Parenthood for Dummies

5 Minute Chocolate Penny Cake

2009-03-05T18:16:00.000Z

My wife just made this for me after a hard day at the office. It tasted great and took 5 minutes to make including the 3 minutes in the microwave! No measuring, no weird ingredients you don't have.Try it and add a comment to this post to let me know your thoughts, adaptions, etc :)5 Minute Chocolate Penny Cake Ingredients: 4 tablespoons flour4 tablespoons sugar2 tablespoons cocoa1 egg3

Surrey School Primary School Selection Process

2009-03-02T14:00:00.007Z

I have just gone through the horrific process of applying for a school place for my first child. While I am happy with the outcome. I realise from talking to many of my parent friends that the application procedure is completely flawed. In fact, I would go further and say that the advice given to parents is utterly misleading. The result being a lot of unhappy parents.It works like this. You

Credit Crunch

2009-02-10T08:54:00.002Z

It has been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. Since I last wrote it seems the entire planet's financial system have gone into meltdown and the optimism and growth of the early 00's has turned into a dark, cold, depressing, homeless person vomiting on a puppy reality that we have today. People are loosing their jobs left, right and centre. Friends are getting laid off in other

2.4 Children

2009-01-23T12:19:00.003Z

Never considered myself "average". �I am a unique and interesting, I am one of a kind, an individual - just like every other bugger on the planet. � Well, Penny is 40% through her pregnancy. �So I officially have the stereotypical UK average 2.4 children.Oh yeah, Penny is pregnant with number 3. �Had I not mentioned that :)I am now looking at distinctly average family cars.All I can say is that

JJ conducting an Orchestra in Wii Music

2008-11-15T23:47:00.000Z

Video: JJ not waking up after his nap

2008-10-18T17:41:00.001+01:00

SUCH a sweet kid :)

Podcasting India

2008-09-08T23:34:00.003+01:00

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

Ripley dancing to the wannadies - you and me song

2008-08-19T13:05:00.001+01:00

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

Writing stuff down

2008-08-13T08:49:00.002+01:00

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

Baby bites dog shock

2008-08-11T18:04:00.001+01:00

Damn damn and double damn. My little robot dog got it's front legsbroken by Jayden. Quite accidental. He just stumbled and fell on it. When I heard the sickening crack I new it wasn't good. Weird thingwas the way the dog reacted. It fell over then seemed to convulse, Iam not suggesting it felt pain, that would be silly but it did have apreprogrammed reaction to being squashed and broken. I

Tap tap, is this thing on?

2008-08-08T22:34:00.001+01:00

Damn, its been a while. But I'm back baby, yeah!Seeing as this site was physically removed from the interweb (phrase Icoined in 1996), I can't really expect any readers. But let's pretendthat I have some.Hello again, you are probably wondering why I haven't blogged in sucha long time, why I have deleted most of the photos and videos of mychildren and so on. It is complex but here goes.My

Ripley explaining the plot of Star Wars

2008-03-04T18:55:00.001Z

Colourful Musical Tastes

2008-03-03T20:59:00.000Z

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

Ripley and his drawing development

2008-01-23T12:40:00.000Z

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

New Name for Prunes

2008-01-17T12:40:00.000Z

OK - I admit this is an in joke that only a few people would actually understand. Tags: prune grandad

Goodbye Lawrence Jupp

2007-12-12T11:26:00.000Z

I heard some tragically sad news today. A friend from my last place of work was killed on his motorcycle.Lawrence Jupp was a truly nice bloke in every sense. I know this is a cliche but he was one of those rare individuals who didn?t have a bad word for anyone, for that alone he was well liked and respected by all.He was trustworthy & friendly, with an adventurous and active streak that always

The Runaway Bubble

2007-12-06T19:59:00.000Z

Sentimental but cute editing experiment. It tells the true story of my son and his attachment to a bubble, naturally it ends badly, the relationship was doomed from the start.Tags: bubble

Jayden's First Steps!

2007-12-04T19:04:00.000Z

He has been climbing up things and doing some controlled falling between objects, but not what you would call walking. I said to Penny today - I guess he is different to Ripley (he was walking at 11 months), Jay is so well developed in other ways. As we were talking about his walking, I picked him up, put him on his feet and let him go. I do this exercise quite often but this time he just

Jayden's first few steps

2007-10-27T00:38:00.000+01:00

Jayden took his first couple of steps today - we can't really say he is walking but it was an amazing milestone that made me feel so elated! He is such a happy baby, but recently he has been very sad. He had a terrible vomitting fever, which the whole family had over the period of a couple of weeks - the WORST couple of weeks of my life I might add. Then we all caught a cold, then the flu,

Jayden

2007-09-04T10:39:00.000+01:00

just recently I have started to feel really bad about the fact that I haven't been blogging anything about Jayden. It occurred to me that in the future he might read this blog and think, hold on, why didn't that write anything about me, why is this blog all about Ripley. Well Jayden, I guess you are right, this blog has mainly been about Ripley. The reason why is that I used it as a method of

The Three Amigos Sing My Little Buttercup

2007-05-10T08:26:00.001+01:00

This is the song I sing to Ripley and Jayden every night before they go to sleep - :D

Watch the Skies

2007-05-02T16:08:00.000+01:00

So, it has been a while since I blogged last. I have realised that I simply do not have the time to blog nowadays. I feel a little guilty about it, I used to blog all the time when Ripley was a young baby and now Jayden has come a long, I don't do any blogging at all. I hope when Jay gets a little older he doesn't take offence that I never used to write about him. I can assure you little man,

Video_: Ripley at 2 yrs 3 mths calls Grandad - take 2

2007-02-12T21:40:00.003Z

Video_: Ripley at 2 yrs 3 mths calls Grandad - take 1

2007-02-12T21:40:00.001Z

Video_: Jayden at 3 Months - Mummy making him laugh

2007-02-12T21:39:00.005Z