

The PCC was ok, an hour in Science World where we decorated some bags in a fall theme, learned a bit about what happens in fall, carved some pumpkins, and planted some pumpkin seeds. Aidan rather liked carving the pumpkin … we had pumpkin carving knives that were essentially kid-safe, and he did a lot of the carving himself.

Today, we headed out to Word on The Street in downtown Vancouver. We go every year (as long as it’s not pouring) and this year was no different. At least, it was no different in us going. At the risk of sounding overly harsh, the actual event was very different. There were many fewer exhibitors this year, and the crowds were much smaller. I don’t know what it was, but it sure didn’t live up to years gone by.

At least Aidan got a couple more trips on his favourite mode of transportation.

Later this afternoon, we headed up to Queen Elizabeth Park to take some pictures. Aidan wasn’t very cooperative, but we got some shots.

© Anthony for Left Coast Floyds, 2008. | Permalink | One comment
Post tags: photoblog, preschool curiosity club, Queen Elizabeth Park, Science World, Word on The Street

Pre-First Day of Preschool Pics

Anthony — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:14:24 +0000

Aidan attends his first day of preschool a little later today. Here’s some pics of his outfit. He looks so grown-up!