Isaac Hoyland

Excellent.

Firstly I must credit my boss with this information and say I wasn’t going to shout about it till Friday when I will hopefully be very happy but I can’t resist and Susie has mentioned it in a comment anyway.  It’s a long time till December but Gloria and I are pleased to announce we will be going to Sheffield Arena on December 14th for our first night out in months.  Result!  Anyone want to come and see Crows in Sheffield?  More importantly, anyone want to babysit?  They’re being supported by Ben Folds and it’s not cheap…

Secondly, I didn’t enjoy school today.  It was my penultimate day.  We had a leaver’s assembly and things.  I still feel it’s right to be leaving but today was hard. 

Finally, slightly strange to follow on from point two with this but I must say that today I am, for probably the first time in ages, feeling quite optimistic about what might be to come.  More to follow.  Was that all cryptic enough?

Right then. I don’t know how many of you watch The Gadget Show but it’s kinda like 5’s equivalent of Top Gear only about gadgets not cars. I suppose 5’s equivalent of Top Gear is 5th Gear but I don’t want that and I don’t watch any other gadget shows so I can’t compare The Gadget Show to anything else. It certainly ain’t 5’s version of Midsommer Murders anyway.

Hmmm. I digress. At the end of the gadget show they always have a competition that gives away pretty much every gadget they have talked about on the show and then a few others. So each week you could win pretty much every console, several TVs, radio controlled things and, well, loads of gadgets. I’ve entered a few times ‘cos I’m a sucker and I’d like a new TV. But this week I HAD to enter. The prize was different. Instead of giving away lots of prizes to one person they were giving away 1 prize to lots of people. They had 85 Canon 450Ds Digital SLRs to give away. I don’t know how good they are but they cost £600… and I figured they’re giving away 85 of the things and the programme is on 5… how many viewers can the show have?!

I think I might win this week.

Evening all.  A couple of things.  Firstly - hope you are all well.  Sorry it’s been a while.  We’ve been kind of busy lately and I’m finding it hard to type one handed while changing a nappy with the other hand and testing the temperature of the bath water with the other.

Secondly - Isaac remains an awesome blessing.  The past few weeks have been pretty tough but the best tough we have ever faced.  Even better than Hulk Hogan and he’s tough…  A little bit of advice though.  The other night we had had little sleep.  It got to around 4am (I think - to be honest I’m making the times up as I can’t really remember) and I was asleep.  I was going to put ‘we were all asleep’ so I didn’t look too bad but I think it might have just been me as Isaac awoke from his sleep in his Moses basket and started crying. 

Before I go any further I will just warn you - this post is about to get x-rated as I will explain our sleeping arrangements.  I sleep on one side of the bed, Isaac sleeps by the window and Sian sleeps between us… so Isaac is on the other side of the room from me.  That’s kinda important.

Anyway - Isaac started crying and I did what every loving father would do and put on my best ’soothing a baby voice’ and said “sssh sssh sssh” (in what I thought was a cute way - not a telling off way).  I didn’t move though.  I just went “sssh sssh sssh”.  At this point Sian, who may not have been asleep and may have been a bit more fed up with the crying than my sssh sssh sssh would indicate I was said something along the lines of “There’s no use shushing him when he’s over there” (indicating his cot) and I said “He’s not over there, he’s here with me”.

It was at that point that Sian realised I was probably mostly still asleep and that shouting at me wasn’t a very good idea…

I’d also like to mention, for the geeks among us, how delighted I am that Wordpress 2.6 is now out.  I’ve updated about 16 websites with the thing now but it’s great because the automatic update of plugins works so much easier than the old version.  I can now just click a button and it will update my out of date plugin.  Very useful.  Now I just need to convince Wordpress to include an “Update all” button.

Right. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned enough how fantastic I find Isaac. I won’t go on about him all the time but I have to just say a few things. I can’t help but smile when I look at him… he’s brilliant! The great thing about having to go to work in the morning is knowing that at the end of the day I get to go home and see Isaac and Gloria. It’s grand!

Even when he cries!

One of the best things so far is taking Isaac in the bath. He seems to love water. Which is great. I can’t wait till he can laugh and splash too but at the moment he is just kicking about and looking very much as if he is enjoying it… thought I’d share this picture with well placed bubbles!

Evening all.

Not much going on on the blog at the moment. I had one thought yesterday though. I was chatting to my Not A Geek Really Boss yesterday who has recently set up a blog (hi boss!). She reads this from time to time and she mentioned that she liked it when I told stories from school and changed the names of the children throughout the story… it got me thinking… I always do that slightly sarcastically but it’s for the best really with interweb safety being quite a serious issue… so should I be protecting Isaac on the interweb? You know, creating a false identity so that no interweb fraudsters can steal his real one and use it for black market dealings and the like. I’m kind of picturing that advert off the tele where the two guys go to Uncle Tony’s place and end up getting arrested by a SWAT team… I’m seeing lots of men dressed in full body armour storming our house (located at 29 Acacia Avenue) and arresting a two week old child. So I’ve decided to change the name of my son. And for fraud protection purposes I’m not going to tell anyone his new name. Not even Gloria.

How’d you like them apples you interweb fraudsters?

Anyway - how have you all been? Oh yeah, also, I’ve lost my list of everyone’s bank details so if you could kindly post them in a comment below that would be great.

Here’s one that’s really close to my heart at the moment - you know… what with the arrival of Isaac and all… er… or not… I just like the recycle logo.  It came from the Stock Exchange again… Not sure why I used it as a wallpaper…

If anyone else has wallpapers feel free to submit them.