Tag: The Peanut

I can has sleep nao pls?

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Q: Why am I speaking like a lolcat?
A: Cause I’m tired.

I’ve been sitting in a saunaauditorium for the past two days attending a conference in Leicester. I’m sure the talks are excellent but I’m having the damnedest time concentrating on them because of the heat. The talk I gave this morning seemed well received, so thats good.

BenBen’s sleeping pattern have gone to pot. He’s woken up at 5am for the last two days and he’s not napping all that well. We think it’s the heat. We;re in Leics until Sunday. Hopefully the weather is going to chill out – literally – and he’ll settle down a bit.

Katy and I went to see Transformers 2. I can see why it’s being nominated for worst movie of the decade. Michael Bay managed to create *two* characters even more obnoxious and stereotypically un-PC than Jar Jar Binks. That deserves recognition. And a kick in the face. The movie was so bad it went all the way to almost good. Everything blows up. It’s one giant fight scene, and nobody but the bad guys get hurt. The robots have testicles. They hump your leg. I kid you not. I’ll go see Transformers 3 when it comes out, but I don’t think I’ll buy the dvd…

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New peeeeeeeeeeectures!

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I’ve finally pulled the finger out and gotten some pictures online. You can go browse the galleries on the website and see:

Pictures of the EMBL Staff Association Retreat to Edinburgh: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/edinburgh_may_2009/

A really cool collection of night-time areal pictures of London: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/london_from_above/

Some recently added pictures of Mr BenBen: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/ben/

Of the last gallery, let me give you some teasers :)


  
  

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Tiredness, and stress. And more tiredness.

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I have repainted the whole of the upstairs of the Hinxton house. All the floors have been vacuumed to within inches of their lives (Katy has the blisters to prove it). We’ve done all that we’ve humanly could to make the house clean and tidy. The house is in a *much* better state than we’ve left it in. And still, it would seem that the powers that be aren’t happy. I fear for our deposit. We need that money, and it’s not an inconsiderable sum. If it’s less than 1K, I’ll have to look at our legal recourses. I am not happy. I don’t need this shit right now.

In other news, we gave in and let the cats go out this morning. For the past two weeks, they’ve been cooped up in the house and have turned into unbridled bundles of energy. Even Tolstoy was poinging everywhere and playing with random shit. We’d planned on letting them out this weekend but had to relent because they were spending their nights chasing each other all over and house and up and down the stairs for hours on end. It sounded like a herd of rampaging elephants. This is not conductive for a good night’s sleep. It also doesn’t help that BenBen has decided that 5am is a good time to wake up. As such, I am currently exhausted.

And stressed.

I do not like this situation.

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So much has happened in the last two weeks, I don’t even know where to begin

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So, a quick bullet point recap:

  • we bought a house
  • we painted it top to bottom
  • we re-wired large chunks of it
  • we installed a shower that still doesn’t work
  • we moved
  • In a stunning display of cleverness, I managed to lock the shed keys in the shed, requiring a visit from our friendly neighbourhood locksmith
  • we re-painted the whole upstairs floor of our old house
  • I went to Scotland for a business trip
  • we are all completely exhausted and I think I gave myself a bad case of carpal in the process

Notable events during this time:

  • the mouse, that damned mouse, stowed away and is now living somewhere behind our cupboards. Our cats are useless.
  • said cats are driving us nuts by destroying the house and running rampant all night
  • the boy is on solids and is discovering the joys of carrots and sweet potato
  • I managed to go to Scotland and not eat a single deep-fried, battered food item
  • the Scottish tried to kill me many times with food, but I have to give mad props to a Spanish tapas bar that catered with much success to my multiple allergies.
  • we bought a new bed and a new mattress. This is a source of joy, and debt.
  • we should have internet access at home shortly

More on all these when I can spare the time. In the meantime, know that I am still alive and tired as sin.

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It might be a loooooong few days

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BenBen’s sleeping patterns have been fractious these past few days. He seems to wake up coughing every night. It used to be only once a night, but these past few, it’s been two or three times. The good news is that he’s still able to settle himself back down to sleep, but it has started to take its toll. He’s not sleeping as well, so he’s not getting as much rest and he’s getting grumpy in the day. On a brighter side, he has regained his appetite back so we are happy about that. The bad news though is that his irregular nighttime sleeping patterns has started to affect his daytime naps. He used to go down for hour- or two-hour long naps during the day. These past few, he’s been restless and doesn’t go down as quickly or as deeply. He cries a lot, and we haven’t heard that in a while. It harkens back to the bad old days.

We had to go to the house this afternoon to wait for BT man. The situation was promising. BenBen had just been fed and it was time for his nap. He did not feel the same way. He cried, no make that hollered, the whole time we were there. Considering that we’re going to be there all weekend and most of next week painting, DIYing and cleaning, this fills me with anxious dread. I don’t like hearing him cry. He’s generally such a good baby that when he is being difficult or inconsolable, it seems that much more difficult.

They say that buying a house and having a baby are the two most stressful things you can do in your life. We’re doing both in a very short timespan. Hopefully things will settle down soon and we can start enjoying life and stop worrying about everything. The cynical voice in my head tells me that there’ll always be something to worry about. Still, we just want a little bit of us time. Of family time. Of time where we don’t have to worry about a dozen things at once.

Health-wise, the BenBen is fine. We go to the doctors enough to ensure that :) His chest is clear. His weight is stable. When he’s in a good mood, he’s bright eyed and bushy-tailed. I’m sure that we’re anxious about things that we don’t need to be worried about. It’s just easier said than done to not worry about all the work that needs doing in short order and having a crying baby thrown in for good measure does not help.

We can only hope it goes ok.

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The BenBen, he is not feeling well

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Just as his appetite was starting to get better, BenBen’s taken a turn for the worse. He’s been cough-y for a few days now. We’re not sure if it’s just a cold, seasonal allergies, teething or a fun mixture of a bit of everything at once, but he’s been running a fever, has a touch of the runs and is waking himself up at night coughing again. And, of course, he’s being a git to feed and is generally a grumpy boy. Yesterday, he skipped the equivalent of two full feeds. He woke himself up at 4am this morning but managed to get back to sleep around 5am. We know we’re blessed with a good sleeper, so that’s making things bearable. He’s having a nap as I’m writing this. He woke up a while ago in a coughing fit but is either back asleep or chilling in his cotbed. Either way, I’m leaving him alone.

In happier news, we should be getting the house keys today :)

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State of the Richard

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Lots of things happened in the past week.

My folks came for a visit, which was excellent. They spent a week on this side of the pond, mostly cooing at the Benster. Katy and I managed to have some us-time and spent more money than we should have at Ikea, buying new furniture for the house, and going to see The Boat that Rocked at the cinema. I highly recommend the movie, it’s a blast.

BenBen’s cold took a turn for the worse near the end of the folks’ visit. He’s normally a very chilled out and happy baby. Not these days. He’s a cantankerous snot monster that refuses to eat anything. He went from eating around 35 oz in a day to anywhere between 15 and 20. He just does not want to eat. He’s usually a good sleeper in the night as well, but the last few days have been trying. On Sunday, when he hadn’t had anything significant to eat for his last two feeds of the day, he had a complete meltdown from 4pm and we had to just put him to bed at 6pm. He was exhausted and just didn’t want to do anything but scream and go to sleep. We thought that he’s be wailing down the walls in the middle of the night – because he’d hardly eaten anything – but it turns out that he had a decent night. He woke up around 3 am in a coughing fit, but managed to put himself back to sleep with a minimum amount of fuss. I, on the other hand, hardly slept that night. I was so worried that he’d be waking up that I was dreading it and ended up sleeping at most 5 hours that night, in fits and bursts of 30 minutes here and there.

We took him to the docs yesterday because he was seriously off his feeds and was running at a higher temperature than normal for him. They prescribed us some antibiotics and we went home. He was still fractious but had a better day than Sunday. He ate more, which is a good thing. We put him to bed at closer to his normal bedtime and things seemed to be going well, except that the coughing fit he had at 2:30 am kept him – and us – awake until 4am. He wasn’t crying, but was very vocal in his attempts to go back to sleep. In the end, we put an extra blanket on him, put his bedtime CD back on and Badger Badger’d him again and he drifted off to sleep. We managed to get a few more hours of kip, but I’m rather tired this morning. Katy and I have also caught whatever bug is plaguing him. I’ve been horking up yellow phlegm and Katy has a cough that would make a lifetime shag tobacco smoker envious.

Things might be progressing on the housing front. We had a phone call out of the blue from the estate agent on Saturday and, after a bit of phone tag, it would seem that the seller is “disappointed at having to reduce the house price but is going to be pragmatic about it”. Apparently, she’s had her own electrician do as estimate of the work that would need doing and the quote she got was about 1/3 of ours. We met somewhere in the “middle”. We’re still eating more of the costs than I’d ideally like, but I’m tired of waiting and I won’t quibble for a few hundred quid – even if we are morally in the right. Anyway, she wants to exchange this week, so we’re going to chase up the solicitors and see what we can do. Watch this space.

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Weekend update

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I felt like crap on Friday so I stayed home from work. I still have a major case of the lurgie and I’ve been feeling off and on all weekend. I blame the new grad student at work for giving me his Ebola.

We had to go to Saffron Walden in the afternoon to go meet our solicitor and sign some paperwork. On the way back, we stopped at the duck pond. BenBen was completely out of it, but we had a bit of fun with Katy’s new phone.

DUCKIE!

When we got home, BenBen went into a major meltdown. We think that, between his teeth beginning to play up, his last round of shots and a bit of a cold, he’s been feeling very under the weather and has been feeling very tired and grumpy and has been a cast-iron bugger to feed. So, when we got home, he decided that he was most decidedly not a happy camper and wailed. Solidly. For close to two hours. As soon as we brought him upstairs to start his bedtime routine, he settled down and had a good night but Katy and I were rather traumatized because – for all our griping at times – he is normally a really good baby and rarely kicks up a fuss.

Just as we were going to bring Ben upstairs, Reenie barged in the house with another mouse – still alive – and ran to the shoe rack to drop it in my boot. Again. Except this time, she missed the boot and the mouse got away from her. We so didn’t need that extra little bit of aggravation when our nerves were still frazzled from all the crying. I tried to look for it but I couldn’t find it and we had to go get the boy to bed.

Once things settled down and there was blessed quiet again in the house, I was able to shift some clutter around and find the wayward rodent. Lo and behold, it was the same mouse as two days ago!!!

Photographic Proof

We freed it in some bushes. If it comes in again, we’re keeping it as a pet.

We spent most of the weekend packing stuff away in boxes and got some good progress done. Most of the mice that Reenie brought in over the weekend were deceased, so we didn’t have too much aggravation. She did manage to drop a live mouse in my boot though, and Katy had to use some fancy penmanship to get rid of it. I just hope it didn’t pee too much in my boot.

Such are the joys of cat ownership.

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