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!

• 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.

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…

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…

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.

We had friends over on Saturday – it was nice to actually see some of my friends for once! We’ve learnt that having a baby can make socialising very difficult, and many of the things we used to do are not so easy any more, so it was refreshing that Tom & Soph came over to see us and a good night was had by all!

Yuletide is approaching already, and this year we’re off to Andorra with the family for a skiing trip. Freyja will be a little too young to remember it but I’m sure she’ll love the snow. Unfortunately I’ve learnt that my mum may not be able to ski due to her leg being sore and she’s had an injection and stuff from the doctors, so she needs to take it easy. Although having said that, she’d love to spend every day with her three gorgeous grandchildren!

In other news, I’ve been working hard on a new project of mine which some of you will have heard of. I’m not far from releasing it as public beta version, but more news when that happens. I’d love to commit to saying “Yeah I’ll blog every few days again”, but since Freyja was born my life has pretty much entirely evolved around her (of course!) which leaves me very little time – and the spare time I do have I spend watching films with Hannah! I will see if I can blog more frequently, as some of you have complained to me for not blogging so much and letting it fill up with tweets…

Anyway, this year I’m looking forward to seeing some great bands, including Carcass, Katatonia, Saxon, Apocalyptica, Blind Guardian, Enslaved, Amon Amarth, Anathema, Europe, Satyricon and Turisas. It also means I get to finally update The Metal Page!

Last weekend we spent outdoors with her at a couple of picnics (one of which was my nephew Finley’s birthday!) which was really nice and so she got to see some friends and family. We’re keeping in touch with my parents in France via webcam which is great, and she gave them a smile the other morning which was really nice to see. If you’ve been following my tweets, you’ll know that she’s already smiling and laughing. At the moment most laughs turn into hiccups, but there is the odd time (normally when I’m at work, damnit!) that she does a proper laugh. I managed to catch her doing it this morning which was so awesome to see.

It’s a busy and hectic life at the moment, and I rarely get a chance to do anything for myself, but she is totally worth it.

Unfortunately due to a large amount of blood loss (from Hannah, not the baby!), Hannah and Freyja have been kept in overnight, which means I am home alone tonight with my thoughts and experiences on this truly lifechanging thing.

I will certainly never forget the first time I saw Freyja’s hair appearing, or when the head was born, or the cutting of the umbilical cord. I’m not exactly squeemish so I got stuck right in with everything I could, but of course mainly supporting Hannah the best I could.

I also would like to send a rather large hat tip to our absolutely fantastic midwife, and the rest of the staff in the labour suite. She did an astounding job at calming Hannah, keeping myself and Hannah up to date with the happenings, and surprisingly – for an NHS hospital – attentiveness was excellent, and for most of the time we felt like we had her [the midwife] to ourselves! Unfortunately we didn’t get the planned water birth at Blakes in Gosport, but all that matters is that both Hannah and our gorgeous daughter are OK, and for that I am truly thankful.

Well, I have sheets to change so I must get on – I am so tired and can hardly function, and I have to be up early tomorrow to visit Hannah at the hospital. So, until next time…

I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.

Here is mine, and although I didn’t have to think very hard about who to post about, I still admire her more than anyone in the world.

Hannah is 39 weeks and 1 day pregnant today, and she’s still working hard at Netbasic. She’s not exactly a pro programmer, but she’s learning so quickly. From knowing nothing at all about HTML or CSS or Photoshop, she’s come forwards in leaps and bounds with the help of everyone here. It’s certainly not easy for her, she gets aches and pains all day, Braxton Hicks contractions, extremely painful kicks, and all sorts. She’s under the weather, tired and very drained, yet somehow she is carrying on, she’s still working hard and creating pages that are helping keep the company going!

I suppose this is just my way of saying how proud I am of her, and how awesome she is.

Pregnancy would be so much easier if we knew exactly when baby was coming… we still wait!

Just 6 more days and we’ll be full term, which basically means I will become Daddy James very soon. We are both going to her antenatal appointment (nice and early, 8:45am) tomorrow morning, and Sunday we’ll be checking out Blakes Birthing Centre in Gosport, hopefully where the birth will take place.

So… it is just a matter of time… more news as it comes!

We’ve had a really nice weekend; Friday evening was spent at Casson’s Restaurant in Tangmere near Chichester, and Saturday night was a yummy dinner with Tom & Sophia. Between Hannah and me, we managed to cook a pesto salmon en croûte and a very messy but sweet strawberry cheesecake; both courtesy of Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food book, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to begin cooking. I warn you, the recipes do have slightly more expensive ingredients, but it’s well worth the extra pennies!

So here’s to the final 8 weeks!

Hannah has this to look forward to in just a few months time…

Personally, I can’t wait!

The rather annoying thing is that it will be quite useful to get baby furniture, so despite being a big blue blob on Southampton’s horizon, it will actually be useful…

And in other news, I’m definately turning into a father… I have a Mothercare Mothercard now.

This is what I got, and technically it’s not for me, it’s for the baby, but it’s an awesome little baby-gro.

It really hits home that in a little over 3 months, I’m gonna be a daddy.. and I just don’t feel prepared yet… but then I’m not sure what I have to do to feel prepared either.

Maybe kitting out the nursery and getting more baby things in the house will help a bit, so we’ll just have to wait for Christmas to see what Santa brings us this year.

Basically, it’s a hammock for babies, and we decided to get one (with the help of Mum & Dad of course!) for our little one-on-the-way.

Despite the instructions being written in badly translated Chinese or Japanese or something, we managed to put it together alright. Just gotta tighten a bolt on top, and it’s done.

In fact, in 4 days, the baby becomes what doctors call “viable” meaning that if for some unexpected reason, she gives birth really early, then the baby is likely to survive.

Still, that’s a worst case scenario, and of course we hope everything goes to plan and as “normal” so to speak.

For those unable to really understand these ultrasound scan jobbies, the head is on the left facing the screen, and the larger right hand blob is the upper torso. The whiter line at the bottom, and the tiny little paw-print looking thing is it’s hand.

This photo is actually from the second scan over 2 days – we had a regular 20 week scan yesterday, and the sonographist spotted that the kidneys were slightly larger than normal. We doubt it will be anything major, but we were referred to a consultant we saw this morning to check the scan in more detail. The placenta is a bit low, so we’ll be having a 32 week scan, and possibly even a 36 week scan as well… we’ll see.

The other thing we got from the scan is our initial suspicion that it’s a boy may indeed be wrong – neither the sonographer yesterday or the consultant today could find any winkies, and today it was in a very good position for checking. The rather annoying thing about that is that we’ll have to think of a girls name (on which we have still not agreed, and probably never will, heh!). Freyja is a name we both seem to like at the moment… but we shall see!

The scan to the left is indeed our baby at 12 weeks and 2 days old, and at that point, he was just 6cm big. By this time I think he’s nearly twice that, and Hannah’s bump is getting bigger by the day (although still hardly noticable to the casual onlooker).

In addition to the random posts about Airsoft, Frosthold, and general computer-related bits, it’s pretty likely I’ll have a baby category, and this is the first post. Cheers!

We’re pretty sure it’s a boy, but we’ll find out at the 20 week scan with a bit more certainty. If it is a boy, we’ve decided on the name, and if it’s a girl, we haven’t. And we probably won’t. So it’ll be called “Baby Girl” heh.