Well that worked until today! In her defense she was woken up accidentally by her Mummy but still, it took her a long time to settle! Twice she was at the top of the stairs, waving her nappy at us telling us it smelled (she had done a wee).  It’s the kind of situation where you can’t help but laugh at her.

Anyway one one of the many trips made to try and settle her, I thought I’d take a video and so here it is:

(Obviously she’s saying “Cheese” because she thinks I’m waiting to take a still picture.)

I assumed wrongly.

On learning that there are crocodiles down the plug hole, Hannah proceeded to shout down it “I’m going to eat you, crocodiles!” and chomp away at them.

Then after a while she started shouting at the plug hole “Go away snakes, you can’t get my sweets!” and then blew raspberries at them.

I love my crocodile eating, snake scaring little lady.

Hannah has had a cold for a couple of weeks now and we are really looking forward to it being over. The cough is the main problem as it’s waking her up during the night, and when she wakes up after any amount of sleep she has a build up of phlegm on her chest and it distresses her. Not fun. In addition to this she does get overly emotional when she’s ill and is currently crying at the drop of a hat. The second she doesn’t get her own way or someone does something she doesn’t want them to do, the tears go on.

It all gets a bit tiring especially as she’s not the only one that is ill in the house. However it doesn’t matter what she’s done, when we see her asleep like the picture below shows, she is the most perfect little angel in the world. I still make sure I see her sound asleep before I go to bed. Less so these days to check that she’s still breathing (though I still do!) but to see her so contently asleep is such a lovely thing.

So here she is fast asleep on the sofa looking like butter wouldn’t melt.

This is the kind of thing I’d love to get on camera but she’s already turning camera shy. She had stopped doing it in the 10 seconds it took me to get my camera out. Further attempts to get her to do the same thing were met with “No camera!”.

To make up for this I did manage to capture her while we did the post-bath routine. It consists usually of her being on the changing matt and we both ‘hide’ under the towel. Then usually a combination of tickling and pretending to eat her. Nice bit of fun before bed and expends the last bit of energy she has.

Whilst she’s uncontrollably giggling she can’t refuse the camera though! Not captured in the video is the fact that she says “Stop it!” (pronounced ‘Dop it!’) but the second I stop she says in the dirtiest laugh of a voice “Come on!”, and I have to tickle her all over again. It’s such a hard life being a dad

So here is my little monkey being tickled on camera for the sake of my blog.

London

Well the first thing is the utter failure of a trip to London. We were going primarily for Hannah’s first visit to London Zoo, a place Me & Kat have been before and loved. Hannah loves animals so we were super excited about it all, which is why the whole experience was all the more bitter. The trip can be summed up thus:

• Poor service
• BUSY! RUSH! LONDON! COMMUTERS!
• Rude tourists.
• Hannah recovering from virus still.
• Grumpy Hannah.
• No cot for Hannah at the hotel.
• Most of the good animals asleep/hiding/not in at the zoo.

So basically it was a lot of money and a lot of effort all for nothing really. The one redeeming thing about the trip to the zoo was that for a few minutes when Hannah saw the tigers she lit up and was happy. Ho hum. Next time we’ll do it when she’s a bit older and we’ll do it as a day trip.

Good Friends

The best thing about the holiday so far is the thing that’s cost us the least. Kat’s parents went on holiday and as they live in a mansion (not really, but you could fit our house into their’s several times over) we decided to stay there whilst Kat’s friends Tom and Jemma visited us with their brand new baby Ellie who is 6 months old. They are the nicest people you could ever meet. Scarily so. Perhaps they secretly eat kittens or something to balance out the niceness? Who knows. Anyway Ellie and Hannah got along great and I found it really nice to be with another ‘new’ family like ours. It’s a real shame they live so far away. I have very few friends and out of those only two are guys and neither have children, it would be nice to have another dad to talk to on occasion.

Exercise! Focus!

Every new year, every holiday I tell myself I will lose weight, start exercising etc. It never happens. I managed 2 long morning walks and that was about it. It comes down to my main underlying problem, the aspect of myself that I really hate the most. I can’t focus on anything. I have a million things I think about doing and I flit between them all, never doing most and barely doing the rest. So I feel in a permanent state of cruise control, doing the same things. I like my life a lot, in fact it’s pretty much perfect. I have a stable job with prospects, a lovely wife, perfect child and overall a cushy lifestyle. But there’s nothing I ever get my teeth into. The closest I get is when my assignment deadlines are only days away and I have no other choice. In those moments I excel, it has always been the way I do work and 99% of the time it works out fine.

So what to do? My brain tends to flick between these options:

• Turn the garden into a paradise
• Learn to play the piano
• Get super fit
• Make a game
• Learn things that will make me a good teacher

When I pick an option my mind tends to go into overdrive with ideas and enthusiasm. The problem being it all vanishes after a night’s sleep. So either I need to stop sleeping, or perhaps set a more low-key plan for one of those goals. Merely writing this is just another example of me just talking the talk, pretending I’ll do one of them when my usual laziness will override any such instincts.

Or will it?

(Answer: Yes)

On a positive note…

I do at least have one thing that I always try my best at and that is being a father to Hannah. Every day I make sure I have fun with her, protect her, teach her and show my love for her. I think this is where my laziness is an asset. It’s just so easy to love her. It happens without trying, it’s effortless. With that the playing, protecting and teaching happens on it’s own. In fact you can’t have one without the others.

All a bit soppy I know but she’s magic personified and I felt like writing about it. On that note I have the rest of my summer holidays to be getting on with, so shoo! Off you go!

It didn’t take long to realise that she obviously understands much more that we think. So I got her a ‘My first words’ book. It must have over 100 things in it, pictures of animals, people and objects with the words underneath. She’s had it about a week and she can identify probably 20 of those consistently. That’s with probably less than 10 mins per day reading through it. Although she has started forming some words, on the whole she’s not speaking but I do love that for most of the animals she recognises she can do the noises for them if I ask her (again, bright enough to know when I’m asking her to point and when I’m asking her to make the noise).

I’ve no idea where this puts her on average compared to other kids her age, but even if it’s not true I think she’s a little genius. Added to that she’s gorgeous, funny, active and affectionate, I really do count myself the luckiest Dad in the world.

Be warned, there’s a lot of waffle here! So much so I think I’ll have to insist you click to see more…

(EDIT: I’ve just realised how horrid the headings are in this theme. I can’t be bothered changing them now but hope to soon)

Games

WoW wise, I’ve slowed down since I hit lvl 80. It also helps I’ve finally got my Chef’s Hat, costing 100 Dalaran Awards. So I don’t have to do the daily cooking and fishing quests. Though if I have the time I do indulge on the chance I’ll get a rare item. I have been loving the random dungeon finder and runs are so quick with this that I can usually squeeze in a random normal, heroic, the Tournament dailies and the cooking/fishing quests in an hour-ish. The dungeon runs are pretty soulless as groups tend to be of the “GO!GO!GO!” variety. However my aim really is to gear up a little more (got some good healing gear, though need some decent leg and trinket items!) and then start looking for a family oriented guild. I’d love to start doing 10 man raids but most people organise this for 7pm ish which is bang in the middle of bathing and putting Hannah to bed. I’d want to start at about 9pm really as that gives me time to go to her if she hasn’t settled and hopefully anything after that Kat can deal with!

Still on the topic of games, I’m getting rather excited about Star Trek Online. In fact I’ve just pre-odered it after reading Tom Francis’s preview. I have no doubt certain aspects will be ropey (such as ground combat) but the idea of an MMO that lets you develop a party of characters is quite appealing, and of course ship combat.

Other than that I’ve picked up a few games in the sales:

• Osmos
• Braid
• Ben there, Dan that & Time Gentlemen Please (Double Pack)
• Red Faction 3
• Borderlands
• Braid

Some of those were very, very cheap in the Steam sale. I won’t go into detail about them all, but I’ve completed Ben there, Dan that (available free here), enjoyed quite a bit of Osmos, a few minutes on Braid and a few hours on Borderlands and Red Faction 3 each. The latter I was…a little dissapointed by. Red Faction 3 is great in concept, I think the problem is actually with me. I don’t like the GTA ‘living city’ style game, they’re a bit too free form? The demolition physics are fantastic, and the game is certainly great for a quick ‘blow everything up’ game but just didn’t grip me.

Borderlands on the other hand has the mechanics that appeal to me (an FPS Diablo, essentially) but the UI has not really been designed for the PC which just smacks of laziness. I shall try it multiplayer though where I think it’ll fare better.

Rob recently got Dawn of War 2, and we’ve played a bit of Last Stand and campaign co-op which seem quite fun.

Comics

I’ve just caught up with the recent Matt Fraction series of Iron Man and I have to say I’ve really enjoyed it! In addition to that I’ve continued with Dark Avengers, New Avengers, Astonishing X-Men and Captain America.

Dark Avengers I quite enjoy, I love Norman Osborne and am just waiting for him to finally snap. New Avengers is as usual a bit average but fun fluff.

Astonishing X-Men has just about recovered from the truly awful Warren Ellis initial run. I don’t know if he realised it was shit, or it’s the new artists or both, but it seems much better at the minute so I’ll stick with it. I’m hoping really that Joss Whedon returns to the series. Or actually if Kieron Gillen would. Gillen used to be my favourite games journalist a while back. I think all the awards made him a bit too pretentious for a while, but from the previews of his run on S.W.O.R.D (which is tightly linked with AXM), I think he could do the series well.

Captain America is getting back to being one of my favourite series. I have to say I’ve not enjoyed it much since Captain America died and Bucky took the mantle. I loved Bucky, but since he’s been Cap and they’ve OD’d on the WW2 stuff I’ve found it a bit of a bore, and dissapointed that during Dark Reign that a new Captain America hasn’t been the beacon of light for our heroes that he should have been. Though I do understand that Brian Michael Bendis has had the major heroes fail so that they can rise better than ever, which is pretty much what is happening. There’s only 1 issue left of the ‘Reborn’ series to go where Steve Rogers will return. Which I’m excited about because I love Steve. And the prospect of there being 2 Captain America’s is interesting, I wonder if Bucky will be renamed?

I’ve also started reading Ultimate Avengers, which has the brilliant Mark Millar returning to the Ultimates universe. So far I’ve really enjoyed it, quite a radical move to have the Red Skull as Cap’s son, and Cap going ape shit about it! I think this’ll be on my regulars list.

Last week I got the JMS (I can’t spell his full name…) trades of Thor. With Thor, Cap and Iron Man all returning to former glories soon for the up coming Marvel event ‘Siege’, I feel I need to complete the trilogy and get caught up. It also helps that there are Cap, Thor and Avengers movies in the works which has got me excited about these characters. In the next few weeks I think I’m actually going to bite the bullet and subscribe to these titles from a comics. Yes I know it’s about 3 times more expensive than waiting for the trades, but the 6 month plus wait for those is too long!

Other stuff

Well work is work. Nothing much to note. My degree is going ok, submitted my first assignment for the new course last week, I think I’ve done ok. My other course starts in a couple of weeks so yay, double the work!

Hannah wise she’s of course as lovely as ever. The super cute thing at the moment is that she really loves books, always bringing them to us to read to her. One of them has flaps that reveal pictures, and one of those is a tiger mask. So we say “Tiger, rarrrgh!” and she says “Rarrrgh!” back! It’s so funny. It’s impressive too that she can be looking through the book on her own and she will recognise the picture and say ‘”Rarrrgh!”. However she some times gets it wrong, and apparently a giraffe and an elephant also go “Rarrrgh!”…

Anyway I shall try and update more, which I always say but hey, perhaps I’ll keep to it this time?

A little bit of druid love then. I love this class. You can do pretty much all the main play types with one character (with dual/re-spec anyway). Want to be a ranged DPS/mage? Normal or Moonkin form. A warrior/tank? Bear form. Rouge/melee DPS? Cat form. Healer? Tree form. Added to that the greatness that is instant cast travel, flight and aquatic form and you have what is pretty much the most versatile class in the game. I spend most of my time in Cat Form doing PvE, and have dual talent specced as a restoration druid that I use mostly in instances.

So the second notable thing, and of course the best, is the fact that Hannah can now walk! Nursery phoned one day to say Hannah was projectile vomiting and needed picking up. I was off work with the same illness so was the one that went to pick her up. When I got there they asked if she was walking at home, to which I said no of course. She had taken 6 unaided steps at nursery that day! Then at home she did it again, all the while being ill. As opposed to me who was a useless lump on the sofa most of the day. She usually walks for at least a little bit every day now and she’s building up confidence. It was brilliant that first time we saw her do it, both myself and Kat got very misty eyed when she did it! It’s amazing how proud you feel at each milestone they meet.

So that was October then. We’re now just a month away from Hannah’s 1st birthday which is unbelievable. That year has gone REALLY fast and she has changed so much. It’s been a fantastic year because of her, and the first of many.

Fast forward to now, Hannah is 10 months old and I am each day astounded by how much I love her. I think she is perfect. There’s no baby smarter or better looking. She’s the best thing there ever was or will be in the universe.

There, just had to get that off my chest. You may start the vomiting…now!