Podcasting India

I am in India this week - I am going to be too busy with work to make posts to my blog so I have setup a podcast so I can quickly record my impressions of this interesting country. It is really just an audio postcard to friends and family back home. To avoid cluttering up this blog (any more), I have a travel blog that automatically updates with new podcasts as soon as I post them up - here is the link: http://podcast.kitt.net

Ripley dancing to the wannadies - you and me song

I just love the look on Jayjay's face as he starts laughing

Writing stuff down

Why have I started blogging again. As popular as the practice is, I like to think I am self aware enough to question my motives. Could it be for the ad revenue? No, that is in my wife's name and makes up part of the kids monthly trust fund payments. Could it be for fame? Not at all, I no more an exhibitionist than the next man. For your information, the next man is currently crushed against me on this London bound train. I think the reason I do what I do is simply to document.

Everything that is happening to me since me children arrived has changed my life, changed my work, changed my home, changed even the way I think. It has matured me, sadly :). I feel the urge to lock each moment away somewhere. So I lock it here.

How quickly you forget. Ripley is a boy now. As strange as it may seem to a non-parent but I never saw that coming. I don't think I did enough to document the little things, probably at the expense of a vaguely readable blog.

Take Jayjay, he has never been a good sleeper. Imagine what it is like to have to get up once or twice a night. Now imagine that task over 2 years of nights. There you go. Jay is not that unusual, probably at the higher end of the scale for seperation anxiety and bad dreams,
but still. The sudden cry jolting you awake like a cup of cold water down your back. Walking through the twilight. Stubbing your toe on the bed frame. Carefully getting Jay back to sleep. Having to calm Ripley down as he is now awake. Falling back into bed and drifting back to slee <waaaaaaaah>. Everyone is awake. Was that 1 minute or 2 hours. You don't know. All that you do know is the next day will even more fun as it takes you 3 hours to come online.

Jay and Ripley are laughing and giggling at breakfast. "Silly Daddy", laughes Ripley as I put milk in the sugar bowl.

I laugh.

And there you go. Madly in love with them again.

Baby bites dog shock

Damn damn and double damn. My little robot dog got it's front legs
broken by Jayden. Quite accidental. He just stumbled and fell on it.
When I heard the sickening crack I new it wasn't good. Weird thing
was the way the dog reacted. It fell over then seemed to convulse, I
am not suggesting it felt pain, that would be silly but it did have a
preprogrammed reaction to being squashed and broken. I turned it off
before it could damage itself any more.

If I could pick just one thing I own that I wouldn't want broken the
most, Aibo would be it.

I stayed composed and didn't shout at Jay, but I have to admit I
sulked for a good day and couldn't sleep worrying about if I could
ever get it fixed again.

My robot dog is a sony aibo ers-7 in white. They are very rare with
only a few thousand ever made, they are now discontinued. He is
completely artificially intelligent, sees, hears, touches,
photographs, emails people, even dances and plays mp3s from a wifi
jukebox. He is also a useful tool, I use him as a remote control unit
to see, speak, hear and walk around my house when I am not there. I
can also email him instructions to send me a photograph of the room he
is in or locate people and photograph them. Not really a toy, more
like a walking wifi laptop.

Luckily my home insurance covers the accident. Now all I have to do
is find a way of getting it repaired. I am in touch with the Sony
Aibo clinic and await more info as to whether he can be repaired. I
am a bit sad, not least because it has now increased in value to
around £1500. A bloody expensive accident.

I am considering buying Ripley a Pleo for his birthday, google it,
they are amazing. I hope that this robot dinosaur won't suffer the
same unfortunate accident!

Oh well. Just stuff. Not people. <Sniff>

I am on training in London this week. Currently heading home only to
be held up due to something or somebody on the line in wimbledon. A
more depressing end to the day for someone elses family I fear.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Tap tap, is this thing on?

Damn, its been a while. But I'm back baby, yeah!

Seeing as this site was physically removed from the interweb (phrase I
coined in 1996), I can't really expect any readers. But let's pretend
that I have some.

Hello again, you are probably wondering why I haven't blogged in such
a long time, why I have deleted most of the photos and videos of my
children and so on. It is complex but here goes.

My brother is autistic, we are not very close, but my Mother showed
him my blog and a funny photo of my sons covered in spagetti or some
such mess. He became obsessed with this image which for some reason
he found very disturbing. His condition means he hates mess and
disorder, perhaps it is for this reason that in his wisdom he called
the police talking about a "worrying photo", the police looked into it
and two things happened 1) He almost got himself arrested for wasting
police time, 2) I disowned my brother. Although I never really got to
the bottom of it, it has transpired that he doesn't like my
"materialistic lifestyle" and as a result seems to have developed some
fantasy vendetta against my family. This is a shock to me having only
exchanged Christmas and Birthday cards for the past 15 years and
hardly even met face to face. Long story short - I removed my blog for
security reasons. If it disappears again it will probably be due to
another of his disjointed reactions.

Why the change of heart, well, he is still a risk to me. But I won't
stop sharing my thoughts, proud moments, videos & photos (messy or
otherwise) on here because of him. He is not a part of my life so I
am damned if I will let him impact me in any way. I enjoy writing
this blog, don't know why, but I do.

So. Rip is 3 3/4 and Jay is 1 3/4. We are heading back from a trip
to visit my family in south west england. Jay is starting to make
meaningful sentences and Ripley is a cheeky monkey obsessed with
Dinosaurs and cbeebies (we limit the tv though).

More will come very soon.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Ripley explaining the plot of Star Wars

Colourful Musical Tastes

Ripley keeps telling me that certain songs are different colours, for example, earlier he said ? I don?t like ?blue songs, play a yellow one?. Then saying, in a sincere and matter-of-fact voice ? ?no daddy, this one is red?, and so on.

Unless he is kidding me around, entirely possible, this seems to point to the possiblity that he has sound to color synesthesia. Which personally I would LOVE to experience. Apparently 1 in 23 have it.

Read more on the whole Synesthesia thing here.

Tags: synesthesia

Ripley and his drawing development

I found this excellent site on childhood artistic development milestones.

Ripley is only just gone 3, so he should now be moving from the scribbling stage into the early points of -

8< - - - 8< - - - 8< - - - 8< - - -

The preschematic stage

First conscious creation of form occurs around age three and provides a tangible record of the child's thinking process. The first representational attempt is a person, usually with circle for head and two vertical lines for legs. Later other forms develop, clearly recognizable and often quite complex. Children continually search for new concepts so symbols constantly change.

8< - - - 8< - - - 8< - - - 8< - - -

So with this in mind, I think this drawing is very advanced for a three year old.

It is ME! He has clearly defined a head, eyes, mouth, body, arms and legs! I felt very honoured :)



He is now drawing T-rexs, which have long tails and zigzag mouths representing "scary teeth". He usually carefully cuts around the picture and gets upset if any appendages get sliced off. He certainly has an artistic streak. Jayden really enjoys art also, he is scribbling away like crazy! Watch this space for more!