So where to begin? ( Long post that is just about general life stuff. Some mention of bodily functions because I live with small children. Some stories about small children because I don't get the chance to do much that doesn't involve them in some way. You have been warned. )

Just wanted to put the word out early that all our Continuum 7 plans may suddenly be cancelled. Both kids are sick, but Lex is really unwell, poor little bugger. He's been out of sorts for a couple of days, but today he's bad enough that he's voluntarily staying in bed, moaning, dozing, and asking me to come in and hold him every 20 minutes.

It's no good dragging him down to Melbourne if he's like this. It won't be fun or comfortable for him, and it certainly won't be fun for us. Mind you, with both kids at the con we were keeping our hopes for fun at fairly low levels. :)

Original plan was to leave Thursday. If Lex isn't substantially better by Wednesday arvo, then we start to cancel 90% of our travel plans. The remaining 10% will be me driving down to Melbourne on the Friday, doing the Chronos Awards, staying the night, then leaving Saturday after the Continuum 101 panel so Sharon isn't stuck with looking after a sick child and a baby on her own.

I have suggested to Shaz that she can head down with MaybeZoe, deliver the awards, do the whole con, and I'll stay here and look after Lex. I doubt she'll go for it, but have made the offer. It'd let her get to a con, and give her a few days off, albeit looking after one child. She could leave MZ here, but it would destroy our frozen breast milk supplies and leave us no reserves.

Naturally, if we do cancel Wednesday arvo, Lex will be right as rain Thursday. If we wait until Thursday to cancel, he'll be well Friday. If we go to Melbourne, he'll be sick and miserable the whole time. This is the nature of parenting :)

Fingers crossed he gets better and we can all travel down. I know he was looking forward to the trip as much as we were. And it's shaping up to be a fantastic con, so it'd be nice if we could see parts of it around children.

Been meaning to post some pictures of the kids for ages, but a request from the lovely kaths has gotten me off my arse. ( 16 pics below the cut... )

Arrived last night, had some sleep. Now, off to Lush and to buy some groceries.

I have a nice room all to myself, it feels decadent but as I said to Sharon on the phone, if she were here and feeling that way, I'd tell her to shut up and enjoy it.

Sadly room windows do not open, nor are they locked with allen keys, so will have to throw a chair through one.

Most years since my faux-stroke I've managed to post around April 1st (the day the migraine that did all the damage started) on how I've been going. This year, the fifth since it all started, I've been way too sick/busy/run down to do so. And even not posting here, I'm still behind on everything!

So this is the short-ish Stroke-Boy Update. ( Read more... )

I'm on page 16 of the novelisation of Evil of the Daleks by John Peel, and it's making me violently angry.

Peel is a continuity obsessed fanboy, and that's fine, but there's a time and place for it. I don't normally mind authors expanding the worlds in which the original stories were set, but this is really pissing me off. The story doesn't need all this retconning, it only needs minimal background, but in the prologue alone Peel manages to tie in with Frontier in Space, Daleks' Master Plan, and Genesis of the Daleks.

The only bit that fits is later when the Doctor is thinking about his past self, who is busy on the other side of London. Given it relates directly to Ben and Polly leaving, it's a fair addition to make.

Then he manages to get the details of the Chameleon's plan from The Faceless Ones arse about, talking about their plan to invade Earth, when their actual plan was to abduct 50,000 humans and leave.

I dunno, maybe I'm just being too harsh. Or maybe I'm right to be angry that I'm being inundated by dodgy continuity by an author who manages, on the second page, to misspell the name of the Dalek home-world as Skarao.

Last night I was so wrecked I nearly went to bed at 8pm. I ended up staying up later only because I wanted to hang out with Sharon, who was actually too busy to hang, so I went to bed at 10pm. After I went to bed, Sharon had a crook guts, which kept her up until 1am.

At 4am I awoke to the sound of Lex being loudly happy. I knew immediately what the result would be, if not the cause. When I went into the room, MaybeZoe was wide awake as well because Lex had decided to play with her. At 4fuckingAM. Took a while to find out Lex had a headache, and then I had to lie with him to get him settled. Meanwhile, Zozo got progressively more unhappy.

At 6am she showed no signs of settling. In fact she was getting louder and more unsettled. By this point nappy had been checked, she had been fed (I woke Shaz a quarter hour before her alarm would go off to feed bub), and given she's teething I'd tried pain relief. Nothing was working.

Then I remembered something. It was something I'd not used with her because unlike her brother, she'd seldom had a lot of trouble settling.

I tried throat singing. Within 30 seconds she'd quietened down. By the five minute mark she was asleep. Hooray!

Now if only I had someone to help lull me to sleep...

Might be time to break out either the Dead Planet soundtrack, or the Warriors' Gate one.

So, yesterday (it's actually taken a while to write this, so a day or two ago, in fact) found time/energy to post, and to deal with a couple of emails. Most non-child/household related stuff I've managed in a while.

Last night, MaybeZoe kept me up until 1:30, then kept Sharon up until 4:30, then Lex awoke at 8:30. And the sleep I had was broken.

So, now I'm zombie boy. And Sharon is zombie girl. But both our children are awake and happy!

( Other stuff, some cheery, some not, kind of long, and some pics of the demon offspring... )

We are now three quarters through the nominations period for the Chronos Awards. Nominations close on 27 March 2011.

A couple of categories have several things nominated, but have not been nominated by enough people to make the final ballot. So if you've been meaning to nominate someone or something and haven't, it may be time to do so.

NB: There has been one set of anonymous nominations received as a screened comment. These nominations have not, and will not, be accepted unless the nominator lodges a further comment lodged here to identify him/herself.

Wide distribution of this post is encouraged but please acknowledge the source and provide a link back.

Been ages since I posted up one of these, but dealing with a teething MaybeZoe reminded me of a big one - medication. Could be an interesting post as I suspect it may open a hornet's nest with some people.

There is a tendency these days for people to over medicate. As soon as there is a small issue, people will break out whatever and give the kid the biggest dose possible. Many will follow it up at the required intervals with more full doses, whether they are needed or not. ( Rest below the cut... )