Blogging squared

This is not a post about parenthood, but one about blogging - just a brief interlude between parental complaining.

Anyhoo, you get some stats related to your posts. For a tech-head like myself it makes for interesting reading. This graphic gives the complete breakdown since I started this thing;

So, aside from my drivel being viewed (or at least glanced at) in places like Saudi and Romania, which is kind of cool, I find the breakdown of the devices being used the most interesting. In terms of browsers, Chrome is the clear winner, though people viewed through facebook is screwing the results.

The worrying bit is that around a third of the views are coming in from Apple products. Now, I personally think Apple is the work of the devil and I won't so much as have one of their devices in my house, but I'm beginning to feel I'm part of a dwindling majority (soon to be minority??? :O).

Also, one of you nice people is giving my posts a +1 - for you, whoever you are, a sincere thank you. The + rating is related to your post's searchability. So if you can, and assuming you actually like the post, don't be afraid to hit that button... I don't think people viewing from Apply devices can, coz it's a google feature. See? Work of the devil I tell you.

OK, back to parenting and there's something looming that I'm seriously dreading...

Twitter rant

A quick twitter related rant. I've been locked out of my twitter account for the past few days. Twitter announced they'd reset by password for... reasons and that I should click this button to get a password reset link emailed to me.

Okay, no problems, except... it doesn't work. I've mashed that button so many times that even the automated system told me to stop but an email is not forthcoming. I've raised a ticket but have yet to recieve any response to that either. I want to get good an angry about this but... I'm torn.

On the one hand the world is being denied my witicisms (in 140 characters or less), and by world I mean whatever % of my 90 odd followers who happen to catch a glimpse of my post as it blurs past in the endless stream of brain farts that is twitter, but even so - MY brain farts are currently being denied a 140 character outlet.

And on the other hand, it's a free service. It's like bitching at someone for doing you a favour, but not doing it good enough for your liking. Obviously I know twitter aren't doing me any favours, this is their business model, but that's how it feels and I feel like a dick for being angry at them. Even so.... anyway, as I said, torn.

Should I be angry at twitter? Am I just being petty? If facebook locked you out of your account would you get angry?

A day out at the farm

Big thing on on at work last week which horrifically involved me working last Saturday. Which I never think is right. I specifically chose a career path that involved no outdoor working, no heavy lifting and working hours between 8.00am to 5pm Monday to Friday. Having to work a Saturday is like heresy.

A sacred trust has been breached as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, this week I took Friday off as payback and we headed off to a local farm. Not what I'd consider your typical tourist destination but farms seems to be going in for this kind of thing in a big way these days. It's like a zoo, but less interesting. No matter what you do cows and sheep are never going to feature up there with lions and tigers in terms of crowd appeal in my opinion.

Which apparently is a minority view as the place was jumping, on a Friday, outside of school holidays. It's also, given the facilities on offer, surprisingly expensive with the entrance fee being higher for kids than for adults, which I think is just rubbing it in.

As expected there were cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, guinea pigs and some giant tortoises who apparently are masters of disguise, as I never saw any. Some play facilities featuring the classic slide and swings, but also some junior go-carts, which from my point of view required a lot of pushing. But the highlight was the maze made of haybails where myself and Jamie spent a happy fifteen minutes recreating the ZX81 classic 3D Monster Maze (with me as the monster obviously).

But for Jamie, the big draw of the place was the tractor ride. It was locked off for school kid trips until 2pm and Jamie watched the tractor with it's trailor stuff with kids coming and going with obvious anticipation, and even though we were probably ready to go home around then there was no way we could deny him his little adventure.

The adventure consisted of a five minute ride in an open air trailer with only a passing familiarity with the concept of suspension up to the top field where the farmer stops and educates us in the finer points of sheep farming for ten minutes before bouncing back down the hill.

Jamie seemed to enjoy it though, so that was okay.

I do think the most fun was had by Sarah... when me and Jamie were bouncing around the countryside and Fraser was sleeping she managed a nice, peaceful twenty minutes that also featured a cup of tea.

Thought for the day

If people really knew what parenthood was like ahead of time the human race would have invented birth control before the wheel and promptly went extinct.

Twitter

I'm on twitter now - as Winging Fatherhood. Just thought I'd make you aware. It's kind of weird as I don't really get it. It's like a bunch of people all making an effort to be as funny as possible in 140 characters or less and I feel like my Dad confronted with the clock on the VCR (man, that reference alone makes me feel old - even updating it to DVD player doesn't work anymore).

So I'm on there, trying to be funny and accruing followers and following people and marvelling at the people who're following 5000+ people. I imagine their twitter feed is a constant blur of 140 character jokes that are whipping downwards too fast to read and wondering; what's the point?

But it's ultimately a way of driving traffic to this blog (eventually) if anyone happens to catch a glance of the link as it goes screaming downward. Anyway, I'm on there, I'm attempting to be funny. Look me up and I'll follow you back - apparently that's important.

Jamie's big bed (cont)

Just a quick update. First night in his big bed went without a hitch (astonishingly!) and he had to be woken up this morning. This is how Sarah found him;

Clearly he's not quite grasping the concept of a bed yet. I wonder if we could have gotten away with a much smaller mattress :)

So, fingers crossed for a repeat of this tonight and then on to building the actual bed this weekend.

This parenting lark's a doddle... sometimes... occassionally... rarely... almost never actually, so should really celebrate this going as well as it did, unless this is just the calm before the storm.

You know, if 10 years ago someone had told me I'd be excited about a 2 year old sleeping in a bed I'd never have believed them, and you know what? I'd have been right, excitement isn't the word. Relieved, cautiously optimistic, surprised, yes. Excited, no. I might be a parent by I'm not THAT sad yet ;)

Jamie's big bed

So, big day for Jamie today, or rather, a big night. It's his first night in an actual bed... well matress, we haven't built up the bed yet (we really are awful parents but I'm confident the mental scarring will be minimal - he's two, he can't recognise half-arsed parenting yet).

Sarah was worried, I was a tad concerned as well to be honest. We'd taken the time to strip his room of anything that he might find even vaguely entertaining so there't literally nothing in there except his bed now and we have the advantage of the door knob being too high for him so he's really just been transfered from one cot to a much larger one that so happens to have a door and window in it.

So he's safe and contained but we doubted he'd stay in his bed and that it would only be a matter of time before there was the sound of small fists pounding on the door - and that's really difficult to ignore, and what with Fraser we can only turn the TV up so loud these days.

But no, straight to sleep, no problems. As of witing he's been down for an hour and a half and not a peep out of him. I'm really trying to work out some way we can take credit for this, afterall, everything crappy about a kid is the paren't fault, right? So if he does something good it's a credit to the parents, right? Right? It does work that way doesn't it?

Thanks guys

Just want to say thank you again to my facebook friends for taking the time to visit and, if not read, at least glance in the general direction of my ramblings on this ere blog. It was nice to feel like I wasn't just talking to myself, which is supposedly the first sign of madness, which if this is indeed the case, how many steps further along the path to insanity is making a permanent record of the dialogue?

Special shout out to Gavin - yes, it's really nice to know I'm not the only one having these thoughts.

His daughter is now seven months old, which means quadrapedal locomotion is now on the horizon. Enjoy these remaining weeks (hopefully months) of immobility, you'll really miss them when they're gone :)

BTW, don't be afraid to hit the +1 button, or for regular updates on my ramblings, plug in your email address and follow me :)

Bodily function drama

Haven't posted anything in a few days because, frankly, the kids haven't done anything that interesting lately. It's a case of just getting on with life and trying to hang on to sanity. The most dramatic thing that's happened in the past few days is bodily function related. In my experience an unfeasibly high percentage of things concerning the rearing of small children centre around bodily functions. For the first few months of life they literally are nothing more than a small bag of flailing limbs and bodily functions.

Anyway, Fraser had done a particularly interesting bowel movement (which is a euphanism for "a shit that made me dry heave") and required a full body makeover - new nappy, vest, sleepsuit and half a pack of wipes. I was right in the middle when his brother decided that right then was the time to dabble in projectile vomiting that began in the living room and continued on into the dining room, and just in case it felt left out, a little bit was left over for the kitchen.

Three rooms in one sitting is an impressive feat for a two year old imho. I think I've only ever managed two. So, one child covered his his own piss and shit, with the other and most of downstairs covered in vomit.

All that was missing was a third child having an earwax ejection episode.

Sometimes I wonder if we actually knew what parenthood was like, in detail, if any of us would opt for it.

Who should be a parent?

This is one of my sayings I'm fond of, being meaning to post it for a while and keep forgetting. Not terribly appropriate given my previous post about my giggling son, but timing has never been by strong suit, but anyway;

Parenthood; a state of being best suited for people who are tired of having free time and disposable income.

The giggling baby

If there's one thing that puts the shine of being a father it's making your kids laugh. It's a truly magical thing - especially when they're little. There's a video on our facebook timeline from about 2 years ago of me making Jamie laugh by having him punch me in the face (I know, what a truly irresponsible thing to teach a child to do) but he thought this was absolutely hilarious - which overrides any requirement for sensible parenting.

It's probably my favourite piece of cinematography (I realise calling it that is a bit of a stretch, but meh). Hollywood can go taking a flying f***, it'll never produce anything as entertaining for me as that two minute video.

Anyway, last night, his little brother giggled for the first time - and only very briefly, but it was enough to make me gasp and forgive the last three months of dirty nappies. What prompted this post was I just got a text from my wife telling me he'd just done it for her as well, so it seems that the giggle ferry has arrived and now the search for things he finds amusing begins - I suspect more face punching will be involved.

Early morning screwup

Damn, did I start the day in the bad books. I use my phone as an alarm clock and after messing around with it last night I had accidentally set it to the wrong time and as it turned out - to the worst possible time... it went off 5 minutes after my wife had got back into bed after the 5am feeding and woke the wee one up (he's still in our room btw).

As starts to the day go, this one could have gone better.

Anyway, after 10 minutes or so it became obvious, despite him not screaming the house down, he wasn't going to go back to sleep on his own. So up I got and settled him back down, which to be fair wasn't too bad, no more than 5 minutes of rocking and gently lowered him back into his moses basket - treating him like a piece of live ordnance. I considered going back to bed, it was another 45 minutes before my alarm would go off for real, but could sense the rage emanating from the far side of the bed and decided the last thing this day needed was alarm going off again - so discretion being the better part of valor I etreated off work early.

I don't need a crytal ball to know there's some apologising in my future.

Incidental comedy

Whilst I will moan and complain about the many many downsides of being a father, I wouldn't give it up for the world as it offers moments of complete hilarity that come out of nowhere and not only make your day brighter  but will, at least temporarily, eclipse all the pain and stress. I was luck enough to catch one of those moments on a photograph.

It's such a simple thing, a baby sticking it's tongue out just at the right moment, but it brought me so much happiness, and continues to do so even a week later, and hopefully for a long time to come.

Maybe I should get it printed, framed and put somewhere prominent to help take the edge off the 4am feeds.

Babysitting duty

So I've got the kids tonight. The wife is going to be off socialising and I'm left babysitting.

My mother would be horrified to hear me call it that. As far as she's concerned a parent can never babysit their own kids. "That", she would say, "is called parenting." And whilst she may be right, whatever it's called, I'm doing it.

Now whilst being left alone with both kids is a daily occurence for my wife it's a fairly rare one for me, so there's a certain amount of trepidation. Young kids, if they set their mind to it, can be more than a handful. I can't mention this to my wife (it's OK, she'll never read this) as the automatic response will be "that's what I have to deal with every day". Which is true (she's a stay-at-home-mum), but it prompts the reply "that means you've had lots of practice so it's easier for you", which in turn leads to me sleeping on the couch.

So, I've got a hanful ahead of me and no one to sympathise with me. I suspect there's be screaming, toys thrown and at least one tantrum. And god knows what the kids'll be like.

Important life lesson (1)

If considering purchasing a beanbag that requires you to actually pour in the beans yourself... DON'T!!!

That's an hour of my life I'll never get back.

Birth of a blog

Just wanted to take the time to credit my wife, Sarah, for this blog. It was totally her idea.

It came about during the glorious child free lunch we had at a local pub last weekened when my parents came to visit and babysat for a couple of hours. My plan had been to write a book about my experiences as a father (which is as magical and wonderful as it is infuriating and draining). In fact it still is my plan to write that book, but she pointed out that this is the 21st century and these days you need to first establish a following before you take on something that ambitious.

And so here I am, blogging into the ether in the hopes that someone stumbles across it and clicks the follow button (hasn't happened yet) and will eventually help me promote a book.

Writing a book has always been one of my lifetime ambitions. There were three, the first being to have my name on a patent (which I achieved) and the third to be the proud owner of a Lotus Turbo Esprit - a result of James Bond's The spy who loved me and has since been removed from the list (I've been lucky enough to own a sports car when I was younger and owned it long enough to know I can't be trusted behind the wheel of a fast car) and has never been replaced with anything else.

So, book it is then.

Feeding time

You know it's not going well when just after you've finished giving your son his bottle you discover he's pooed so hard that you need to change your clothes.

Not sure which part is worse, discovering you've been crapped on, or the trepidation about what's waiting for you in his nappy.

Thought for the day

Prenthood: A state of being best suited to people who've grown tired of free time and disposable income.

View confusion

OK, this is bugging me - looking at the stats for the page. I keep seeing 2 views from the US every day, one from a Mac using Chrome and one from a PC using Internet Explorer, and another from the UK using firefox.

I'm working under the assumption that I'm talking to myself here as none of the individual posts as showing any views. So what the f*** is going on? Is this some check by Google to make sure the blogs work for all systems? That would seem... inefficient. Or am I being stalked?

I hate not knowing something.

Going to ignore it for the moment and continue to assume no one is reading these.

A confession

In the interests of full disclosure these early posts aren't really for public consumption, so if you're reading this - cudos and apologies.

Instead, based on my own behaviour when it comes to this kind of thing, I'm creating a legacy to this blog. In around a month or so I'll start promoting it (that is of course assuming I don't get bored of it within a week and forget all about it - I do have a track record for this). When I click on a site that's just started (this applies to youtube channels as well) my interest immediately wanes. This is totally independent on how good the content is. 50 subs eh? Let me know when you've got 5000. Not sure why this is, but basically I'm not an early adopter (and given I didn't get married till I was nearly 40 and didn't become a father until I was 42 this trait applies to my whole life) and so it was important to me to show content and momentum before letting anyone know this blog exists.

Even if it means that right now I'm basically talking to myself.

So if you are reading this I can only assume you've scanned back through my post history, in which case, Hello! You're in the future. Or by some mechanism I don't understand that probably includes pure dumb luck (or lack thereof).

This was not the post I intended to make today, but it was the one I needed to make. It's been bugging me.

Grandparents visit

Parents just left after visiting for the weekend. As always, lovely to see them and this visit was a little bit special as Jamie can now say Grandma and Grampa. Admittedly not very clearly, but it's the thought that counts. And although he was fine to them and took to them immediately despite not having seen them for over three months it was obvious they were just a minor distraction from Thomas.

Honestly starting to wonder if we're going to have to book him into a Thomas rehab clinic at some point in the future.

Oh, and they brought a Woody from Toy Story toy - on the rare occassions where he's bored of Thomas he'll sit enthralled by Toy Story, but only the first one as that's his favourite, because Woody is in that one the most. So the toy went down a treat. It has the hat and pull string and everything. Really excellent gift that kept him amused for a solid ten to fifteen minutes.

But they were really here to see Fraser. This was the first time they'd met him, and from my point of view it was awesome as they fed him a few times. But the really magical part of their visit was they babysay for us for two hours and allowed me and the wife to escape...

Bumholes

I look forward to the time when having a ringside seat at a small person's arsehole is no longer part of my daily routine.

My boys

OK, so all appendages free now, though based on the light flickering on the baby monitor, not for long.

Anyway, these are my two boys. Jamie, the eldest is now pushing two-and-a-half and his little brother Fraser who's rushing for three months with reckless abandon. Whilst they're awake they occupy all my non work related life. Which is as much fun as it is a pain in the arse. Despite numerous subtle hints from me, neither of them are showing any signs of getting a job and leaving home.

Lots more about these two to follow - a lot of it via one handed typing, so apologies in advance for typos  Hmmm, and despite turning the volume down I can't really ignore the baby monitor any longer.

First!

First post.

Sitting at the computer, my oldest in the next chair with his headphones on and shouting at Thomas. Youngest in my lap with a bottle in his face and slowly losing the battle to stay awake. And here I am, blogging with my spare hand. Like a boss :)

Proper first post when I've got more apendages to spare.