Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Whilst on the subject of Flickr, I’m making the most of being off work this week and catching up on a few overdue jobs. One of those is to add some more pictures of Emma to her collection to fill the gap over the past six months. If nothing else, it gave me an excuse to go back and look at those cute newborn photos and see how much she has changed over recent months!
Posted in Family, Photography | 4 Comments »
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
469Lest I be accused of being the uncaring father I thought this blog was well overdue an update on my favourite (okay – and only) daughter. Emma’s coming up for eight months now and her latest trick is crawling. Having spent a couple of months waggling her bum in the air and shuffling backwards she has now well and truly mastered forward motion. Unfortunately, more often than not, her locomotion is in the direction of the nearest electric cables! She is also now able to switch at ease between sitting, crawling and lying. She demonstrated this the other morning when we woke to the sound of the mobile going round powered by a seated Emma – time to lower the cot base! Then yesterday she positioned herself in front of the TV/Hi-Fi stand and proceeded to remove CDs one by one. In summary – we now have some serious baby proofing to be done around the house. The other mark of Emma’s progress is her teeth. The bottom two came through a while back but, as previously mentioned, her top teeth have been fighting their way through since Christmas. Unfortunately it seems that Emma favours the vampire look as it is the lateral incisors that are coming through first!
Posted in Family | Comments Off on Emma’s on the move
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
One of the many kind donations we received when Emma was born was a second-hand running buggy – the sort with three massive bicycle-style wheels. Christine has been out with it a couple of times but today was my first run. Despite its size the buggy is very light and manoeuvrable and on a smooth tarmac surface has surprisingly little rolling resistance. I believe the recommended technique is to give the buggy a push and then run after it. Unfortunately I need to try and work out why ours veers to the left slightly. As a consequence I had to run with one hand on the buggy most of the time which doesn’t do your running style much good! My running speed was down a little but the additional effort certainly kept my heart rate up. On even the slightest incline you find yourself up on your toes pushing so you get a good workout.
Emma slept for 55 minutes of the hour we were out!
Posted in Family, Running | 2 Comments »
Sunday, December 30th, 2007
461Thought I should have at least one post to account for my actions over the past few weeks (and consequent lack of activity here). Two weekends before Christmas it was the annual Ashton family reunion (Christine’s Dad’s relatives). The location this year was a Best Western in Kennilworth probably for no other reason than it is pretty much the centre of gravity of an increasingly dispersed family. Much fun and games were had by all although ours were tempered by having to perform relay babysitting (the hotel’s baby listening service didn’t stretch to the room where everyone was gathered). We could also have staged a West End farce: the card lock on our bedroom door ceased to work so we got a key to Christine’s parents’ room and used the internal door between the two. Unfortunately, every time we got our key to their door enabled it disabled theirs.
(more…)
Posted in Family, Travel | Comments Off on Festive Frolics
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
Christine’s brother and fiancée have been here this weekend and today we had planned to go to the SOC district event at Burley North (to the west of Bolderwood, just North of Lyndhurst). Shortly after we arrived it started to absolutely tip it down and both myself and the running buggy I had just assembled got completely soaked. There seems to be a bit of a design flaw with the latter where the roof drains down the back of the seat and the water collects in a puddle where the child is meant to sit! Fortunately the rain soon subsided (there was even a bit of sunshine) and with Sarah’s wetsuit lining the buggy, Emma had a relatively dry place to sit.
(more…)
Posted in Family, Orienteering | Comments Off on Decidedly damp day
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
440Christine’s brother and fiancée were visiting yesterday on their way back from a trip to Bordeaux (our garage temporarily looked like a respectably sized wine cellar!). We went out to Fritham in the afternoon for a short walk. My appendectomy was a good excuse to let Ian lug Emma round most of the way (she weighed in at just over 8kg at the morning’s clinic). Emma doesn’t mind who it is that carries her as long as she can suck on the front of the Baby Björn! Our only disappointment was that the Royal Oak was closed when we got back. Many congratulations to Sarah who, having spent much of their stay fretting about the possibility of a viva for her MSc, discovered today that she not only had a distinction but also a commendation and prize for her dissertation.
Posted in Family | Comments Off on Family at Fritham
Thursday, August 16th, 2007
413No – I haven’t been reading Harry Potter all of this time. We’ve been away on holiday for the past couple of weeks and without network connectivity for most of that time. Our primary destination was the Scottish 6-Days orienteering event held on Speyside, up in the Highlands of Scotland. However, we decided to make the most of my being off work and have a fairly leisurely drive up there showing off Emma to various relatives on the way.
(more…)
Posted in Family, Friends, Orienteering, Travel | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
410Yesterday we headed over to Itchen Valley Country Park for the afternoon. As you can see, Christine had fun on the play trail whilst Emma slept. We then went for a walk round the woods and up to the top of the meadows – all fairly pram friendly if a bit muddy given the recent weather. We’ll have to remember to avoid Monday or Tuesday next time though as the cafe is closed.
Posted in Family, Travel | Comments Off on Out to play
RSS - Posts