Ultramatt v8

Elise's Birthday 19/12

Elise is two today! We had a little party for her on Saturday where Mum made an amazing ladybird cake (or bee according to Elise) which was very popular. Not as popular as the soft toy puppy they got her though which has had a good and thorough cuddling. The keyboard we got her was also quite a big hit although mainly with Rod and I.

It has been a massive first week for the girls, seeing Mum and Dad and settling into life at Kiri's house. Everyone has handled it well but it has been fairly hard although the tolerance of Kiri and Rod has made things much easier. Sarah has managed to find us a car (a Mazda Altenza for those who care about those kind of things) and a flat all in the same week. The flat is a cute three bedroom cottage really close to the city, I'll even be able to walk to work. We don't move in till the end of January so we will be gypsies staying at multiple people's houses until then. Just like when we first got to London ...

Photos have been absent due to a missing piece of tech for the camera, which has now been replaced, so hopefully will get some up over Christmas ...

Auckland 4/12

Almost there, on the way to Auckland from Melbourne as I type to start on Lushai's first project before nipping back to collect the family. It's been a fairly full on trip with both girls getting a virus just days before we were due to leave. They were pretty much recovered by the time we hit the road but Elise vomited all over herself on the Taxi to the airport (we also lost a suit, iPhone and iPad in the subsequent kerfuffle. Phone and iPad have been recovered). Then Sami vomited all over the bed in the hotel in Singapore. The whole trip to Singapore was a mess to be honest, pretty harrowing. At Singapore Elise struggled with the heat but loved the swimming pool and both girls slept like angels on the final leg to Melbourne. Sarah and I were up all night but exchanged regular disbelieving grins and silent thumbs up at the miraculous sight of our two girls obediently dozing through the night.

Was very sad to say goodbye to London, the city itself and our friends. Felt quite guilty removing Elise from her routines and her little friends that she loves so much. I love London and although I'm excited about New Zealand, summer and exploring a new city I'm really going to miss it. It was such a great city to live in.

Melbourne is putting on it's usual baffling weather show swinging without warning between 30 degrees and 20 degrees like an unpredictable drunk who wants to be your best friend one moment then wants to stab you the next. Jet lag hit me pretty hard this time round. The girls recovered quickly but Sarah is still pretty worn out. Hopefully Pither hospitality will sort it out. The will be the first time I've spent more than one night away from Elise, and the first time I've spent time away from Samira ever. I do not like it, I must say.

Ugh, time has made a fool of me because I didn't publish this and now I'm actually in Auckland. It is warm, humid & sunny here and I do like it, I must say. Feeling very good about coming here at this point. Have been completely overwhelmed by the move sorry and starting work so quickly so I have been very tardy with emails and blog posts e.t.c. Normal service will resume shortly (possibly).

Working and not working 06/11

What a cutie eh. I have, thank the heavens, finished my Socgen contract and am splitting my days before we leave between spending time with the girls and working on stuff for Lushai, the agency I'm joining when I get back. I can't be bothered looking through the blog to see if I already talked about this but just in case I'm going into business with my old boss and forming a design agency. She is already working under the name Lushai in Welllington and I'm going to open the Auckland branch, consisting of one employee. Me. Probably working out of a bedroom. But you know small acorns yadadada.

Sarah and I went to see PJ Harvey at the Royal Albert Hall. It was incredible, very emotional. I've been trying to see her play for years so am really pleased we finally managed to do it. A great note to end our time here on.

Off to Liverpool next weekend to see Uncle Will and Aunty Mary. I've never been there before so am pretty excited at the prospect of checking out (however briefly) the home land.

Unrelated: We have had a pretty and fairly mild autumn here so far, it's been pretty nice. Some random cute pics by Sarah of me and the ladies, for you:

Phone Dump 26/10

Things still absolutely mental here, but only two days of work left so hopefully sanity returns soon. Here is a dump of phone pics from Sarah & I to clear the decks.

Baby Gorilla 10/10

Cripes a month since the last post.You can expect this blog to be irregular for the next few weeks while our lives are ruled by exhausting chaos but after that I'm off work and things should settle down a bit. Mad busy on every front this week. I had a photo in an exhibition and played keyboards (very timidly) in Grok for a live radio broadcast as well as looking after my actual family and doing my actual job. Have a big back log of photos and videos to work through but they may have to take a back seat for a week or so. We also went on the London eye ... we've done so much this month but I can't think what any of it was ... I just have an overwhelming feeling of being very busy and tired all the time. Although mostly in a good way. Heat wave! That's what happened this month, crazy 30 degree days. Gorgeous, blue skied and sweaty. But back normal meh weather now.

Sami is killing us with her desire to party all night but made up for it tonight with her first laugh! She is actually a really smiley baby but we have had very little luck capturing photos of her little chubby cheeked gummy grin. However the laugh we got! So we are able to share with you her 3rd ever laugh to a funny face, captured only minutes after her first ever one:

That video remind you of anything?

On the Elise front, she is trying to make longer sentences these days, sometimes really surprising us with what she comes out with, 'Daddy took the rubbish outside' and 'There's a ball in there' being two of her better efforts. Usually though she just says 'cake'. She actually woke up the other morning and when I walked into her room looked up and me and said 'cake?'. She can also use 'both' to good effect. Tonight I asked her if she wanted this teddy or that teddy and she said 'both'. So she is now asleep in her bed with two comforters and two teddies. Must work on my authoritah. Elise has also decided to toilet train herself. We were going to wait until we were in New Zealand, but she kept asking to go onto the toilet and has actually successfully expressed herself in it in both the country and western styles. We aren't going to push it but we did buy a little seat so she can sit on it without falling in. Clever little thing though. For the record her current hobbies are Duplo, jumping, and running backwards and forwards shouting 'fast!'.

More Cute Bomb 10/09

Awwww we love her. Some photos of Elise are here.

Cute Bomb 06/09

First part of a three part cut bomb, the main event: Sami's first six weeks. They are here. 37 photos! Too many. Sami's personality is starting to come through now, real chatty and real smiley although we have been luckless at catching any of her smiles on film. Mainly because whenever she does we just sit around her like idiots gushing.

Some more cute ones of Elise next, then some a dump from our cell phones, then .... dum dum dum duuuumm a movie.

Actually the phone ones might be a little less cute as it will be interspersed with other flotsam but surely this enough sugar for a whole cute Pavlova. Surely.

Upwards 28/08

Just a quick one to post a few photos from our one night stop over in LA on our last trip to NZ in order to clear the desks for a big photo dump of Sami and Elise from the last few weeks. LA photos are here.

Also, although I think most people know this already by now thanks to loose-lips Gerritsen we have bought one way tickets back to NZ. We are de-emigrating to Auckland in November and will reach home on December 12. Lots of reasons why, I will go into them briefly at some stage before we go for the curious but I'm too tired for all that tonight. Got some exciting stuff planned though and really looking forward to experiencing more of Arlo and Blake. And even Edie we hope. We are also interested in grown up people too of course ... more about all this in future episodes.

Onwards 17/08

Mum has gone and is safely back in snowy NZ leaving us to do our own house work. We miss her heaps already. We are settling in to our new Nanaless two baby life and it was really relentlessly exhausting at first but we are all starting to settle into it now. I had a week off after Mum left which was fantastic and so much better (although harder) than my job. It was great hanging out with Elise everyday and getting to see her in her normal week time environment and multitude of activities. It is astounding how much there is to do for kids in London, city farms and drop ins and whatnot. We went to one amazing place called Coram's field which is in the middle of the city, is completely free has bikes kids can ride, multiple sandpits with water features they can play in, a flying fox and swing and what not and even animals including goats who just wander around the playground as if they had paid to get in.

Elise has found it tough not to get so much of Sarah's attention but has never been anything other than sweet and loving to Sami (apart from that one time where she hit her on the head with a spoon but we'll overlook that for now). Even when she has been at her wits end she takes it out on us and not Sami. She calls out to us if she is worried Sami is not happy and today softly stroked her head when she thought Sami was upset. Of course Elise being the hurricane of shouty destruction that she is she often barrels through Sami at full speed and Sami is (wisely) a bit wary of Elise but today Elise was rewarded with little smiles so I think they are working it out. Belive it or not we have hired a friend of Janine's as a nanny a couple of days of a week so that Elise can do some of her activities like swimming that otherwise she would have to drop and so far she has been great and Elise loves her. Sami is doing great, has put on heaps of weight and is pooing like a champion.

This pretty much sums up Elise and Sami's relationship

The riots didn't effect us at all you'll be pleased to hear. Pretty shocking though. It might be a wake up call for the UK but possibly not. Basically everyone has looked at the riots and seen all the things they already believed about Britain validated. Even if those things are completely contradictory. The place is full of politicians swaggering around trying to out tough each other, resulting in weird situations where a kid stealing £3.50 worth of bottled water get a 6 month jail term and a politician stealing £60 000 worth of tax money gets a 9 month sentence. Funny times.

We are working on a pretty big project at the moment that I can't go into too much detail but it means we are pretty stretched for time. However we will be dropping a cute bomb of photos of Elise and Sami sometime over the next couple of weeks.

The picture at the top of the blog is of a beautiful piece of art that Elise did (with a little help from myself dipping her feet in paint and dipping her up and down on the paper). She was so proud when we hung it up, it was really cute. And now she insists we put all her paintings on the wall with our regular art. It is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen. The actual cutest thing I have ever seen was yesterday when I had a bath with Elise and she sung me a song where the only word was 'Daddy' sung again and again. She knows how to work a room.

And because they are beautiful:

Haze 31/07

Almost time for mum to leave and I can't believe how fast it's gone. We are stumbling around in a sleep deprived (and in my case slightly bad tempered ) haze, but coping ok I think, with a lot of help from Mum. Sarah of course is a rock solid & tireless Mum, the best two girls could ask for really.The girls seem to be coping well anyway.

Amy Winehouse it turns out does live around the corner from us as Sarah asserted all along and our hood is thronged with sad fans and tins of lager. It is all quite sad really, that business. In better news it has hotted up again but I feel a bit bad that the summer has been 'meh' the whole time Mum has been here. At least she will get a few proper summer days out of it.

We are lucky where we live I think, apart from being so close to downtown, this weekend we were able to walk to a city farm in the next suburb over & a kids carnival opened up for the weekend in Elise's local park. Elise and I had a dad/daughter afternoon there. Elise rocked it like she owned it, as follows:

Hong Kong Photos 16/07

... are up! Our stop over on the way to NZ earlier in the year. They are here.

Samira 15/07

She's here! Samira arrived at 5:30am on the 11th of July. We were lucky enough to have a natural birth even though she was a whopping 4.4kgs. She is doing great and Sarah and baby have been home for the last few days recovering and getting to know each other. I'm home too at the moment watching Mum run around looking after everyone while I lie on the carpet complaining about whatever pops into my head.

Elise has taken the big change very well but I guess the challenge for her will be when Mum leaves. At the moment though she loves the baby and is all gentle kisses and cuddles, apart from one time when she was having a cuddle and almost accidentally throttled her because we tried to take Samira back and Elise didn't want to let her go.

So we are all very tired but doing great. Here are a few more random photos from the week.

Dancing with Nana

Elise gets all Frankenstien and the kitten with the Totoro plush the baby gave her.

Awwwww

Waiting for baby 03/07

Mum is settled in and has been an enormous and tireless help. Elise loves Nana to death, as if there was any doubt. I'm a bit sick of 'Nana! Nana!' all the bloody time to be honest. We are in a holding pattern waiting for the baby who is due tomorrow but with Elise being so late who knows when she will actually come. In the mean time we are trucking around enjoying Mum's company and inadvertently introducing her to the real London where she was lightly verbally abused by an out of his mind and highly aggressive teeny tiny gay man on his way to the pride party, got to overhear a drug overdose and was almost squashed by a man collapsing as he had a heart attack all in the same trip. A more gentle affair was the Caledonian Road festival as shown below.

Don't ask me about the juggler, I have no idea. If a baby comes, you will be the 5th or 6th to know, depending on timing and cell phone coverage.

Waiting for Nana 26/06

It is scorching here at the moment. Must be 30 degrees surely, excellent weather to knock out a jet lagged Nana. We are all very excited about Mum arriving tomorrow and can't wait to see her. Behold the glorious sign Elise and Sarah have ready for her arrival.

Here are a couple of little videos of Elise taken over the last few months. Note the cool steely calm with which Ted looks death in the eye and laughs!

And finally, for no other reason than she is pretty, here is Elise enjoying her last few days of being an only child.

Photo Dump 19/06

In a mad dash to get a bunch of back logged pics up before the new baby eats all our time, here are a bunch of random pics mostly from our mobiles. The first lot are of Elise from about 15 months to 18 months, they are here.

The second lot are from my mobile mostly taken on the way to and from work, as well as wandering around town and trying to avoid housework at home. They are here. I'm quite fond of them because although they are dubious technically, they are a real little snapshot of the last couple of months of my life. The phone camera can take a pretty good picture in the right light conditions considering the size of the lens. But it struggles under marginal or extreme conditions, which are the conditions I tend to want to take photos in. Colours get over saturated and they come out looking like a weird sharpening filter has been applied to them. Photos of HK and LA to follow as well as a video if I can get all of that done before no 2 arrives.

Also today was Father's Day here in the UK. Despite me fudging Mother's day both for Sarah and my own Mum (and Father's Day) Sarah and Elise gave me a wonderful day, starting with Elise giving me a painting she had made (brought to me while I was still in bed by a very excited daughter) and ending with us wandering around East London drinking coffee and eating Mexican food. Lovely.

Fat Wife 05/06

So clearly the blog is still a bit sporadic. The new job and the fact that I have to work on my own computer which means that I often leave it at work has mucked up all my routines but we are slowly getting back to normal. As I said last time I have a whole bunch of media I would like to share with the family so at some stage there will be a big content dump. But we are so busy right now that god knows when that will be.

Very nice and springy here at the moment, summery almost even. Sarah is healthy, huge and looking foward to getting the baby out, it really is of a size now where it will be more comfortable out than in. Elise continues to find new ways to be noisy and adorable, and also explores new ways to rip my nerves to shreds with her dare devilness. The latest trick is to stand on her toy car like a surfboard and to try and get it to rock backwards and forwards, which always ends up with a suprised looking baby cackling on the floor, right up until the time when it ends with a suprised looking baby with a sore head bawling on the floor.

Tardy 16/05

Sorry for the lack of posts, still haven't done the photos of HK or LA and have a fist full of Elise stuff to share but everything is a complete whirlwind at the moment. I've just started a new contract so I had to finish up my old one and now I'm knee deep in finding my feet in this new one, if you will excuse the tortured and mixed metaphors.

In short: Me - quit old job, started new one, had bike stolen, bought new (slightly better one). Busy busy busy. Forgot mothers day (both the UK and NZ one, sorry Mum I've never appreciated you and Dad more! I'm just rubbish).

Sarah - very big, very healthy, no 2 is kicking and moving around a lot, also busy busy busy.

Elise - jabbering away, exhibiting parent nerve wrecking dare devil tendencies (standing on chairs and trying to make them wobble for example), being lovely and extremely noisy, spending lots of time with Dad in the weekends.

Less crap update in a week or two, scouts honour.

Easter and whatnot 01/05

Just a quick one to post a video we made of Elise's introduction to Easter. Technically it's her second Easter but she was too young to run around hunting for eggs the first time. Continues to be lovely here, we just spend a nice evening in our local park listening to a jazz band. I worked through the wedding but sarah and Elise went to a party where everyone had royal family masks on that scared the crap out of Elise, hopefully giving her a fear of the royal family for life so she turns into a grumpy republican like her dear old dad. On the tube home Sarah gave her a Union Jack flag which Elise tried to snap and throw to the ground, so things are looking hopeful. I have nothing against the flag as such, I'm very fond of old of blighty but I admire the general spirit she displayed. Anyway, the video:

New Zealand 22/04

Just a quick one to post the NZ photos. They are here. What amazing light down there. It is stinking hot here at the moment, and the lack of rain has made it pretty smoggy. We are going to Brighton for the day tomorrow to get some clean air and go for a swim in the sea.

Quick cute story, Elise has a t-shirt that Kate gave us that says 'I love Dad' and today as she wore it she kept looking down and pointing at the words saying 'I love Dad'. Or to be more accurate 'aiiie. Aaaaaa aaaaaaaa'. Although she has has no idea what she is saying you can rest assured I will be making sure she wears that t-shirt a lot.

Views but no news 17/04

Haven't had a chance to go through the Auckland photos yet but will this week and get them up before next weekend. In the meantime here are a few I've taken during the week of dirty old London and clean not-old Elise. Who actually, despite a day of breath taking cuteness, as I type this is howling like a ring wraith as Sarah tries to put her down to bed. It's not easy being a Mum sometimes ...

First of all someone call Liverpool, because check out these mad skills.

That was at Camden Square today, here is what the back of Elise's head looks like in that same park, note the victory air punch in the last photo. Yes!

These are some more from my office, continuing my theme of the back of people's heads and extending that into a city with no people in it.

The building obscured by window reflection is the amazing and controversial inside-out Lloyds building designed by Richard Rogers, worth reading about here. Here is a (slightly better) view of it.

And because no photo of London is complete without it, the Gerkin. Almost.

Spanish Winds 10/04

Can't begin to express to you how welcome and utterly perplexing the blast of summer weather we just had was. Winds from Spain meant It was 8 degrees above the normal temperature for this time of year, which is more than enough for a British person to take their shirt off and drink cans of larger in the park or sunbathe in their underwear. The shenanigans that have been keeping me so unbearably busy have now subsided and life is a little more back to normal. I even managed to get out of the house a few of times, including going to see a band play (The Crocodiles) which I feel like I haven't done in a millions years. And or course it's Sunday evening and here I am tapping away at the blog, things must be back to normal.

As requested I have finally started to sift through the photos. I've uploaded the Melbourne ones and will do Auckland next and then Hong Kong. Although this is not in chronological order, this is the order than will get me the least nagging I think. They are here.

Elise pretty much exclusively Walks everywhere now and in fact her physical confidence has come along in leaps and bounds the last few weeks. She clambers up play ground equipment and hurls herself down slides with confidence completely unwarranted by her actual ability. Which comes with all the knocks and bruises you would expect. It never seems to stop her for too long. Here's a little video of her, demonstrating none of those skills.

In unrelated news, check out the view from my new building at work. Flash.

Spring 27/03

Spring is here, thank god. Sun and flowers and puppies e.t.c. Some people are gagging for photos from the trip I know and the good news is they are all down now but there is a lot of them and unfortunately this week is unusually insane so realistically I probably won't get to them until next week. We haven't even looked through them ourselves yet. But I will do them then, I promise family. Probably melbourne first, then NZ and then HK. I had a quick skim through and grabbed one I liked to keep you going. I realize there is only one face is this photo but the one face is adorable and the photo also has lots of luscious red hair in it. But mainly it had really nice colours and light and you should know for now I will always swing for that over actual faces ....

We are good, Elise has moved into her own room (or rather a curtained of and insulated corner of the sun room) and that couldn't of gone better. There were no problems at all moving her, she loves it and often wants to stay in her bed and play with her toys by herself. It's fantastic to have a room to ourselves like real grownups but a part of me misses her being so close and hearing her breathing. Any way probably one more post and then it'll be photos for Africa. I hope.

London! 20/03

We're back! Through Hong Kong, Melbourne, Wellington, Auckland, LA and now back in Blighty. And we have 2653 photos to prove it. Although ironically we have completely run out of space on the computer to download them. We picked up a hard drive this weekend so should be able to start pumping them out to Flickr soon. It was a great trip, Elise was a star, although a fairly grumpy star at times and although we have been back a week last night was the first night she was settled enough to sleep through the whole night. So on top of normal jetlag we are running a fairly exhasuted ship here at the moment.

It was great to see family (proud to say Elise gave Arlo his first ever cold, never say we don't bring you anything Kiri) and friends and to spend some time in some warm countries, Auckland in particular impressed with it's tropical green lushness although we had a great time in HK, Melbourne and Wellington too. Also had a suprisingly good time in our brief stop over in LA, managing to put in some spa pool, beach and junk food time and even scoring one of the flash new iPads which still haven't been released in the UK yet making me the envy of every nerd I meet.

It's always hard to come back to real life and leave your family, especially all the nephews and our niece, but at least it is feeling very spring like here with flowers blooming and some lovely sunny days. Quite good to be back in the hustle and bustle actually, especially now it's a bit warmer although obviously I'd much rather be at the beach. If only I could move London to NZ.

Hong Kong! 21/02

Found myself a few moments in the hotel lobby during nap time so I thought I would bash out a post. A surprisingly nostalgic experience being in Hong Kong actually, little details like the small square tiles that cover most buildings really took me back to Japan and Korea. Hong Kong is real breath of fresh air after London with it's mild temperatures and genera Asian high rise modernness. A poor choice of phrase given that an actual breath of Hong Kong air isn't particularly pleasant but everything else is strangely refreshing and it's very exciting to be here. It's jam packed and full of delicious smells (of meaty food we can't eat mostly), like Camden on a weekend but everywhere, and all the time. It's also surprisingly green and there is a lovely semi-tropical humidity to the air. More than anything it's lovely to be by the sea and in an Asian city again.

If you find yourself travelling around Hong Kong I can't recommend getting yourself a red headed baby strongly enough. She is an absolute babe magnet, if you define babe as all Chinese woman over 60. We went to a Vegetarian restaurant and a big fuss was made over her which she loved, and when they pretended to leave with her she seemed perfectly happy waving goodbye to us to go and live with her new Chinese family. Elise as usual is a massive flirt, smiling at anyone who will have her and then hiding her face in her arms (the old bait and chase) and following any child who look like they will be her friend. She loves Hong Kong. In fact generally she is perfect for travelling as long as you don't mind structuring your days around nap times. She can't wait to get out, loves the hotel room, is generally very excited about anything new, with lots of pointing and oh oh oh sounds. Our hotel, although slightly shit, has a flash area for weddings, so she has had quite a nice time looking at all the brides traipsing through the lobby in massive blingy gowns.

On that note, as we knew it would it is slightly challenging to travel with a baby, the time difference is a killer and she has found it hard and so have we. But actually it is not as bad as we expected, she has found all the parts we knew would be hard, hard (sleeping when she would normally be awake and vice versa) and at all other times she really has been a dream so we are counting ourselves pretty lucky. Right, my shit coffee is getting cold and I had better wrap up before the girls wake up. We are going to Lama island to see this 'nature' I have read so much about.

Girl! Probably 18/02

Had the 20 week scan and she is a prefectly formed, long legged girl! So from now on every night in our house is ladies night. We are super chuffed. Off to Hong Kong tomorrow, on the way to Melbourne and New Zealand so won't be updating for a few weeks. See you London! Be good while I am gone, you big dirty beast you.

Walking, Talking 14/02

Or more accurately, mumbling and stumbling. Just a quick one - it's late and things are a bit crazy getting ready to go on the big trip, but here is a video of our little mover and shaker. Generally she is an absolute hilarious joy to share a house with although she has recently rediscovered her nerve shredding scream, just in time to strike terror into the poor souls who are likely to hear it several times in the middle of the night on our upcoming 10 hour flight. Current hobbies of Elise include making the aforementioned noise, dancing, pretending to cook, trying to walk more than one step (going very well) and slapping Dad's expanding belly. Hilarious apparently. Note the little bit of music at the start of the video, it's a sample of her actual piano playing from the video with a bit of jazz hands added on by myself. Our first co-writing exercise. Note the pick up food with your mouth so that you don't have to drop the food already in both hands maneuver, an Elise classic. Also of note this week Sarah has finished all the curtains that transform the corner of our sunroom into a little bedroom we can section of for Elise. It looks amazingly professional! I'm absolutely stunned to be honest, maybe she's not as mad as she looks. Mmmmm, not such a quick one after all it turns out.

Birthdays 06/02

As I as was forgetting to say Happy Birthday to Dad on Skype this morning he nagged me to put some more pics of Elise up on Flickr, so they are here. Also, Happy Birthday Dad! Sorry I didn't realise it was your birthday, it was very early in the morning and I was trying to Skype and prepare Elise a three course breakfast in my defense. Useless. Although uniquely for me I have already send a birthday gift, so I was aware of it, and I do love you heaps Dad, especially now I realise how much hard work is involved in actually being a Dad and how good a job you did of it. I offer my usual excuses. It was also Sarah's birthday this week, I considerately bought her an Indian cook book so she she can cook better food for me. We also went to a super flash restaurant and gorged ourselves on posh nosh, the first time we've been out just the two of us since Janine and SImon left. Along those lines a few things have come together recently enabling us to resume a slightly normal life. The weather is a lot milder (we haven have some little flowers popping up in our back yard), we are no longer sick , we are slightly less exhausted and Elise is relaxed enough with me now that she and I can go out for a few hours together and give Sarah a break. She even happily waves good bye to Sarah at the door instead of looking around in horror at the thought that this crazy man is in change of her. She also lets me sooth her at night now, adorably resting her little hand on my arm to make sure I'm still there as she falls asleep. Sarah is out now seeing a friend of hers do a poetry performance, which sounds lame but is in fact awesome. It's called Hope for Robots, so that's already a little cool, right there. Very talented chap.

Elise's room is almost done! I've done next to nothing on it apart from uselessly holding the end of the tape measure on occasion and even then not concentrating enough to do a half decent job of it. It reminded me of how I used to 'help' Dad fix the car. I realised as I rushed to take a photo of her sawing through a curtain rail today that a good reaction to seeing a pregnant woman sawing wasn't to think how hilarious it looked and to take a photo but probably to offer to do it instead. But by then it was too late and also it looked hard and a little bit boring.

Steps 30/01

Florence pics are up here. That was a great holiday.

Exciting times in non holiday land, if you consider the development of a 1 year old exciting, which these days I apparently do. Well almost exciting days if it wasn't for over excited Dads. I turned around the other days and Elise was standing in the middle of the room (I have no idea how she got there) and with a very pleased look on her face and she took a step! Just the one, it would have possibly been more steps but I got a bit overexcited and swooped her up for a congratulatory squeeze before she could do anything else. So not the best parenting but there you go. She is particularly enjoyable company these days. Two 10 hour flights into a different time zone should take care of that.

15 Minutes 25/01

Summer! Ha! Clearly not. But I have put some photos of last summer up here. It was a good summer. Sort of depressing that it was so long ago but we are now closer to the start of next summer than we are to end of last summer, and that thought does help. As does the holiday to Oz and NZ in a few weeks. Not so cold here at the moment and I'm enjoying London again although we are still thinking this might be our last year here. Now though it's for positive reasons such as being ready for a new adventure or wanting to be closer to family, as opposed to mad escape. And perhaps it would be good to quit while we are ahead as opposed to waiting till it all gets too much. The immediate future is all up in the air at the moment, we will probably make a decision after the holiday since it hits all three places we are thinking about (Hong Kong, Melbourne and Auckland). Emotional black mailers (Kiri) will be pleased to hear that seeing pictures of Arlo with his grand parents and thinking how lovely it would be for Elise to have that relationship too has temporarily put Auckland in the lead.

In our current actual home more progress with the coffee machine has made me realise that my boast of a decent flat white last week may have ben a bit enthusiastic. But I'm definitely getting better and am now producing what can safely be described as an almost average flat white. I have honed my technique a little. As my coffees are made completely by hand (bar roasting my own beans, I did actually look at home roasters on the internet but realised that was getting a bit carried away) there is a lot of love in them if not so much quality. The main thing I have managed to achieve in doing the whole thing by hand from the grind to the froth is that I have made the process incredibly laborious and given Sarah a reason to roll her eyes at me as I spend about 15 minutes making each coffee.

Elise has started to draw! Well perhaps draw is a little strong but she will seek out a pencil and paper (or a wall) and studiously and intentionally make marks completely of her own volition. It makes me so stupidly proud.

I was in the audience of a live TV broadcast of a new show last week starring David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr, Charlie Brooker and Lauren Laverne. It was very interesting. In real life they all looked incredibly thin with big bobbly heads. I did actually get in shot but unfortunately due to my habit of laughing into my hands when some one tells a rude joke I completely obscured my face for the whole shot. Curse you David Mitchell for making a joke with the word erection in it. The show is called 10 O'Clock live and is actually well worth checking out although it's still finding its feet. You can watch it here if you are in the UK or a nerd enough to know how to fake a UK IP address: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/10-oclock-live. Still if we really do get 15 minutes of fame then I calculate I still have 14 minutes and 58 seconds left.

Cantonese, coffee 18/01

The weather has mellowed which in turn has lifted the winter blues a little and mellowed my desire to escape London although I'm still in the mood for a new adventure. I guess the big trip next month and the new baby should give me more than enough to handle for the next little while. I'm trying to teach myself some Cantonese in preparation for our trip as I bike to work and feel pretty confident that my pronunciation is incomprehensible. In preparation for the other big event we are just about to convert the sun room into a room for Elise (not sure how she will feel about that ...) which is pretty much wiping out our next few weekends.

Elise is growing so fast. As she gets older she becomes much more adorable and interesting as she becomes her own little person while conversely she also becomes much more annoying as she is more determined to do what she wants to do not what we want her to do. Every night when I come home I'm greeted by the sight of Elise pulling herself up on the kitchen baby barrier as she shouts at Sarah to get her dinner ready faster.

More important than any of this, I got a manual espresso machine for my Birthday from Sarah. It has two handles with some kind of internal gears that lets you get a surprisingly high level of pressure through the beans. I've even managed to wrangle a pretty passable flat white out of it. Unfortunately I'm the only person in the house who can actually drink coffee due to every one else being pregnant or a baby, but I spend a lot of time explaining to them how good my coffee is and my various theories about how to make a good coffee, which is enjoyable for everyone I'm sure.

Normal Service Resumes 08/01

We're back! Happy New Year and all that. We had a great holiday in Florence, some photos will be up in a couple of weeks once the film gets back from the lab. Funny to still be shooting on film on 2011 but there you are. Most of our stuff is digital now but I'm still mucking about with the old film cameras just for fun really. It was quiet hard to come back to London actually. Florence was so romantic and we ate such great food. But we did come back and immediately fell into mid winter blues as short dark days and actual work replaced Florence's milder winter and our daily routine of wandering around looking for restaurants. Some unexpected and welcome sun has eased the burden but I think this might be our last winter in the UK.

Every year I wonder if I should end this blog and website, which could pretty comfortably be replaced with Flickr and Youtube now, but I've decided not to this year. Maybe next year or the year after. For a start it's turned into a great record for our family, it's not a particularly accurate record of our life I think, but it is roughly enough to jog the memory on the odd occasion we have gone back through the archives. Secondly (and this one is for nerds only), now that my job involves fairly complex and large interactive projects involving communicating with large groups of stakeholders and large teams of developers there is something quite cathartic and relaxing about coming home and working on something that involves just typing in a few lines of simple html into a singe web page, which is how I update this blog. So I'm going to keep at it for now, and keep doing it in the same way although I know that by the end of the year the blog page is waaay too long. I have made a half arsed attempt to update the header but I haven't tested it, it doesn't look that great and it has only been updated on half of the site. If I was as lazy with the design of my work as I am with the design of this blog I would be unemployed.