James Titcumb

Jasper made some breakfast this morning and it looked good. So me and Freyja went to the shop and got our own breakfast, which I have to say is much better. Purely because our sausages were made out of real meat. And ours has bacon. Real bacon. Mmmm bacon. Bacon is good. And toast. The only thing that’s not as good is the picture, but I’m no photographer, so I used my camera phone.

I also thought I’d throw in a picture of Kali and Freyja for luck. Freyja is shown here modelling her new buoyancy aid that her Granny (my Mum) bought for her to go swimming in France.

Kali couldn’t resist getting in the picture either, although I’m not sure she realises what it’s all about. She’s definitely a puppy, and more than a handful. Taking her on walks is a real struggle, but I’m sure we’ll get there. She’s only 15 weeks old bless her, but my she’s growing! In fact, this is her like 5 minutes ago:

If you’re wondering what the white powder is all over her head, it’s not dandruff, it’s sand from Freyja’s sand table we were playing with earlier and Kali decided to roll in some sand that had fallen off. Silly puppy!

So Tuesday at work they attempted to build a Ferrero Rocher pyramid. We ended up building about 3 different pyramids, none of which were as impressive as the advert, as you can see. For the evening me and Hannah made a big old list of stuff to do:

• Do some my clients site
• Play Fallout: New Vegas
• Cook dinner
• Food shop
• Order Freyja’s main Christmas present
• Sell old mobile
• Do my accounts

Out of that list all I managed to do was do some of my clients site, cook dinner, and Hannah ordered Freyja’s present. It was a productive evening because of doing the website, but everything else was shelved so I left it to the next day…

… which was Wednesday. It was a busy day at work as normal, and we got lazy and ordered pizza for dinner. I did however get to play about 10 minutes of Fallout: New Vegas before we flaked out and went to bed.

Thursday was a day of many deliveries for Hannah. Our new tumble drier came, which has been fantastic in this November Rain (Hah! Music reference…). Freyja’s main Christmas present from me and Hannah arrived as well, a shiny new toy kitchen thing which cost a pretty penny, but hopefully she’ll enjoy. We also had Tesco come, which reminds me, I need to get on with doing the shopping for next week!

Friday wasn’t too eventful (well, it was at work, had a big old meeting to discuss Phones…) – Hannah was working in the evening, so I got some client work done. When getting Freyja ready for bed, the fireworks started of course though. They’re noisy and unavoidable and thankfully didn’t keep her up too much. The great thing is seeing her face when they went off and lit up the sky – I wrapped her up nice and warm and we stood out the front of the house watching quite an impressive home firework display by one of our neighbours. She loved it and pointed and squeaked every time one went off.

Saturday I went shopping for some Christmas bits – big mistake. It was horrendously busy and full of annoying people. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate crowds and the general public, so it was a bit of a nightmare for me. Standing in a shop waiting for them to look up the item because Hannah’s Christmas present happened to not have a price tag and me sweating buckets and Freyja writhing and crying in her pram is really not my idea of a good time. I tried going to town to look at some book shops, but it was crowded, annoying and Freyja started whining so I just had to leave. We had home made Tomato Soup for dinner (I thought it fitting, being fireworks “weekend”), which was scrummy and Freyja loved it too. She loves home cooked food, and I swear she has a “home-cooked-food” detector that makes her not want to eat anything else… she knows what’s good for her at least!

Sunday was awesome – me and 3 others from the Deco got suited, booted, locked and loaded for Russell’s private day at UCAP Virus. Everyone played fairly, I don’t think I even heard anyone utter the words “Take yer f**king hit!!” which was really good. People were being tactical, not being idiots, and I think everyone had a lot of fun. Monday again was uneventful – Hannah worked, and I was shattered so I flaked out and watched crap telly, just like Sunday.

Yesterday me and Freyja went for a trip to our boss Luke’s house for his birthday celebrations and had a canapé evening. Most of the couple of hours I was there was me chasing her around making sure she didn’t smash Luke’s glass cabinets filled with expensive-looking glasses with the pool balls she was throwing around violently… so it was a bit of a relief when she was settled down to bed. On the downside, it looks like I need my car looked at – the orange engine light has come on so I’m going to have to take it in to have the computer checked to see what’s wrong with it. Not that we can actually afford to get it fixed… Gah!

Anyway, I’d better get on with doing the shopping (I love shopping online!), and get Hannah some dinner! Ta ta for now folks, enjoy your week.

We’ve had the suggestion from many different people that we should enter Freyja into competitions and model her for companies and so on. Hannah and I have discussed this a few times when the suggestion comes up, and we just can’t justify it.

The lure of prizes and money is the, and when our budget is so tight and doesn’t give us any spending money for ourselves, it can be quite tempting.

However, being a model isn’t easy on the baby. Sure they try and make it as easy as possible, give them breaks, pamper them, let them play and so on, but there is so much travelling to locations or studios and it can be tiring for the little ones. I may have a total misconception of the whole thing, as – to be honest – I’ve not seen how much a baby model does.

However, The risk of stress and losing her sparkle that makes her such a happy little baby is too much for me and Hannah. Freyja means more to me than anything, and I want her to have the best upbringing I can. I want her to make great choices with what she wants to do with her life, and I want her to become proud of what she has achieved. She can’t do that if she’s already born into a life of modelling.

Sure I’d love to see my daughters face on billboards or baby products, and I’d love to have a bit of extra cash, but she is worth so much more than any of that. She’s my little girl, and you can call it being selfish (and it probably is), and I don’t want to share her with anyone but those who love her.

Mine… my precious…

It’s been a little while since I talked about our little one, and my she has grown up a lot. She’s 14 months old now and she’s walking around like no tomorrow. She wants to walk so much that if you let her loose outside she will just walk and walk, and if you try picking her up she will protest. She’s got such a character now, and I’m happy because she always seems to be so happy. We must be doing something right, right? We went to Marwell Zoo last weekend and she loved it. Maybe she’s still a little young though as she seemed more interested in the other children than the animals, but she had a lovely day out. You should be able to see a picture of me and her looking at the fishes in the African bit at the top of this post.

In other news, we are settling well into our new home and we couldn’t have done it without everyone’s help, especially our lovely parents who have given us guidance and support through everything, so a massive thanks to them! Work is busy as always; it’s keeping me right on my toes and some of the projects we’re working on are really exciting.

Hannah has been doing really good too since we moved back to Portsmouth, she’s making regular visits to new mums she meets on a site called Netmums, and has been visiting lots of play areas in the vicinity such as Krazy Kaves, which Freyja seems to love! I’m planning on booking a day off work one day so we can all go together as it looks like I’d have a lot of fun there too…

All in all, everything has been going really well for us and it’s thrilling watching Freyja growing up and developing such a wonderful personality. Time really is flying and we’re having such good memories – many of which I’ve got on video camera, but I just haven’t had time to sort through all the footage and actually get some videos on YouTube. It’ll happen one day I’m sure…

I haven’t done a “personal” update for some time now, so I thought I’d briefly brush over our recent lives. The photo you can see on the left is the current state of our new house that is being built in the new Dickens Quarter development in Portsmouth. As you can see it is coming along well, and the estimated completion date is currently the end of April. It’s exciting to see it come so far and we simply can’t wait to make it our own lovely home.

On the Freyja side of things, she’s drawing close to 10 months old now and is coming on leaps and bounds. She can make “red indian” noises (patting her mouth and making noise), walk around standing up and holding the furniture, put balls into the “learn and sort” helicopter toy I got her for Yule, crawl around on hands and knees with quite a pace, wave, throw tantrums and all sorts of other bits and pieces.

She’s truly a joy and makes me a very proud parent. She also eats us out of house and home, typically getting through a bowl of porridge and yoghurt for breakfast, a slice of bread with topping and a yoghurt and biscuit for lunch, a snack mid-afternoon, and a bowl of healthy home-made food followed usually by 2 or 3 yoghurts. As you can probably tell, she likes yoghurts, but there’s nothing wrong with that as they’re a good source of calcium as Hannah’s milk starts to deplete.

In other news, it’s Hannah’s birthday soon, so if you haven’t been invited (on Facebook of course…) and you think you should be, get in touch.