10 Months on

And still loving every day with the wee man, there are days where he tries my energy levels a bit when I'm knackered, normally about 2am!

Hard to figure out what you should do sometimes as a new Dad but I'm learning every day, I know most parents say this but he is a star, he only ever really cries when he's in pain from teething or over tired, he's coming on leaps and bounds in the balance department as well, certainly the last week he hasn't had any falling over episodes & is cruising around on the furniture as much as he can ;)

So far we're on tooth number 5, two in the bottom & three in the top, he's started grinding his teeth on occasion which is such a fun thing to hear when he's right up by your ear!  House is pretty much Ruaraidh proofed now which is a big help, now thinking of getting something for the cooker as he loves the light when it's on, joy...

We're at the stage where we're going to have to move him into his own room, have to admit to being a little worried & sad about that, worried from he won't be visible & sad from not being to hear him breathing during his sleep, really going to miss that but he needs to grow & develop, what can you do :(

Weekends have turned into meet the folks which is a little knackering given Granny Macindeor is in Eaglesham, and family Wishart/Taylor is in Kirkcaldy, at least the second part is helped by the M74, down to an hour now & no stress from traffic/lights through the city centre.

Going to really miss the baby phase, being able to hold him in my arms & watch him sleep, putting him in his cot & see him curl up like babies do, give him a bath & watch him giggle as he splashes, the list goes on, but hey ho, he's almost a little boy now so things move on, new things to see & help him develop through.

Love you Sprout

Halo 3: ODST - Finally!

That’s Halo 3 ODST single player done & dusted.  Took me long enough; 18 months almost as Lindsay kindly reminded me last night, ah long term memories.

Well worth it I would estimate, probably a 4 out of 5 personally, single player might have been a little on the short side but the storyline was strong & the sideline “Sadia’s Story” was a nice touch.

There has been various things said online about elements of the game being unfinished, haven’t touched the fire fight or co-op elements so I can only comment on the single player part, from what I experienced it was a solid story with the intersecting story parts on the whole pretty good.

The wandering around the city as the Rookie started getting old with the same old bits of the city, but you can’t really have too big a map, otherwise it would get a bit lost, it didn’t get old for too long though as the end pieces starting coming into play just as I was getting bored J

The voice actors were perfect choices; I’m a little biased with two of them being ex Firefly characters & the female lead being Number Six from Battlestar Galactica.  Plenty of banter during their parts in the game kept the game fresh as you fought your way through the increasingly harder mobs of enemies.

Was definitely fun being a little more ‘human’ than the Master Sergeant who could almost take on a tank one handed!  Definitely makes you look for cover and flanking firing positions a lot more than you would normally do.

The friendly soldiers are still quite suicidal in part; so you do end up not caring about them as much as you know they’re going to run right in front of a Brute at some stage as if they’re going to take it single handed!  AI is fairly good for the bad guys though, you have enemies running off to escape/get more support and chasing you when you dive for cover.

So overall well worth it, now with Halo 4 in the offering (who didn’t see that coming!) plenty of game play to come. 

Still haven’t decided if I’m picking up Halo: Reach, it’s a bit of an emotional thing with me given the events of the last year or so, playing a game where you know the main characters are all fated to die in the lifetime of the game is a bit black for me just now J

End of a season

Well that’s the end of that, we’ve handed in our notice at Oatlands Allotments that we are giving up our plot.

A sad day, but we had to be realistic with the arrival of Ruaraidh and the fact that we’re helping Lindsay’s Mum out with the garden in Eaglesham, which for the record is approximately 85 metres in length!

We’ve learned a lot about the ins and outs of growing your own veggies.  That and the internal politics of an allotment, but that’s best left alone, trust me, if I let myself get started there I will just become growly, and it’s all about moving on and upwards.

So what have we learned, we’re reasonably good at the whole thing but we need to find the time to do it, so we’ll need to decide on days/nights to work on the garden.  The area dedicated to fruit/veg is about what you’d expect of a normal size allotment so that’s going to be a fair amount of work, but there’s also the fruit trees and the general garden to take care of to make it safer for the wee man to run around in, not to say it isn’t just now, probably just the usual new parent worrying J

A shame to leave, but best to let someone else take care of the ground who can work on it properly, will miss the banter with the old guard, they were a great laugh for the end of day wind down after work, we’ll still do small bits of veg in the back court as well so our green thumbs will stay green no matter what!

Cheerie!

Thoughts of zombies and parenthood

Kind of two thoughts at once, a sudden realisation of my attitude changing, and how it makes complete sense that it has.

To roll back to where this started in my head...

Caught a trailer for a new zombie related game, before it started I was thinking "Great!  Another zombie shooter, this will be fun", but then it started and to not make it too tearful it shows, in computer graphics, a family being attacked by zombies.

Unfortunately it doesn't end well and looks like the three of them, mother, father and child are taken, the way they do it with a couple of scenes is what had me turn off getting into the game, with the father outstretching his arm to get his kid on his shoulder and then barricade the door as the mother puts the child on the bed, new world zombie stuff there as the kid turns zombie almost immediately and attacks her mother.

Now, today, I came across a graphic novel/comic in the library with a different scenario where there is a baby that doesn't survive a post apocalypse world situation.

So it seems I no longer find this acceptable as much in books/games as I may have used to, I say may have because I'm not entirely sure I ever would have in those scenarios and it's simply that my sensitivity to all things children has been dialled up a notch or two, given that I actually really like 'The Walking Dead' which is  a zombie world related drama, where in the first episode the hero is forced to shoot a zombie kid who is about 9/10 years old.

I also still really like the original 'Dawn of the Dead' by George A Romero where one of the hero's of the piece is put in the exact same situation and forced to shoot two zombie kids of about the same age.

But you then have the remake of the same film where you have a pregnant woman who has a zombie baby and I find that pretty much over the line and will never watch it again.

So it appears parenthood brings some interesting realisations amidst the no sleep, baby giggles and running around, I'm sure I'll come across other films/games/books that I used to like that now drop off my radar as 'likes'.

See below for a lift to the slightly dark thoughts above :)

Space is big

Caught the BBC2 programme with Professor Brian Cox on Monday night, Wonders of Our Universe.

Thought compelling stuff, made me realise again that I need to poke my head up out of baby world once and a while to see what interesting stuff is going on.  First time I’ve seen one of his programs, he has a really good straight forward way of explaining concepts and genuinely appears to be excited about everything science and space related.

Something fresh amongst all of the one brain cell programs that are out there just now, the concept of Entropy can be a bit scary and depressing given that it highlights there will be an end to everything eventually, but you know what, that end is so far in the future that it really should be seen as interesting rather than scary.

Given what the human race has achieved in it’s short time on this planet there is no reason not to imagine how advanced we can get, given the chance and our own ability to get over land grab wars, religious wars, the list goes on.

When you see how many wonders are out there, and even down in the oceans of our own world it is quite easy to get frustrated and mad over how many lives are wasted over all of these disputes and wars, can you tell it personally frustrates me?

So here’s to the wonders of science and the Universe, may we keep stretching and striving for the future as much as we can!

Hello world

Finally getting around to sorting out one place to record thoughts, general dribbling etc so I've closed down 'officially' updating in Microsoft's live space, will still post on the old Facebook but closing down everything else as I have less than no time to be mucking about with multiple spaces!


Today's thoughts - Swimming last night, learning back crawl is a new favourite as I appear to be able to do it, interesting sub note, my fear of drowning, drowning reflex, call it what you will appears to have flown the coop.

Have no idea why, Linz thinks it's down to an overall state of tiredness, e.g. too tired to care!  Whatever way it's great, now that I'm not panicking in water I can stand up in I can concentrate on actually learning to swim.

So I can do the back stroke legs, just, knackering stuff, haven't got the hang of the arms yet, funny stuff as I ended up effectively swimming head under water for about 20 seconds as I was so concentrated on learning I appear to have forgot my head was about 2 inches under water, until I stopped for breath lol.

 More general thoughts on life, parenthood and fledgling scribblings to come, have a good day world!