Bodmacity

Jake is now 4 months old (well he was last Sunday) at any rate. Yesterday was the hottest UK day since 1911. Today looks like being a little cooler but it will still be around 28 degrees according to the BBC weather centre. Last night our flat was unbelievably hot, with no air moving whatsoever. It reminded me of our travelling days in Mexico. I remember a particular night when we had the romantic notion of spending a night in a Cabana on the beach in Tulum.
Our particular Cabana was more like a bunker. It was a square concrete structure with no windows and a single bare light bulb. We just lay there under the mosquito net (which does an impressive job of blocking the slightest breeze) with the sweat running into our ears. Any movement, event the tiniest flicker of ones eyelids, generated heat so we had no choice but to lie prone and motionless all night. To be fair the location was fantastic. It was situated on the white sandy beach with the Caribbean a stones throw away. Our next Cabana was much nicer, being a wooden structure with window openings and even a toilet :-).

I have digressed somewhat, so last night I don’t think the ‘mercury’ slipped below 29/30 degrees celcius. Poor Jake woke several times. The first time was at 2am. I got up and as I approached his door he stopped crying. As I looked in on him I heard a particularly vigorous ripping fart. This was the source of his troubles. I waited a little longer and he seemed to calm down, gently kicking about and yawning. I think Ames was up with him at 4am for his feed. I was completely oblivious to this being absolutely exhausted.

Today Amy has taken Jake to see his Granny Sally down on the south Coast. The air should be a little fresher there. Also, Sally has bought him a paddling pool which I’m sure he will love!

I have come to a point in my photography where I have amassed a number of images that I can no longer manage effectively using a simple folder hierarchy. I still use Google’s Picasa for my snaps. It is very quick and easy to make minor non-destructive changes to images and has built-in support for emailing and archiving to external media.

My major pain has been RAW workflow which involves a structured, rigorous approach to Digital Asset Management. I have been trying out ACDSee8, Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 and iView MediaPro3 for a trial period. Each application is great and all offer common functionality in terms of organizing and cataloguing images. iView has the edge though. The interface is not the best in the world but as an application it is very flexible in terms of adding annotations to, and categorising and keywording images. The news that Microsoft have purchased iView lends weight to the argument that this is one of the best DAM applications out there. No doubt a little Microsoft polish to the UI will make it the best.

MediaPro3 has a number of vocabulary fields including country, ISO country codes and IPTC Subject and Scene codes, but the default vocabulary for these codes is empty.

I quite like the idea of having the standard codes available. Thankfully the ISO and IPTC websites supply the information as XML files. I wrote three simple XSL stylesheets to convert the XML codes into a MediaPro3 friendly format. These links are shown below along with the stylesheets. Simply copy the IPTC Subject Code.txt, IPTC Scene.txt, ISO Country Code.txt and Country.txt files to

iView\Plug-ins\Vocabulary\Default

The directory can be found by opening up the Vocabulary Editor (Ctrl-Alt+,) and clicking the folder icon.

• IPTC Scene.txt
• IPTC subject Code.txt
• Country.txt
• ISO Country Code.txt
• mediapro3_iptc_codes.xsl
• mediapro3_iso_country_codes.xsl
• mediapro3_iso_country.xsl

On Sunday we went to Bluewater with Granny Janet. Amy bought herself some new outfits while I went to meet mum. Later we took Jakey to a toy shop and he was in his element. He started by chatting away but gradually it got louder and louder as he got more excited by the things in the shop. We picked out a few mobiles and he chose the one he liked. Granny also bought him some new clothes for the summer and a nice rattly grab toy. As if he wasn’t lucky enought already we bought him an activity centre that attached to his car seat. Hopefully he can now while away the hours in the car playing instead of his customary sleeping.

Bluewater seems to be expanding every time I visit. Mum told us about a small lake nearby within the Bluewater grounds that had some different ducks and geese. It was absolutely roasting on the way over there but nice and shady once we arrived. We fed the ducks and Canada geese. Jake was studying them intently and enjoying the experience. He is so alert and aware of his environment now and seems to take everything in. I shall end this by saying ‘what a lamb kebob’!!

I thought I had better blog an entry detailing Jake’s latest shenanigans before I forget. In the world of Jake, he has taken to pretending to suck a Werthers original. I was, initially, a little worried and thought that he had swallowed a hair. Ames checked with the doctor but apparently this is another sign of them old pegs making their way through! He now confidently holds his feet with his hands and has been known on occasion to even suck his own feet, which is quite an amusing sight! Yesterday Ames saw Jake roll completely for the first time. Every so often he has been rolling onto his side but never all the way round.

Okay, so that’s the Werthers sucking, feet grabbing and the rolling. The last thing he has learnt to do is to take big steps when he is held in a standing position. This is amazing because he actually lurches forward while raising his leg and then plants it firmly on the floor before trying with the other leg. It is very cute to watch.

This morning he woke at 5am and would not go back to sleep even though he was blatantly tired with constant eye rubbing and yawning. I took him upstairs while Ames slept and we watched some cbeebies but he was not in the mood and kept bellowing. In the end we gave him his dummy and within minutes he had popped it out and was sleeping soundly. In fact I phoned Ames at 8.30am after I had arrived in Staines and the little Kebob was still fast asleep. Jake has been on such good form the last few days, very smiley and chatty. This may be coming to an end (possibly a poo is on the way) as the last couple of nights he has been a beast to get to sleep.

We had a parents BBQ at Gary and Emmas last Saturday. It was an extremely enjoyable day and perfect barbie weather.
It was also England’s ill-fated match against Portugal. The frustration got to me after the second half and at one point I joined Gary in the garden to play with Sam as it was all too much to bear!

We met Pearl and Charles and their lovely daughter Charlene for the first time. They had also attended our Parentcraft lessons. Charlene is a real sweetie with a lovely temperament. I think Pearl has already lined Jake up as Charlene’s future husband ;-).

It was quite amusing, while watching the football(last time I’ll mention it) and England had just either missed an opportunity or Portugal had almost scored. We all let out a huge cry/cheer and simultaneously all the bairns let out bellows due to the sudden noise! What followed was a general calming down session while the bairns settled themselves again :-).

It has been a busy month. Jakey is still doing new and amazing(well to us anyway) things. After a small sleeping blip he has now settled at night with only a few bellows and most nights with barely a sound. However, now Jake does not sleep the whole night and has reverted back to waking at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. for his feeds. Yesterday I made the schoolboy error of not ensuring that Jakeys’s nap-nap wrap was covering the nap-nap at the back. Consequently we found that his poor back was all soaked 🙁 So I was up at 5 a.m. after his feed changing his vest and nappy. To his credit he only cried a little while changing him and soon settled down to sleep again after a short kick-around.

So back to the new and amazing things! Jake now is giggling and blowing bubbles. His loves being kissed in his neck creases and often shrieks with laughter in anticipation of my tickly beard coming his way. The other day while in his bath seat he worried us by almost lifting himself out. We think he will be crawling very soon as when he is placed on his tummy he lifts his head clear off the ground and moves his legs. That’s quite scary as we now look at the flat in a new light with potential dangers lurking in every corner.

Early on Sunday morning at around 3 a.m. we were woken by shouting outside and people banging on our door. Then we heard someone shout “get out, the barn’s on fire!!”. We scooped up Jake and threw a few possessions in the car and drove to the farm entrance, where the other holidaymakers were gathered. The whole barn was an inferno and the sky was glowing an ominous orange colour while ash and smoke spiralled up into the sky.

The barn had been in the process of being converted into holiday apartments and was due to be used the following weekend for a wedding reception. We felt very sorry for the owner because a lot of hard work and money had gone into the renovations and now it was all up in smoke. The blaze took several hours to put out and involved 10 fire engines and 100 firemen. All the tenders were emptied of water as well as the swimming pool. Next hoses were taken to the nearby fishing lake and the water was drawn from there.

At 6 a.m. we were all given a briefing by the fire commander and he said it wasn’t safe for the young ones to stay because of the risk of smoke inhalation. We had no choice but to quickly pack and make our exit. The good thing about leaving so early was that we got back to Brockley at the reasonable hour of 11 a.m. Jakey was very good during the whole incident and took the furore and the rude awakening in his stride.

To celebrate Father’s Day we took Jake on his first holiday. Amy had booked a nice apartment in a converted stables. The weather was superb with a cloudless blue sky and temperatures of 28-29 degrees celcius. Our apartment was lovely and had it’s own conservatory overlooking the hills and the Blackmore Vale beyond. The farm had a swimming pool and Amy had prepared by buying Jake a pair of swim shorts.

What we needed though was a swimming vest so we toodled off to Dorchester to find one. We found a few shops selling these but Jake was too young for so after a little searching we came across a ‘floaties’ ring. This is basically an inflatable ring with the little chair and two hole where the legs go. Jake absolutely loved his first encounter in the pool. He splashed about looking around and taking it all in. We only spent 5 minutes as the water was a little chilly for him.

The place where we stayed was called Woolland and was very central for the major sites. On Friday we headed to the coast . At Durdle Door Amy took Jake in the sling facing outwards which he loved. We strolled up through the campsite, across the meadow and onto the cliff path. We didn’t venture any further because the path got quite steep so it was a little treacherous. Afterwards we drove to Lulworh Cove. Jake was tired and very fed up by now and started to cry so we curtailed our visit and drove back to the farm to watch the match. 🙂

The British summer has arrived at last. The weekend was absolutely steaming with a temperature of around 28-29C. I would have liked it a little cooler but thankfully there was a nice breeze to temper the soaring mercury. On Saturday we took Jake on an outing with Nanny Janet to the Wild Animal Park in Port Lympne (pronounced Lime). The entrance price was £13.95 which I think was a little steep. The park is set in wonderful grounds situated around an old mansion house and gardens. Unfortunately there was a function on so we couldn’t go there. The other disappointment was that most of the animals were missing. Not simply asleep in their living areas but non-existent. We came across one rather sad looking Asian Elephant who was disconsolately kicking the ground and occasionally spraying himself with water to cool off. We were told by the lady manning the refreshments stall that the other Elephants has been taken away and that this one was due to be taken to Spain to make way for an African Elephant. Is it really necessary to put such a large animal though the stress of being crated up and having to endure a journey of four days just because African Elephants are better crowd pleasers? I was disappointed because the park is operated as a charity. Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick but it did seem rather odd. The lack of animals and steep entrance fee aside (to be fair we did see some Rhinos, Ostriches, various Monkeys and Gorillas) the walk around the park was lovely and the day was gorgeous. Little Jakey enjoyed himself and even saw the elephant bathing(at least I think he did!!). At the end of the day my arms were an ominous red colour. Good job I put loads of sunblock on my face. I neglected my arms because they don’t usually burn during the normal British summer. I’ll remember to do it the next time the mercury starts edging past 25C.

On Sunday we met up for a picnic with the other parents from our Parentcraft lessons. In total we had myself and Ames with Jakey, Emma and Gary with Samuel, Esther and Matt with Tess and Graeme and Henrietta with Nathaniel. It was great to chat about our bairns without fear of boring everyone to death! It’s amazing how different the babies are. I would never have thought it before Jake came along. Sam was his usual robust self, standing proud with feet planted on terra firma. Then there was lovely Tess with her sweet little face and lovely smile. Little Nate was happily cuddling up to Mum or Dad and would wake every so often and give the nearest person a sleepy smile :-). I think Jake took the award for the loudest cry but overall he was very well behaved. Before packing up and leaving we took some excellent photos of all the babies lined up and wriggling and kicking away. Both Ames and myself had an excellent time. We should make it a regular occurrence.

Jake is still going through the throes of teething. On Wednesday he was in a dreadful mood and just didn’t want to go to bed. We decided not to to give in to plugging in the dummy and tried some controlled crying. It was quite heart-breaking. We left him for 5 minutes after which we took turns going to soothe him by stroking him and letting him know we were nearby. After three such sessions he drifted off. We have decided that we should give him the dummy at bed-time if he needs it. The reason being that during the day he uses it to get himself to sleep so maybe he is getting upset with the inconsistency. Anyway this is by-the-by because last night the angel went to sleep with barely a whimper, just a few moans and without his plug. I think we need to play it by ear. Ames has started to reduce to reliance on the dummy during the day and to ensure that Jake does not sleep too much. The thing is that Jake like most babies love to suck and if it is not the dummy then it will be the thumb. Which is worse or better I ask myself?

New developments this week. Jake now grasps and holds onto things. This morning he was hanging onto the Giraffe and Monkey while kicking away on the play mat. He is also scarily rolling about in his sleep. This morning Amy found him on his side in the cot with the bumper having been half pulled off. Beast! We should invest in a summer sleeping bag with a low tog rating as he has a penchant for kicking off his covers and getting chilly in the early hours :-(.

He has been enjoying his activity clutch cube and the padded ‘white on black’ book which we have attached to the cot. After he was put to bed last night I discovered him ‘leafing’ through the pages. What a lamb kebob!