Dalekboy

Sharon has been having a terrible time settling Lex (he's teething - big, painful rear teeth), whereas I'm having some trouble, but nowhere near as much. I was trying to come up with anything I did differently, couldn't think of anything, but mentioned that I now always finish with the Venusian lullaby from Doctor Who. It's the one Pertwee uses to hypnotise Aggedor, the royal beast of Peladon.

No, really. I couldn't make that up.

Anyway Sharon tried to settle Lex tonight, and he would not settle. She headed off to resettle him again, and this time it worked! When she came down, I told her I was surprised, and didn't think he was going to settle.

She mimed patting Lex's back and then starting singing a rough version of... you guessed it! It's the easiest he's settled for her in a while.

Here's the only copy I could find on Youtube.

I wonder if this was the original version of the Cantina scene from Star Wars?

( Another youtube vid below the cut )

So, today I've had a nice little outlandish coincidence.

As is the norm, before Lex went down to sleep, he wanted a book read for him. I usually let him choose, but I was tired, so I chose. In amongst the books was a copy of the Little Golden Book of Pinocchio. I remembered mum telling me that it was my favourite book as a child, and that I always drove her nuts by wanting her to read it to me again and again. So I thought, yeah, let's read that one.( Read more... )

Back to the Future and Terminator from How It Should Have Ended.

So, I had a very busy day. And in amongst my busy day, a run of chance coincidences lined up that is kind of awesome. ( Read more... )

Lex has shown a few random smiles here and there, but none as a consistant reaction to a specific thing, or that couldn't be put down to gas. Until today. Today he smiled every time I offered up a very specific bit of stimuli.

Throat-singing. Every time I did a little, he smiled.

I hope he stays this cool :)

Shaz was in labour for around 26 1/2 hours. She spent probably 25 1/2 of it in only moderate discomfort even though she used no major pain relief. She would have a contraction, pull a face, and keep going. She continued chatting happily through all of it, punctuated with the occasional, "ow." She literally sang through some of the later contractions. It only got hard on her when she got tired due to getting chilled in the bath. Then she had two Panadeine Forte, snoozed for a couple of hours, and came back rechanged and fairly cheery.

During one quite bad contraction, she broke into a Carmen Miranda song.

I couldn't make this up if I tried.

Right at the end, she had some gas. She moaned a bit during the final contractions to get Lex out, and had a hard time explaining to the midwife that in fact, she wasn't getting any of the natural signals to push. Sharon doesn't know her own body, because it didn't come with a manual, and she's crap at exploring or understanding her own physical being. Once the midwife understood this, she just told Sharon when to push and when to stop.

Lex plopped out of her and immediately let it be known that he had my lungs. We're still calling him Lex, but aren't sure yet whether that will be his name. Have to wait and see if he is a Lex.

Lex is 51cm long (20 inches), weighs 3.77kg (8 pounds, 5 ounces), has long, sharp fingernails, a giant boofhead, and looks like Winston Churchill. He was born at 10:38am on Sat 23rd August. mireille21 won the sweep, being only 4 minutes out. Once the chocolate cigars arrive, I'll send one out. I hope they don't suck.

Mother and baby are doing great. So far I have been able to calm him down within a few minutes every time he starts to cry. I'm rather proud of this. I also don't expect it to last. Lex fed without too much hassle, was happy to sleep on my chest at one point, and in my lap later for an hour and a half while Sharon caught up on her sleep.

I'm about to go and catch up on my sleep.

Shaz needed some internal stitches, and was naturally rather tired, but is fine and cheerful. When I left the hospital, they were asking if she needed any pain relief. She paused, took careful stock of how she was feeling, and said no.

Other people's dreams are usually pretty dull and only interesting to the actual dreamer. So I'll pop the two dreams below a cut, and you can read them if you feel you want to. I will attempt to keep the descriptions short and to the point. All you need to know is that both dreams were about death. ( Read more... )


Made for a slightly sleepless night. I wasn't particularly worried by either one, but I'm not used to remembering my dreams, so I tend to mull over them a lot when I do, which kept me awake.

Then this morning when Sharon woke up for work, I was already awake. We cuddled up and she grabbed my hand and put it on her belly, and yep, I felt Lex kick. Or punch, or head-butt, or body slam, he is related to me, after-all.

It's the first time I've actually felt him move, which is very cool. I felt him move a few more times, but interestingly, I wasn't... thrilled. Or amazed. Or even really moved. My rational mind knows there's a little living being doing the samba in my wife's guts, so him moving is a given, and conceptually I think it's awesome. It just isn't getting me on any sort of emotional level. I suspect the distance was from one of two things, I still haven't connected with him after Tracy, and/or I was kind of out of it and sleep deprived after those two dreams. So will just have to see how I go next time.

I did appreciate the odd timing though - waking from two dreams about death to encounter definite signs of life from my son.

For all those people who have yet to watch Top Gear because they "don't like car shows" or they "aren't into cars", be watching next Monday night at 7:30.

The challenge to Richard Hammond and James May in next week's episode is to turn a car into a re-useable shuttle craft. They know the car will never fly, but they get people from the British Rocketry Association to figure out how to launch it.


Trust me, it is a fabulously insane and inspired bit of TV, and the clearest example of why Top Gear is anything but a car show.