One thing we noticed recently is that Claire tends to fall sound asleep when you get her out of the house and around noise and other people, so we wanted to head out to the beach today. Our first choice was Waikiki, but we forgot the Honolulu Festival Parade was today, and so parking was completely nonexistent.

So we went on to Waialae Beach Park, and when I was about to turn into a driveway to make a U-turn to park on the road, I put on my turn signal, slow down, start to turn, and suddenly, bang, thump, and there's a crashed moped on the road with its former rider sliding on the ground, stopping just behind a truck on the road.

For some bizarre, crazy reason, the guy (who wasn't wearing a helmet - heck, he wasn't wearing a shirt) decided to try to pass me on the left when I had come to a stop. I dunno how this was supposed to work, considering I was turning left, but it certainly didn't end well.

He's fine, we're fine, there's a huge dent in the driver's door and the driver's mirror is less attached than it should be, but that's really all. Thankfully even he was apologizing a lot and saying how dumb it was, or I'd be even more frustrated.

Have I mentioned I hate driving?

Plus this happened on a weekend when Claire decided to be angry and fussy all weekend long. What joy.

It's amazing how big a deal chain stores opening on the island is. The governor showed up at the opening of the first Walgreens on the island (which is hilarious, because it's not exactly that impressive - it's a pharmacy, after all, and the existing option - Long's Drugs - is actually much better), and I'm sure she showed up today for the grand opening of the two Target stores on the island.

Jamie went out to Target yesterday, and apparently it's a madhouse out there. For good reason, too - based on what she bought, Target's basically pricing things at mainland levels. That's a big deal here, since prices are normally 25% higher, but can sometimes be two or even three times as expensive depending on how much a grocery store wants to fleece its customers. One Target is apparently the largest in the world, since they moved into an old Costco building, so they've got a huge selection, too.

It's also a bit interesting in that they located one of the two stores in Kapolei, which is on the leeward (west) coast of Oahu. The leeward coast is sometimes called "up and coming," but the main reason for that is that it's the lowest-cost housing on the island since it's ridiculous to commute from there into town. A commute from Kapolei to the University runs ~2 hours in the morning, which is why you typically see people arrive at the University way early and sleep in the parking lot to avoid rush hour.

It's smart planning by Target: the leeward coast is relatively underdeveloped compared to the rest of the island, and the city's devoting heavy resources to build a light rail transit system which will cut commuting times to reasonable levels.

I pretty much haven't talked to anyone except family in a month. Sorry about that - honestly, it isn't me avoiding people now that I'm a dad or something like that. It's just that for the past two months, in the few minutes a day that Claire doesn't require constant attention, I've been trying to regain at least some portion of my sanity.

OK, OK, it's not that bad. Some days it is pretty bad, though: last Saturday Claire started fussing around 2:30 and stopped sometime after midnight. Our nerves were shot by around 9, so for three hours you had two short-tempered adults frustrated with each other and the whole situation along with a crying baby. Not a good situation.

My parents and aunt came last week, which was helpful and yet somehow still somewhat depressing. They confirmed that no, it isn't normal for a baby to be this fussy and crying, which is simultaneously relieving and frightening, because 1) I don't feel like a failed parent, but 2) something's wrong with my daughter.

On the plus side, I am really thankful that we randomly went with the best health care coverage, because Claire's already racked up over $10,000 in medical expenses. It's hilarious to get a bill that says "patient charges: $10,000+. you owe: $17."

Claire's been in the hospital since last Monday. At her last doctor's appointment, she was 24 days old, still under her birth weight, and had lost half an ounce from the previous week. Blood work taken that day showed elevated ammonia and lactic acid, so the doctor recommended we admit her so that they could watch how much she takes in, take more blood work, and get her weight up.

The good news is that the additional lab work came back fine, and so they went with putting her on Prevacid for acid reflux, along with Mylanta, Tylenol, and Mylicon drops. She's like a little pharmacy. So much fun. The additional stuff (other than the Prevacid) is basically pain management since repair of the esophagus can take 1-4 weeks (or more).

That reduced the pain and fussiness (along with shorter, more frequent feedings) but she still wasn't gaining weight, so we had to start fortifying breast milk and using 24-calorie per ounce formula to boost caloric intake.

Thankfully, that seems to have done the trick, since on Thursday she started gaining weight pretty fast (3 oz/day). She's past her birth weight now (yay, she's a functioning human being) and hopefully will be coming home Sunday.

Normally I'd put some comments on how difficult the experience has been, how it makes me feel, and all that, but I'm pretty much emotionally burnt out. It's been hard (really, really hard) but so long as she's gaining weight and growing, I'll be fine.

It's weird seeing things you were learned behavior show up in a few-week old infant. When Jamie sleeps, she tends to pull something over her head (past her eyes); sometimes a pillow, but if not, her hands, or the blanket, etc. I didn't do that growing up - I've tended to recently, but it's more out of learned behavior from Jamie. Claire does it, though, and obviously she couldn't've learned it (cuz, uh, she can't see us sleeping).

Of course, while it's "huh, weird" behavior for an adult, it's "gee, that's annoying" behavior for an infant, as it doesn't fill me with warm fuzzies to see a baby covering her nose and eyes with her hand.

Claire's off to the hospital today to get an ultrasound. She's not gaining weight as well as the pediatrician would like (she's off-the-charts small, which worries me somewhat except for the fact that both Jamie and her brother were tiny at birth), and she's spitting up a fair amount, so they want to check that her stomach to make sure she doesn't have pyloric stenosis. She's also due back next week to check her weight gain - if she's still fussy and not gaining weight well (and the ultrasound's fine), she probably has gastroesophageal reflux disease, a wonderfully fancy word for 'frequent heartburn,' so they'll probably put her on Zantac to calm her stomach.

First time parenting is so fun! No, I don't spend most of my days terrified, why do you ask?

1) Website is back. Obviously.
2) Many more pictures of Claire here.
3) I'm pretty sure that being subjected to sleep deprivation, high pitched whines and screams, foul odors, and having sensitive body parts yanked is what the US got in trouble for in Abu Ghraib. And we're doing it willingly.

Claire Marie Schirk Allison, 5 pounds 10.1 ounces, born 9:43 AM HST on January 9, 2009.

Mom, Dad, and baby are all doing fine. A little exhausted after ~36 hours of labor, but fine.

No surprise a child of ours wants to be born past midnight.

Less than a week until the big day or so. We haven't had any false alarms yet, so it's been a pretty quiet month. Jamie was worried that given our luck, something would happen during the power outage, but nope. Baby seems determined to be born in 2009.

So, the baby's room's ready, there's a portacrib up in our bedroom, the house is mostly clean... and it's just waiting now, I guess.

Those Digital TV transition commercials sure make it sound simple, don't they? Oh, you'll just need a converter box, and suddenly, everything'll be better! Easy as pie. And they'll help you out buying a converter box, too. How nice of them.

Sounds like everything's well organized, right? Uh, no. Hardly. See, it's not as simple as buying a converter box. Broadcasting in digital requires a second transmitter, so now each station's got two transmitters - one analog, one digital. So, since we're trying to minimize the loss of signal to consumers, the transmitters must be required to be in the same place, right? Nope. In some cases, like KHNL in Hawaii, the transmitters can be fifteen miles away on a ridge that's not visible to a good fraction of East Oahu, as opposed to their original transmitter in Honolulu.

Oh, and get this: since a huge chunk of bandwidth is opening up after the transition, a huge number of stations are going to switch frequencies before and after. Which means that for a lot of people, on transition day, they'll suddenly lose signal, even if they were already receiving it in digital. Now, some people might say "well, they just need to rescan," except depending on the antenna purchased, it might not be able to pick up the new frequency. Almost all digital TV stuff right now is in UHF - afterwards, some will switch down to VHF, and obviously a UHF-only antenna looks a lot different than a VHF/UHF antenna.