I’ve given this long and careful thought. It IS accurate to say I’m not the IT geek I once was. I had a limited childhood due to surgery, wheelchairs and so on. I was kept sane and occupied by being encouraged to dabble with engines, and electrical things.

This led to an electronics interest. Then, a chance encounter at college took me from the path of Robotics engineering, into the world of IT. My choice.

Back then, IT was still “new” and interesting. Things were less seamless, less integrated, more quirky. More variety, more oddities, more challenges abounded – AMD, Cyrix, Nexgen, Intel..286, 386SX/DX, 486, 5×86, 6×86, MI/MII, the list ran on and on. All required a slightly altered approach. All hardware was mildly different.

I was intrigued and really enjoyed the time. I feel privileged to have been there. Year 2000 fiasco? Good times!

Nowadays, it’s..dull. I’ve spent 15+ years doing this IT lark. Now it’s Intel/AMD, all standardised, no real challenge. Even Servers – very little there can now engage an interest. In some respects, seen one, seen all of the buggers.

So, hardware is pretty much out, does the software do anything for me? Windows 7 I like, so much so I bought it. Virtualisation will never lose it’s “cool” factor. Software can be very interesting still.
I once had rooms full of IT kit. I once lived as a human minority to an enclave of hardware.

Then I met Jem. Hey, here’s something more complex than any program, more tactile than any input device, more entertaining than any game…perspective shifted slightly.

Then we had, and lost the twins. That was a very, very black time for me. Jem was hospitalised, I drove there and home, back and forth on autopilot. I was tired, I couldn’t cope at all. I used to get home and break down, usually on the floor surrounded by the cats. Company of a sort. I so badly wanted a drink, but I was so scared of what I’d do, it didn’t happen. I spent long, dark, cold hours in a very personal hell, questioning and analyzing everything, feeling utterly helpless or hopeless.

I found myself. I didn’t like what I found, to be honest. IT? What had it ever really done for me? Enough to dedicate myself to it? Hell no. I’d freaked at the idea of becoming a parent, and then grown used to it, and now it was gone. So had a part of me and my beliefs.

Time moved on, things settled. Never forgotten, not even for a day, nor would I ever wish it was so. I carried on with the Job, as it was just that, and you do what’s in front of you. I found myself taking less personal pleasure in it however.

Then we found out Jem was expecting Izzy. Mild panic, followed by a settled time, followed by all manner of minor “edge of the seat” problems while she was carrying Izz. Not easy, I found myself turning ever more from IT to support Jem and keep things going. I didn’t have the time, mental headroom, or the energy. Work stayed at work, stopped coming home.

Then Izz was born. An indescribable moment. When the midwife first asked if I could hold her, minutes after arrival, I took off my shirt and held Izz against me to keep her warm. Looking down into those blue eyes, and that small face, all I could say is “Hello Matey, I’m your daddy..”..mentally adding “you poor bugger”.

That was a little over 2 years ago now. 2 years of laughter, tears, frustration, amusement, the whole seesaw of emotions. 2 years of watching her develop physically and mentally. 2 years of thinking “When she grows up, and looks at me..what do I want her to remember?”.

Is it the IT geek who was forever surrounded by equipment and superflous crap, who placed it on an equal or greater footing than my family? Or is it the Daddy who spent his time with her playing games, drawing, cuddling, reading, writing, and encouraging her imagination and practical skills, and kept IT in it’s proper perspective, and in it’s proper place, as a tool and a means to an end?

No contest. Never will be. I promised myself, promised HER on that first contact. Who I was, who I used to be…I was no parent. If being a parent now means I’m no geek, then hells, bring it right on, I’m more than game for it.

I AM still a geek, I just changed the focus. With the aid of Jem I’ve become a breastfeeding, babywearing and real nappy geek. In myself, I’ve become a household geek. I geek about useful things like energy conservation, home security, home system automation and optimisation, appliance/structure repair and maintenance..because that applies where it matters, at home with the family. I’m reverting back to electronics and the like. I have to say, in this respect, I now feel far more fulfilled. My diversion is my car, nothing changes there at least, heh. The complexity of a modern vehicles onboard systems is quite scary if you think about it.

Once you plug in your laptop and see just how much data the car processes, second on second..it becomes quite amazing. I drive my computer on wheels with a slight geek smile every time it shifts the gears, or varies the ePAS system, alters the timing on the fly to stop pre-ignition or even flags up an issue on the dashboard.

I draw the work/home life line very firmly now. The geek/non geek line…well…heh..maybe not so much.

PIR sensor in the bathroom is invaluable – one of my favourite mods so far!  No problems found yet.

The floor paint mentioned in the last post?  Tat.  Crap.  Washed off!  Bloody awful.

Dryer vent is in and working well, most pleased.

Garden is now transformed!  We caved in to tiredness, and finding out Jem was pregnant again, and therefore couldn’t put much stress on herself.  Hired a team of contractors.  2 days later, we have NO leylandii, no cherry laurels at all, all roots gone as well, and a new 6ft panel fence on those 2 sides of the garden.  MUCH bigger garden now we’ve reclaimed the space!

We’ve re-seeded the bare earth, and the grass is going great guns.  We also put in a bugger of a bank holiday weekend’s worth of work after some random purchasing of turf, and have now turfed the lower level back garden.  So that’s 3 back lawns we have now!

Doing so uncovered more muppetry.  There were decorative slabs in the gravel.  Some concreted in.  Fine.  BUT, concreted to a LINER that had been placed on the ground.  Duh.  Some had NOT been concreted in.  SOME had been stuck down with..silicone sealer.

Ah well, it looks lovely now.

Upstairs I’m happy with, it’s just the hall and living room left to do really.

I caved in to my own paranoia last week – I ordered a set of snow tyres for the Astra.  I’m planning on putting them on my existing steel rims.  Not the original plan though – originally I wanted to get some scrapyard steelies and do it.  However, the scrappy had none in.  BUT, for the same money, they provided me with 4 Genuine Vauxhall SRI Alloys, with..NEARLY NEW tyres!

So, thats my new “warm weather” wheels sorted.  Now I can have the steelies with the winter tyres on, and my old tyres..well..any good ones I’ll keep as spare.  Any naff ones can become garden planters, or small sandpits for Izzy.

Izz herself…is creasing me up.  She turned 2 on Monday, so we had a day at home, and playing at the pirates Playpit in Telford.  All good fun was had.  She’s now able to communicate scarily well – it’s rare we can’t understand something now.  Full sentences, new words daily.  If she can’t make herself understood, she’ll show us what she wants.  We have free will now as well, and decisions – she’s become a fairly independant mini-person now!

Our room is now a silvery grey on 3 walls, and on the “Window wall” is a slate grey. Looks OK to be honest, and soaks up the daylight that seeps round the dark curtains, making it ideal for Izz to sleep in.

Izzy’s play room/spare bedroom is now bright yellow and wipedown capable with “Duracoat” paint, and has bright orange skirting boards and doorframes. It’s very cheerful..heh.

I finally lost my temper with the bathroom pull-switch. It’s LOUD. CLUNK, CLANK. No thankyou. I’ve fitted a PIR in it’s place, and the lights now come on when you walk in, and go off approximatly 7 minutes after you leave. BETTER. Handy for us, handy for Izzy, and tidier too.

We’ve got bookcases from IKEA in the living room, now full…still need more! I’ve also got to alter power and phone points in there to get the router and phone to a safe location…Izz has wee’d on the router twice now, haha!

I’ve ordered a load of bits from Toolstation that should arrive today, to start revamping the utility room. I have a sink in there that we could lose, quite happily. So I have got parts coming to cap it off. I’ve also bought some anti-slip floor/doorstep paint, and a dryer vent kit to install that properly. That’s looking like fun.

The front garden has gained some new plants, and we’re looking at turfing it (currently gravelled). Back garden is looking likely to recieve the same treatment. The cherry laurels and Leylandii that bordered 2 sides of our garden have gone, after a mammoth sawing session. Now I have the mother of all piles of garden waste to get shot of. The neighbours think it’s brilliant. The garden is so much lighter too – but we’ve got a lot of grass re-seeding to do. I’ve also sculpted out a ramp for Izzy to get to the raised lawn instead of using the slab steps…they’re a bit heart-stopping, and she’s fallen on them twice.

So, it’s less “project rooms” and now “project all in parallel”..heh.

And tonight is Izzy’s first parent evening..at 21 months..!! Scary..

Why do this? Simple! BABIES. Well, Toddlers now (where did the time go?!). Toddlers are by nature messy. Food gets dropped, wee happens, and so on. With a carpet, it’s a small pain. With Vinyl, it’s a towel and forget it. Better.

Secondarily, it makes cleaning easier. If you recall, we have 3 cats. Hex, Fudge and Crumble. They’re lovely. They all shed fur, but in that respect Fudgie is TERRIBLE. He sheds his white coat oh-so easily. It drives us mad – it did in the cottage as well..continual battle against cat-fur.

So..given that working+toddler = little time to vaccum except weekends, I went on a hunt for a way to make it less of a bind and reduce Jem’s stress levels. Enter our trusty Roomba! I took delivery of him a week or so ago, from the US.

For those who don’t know – a Roomba is a robotic Vacuum Cleaner. Think of an oversized frisbee that’s about 10cm high, with a button on the top marked “Clean”. and you have an idea. I’ve bene watching them with interest for a few years, and now I had the perfect excuse to indulge my geek. So..baulking at the cost of £300 for the newer models, for tech I’ve never used that may or may not do the job, I went on a hunt. I got this Roomba for around £150. It’s a 400 series, so an older unit. It lacks the self-charging “home base” dock, or the virtual walls, or the scheduler function that automates it’s cleaning cycle when you’re at work.

However, the base and scheduling remote are available as upgrades, which is tempting.

So far, I’m very pleased. Put him on the floor, press “Clean”, and off he wanders. He’s managed the living room/diner, hall and kitchen easily on a charge. The stuff he picks up is quite scary – OK, he’s no Dyson, but I have a Dyson for that. He’s damn effective though. Cathair, food, crumbs, paper scraps, exploding floor cake, you name it, he picks it up. Literally it’s a case of “unplug charger, put Roomba in room to clean, push “clean”, walk away”.

We use him to clean while we’re at work – it makes the whole thing effortless. On Sunday we were in the garden all day, having fun in the sun. Roomba did the ground floor, and then I moved him upstairs and the bedroom/landing, bathroom and even Izzys playroom got hoovered. Under the beds, everywhere. I had to empty him a few times, but it was an odd feeling knowing that the housework was being done, without us being involved. Love it. Izzy’s getitng used to him, the cats are a bit unsure. The gas meter reading guy was rather surprised when it shot past him on a mission.

I can highly recommend a Roomba – and that’s not just my inner geek talking..;)

Second Recommendation –

He came out on Friday to service our boiler. When I got there, it was in peices, on a dust sheet. Every bit was being cleaned carefully, checked, greased, reassembled and tested. By all accounts, it was well and truly overdue for a service, and in a bit of a state. The level of detail, stripdown and care given to the job was frankly impressive, and from me, this is no small compliment.

He was polite, cheerful, and when asked about the boiler, condition thereof, practicality of changing it for a combi etc, he gave an honest opinion. By all accounts the Bermuda backboilers are a thing of simplicity, and built like a brick toilet, capable of LONG periods of good service (talking 30 years or more), and not worth replacing for a “modern” unit with a design life of 10 years max, really.

BG etc will try to get you buy a new boiler, as Bermudas are old, non-efficient..think 80% max, and apt to not go boing as often as other types, due to the lack of moving parts and complex bits, so less callouts and revenue for them I suspect.

He also checked for adequate ventilation, advised about a CO detector (got one already), and once it was all reassembled, it even got a wipe down!

It’s far happier, quieter, and I daresay running a fair bit better post-service. I certainly feel happier about it.

Total cost? £55 for the serice, both of boiler and firefront. Can’t beat that with a stick.

Consider the first company that came out…£80 to tell me it was broken and mis-diagnose the fault, then leave me hanging for a week. Then a further £80 to do a service, that would, I bet, not have been as in depth as the one it recieved.

I know who I’ll be calling in 12 months time.

Since we moved in, the heating system hasn’t worked. Literally. First of all I couldn’t get the boiler to stay lit, despite following all the instructions. Then, it started blowing the 3amp system fuse, rendering the system utterly kaput.

So, better safe than sorry, I called in an engineer.

Cost: £80.

He got it lit onto the pilot light (It’s a 1997 vintage Baxi Bermuda backboiler with the horrible firefront). Then he went to poke at the “non gas” bits. I accompanied him.

He removed the cover of the wiring center. Spent 15 minutes tryingt to get his test meters to work (poor maintenance there, tut). Then he started poking bits. I heard “Oh shit. OH shit. OH SHIT” as he poked various wires.

“Your pump’s gone.”. Well, *I* had narrowed it down to either pump, 3 port valve or control failure. So he disconnects the pump..”oh no, it’s fine”. Yes, I knew that. I HAD got it running boilerless for 2 minutes at one point.

Opinion then revised to “It’s your 3 port valve”. Hmm. Possible – it sounds like it’s on it’s last legs anyway..groans and pings like a mad thing.

“I’ll call you back next week (this was a Friday)..you need a 3 port valve, a universal thermocouple, and a service.”

Off he toddles, £80 better off.

The next week, no call. So I thought “sod it.”. The last thing that happened to the system before it popped was I knocked the thermostat on the wall. I don’t LIKE that one anyway, and had bought a unit to replace it.

Power off, multimeter out. Rubber gloves on (safety first, haha). Thermostat opened up, 3 wires off. 2 screws out, thermostat off the wall.

Power the system up…fuse doesn’t blow. set hot water to “on”..valve chugs over to port B, pumps hums and spins up..boiler fires up. BINGO.

It’s the poxy thermostat. Power off again. Look at wiring – there’s a red, yellow and blue..connected to terminals 1, 3 and 4 If I recall. That’d be “Live” “Neutral” and “Switch Live” then.

I already said I didn’t like the thermostat we had..it’s one of the basic dial types, a Honeywell T6360..ours was a “C” variant, that has a supplemetary “on/off” switch. No intelligence there. BORING.

I’d bought in advance one of these babies:

A Drayton Controls Digistat 3+. “Set and forget”. You can specify 6 times of each day, and a temperature you want the house to be BY that time..it does the rest and adapts to the house, the temperatures, the boiler heat generation etc. Also has a holiday function to mind the house at a lower level but get it warm for your return and lots more. Cost was £25 from eBay.

This was a 2 wire thermostat that runs off batteries. So..the Neutral wire I was advised is now not needed. OK, I heat-shrinked it off and made it safe. The remaining 2 wires ran to the digistat back panel relay.

Programmed the Digistat, clipped it onto the backplate. System power on again, all good. Water on, that works, boiler starts. Override the digistat temperature program and ask for heating as a test..”click, whirrwhirrwhirr”, hum, WHOOMF”…followed by a shout from Jem – “Boilers lit!”

Yee-HAH.

I was going to replace the programmer..a Honeywell ST699 digital 24 hour job, as that is also inflexible for us. However, the Digistat has rendered that unnecessary. The ST699 is now purely a relay for the digistat, and a controller for the hot water demand. Hence, heating is on “Constant”, water is set to heat from 5pm-6pm for Izzy’s bath. Apart from that we don’t need any (Electric shower, dishwasher etc)

For a materials cost of £20, we now have a fully intelligent functional heating and hot water system.

The engineer, when called said “Oh. Yeah. I’ll be back out in half an hour..it’ll be another £80.”. I said forget it. Plus the valve he wanted to replace is an £80-90 part.

Got a guy coming tomorrow who’ll charge a flat £55 to service the bermuda and firefront, that’ll do nicely. If the thermocouple needs replacing (possible, would explain the difficulty lighting it), that’s fine. They’re cheap.

I shal have this unit service yearly for safety, and although it’s old and inefficient I expect it to be a lot cheaper to run than the cottage boiler was..that was routinely £550 bills to maintain a temperature of 15 degrees..the house can hold a steady 21-23 degrees even with the boiler broken down. Impressive! It rarely needs to cut the heating in.

Moving day didn’t go as smoothly as hoped, but it could have been worse. So far, here is a list of what’s been done:

• Living room carpet removed and replaced with Wood-effect vinyl
• Horrific and pointless fire hearth removed and binned, to find perfect flooring underneath(!)
• Oven fixed – had a snapped bolt on the element. Doddle.
• Ripped out a double kitchen unit that was doorless, to fit the fridge. Better.
• Fitted stairgates using permanent fixings
• Attended to all upstairs doors, as all doors are warped/badly installed/hinge bound/non-closing or opening. All fine now.
• Removed pointless HE system in the bedroom
• Removed pink gauze bedroom curtains (peepshow anyone?)
• Removed broken bedroom dimmer and fitted a normal switch.
• Broken the central heating system.

It’s better, but it’s a long way to go until I’m happy with it.

]]> http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/06/18/were-in/feed/ 0 http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/06/02/last-day-or-so/ http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/06/02/last-day-or-so/#comments Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:21:59 +0000 Karl http://sirbendy.co.uk/?p=342 Continue reading →]]> We get the keys to the house tomorrow….OH.MY.GOD.

As much as I’ll miss the cottage (and I will)…so help me, we’ve already started mapping out plans for the new place. New/more sockets, plumbing alterations, garden changes, you name it.

Then after we move (Saturday, all being well) and things start to settle down, I have plans to improve the energy efficiency of the house.

I’m intending to replace the kitchen halogen lights (4) with LED ones..if I can find a decent set.

ALL remaining lights will go CFL unless there’s a reason they can’t.  I can see a dimmer switch that may stand in my way, and we have a PIR floodlight that we’re probably unable to convert.

Once I’ve got my head round the central heating controls, I’m going to modify them to be intelligent and manage the heating in a far more flexible way. What it has now is..basic. I don’t like that.

There will be more. As a comedy aside, we’ve also purchased an older Roomba..a 400 model. Lets see if it can assist in keeping on top of cathair and crumbs, shall we? ;)

]]> http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/06/02/last-day-or-so/feed/ 1 http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/05/25/we-live-in-interesting-times/ http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/05/25/we-live-in-interesting-times/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 14:21:45 +0000 Karl http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/05/25/we-live-in-interesting-times/ Continue reading →]]> Home first. We’ve lived in some places during our time living “autonomously”. First flat was a 3 room flat in an old tileworks, compact but easy to live with, but cold.
Then we moved to Clarendon, a 3 bed semi in a posh area of Broseley. Nice, very nice. I still regret moving from there, but heyho. Then we moved to a top floor flat in a converted house.
BIG mistake. We thought it’d save money, and it did..but the damp, the poor condition of the conversion, the flat itself, the neighbours and the landlord led to health issues and much stress, and us leaving and breaking contract before Izz was born in order to not bring her into that place.
From there, we moved to our current cottage. Lovely old place, exposed beams, huge thick walls, lots of character, big rooms. Bugger to heat, no garden, but lovely.

My cynical side always said we’d never be able to afford a mortgage, so renting was good. However, Jem persuaded me to chat to an IFA..and we did. We found that we COULD get a mortgage.

And now, here we are..the last 2 weeks or so of living at the cottage, before we hopefully get the keys to our first “owned” house! It’s a c1950s “Wimpy No-Fines” concrete job.
Ex council, ex rental, rewired less than 20 years ago, kitchen and bathroom refitted fairly recently, fully insulated, double glazing, driveway, gardens, whirlpool bath…

It’s a big, exciting step. I have a list of things to do both in preparing our stuff to go, and readying the new house to accept Izzy..heh.

We’ll have a nice little garden for her to play in though, which will be by far my favourite bit..:) She does love being outside.

We seem to have reached an understanding this last week or so – until now, if she woke after going down and I went to her, we had war. Wailing, crying, screaming tantrum war.

This last week or so, if I go up we have a bit of a cry, but as soon as I start singing nursery rhymes to her it all stops, she crashes out in my arms across me/next to me, and with a bit of cuddling/head/face stroking, she rapidly drops back off to sleep quite happily.

This is really a nice feeling..heh. I feel like I’ve been let into a small exclusive club! The difficulty is not falling asleep as well…

]]> http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/05/25/we-live-in-interesting-times/feed/ 0 http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/04/04/things-i-notice-as-a-parent/ http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/04/04/things-i-notice-as-a-parent/#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2011 11:48:34 +0000 Karl http://sirbendy.co.uk/?p=339 Continue reading →]]> I was chatting to someone at work the other day about parenthood, and it occurs to me that whilst there are a few staff here (well, I know of 1 at least) that use non-disposable nappies, it’s regarded as…odd. In fact, our parenting approach seems to be seen as “cult-like” (someone elses words, not mine).

We Co-Sleep – I wouldn’t change it, I love it to bits. Other people range from “OMG, SO dangerous”, to “you’ll never get her into her own now”, to “rod for your own back”, to “when are you going to grow up and stop living like a hippy commune?”.

We use “real” nappies – Love it, wish we’d done it sooner. No chemicals, no nappy rash, no waste. Others range from “POO? EWWW DISGUSTING!” to “it’s not greener, think of the energy wasted washing them”

We don’t watch TV and use it as a digital dummy to keep Izzy quiet – Now THIS does throw people. Bear in mind both Jem and I are “technical” people. Everyone assumes that I am an Uber-geek, with a house full of digital gizmos and finger touch flushing loo with SMS option, etc etc. When I laugh and say “We don’t even have a TV license”, the look on their faces is similar to as if I said “We swing openly, and your parents were ace”. Yes, really.

I don’t feel Izzy is being “left out”…we have the radio on as a rule, and Izzy is continually playing with us, walking with us, helping us, talking to us and being talked to as well. Izzy’s life is pretty much continual interaction and contact in some form. Not for no reason are the nursery staff continually saying “Isabel has managed X, Y and Z today, and done REALLY well.” Instead of TV, she plays and we read. She loves reading, and her imagination play is quite funny to watch.

And so on. I quite like our parenting choices. It gives us the freedom to let Izzy explore herself pretty much without limits. Mess happens, we deal it. She learns by us doing that. I have no intention of dumbing things down..it’s far too much fun.

Last night she got over the fear of our Big Trak (Yes, we have a 2010 rerelease of it)..and she loves it. She can even make it go. She knows how to load up our washing machine, that you must shut the door until it clicks, then move the dials and press the button to start it. The only thing I don’t allow her to do is the powder. She knows how to start up my PC from “off at the mains” cold..I’ve sat and watched as she turns the mains on, then the PC. She has got the hang mostly of clicking things with the mouse.

Last night while we were waiting for the bath to run, I sat and chatted to her about the tower fan, which scares her. Handed her the remote, showed her how to make it go/stop etc. BIG GRIN. She played a bit, then dropped the remote and the battery pinged out. I then watched with considerable feelings of being chuffed as she turned the remote over, spent 3 minutes or so playing with the battery/remote, then slotted it back in. Of course, Nothing is ever that smooth – after she did that she went into the bathroom and…dropped it in the bath. Bless..:) No harm done.

See – that’s just it..I’ve changed. I don’t worry about Izzy playing with things..she can have my mobile, remotes, bigtraks, even my netbook – if it gets dropped or whatever, it’s not the end of the world. What’s the point in giving them toy versions of things, when the real ones are much more fun? I can fix most things. I’d like her to grow up not being afraid of trying things in case they go wrong/get damaged etc.

2 years ago, I’d have been a wreck. :)

]]> http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/04/04/things-i-notice-as-a-parent/feed/ 2 http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/03/03/march-2011/ http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/03/03/march-2011/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:30:51 +0000 Karl http://sirbendy.co.uk/2011/03/03/march-2011/ Continue reading →]]> Hmm. OK. Still here. Website..still works. Smells a bit unlived in. Best get the windows open then and get things underway a bit!

Where are we at? Lets see.

Isabel is now 15/16 months old (where did it go?!). We’re walking, running, chatting, and merrily amusing ourself now. She’s becoming a “proper” little person in her own right. She has definite opinions, likes, dislikes and preferences.

She’s capable of understanding a lot of things we tell or ask of her now, and often helps out round the house (even loads the washing machine and pushes the “go” button.). It was great fun before, but now it’s moving up a gear – we have to use logic, reasoning, sneakiness, bribery and play to achieve our aims.

She’s a definite cat lover (not to mention she adores the guinea pig)..I think her “most want to cuddle” cat is Fudgie, but he’s still too timid (although he’s getting better).

She’s now been at Nursery for 3 months, and has moved from Baby Room 1 to Baby Room 2 this week. Bigger, more advanced tiddlies, more advanced toys. Seems to be loving it so far. Last night I was able to walk into the room and she was so engrossed she didn’t see me. Playing with the mock-up washing machine. I explained we did that at home..”oh, does she have a toy one?”..”erm..no, she can pretty much work our Indesit actually…don’t see the point in toy ones when there’s a real one!”…”oh! Right..”. Heh.

She can semi dress herself, she’ll leg it off down the corridors saying “car…”..she knows where she’s going, how the day goes now, and how to get herself understood. About the only issue we’ve got at the moment is constipation and witholding..she’s on Lactulose, but it’s not doing much.

What else is going on? Not much. Still at the cottage, managed 2-3 bloody cold snaps with ice on the inside of windows, had some whopping huge heating bills due to it as well. Still got the red Astra, but I’m getting annoyed with the fact it’s only managing 260 miles to a tank. Blue Astra hasn’t changed at all – still on ramps, still not running. No time to do much with them yet!

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