Little Angel

This week was Lisa’s school nativity play. I was asked to be the “Official Photographer” type person, and put together a slideshow for the parents, as in the past they had got a company in to video it, but it ended costing too much money. This meant that I got to go to every performance including the dress rehearsal and have pretty much unrestricted access to wander around taking photo’s. I also got access to the sound desk to record a track to put the music to the slideshow.

I was in heaven… I have mentioned before that I am a sucker for Christmas, mix Christmas with one of my children on stage and I am one very proud and happy Geek, allow me to take my camera and I might just burst!

Not so long ago I would have totally bought in to the little angel thing, but recently she has become significantly more naughty disobedient rebellious … lets say “wilful”. But speaking to her teacher, you get the impression that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

So why the Jackal and Hyde, is she reserving her good behaviour for in school? I’ll admit it’s better than vice versa, but she really does seem to be testing where the boundaries are. I suppose to be honest, I don’t blame her. She gets away with far too much, but who could stay grumpy with this little angel?

Happy Thanks Giving

Thanks To Mrs V for finding this one again.

I am British (English to be precise), so I don’t really celebrate thanksgiving. I am therefore a little shaky on the details. I know, or at least I believe I know, it to be to do with the early pilgrim settlers being thankful for their first harvest and the help afforded to them by the natives, resulting in the two tribes sharing a celebratory meal. How much of that is apocryphal and how much is true, I don’t know… But what is thanksgiving to modern Americans? Is it a bit like harvest festival over here? Is it just a chance to have a few days off work?

For my sister-in-law it is all about shopping. She is off to the “Great Big US of A” to visit her brother and from what I can understand accompanied by my brother-in-laws significant other, they plan to attempt to see how far they can go to stimulate the American economy. However with the recent dollar-sterling rate changes recently, there are likely to be significantly fewer dollars to do the stimulation

For me it just legitimises my ongoing campaign that we should be listening to Christmas songs and watching Christmas movies. This has been the case in my house for about three weeks already, but as of thanksgiving I am far less likely to get moaned at for it (I think I am the only person that starts playing Christmas music before the stores)

But without getting too mushy, I think that there is something to be said for giving thanks before the festival that is Christmas. A chance to stop and take stock of all the wonderful things that we often take for granted. Many of the things I concern my self with really are First World Problems, so without wanting to sound like Bono, I am glad that I know that there will be food on the plate at Christmas, presents under the tree and loved ones with which to share this Christmas.

This is why I am so cross that, due to my bad blogger absence, I am too late to plug this year’s Operation Christmas Child appeal. So if you haven’t heard of it (or your local equivalent) please give it a click and put it in your diary for next year.

I’ll leave you with a message from Bing…

I would like to thank all those that made it possible …

How is this for Irony, I received an blog award and, as if to prove my unworthiness, it takes me nearly 2 weeks to accept it.

I can talk about manic this and hectic life that, but others including the stoic bestower of said award still seem able to keep going.

That said however I am not one to pass up an award, deserved or not … So here it is

Now it is my turn to pass the baton. Many of the blogs that I read have already been the recipient of this award [1] [2], however there are two blogs that I seem to have become neglected a little recently, that never the less bring a smile to my face when I see them in my bloglines.

Thankfully (after a few of her regulars sent out a search party) Helen is alive and well(ish) and very deserving.

Also MIA is Tendrils, hopefully we shall hear from her again soon.

(I have to admit that I have rushed this out to avoid it being any longer before I acknowledged the award, so if I have missed you out, feel free to moan and I will address it later)

One Happy Geek

Well iPhone day is here!

And after a rather convoluted 4 hour process I am now in possession of a 3G iPhone.

I will leave you with my unboxing photos to show you that I really am a geek. (It also achieves the effect of mocking my best mate Guy who failed to pick one up)

As you may have guessed, this post was written on my new iPhone.

This Happy Amnesia

On friday I got to feel the new baby kicking for the first time.

Mrs Geek has been able to feel it for a couple of weeks now, but she is a little closer to the action.

Feeling your baby kick for the first time is wonderful, truly an experience to be savoured and I will admit to both of us sitting there for quite a while in quiet rapture.

However I am also aware that a good friend of ours, who is currently due any day now, has been complaining for a couple of months, that she is being kicked and elbowed and generally abused from the inside. So when does it turn from this quiet and charming miracle change into a cut scene from alien with this creature trying to escape from your body by kicking its way through your ribcage.

The more interesting thing is that this is not our first. So you would think that Mrs Geek would be a little more apprehensive, but she seems blissfully unaware of what is in store, even labour seems to have been quite charming when looked at through the misty rose tinted vail of 4 years. What is it about pregnancy that causes such an effective amnesia?

I am sure if I could bottle it there would be a market for it somewhere.

What a lovely way of sayin’ how much you love me

When we found out that we were having our first baby, Little Miss Arts Student (Now Mrs Geek) was still in her final year of university, and I was living at the opposite end of the country for my job. Now I am not a person that pays much time to regrets, but this is one of my biggest regrets in life. It meant that I missed much of the day to day changes of the early stages of the pregnancy.

Fast forward a couple of years and we decide that we will try for a new baby also. Well as a red blooded young (ish) man having watched far too much TV on how difficult it was to get pregnant (Only Fools and Horses and the film Maybe Baby were my chief sources of information) I must admit I really was looking forward to the trying, only to find that we had achieved the goal within the first month. Bugger!Horay!.

However I got to experience my wife’s pregnancy from start to finish. Now I will say it now and I will try not to repeat it too much in any manner that can be used in evidence but my wife is beautiful. I see people thinking all too often, and have to admit it myself, she is a good way out of my league. However she was foolish enough or drunk enough or more likely both to fall for me so who am I to grumble.

But on top of this, and as cheesy as it sounds, when pregnant she glows. Not in the old ready brek kind of way you understand, but she just seems to have something very magical about her. It is bizarre. I don’t want it to sound like a fetish or anything creepy, it really isn’t anything course like that, it is just that some how between the nausea and the fatigue, she radiates something that I can not describe in anything other than gushy nonsense. Alas she married a crass rugby playing physicist rather than an artsy fartsy poet (proof by example), and so I again find myself falling short of what she deserves.

So fast forward another three years and the topic of having another child comes up for serious discussion. I would be lying if I told you that the thought of not seeing her pregnant again did not enter into my thought process when we were deciding whether to have another baby. Now don’t get me wrong I want another baby, but watching my wife blossom and go through this journey all over again also went a good way to sweeten the deal.

The thing is that this is one more than we had originally planned, I know that she does not like the idea of saying “no more”, and I believe that any sign that I might be willing to have more will one day be used against me, but that way lies people carriers and bankruptcy. So how do I convince myself that enough is enough and that I have been lucky to have witnessed this miracle twice (if not thrice).

Looking inside the bump

Today marked the beginning of Week 20 and as if to mark the day we went in for the Second Scan. There is something really cool about going for the ultra-sound. I will admit, probably better for me than Mrs Geek, as I got to watch the whole time while the technician took all the measurements.

The image is incredible, you can see the hands and feet, you could to count the vertebrae if you had the inclination (and the time). However for some reason they only have 2D Scans with a very limited depth of vision. Why. I get that this is the NHS, but they could charge £10 for a DVD of their session and the machine would pay for itself.

I digress, As much as I may bitch and moan, it was a great experience. So here is a picture of inside the Bump.

If you’re happy and you know it …

A little word of warning before you continue to read this post. I intend to use this blog to record my thoughts feelings and generally what is going on in my life. It just so happens that at the moment I am actually very happy, and it has caused me to write the following saccharin sweet meringue of a post. I will not apologise for it as it is what is going on in my head right now, but it might be best read on an empty stomach. I will categorise this and any other future posts deserving such a label as “Happy Me” to make the easy to avoid for those with a weak constitution.

Every now and then, I am caused to stop and think about the choices I have made and how life has panned out. Looking back over the past 8 years it really is quite a bizarrely random path, that I would love to take credit for but I hardly feel that I was particularly involved in the decisions that formed it. They all seemed to make themselves (or been made for me).

8 years ago I had just entered the world of work and moved to the big city (London). I was being paid small fry money to live a big cheese life style, and to be honest I was enjoying living beyond my means. So when my then fiancée (Now Mrs Geek), let us call her “Little Miss Arts Student” and I found that we were expecting it was time for some rather major life decisions. Although unplanned and not really optimal timing, as she was still in her final year of university, I am glad to say, in retrospect, we took it rather well. The first thing was moving in with my parents to sort out my finances while Little Miss Arts Student lived at the opposite end of the country whilst she managed to complete her degree.

However we were living together, all be it at my parents house, for the final couple of months before My Son arrived. Now don’t get me wrong, my parents are great, and it was a lifesaver that I could come home to sort myself out, but I had a Soon-to-be-Wife and new born child, living with my parents felt like something of a failure.

Thankfully my father-in-law offered to loan us some money for a deposit on a house and we moved out when my son was 2 months old. However we were now the opposite end of the country to my wife’s family and with the new baby seemed to have switched on some kind of homing signal, and someone who, up until that point, had expressed an interest in living in places such as London, Paris or Madrid, was longing to live near a little town in the north west of England.

Thus we found ourselves moving up north. After another stay with parents (this time hers), whilst waiting for the previous owners of our new house to get out. So new jobs, new house, new city, new marriage and not too long after a new baby too.

After seven months of looking after my daughter my wife was back at work with a new motivation. In the following 3 years she has had 3 major promotions and 2 changes of job and I am now a kept man.

We i.e. my wife then decided that the house was a little cramped and after a long and drawn out period of having our house on the market, we managed to buy the house of our dreams. Don’t get me wrong, it has plenty do, but it really is a wonderful house.

We are now expecting our third addition to the clan, and I could not be happier. I really hope I am not coming across as smug, as most of it really was not of my making, and if I were a superstitious person I would knock on wood before uttering the following sentence, but I have to admit that currently I am as happy as a pig in sh… well what pigs are famously happy in, and it just so happens that life seems to be smelling of roses.