October 2005 Archives

Not much new to report, except a gigantic cardboard box sitting in the living room. We finally bought ourselves a real piece of baby furniture, namely, a crib (or a cot, over here). Emelyn outgrew her Moses basket, and now seems intent on pushing herself out of her pram, too.

Updated: A bit later, here’s Em in her crib:

The worst part about updating Emelyn’s blog during the week is that it’s almost all second-hand information. On the weekend, I feel like I’m watching “The Emelyn Show - Live!” with some spectacular new thing happening every hour. In that case, it’s no problem to pound out a few paragraphs detailing whatever Great New Thing she’s been up to. Weekdays are all hearsay, though, another matter entirely.

So, no, I haven’t personally seen it yet (I’m still on the night train home), but Em now has a tiny little chair to call her own. I’ve seen a photo, at least - intra-day news updates come to me via Az - and she looks super-duper-cute in it. It’s remarkable how upright she can sit, and in the picture I’ve seen, she’s got her bobble-head held up to see the world around her. I guess Emelyn loved it right away. Can’t quite remember what the chair is called, but it’s all very sleek and Euro-looking.

Other news to relay is that Em seems to have figured out that Azure is, like, the person feeding her. So instead of staring off into space while having her feed, Emelyn has started to look up at Az, and will try to simultaneously smile or coo at her. Az says it’s weird, and I believe it.

All this isn’t to say that Emmie and I don’t get any quality time together. The two of us trekked to ASDA late last night to get some direly-needed nappies. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but Emelyn just loves ASDA. A bit declasse, if you ask me, but then again, where else can one get 4 frozen Yorkshire puddings for just 37p? Anyhow, we made a fine time of it; I made an impulse purchase of Ovaltine, and Emelyn was enraptured by the industrial-sized fluorescent lights. As always.

I just got a fancy 3G card for my laptop, so I’m going to see if I can’t post this from the train, now. Bye!

It’s been an inauspicious start to the week - I just tried catching the 6:45am train to London, which included a mad-dash cycle ride through the dark, only to be thwarted at the very last minute. So I literally watched the train pull out of the station as I ran up to the track, which is one of those things that makes your heart sink. Rough week ahead, I can tell.

Last week was a bumpy one, too. Emelyn went into growth-spurt mode on Tuesday, when I was in Germany. She was feeding every 1.5 - 2 hours, and stubbornly fussing all the rest. Azure was operating solo, those nights, so obviously it wasn’t the best timing.

I’d thought I been through a lot on Thursday evening - I flew back via Air Berlin, a not-so-brand-name carrier, and their disreputable-looking transport (a weird Fokker jet from the early 80’s) delayed my arrival just long enough so that I missed another train - this one being the last direct train home from the airport. Oh, I made it home, in the end, but not without seeing much of Essex by night (empty, dark, featureless), first.

Like I was saying, if Thursday was bad for me, it was worse for Azure - I noisily barged through the door, only to be greeted a wild-eyed “Don’t wake the baby!”. Which told me just about everything I needed to know, and was some sound advice, to boot.

In fact, “Don’t wake the baby” is becoming something of a mantra in our lives. Certainly it’s on the way to becoming our standard phone greeting to any person who dares call us outside the hours of 11-11:30am.

Still, all this stress and worry somehow seems to disappear on the weekends. Suddenly it’s easy enough to put Emelyn to sleep in her pram or the Bjorn; you just have to keep her moving as you go about and do fun things. Saturday we spent just pushing our way through Cambridge, and hanging out on the grass behind the Wren library, watching the punts go past. And Emelyn, of course, was on perfect behaviour the entire time.

We topped that on Sunday by doing even more - Emelyn went for her first train ride, over to Audley End. (It was pretty sweet, actually, the porter insisted we hang out in the first-class cabin, so that Emelyn could have her lunch.) There’s a large manor at Audley End, and some really fantastic gardens to walk around; it’s dozens of acres. The only downside is that the actual Audley End house is a good mile-and-a-half from the station, and through intermittently paved paths - suffice to say Emelyn’s pram boldly rocked the ‘muddy SUV’ look, most of the day. Nice.

Azure, Emelyn, and I all did pretty much the same thing this weekend, namely, sleep, hang out, and eat. Emmie engaged in a fair bit of crying, too, which isn’t really like her. She’s still congested from her cold (no surprise - I’m still coughing, too) and I think it’s waking her up from her naps, and frustrating her, overall. Can’t blame her.

My first night and morning away from Emelyn was at least memorable - I woke up in a very Gosford-Park-ish kind of place somewhere in Sussex, and spent the morning shooting skeet and playing with crossbows. All very enjoyable, too; it must’ve tapped into some kind of paternalistic hunter/gatherer instinct.

In other news, the descent into winter seems to be picking up speed. It’s pitch-dark when the alarm goes off, these days, and the sun has barely cleared the horizon when the 7:15 train rolls out of Cambridge. It’s brisk, too - Emelyn and I went for a long walk yesterday morning and I had to bundle her up pretty good before dropping her into the Bjorn. She still managed to lose both her socks along the way (a recurrent problem) so from here to April, I think it’s time for wee little shoes to be worn if venturing out-of-doors…

My cousin told me the other week that he accidentally referred to Emelyn as ‘Emelyndotnet’. In which case, I think I should point out that although Emelyndotnet has been rather shaky all week due to technical issues, site namesake Emelyn has been doing just fine.

(The long technical story, for those interested: Emelyndotnet, jasoncookdotcom, and some other domains that Azure and I tinker on are all graciously hosted by our old friend Andy, who happens to own a couple of aging Unix machines that sit in a server cage somewhere outside of San Francisco. This steadfast pair of machines - incidentally named Chunk and Sloth - have been generally reliable, but are showing their age a bit. One of them recently went haywire, taking down a bunch of other computers in the same facility; so it’s therefore being put out to pasture.

As I type, our sundry domains are being migrated to a shiny new hosting facility - thanks once again to Andy - but like any move, there’s the usual broken plates and glasses and hardcoded-virtual-include-file-paths to be dealt with. Things should all be swept up by the weekend, though.)

Anyhoo. Like I was saying earlier, Emelyn (not-dotnet) is chipper as can be. And really talkative - she’s taken to cooing at anything and everything she fancies. Az and Arps went back for a second helping of Pride and Prejudice at the Big Scream showing yesterday, and apparently Emelyn started ‘Awoooo Awoooo’-ing at Mr. Darcy, at a volume that had lots of heads turning and laughing. (Wish I’d seen it, too.)

Tonight will be my first night away from Azure and Emelyn; I’m headed to an overnight work-offsite-thingy somewhere in the countryside. Next week I’m in Germany for a few nights and the week after it looks like I’m in the States. But as far as travel goes, that’ll be it for awhile. Good thing!