the adlards

taken on an SPV c500 at 640×480 – terrible colour I know. That’s Jo’s best friend, Sebastien, in the foreground.

So this is blogging from my phone. I’m at toddler group and must confess to having left a riveting conversation about dilation and induction in order to attempt to publish a picture of Josie wearing one of those medieval conical hats (called a henin if memory serves).
Hmmm. Just realised the permissions won’t allow this process to upload so I’ll add the pic later (and will write more). Must get this working properly before going on holiday …

Rom just called out of the blue. His accent has changed so much I spent the first part of the conversation trying to place a “Rob” who obviously knew me pretty well and was up to date with goings on in our lives. The penny dropped and we had a good chat. He and Sarah are in the UK for a visit and we’re hoping to get together later this week, which will be fun. Accents will change in seven years.

Josie and I spent the afternoon in the park, mostly eating the most delicious bark pieces which Josie prepared in the galley of a ship-type-climbing-frame-thingy in between climbing up the netting and sliding down the slide. She’s given up riding the roundabout, preferring to push it while Dad sits in the middle and tries to keep his lunch down. She’s figured out that if she really gets it going then runs off she can get pretty far before I’m capable of catching up.

Sophie had a very long midday nap today in the sitting room with me while Michelle and Jo had a kip upstairs. Everybody needed the rest, but of course her little body clock may have been thrown out of kilter in which case we’re in for a fun night.

I’ve felt absolutely rubbish yesterday and today and blame caffeine, which I started drinking again on Friday after several months without. I’ve stopped again, and have no doubt that regardless of the actual cause of my malaise, the fact that I’ve taken action to sort it out will make it very much better. It had better do because I think I’m going to have to clean our drains tomorrow. I have a suspicion that our dishwasher floods the forecourt every night … I suppose I could go and have a look right about now, but I’d rather live in ignorance for the moment.

I’ve just helped our (delightful) elderly neighbour to open her front door, which had seemed to be double-locked. What’s the first rule of trouble-shooting? Try to recreate the problem. Works a treat. Seems a fitting end to a day that’s been all over the place.

Pete and Ros visited this weekend between visiting Kew and Oxford. Josie was very excited, each time we’ve played on the swing this week she’s asked whether they’re coming to visit. They’re obviously much better at it than I am. Best of all, they spent the night on an inflatable mattress downstairs, so in the morning I just told Josie they were on a bouncy castle downstairs 😀
Pics in the gallery.

Sophie had a good going over on Friday – weighed, heal-prick and all the rest. She’s been feeding really well and was exactly at her birth weight. Josie took a good three weeks to regain her birth weight, which just shows they’re all different – it’s just not worth getting bent out of shape over differences in development. The community midwives have changed their approach since Jo was born, they now only weigh from five days, and they don’t measure length at all – they leave that to the health visitors. All good stuff, apparently everyone was measuring in different ways and it was all becoming far too confusing (and no doubt needlessly panicking new mums and dads).

We popped into the Hemel Birth Centre on Friday to thank them and drop off some flowers. All the midwives who helped with Sophie were there except Sita, who we’d like to have thanked again.

Michelle has been doing a sterling job with Sophie, who had two 3.5 hour stretches last night so really does seem to be getting her days and nights the right way round gradually. The highlight of the week for me, though, has undoubtedly been being able to give Josie the opportunity to spend lots of time with me. It’s good to have time to just be a husband and a dad without having to commit huge amounts of energy to other things. We had a great game of catch at church today, Josie spending much time suspended by her ankles – one of her favourite poses. When I fetched her from her toddler group this morning she was on top of a table practicing her hopping. The carers were very embarrassed – apparently some parents don’t encourage that …

I think I’ll be taking more holiday later this year and just staying home. Does that mean I’m settling down? Naah, can’t be.

I installed an excellent plugin from Arne Brachhold today to generate Google Sitemaps for WordPress. My service provider doesn’t currently run Python at v2.2 so the standard Google script fails. Arne’s script was very simple to implement. I hacked in a line to allow me to add my gallery to the map, and also added the following function to ping Google to let them know the sitemap’s been updated (requires php “- -with-curl”):

function sm_pingGoogle($mapName = “sitemap.xml.gz”) {
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, “http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=”.urlencode(get_bloginfo(‘url’)).”%2F”.$mapName);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec ($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
}

I’m calling the function from after the fclose() calls in sm_BuildSiteMap(); I think this means that it’ll only ping if the file is successfully opened for writing.

Grab Arne’s sitemap plugin for WordPress.

Josie figured out DVDs today.
“Pingu, Dad?”
“No, my darling, I don’t think Pingu’s on at the moment.”
“Pingu DBDB, Dad?”
“Oh dear…”

 play josie: pingu dbdb

I’m just not going to be able to keep up, am I? How can I, I was 28 when I saw my first DVD. Remember banal debates about whether they’d catch on?

Josie’s had a cracking few days, in fact. She now has about 3 quid in medium-term savings (the CD player in the car), and last night after everyone else was in bed she got hold of a pot of vaseline from Sophie’s bath and took great care in styling her hair with it. Have you ever tried to get vaseline out of hair? She wore a hat today when I dropped her off at her childminder’s but you could see something was wrong.

What delights will the weekend hold, one wonders …

That’s right, Dad’s cooking, and crunchy sausages are a favourite. They’re just so easy to make:
1. Take a handful of sausages and put them in a dish that doesn’t mind getting very very very hot
2. Stick them under the grill (don’t forget to turn it on to it’s quickest get-hot setting)
3. Add a pinch of sleep deprivation and dashed poor short-term memory
Your crunchy sausages will be ready when your wife says so. Usually at volume.

Crunchy sausages are best consumed in a finger roll mixed with lots of pickles, salad and sauce. If it took slightly longer to make it to the kitchen, they’re also good cut very fine into a green salad, which has the added advantage of being very quick if you buy your greens in a bag from the supermarket.

Last night was crunchy pizza. Well, it was for Josie, I made a fresh one for Michelle and I 😕

While I was languishing at home today (well not strictly at home – the sun was shining), my team at work were at the circus space. Now that’s got to be a seriously good way to spend an afternoon. I’d love to have been there – did we all want to run off to the circus as kids? – but I suspect being able to catch up on all the stories will be at least as good. If anyone has pictures of Steve on the flying trapese (has a nice ring to it, that), or Myles practising his knife throwing, I’d love to publish them …

Sophie’s gradually getting days and nights figured out (she has an excellent mum), which means that Josie is getting to see a lot more of both Sophie and mum – all very good. Josie’s no longer distressed by Sophie’s crying. She comes and gives me status updates, or asks Sophie, “matter, baby?”. Receiving no response she’ll try again and then try “MATTER BABY?!” with a good bump of Sophie’s bouncy chair to get her point across. She’s a great big sister. Sophie loves Josie’s voice and finds it very soothing. Probably all the time Jo spent using Michelle’s tummy as a pillow.

Sophie had her first bath today. Josie was a great help. Pics in the gallery, including comparative pics of Josie on her first bath day.

Miss TBA Adlard became Sophie Mai Adlard today in a ceremony almost as old as time itself:
“What do you think of Sophie, love?”
“Hmmm. Sophie May?”
“I was thinking Sophie Mae.”
“What about Sophie Mai?”
“Yeah OK then.”

We’ve chosen the names simply because we like them and she looks like a Sophie, but for those of you who need meaning Sophie means “wisdom” and Mai, if you’re Japanese, means “brightness”. If you’re not Japanese it’s a shortened form of Margaret, meaning “pearl”. No bright pearls of wisdom jokes please …

What do you think of courtesy cars? Does it count as a courtesy car if it’s grubby, the seats feel as though they’ve had a succession of greasy 100 stone men abusing them, and four of you feel like you could only get in or out with a crowbar even though two of you are infants and the other two are SHORT?

Jo and I took the car in today because it had told us “oil gauge fault return to dealer”. Nice descriptive error I thought. Apparently not. I’m led to believe that, when asked about it today, the onboard computer had completely forgotten ever having even thought of the error. They assured me they’d restarted the computer. I asked if they’d switched it into verbose mode. They looked at me blankly.

So baby started on her first outing today in a dirty, grey Punto with bright yellow advertising plastered all over it, no air-conditioning and a fuel tank that went from empty to half-full for a tenner. We loaded ourselves in, having removed the tray over the boot space to fit the stroller in, and headed off to Josie’s toddler group.

This is the group that went to antenatal classes together before Josie was born and still meet up every week. I get to see them perhaps twice a year – Christmas and birthdays – so it was a treat to be able to go along today. I particularly enjoy watching Jo interact with the other kids. They’re at various stages of learning to speak, but it’s amazing to see how effectively they’re able to communicate with each other in play despite their differences. Of course once we’d introduced a little birthday party sugar into the mix (they’re all turning 2 around now), social etiquette took something of a back seat, giving way to pure power and speed. Josie was definitely out in front of the pack in the dash-madly-across-the-room-and-throw-yourself-wildly-against-the-wall game they were playing.

Baby was cuddled and held and loved by all, and Michelle had some good chatting time. It was a great afternoon. There are some pics in the gallery.

Thanks to all who’ve responded to the “noisies problem“. Amid much typographic shrugging of shoulders there was some excellent advice and information, most notably from Tim H.

No name for baby yet despite the best efforts of those of you who’ve been offering such useful advice (notably Mr Midgley). Oddly enough, this state of affairs doesn’t seem to be distressing her at all … probably because I haven’t shared all the suggestions with her.

Today was mostly about getting to grips with having a new personality in the family. Jo is very excited to have a little sister and went hat shopping for her today, giving mum a bit of time to rest and get to know the new baby.

Most of the excitement today, though, was around Josie’s current phobia about “noisies”. Workmen, lawnmowers, crying babies, … can, if volume and proximity are present in the correct measure, all give rise to a mix of collapsing-at-the-knees and running in hysterical circles. Very entertaining if you’re removed from the immediate pain of the crisis, but somewhat problematic if you’re responsible and have a small baby at home.

The problem seems to have been cemented (as it were) by builders in the bathroom, apparently the aural equivalent of monsters under the bed if it’s your habit to have after lunch snoozes. We’re currently trying to find creative ways to help her overcome this fear. It’s particularly difficult sometimes to see the balance between comforting her and reinforcing her fear. All advice welcome!

We’ve added a few more pics of Jo and baby to the gallery.