Being in IT it happens, a friend of a friend, knows this man whose uncle needs a few computers fixing in his work, and before you know it you are walking around trying to fix some ancient network together with software for something you never knew needed it, that has been running for 10 years, held together by the fact, that the IP address of the server is prime.

well I’m not doing it anymore, you see just before Daisy was due, I did make a mistake and I got myself into one of these situations, and almost straight away regretted it. Had it been a week later I would have backed out too, but once I’ve touched the computers I feel a moral obligation to leave the whole system in a working state, so much procrastination and returning of hardware later.

I think we reached that point today. I’m going to give them a document, telling them how there network now works, and then I am walking away, I have much better ways to spend my time, and besides, I have a job, it pays bloomin well, and this kind of fiend of a friend lark gets in the way of not just that, but my family, and that’s not on.

At one point I thought I could go down the small business, computer consultantcy root, but my lack of drive, coupled with my desire to have weekends meant it never really happened, and now I am glad, because the reality is, these people are so hard to work with, and they don’t know what they want.

a typical thing would be upgrading a server, which runs most if not all of a companies critical software, now being though I ask them what is on the server, what is really really important that they need to work, and where is it. And then because I know they won’t answer everything I ask them five times again during the day, and yet you will always get to the end and someone will say,

It’s at this point I usually go beetroot, if it was me, (and I know this probably says why I don’t run a company) I would make sure I could pay my staff/suppliers before anything, I mean you can live without a spreadsheet, if you have to, but just how long do businesses survive when they aren’t paying people ?

It’s these types of incidents that make the whole thing just not worth it, it’s to much stress, and to little rewards, I think I will spend the time, writing software, and trying to convince people that’s the bit of string they need to hold there company together.

We’re calling it a bump, because well that’s what is was, and besides I want to play down the drama, and guilt I have after it happened.

Yesterday, at around 5:30pm I slipped on the lower part of the stairs, which in it’s self isn’t to bad, except, you’ve guessed it, I was carrying Dasiy. Now it all happened very fast, but the aches and pains in my arms and legs would suggest I tried my best not to drop her, but I did.

I think my elbow, landed on the step, and jarred me, as to make daisy fall out, and roll down the last few steps, yes, it was horrible. After watching daisy roll down about three steps and land face down at the bottom of the stairs, we had a crying baby, and an hysterical me (I did indeed lose it for a bit).

In true hich-hikers guide style, not to worry anybody, it should be pointed out at this point, that the outcome of this story, is a healthy Daisy.

Being first time parents, (or indeed parents who had just had there baby dropped down the stairs), we where a bit worried at this point, but as Daisy was hysterical, rather than floppy, we phoned our friend Tess to come and have a look, who said she looked OK, and then we took Daisy to the Minor injuries clinic who also said she was ok, so then we stayed awake almost all night checking breathing, and poking an otherwise perfectly contented sleeping baby.

today, daisy is fine, she probably can’t even remember what happened, and she has a couple of little bruises, but nothing that won’t be gone by the end of the week. I however am still a bit traumatized, and have vowed never to take my shoes off when I get home ( think I slipped on the back of my pants, how pathetic) .

It’s things like this, that make you realize how attached you have become, and how depended they are on you, and how, you can make a complete fool of yourself by simply not looking where you are going.

It’s been a while, and I know most of you don’t want to listen to us prattle on about food, and sleep, you just want to see baby piccies.

so with out much more of a ramble, her are some more recent photies of daisy, looking particularly cute if I do say so my self, (have you spotted ? I’ve turned into quite the proud farther)

Daisy looking up, there is always something interesting the other way.

As you can see, Daisy likes to stick things in her mouth, and although this thing
is huge she does like it.

Daisy has picked up on this solid food lark real quick. Almost from the off, she has been reaching for the spoon, and we are having trouble keeping up.

After much searching and reading, we found that the Contented Little baby book while no doubt being one of the scariest baby books on the market, does tell you in much more detail how to do the introduction of solid foods which is always good if you are unsure.

The book ‘recommends’ (I say recommends but it is more like tires to enforce) increasing the food a little every three days, but daisy, wants more than that, after her two feeds on Saturday she was crying when it all ran out, so we gave her two cubes* of parsnip on Sunday instead of the one the book said. And she still cried when it ran out, although nowhere near as much.

Today we move on, and daisy is going to start to devour the sweet potato mountain that is in our freezer. So far we have managed to hold it together, and we have quite a supply of frozen cubes of food, from apple, to turnip, and everything we have given her, Daisy has loved, with the exception of one day when she took a dislike to some carrot, but we think that has more to do with being too hungry, than with the carrot.

*all the food is in cubes, when you start feeding you have two basic options, buy it ready made or make it yourself. Daisy being our first means we are organized, and new parent obsessed enough to make her food and then freeze them, so we just have piles of frozen pur?ed food in our freezer.

I think today may just be the day we start down the hopefully not to long road of getting Daisy to go to sleep better.

Daisy has always been a good sleeper, sleeping thought the night from almost the first week, and this is great, you can put up with an awful lot from a noughty baby during the day, if you are confident that they are going to sleep through, but the one thing Daisy hasn’t been is a good going to sleep baby.

The early tactics, where calm environment, last feed in the chair in the bedroom, and put down from there, usually this meant that daisy fell asleep feeding, which yes wasn’t a good trend, but that didn’t seem to be a problem, because after a while we progressed to feed, followed by Kevin walking around for about five minutes, causing her to nod off. We knew this wasn’t going to be a tenable position for ever (she is already very heavy), but hey we had a newborn baby that slept through, and only took around 30 minutes to get to sleep, so we weren’t complaining.

The problems have been brewing for the last couple of weeks, daisy going to sleep has been much more of a hit and miss thing, than it use to be. Most of this is down to food, which we have now started to give her, but also, I think she has started to become aware much more of us.

tonight we seem to have reached an impasse, we’ve tried 5 times tonight to get daisy to sleep, 3 times she has been asleep enough for us to leave the room, but not for long, the last attempt sealed her fate for the future. I was holding Daisy asleep in my arms, and every time I lowered her into the crib, she started to cry, If I raise her back out, she falls asleep again, and as Ruth just said, “we need to start making this work for us”.

Ruth is currently sitting next to Daisy with her hand lightly on her chest. Daisy for her part is screaming, although I think she is starting to calm down. It’s now a battle of wills, what we are hoping to achieve is a Baby who can actually go off to sleep by herself. She is more than capable, because she does go back off if she wakes up in the middle of the night.

update: Well that did eventually work, it took around an hour, but Daisy went asleep, hopefully tomorrow will be better because we will be starting this at bed time, and not the middle of the night.