Basically week 10 disappeared into a weekend of whirlwind-like activity. I had about 3000 things on, including making up for missed time, weddings and making sugar-based napalm (which is now diabetic-coma-in-a-jar, ie: jam) plus taking care of the wriggle monkey, and just never got to writing anything down, or even taking photos of him.

Things progress. He now seems aware that we exist, but has yet to make the judgement call on whether that's a good or bad thing. He'll focus on faces and stare intently at you a trying to make the call - should he send us back or see what he can manage with this raw material.

I can't tell whether weeks of sticking my tongue out at him rather than smiling are coming back to bite me in the ass, or whether this constant testing the air is just a sign of development. Hamish has also begun the multi-year spanning process of dragging inappropriate things into his mouth to taste test them by grabbing hold of my finger and jamming it pointy&sharp end first into his gob, with predictable results.

In the last two weeks, he got himself jabbed with various antibodies (scream) and hearing tested (left ok, rightside SCREAM). He mostly slept through bjj_moves's wrestleque on the weekend, and mostly yelled his way through the Sunday, including what is becoming his usual trick of yelling as much as possible through "Who do you think you are" (which, as a genealogy nerd, I am compelled to watch). Most of the yelling seems to be gut-pain - when you can feel and hear the gurgling quite loudly, its a bit of a give away. When that's not about he does tend to simply observe everything with a serious mein.

(As an aside, someone at the wedding commented that it didn't seem to be much fun, that a lot of what people talk about the bad things when they have a baby. I think primarily that might be because the good bits are, well, dull :-) There's not a lot that I feel compelled to write about sitting and a shaking a panda-headed rattle at him for half an hour - it doesn't lend itself to any level of wry humour. Take it as read that I spend a fair bit of time grinning at him and making stupid vowel noises and pulling faces).

Nappy changes are no longer universally a 10 minute screaming jag (you might think "how can this possibly take 10 mins" and then think "no nononononono i don't want to know", but its mostly because he wriggles like a mad thing and kicks me in the stomach a lot, which shifts him up the table) which has its downside - the only way I knew how to stop him hiccuping was to change his nappy. The hiccups don't seem to bother him, but they do stop him resting. Baths are still in the "this might be alright" category, but much like being outside, it might be utter terror rather than actual enjoyment causing him to go quiet and just stare. He's mostly quiet when not actually yelling, but has started coming out with more random sounds - I look forward to when they are conscious attempts to communicate, and not random vocal chord spasms that leave him looking as surprised by the noise as I am.

I've spent part of the weekend sorting through old family photos of Liz's mum's family, and wondering if there's a resemblence. I think he's still too young at this stage to be sure, although he looks frighteningly like his cousin Calum. I am not sure he'll take specifically after either me or goldengrove specifically, but will probably be a mishmash of us both (I look a lot like my dad, and another brother has a lot of my mum's appearance, so the blended thing is more unusual to me than you might think). His eyes have faded out from black to blue, and are now going quite pale in the middle - given mine are yellow there, its not too surprising.

So, yeah, nothing too momentus in the two weeks, but slow progression toward being a human being. :) Much staring and cuddling and googaring at him, plus also getting tired and a bit frazzled when he's screaming a blue fit. So, the usual parenting experience :)

yes, unsurprisingly, photos :)

Photos from morsla and aeliel's wedding. A lot of them were fuzzier than I hoped, not sure what to blame, so I'll stick with 'me'. :)

Sometimes when you get an old BDM certificate, the problem with it is the writing. This time, its the photocopying. I've got a cert from Scotland 1858, and I can't quite puzzle out everything that's been written there. So, if you fancy yourself as being good at reading older writing, please feel free to have a go ;)

( Nerdy snippage )

They are the unasleep, creatures that are neither awake nor asleep, but poised between them. During the day, they doze in their beds, but at night they arise with an unholy thirst, living on the sleep of others so that they may stay awake forever. You may hear their endless wail, chilling the blood of all that hear it, and announcing that tonight one will be found drained entirely of rest.

This week has been less emotionally tumultuous than last week, fortunately. Its been busier tho, so we're all feeling a little worn out. We had dinner with Benji & Ainsley despite Hamish's best efforts and the 34 red lights between our house and theirs. I went shopping most of Saturday, and then out to geekweevil's Halloween party, and then on Sunday we went and had a bbq at Rupert & Sam's place. Monday was a work from home day, Tuesday I had to go to work and geekweevil came over for tea, Wednesday lirion came over for tea, Thursday was meant to be tai chi but was cancelled for illness and... wait, no, that's today, so that's it. Plus wriggle monkey getting bigger and heavier almost visibly.

It was a week of discovering things you can do and not do while holding a baby. Under the list of things that you probably shouldn't do - sysadminning, eating icecream, sneezing. Things you can do - take out the garbage, eat bbq... um... no, that's about it. So this week the winner is things you can't do.

Hamish is developing. He has longer awake periods and makes more random noises while awake (despite bjj_moves best efforts, he still doesn't say 'armbar'). He can hold his head up just long enough to make you think he's stable before losing it and plunging off to one side. He regards the dummy with extreme skepticism. He is now more than half the length of his bassinet and we're looking at the space either side of him and wondering if it'll last til Christmas.

On a number of occasions we've noticed people walking up to the house, then turning and leaving, which means my sign that says "don't knock if you're selling anything" is working out pretty well. I recommend this for all new parents - its less about waking the baby, and more about maybe waking you, and more likely, causing you hassles if you are trying to disentangle from the baby to answer the door for no gain. I was going to make a lovely computer printed one, but the crayon-clutched-in-fist style of my handwriting seems to have worked just as well for some reason.

photos, including what might be a smile...

Arcanacon 2008 and a walk in the Black Sherbrooke Forest

Well, that was one of the more unpleasant 48 hours that I've ever had.

Tuesday lunchtime, we got a call saying there were some results back from Hamish's heel prick test, and that he had tested as being at least a carrier for cystic fibrosis - he had not only some of the relevant enzymes but a genetic test showed that he had one of the common 12 mutations that cause CF. They had to do another test on Wednesday to clarify whether he had it on just one gene (and was therefore a carrier) or both (and therefore he had CF).

Liz went off to mother's group, but between the possibility of Hamish being pretty sick, and generally not feeling well, she wasn't dealing very well... which was capped by throwing up at the MCHN centre. Meanwhile, in Caulfield, I also wasn't feeling well, which I put down to a crap meal from the pub. I got a call to come home, and didn't mind too much. Within a couple of hours, it was pretty clear that we both had a bad case of gastro, shivering in front of the heater on full blast. Liz's mum came over and helped us with Hamish, who fortunately has skipped getting it. I ended up staying up that night for the early morning feeds to try and let Liz sleep and rest, so I got about 4 hours sleep on top of feeling like crap and being stressed.

Wednesday, we went in for the test to Monash Med, which basically involves running a current through his arm to make him sweat a lot, then measuring how much chlorine gets expelled in the sweat. Hamish hates anything that takes away his control[1] of his arms, so basically screamed for 10 minutes while being zapped. We kicked around at the hospital for a while waiting for him to sweat some, and then got blood taken ourselves to check to see which (or both) of us are carriers. No one else in either family has tested positive to even being a carrier, so its likely to only be one of us, but we wont find out for weeks as its a genetic test rather than the quick one he did.

By late Wednesday I was still feeling awful, so I went to bed not too late, and Liz handled the morning feeds. He spent all today being very rambuctious and not wanting to rest - I think its just wind, but we're both a bit over being kicked in the stomach as he wriggles about.

Fiiiiinally we got a call around 2.30 saying that he is only a carrier, and definately does not have CF.

So, if I've been a bit weird or inattentative the last day or so, I hope you understand why. I didn't want to really discuss it too much with people until we knew for sure one way or another.

Now we wait for 2 days of accumulated stress to fade away, and for the results of the gene test. If we both are carriers, it means that we'd have to take that into account if we want to have any more kids - 1 in 4 chance of being a sufferer in that case might be too high a risk.

In the meantime, more photos of cute

[1] by control, i mean "stopping him from constantly flailing them around aimlessly "

Despite being my usual ubiquitous self with the camera this year, I haven't really felt the urge to sort through them afterward. Realising that this meant there were about 2000 photos just sitting there, I found 300 or so that were worth it. This lot is probably only of interest to those attending the various events...

( To see photos, click here )

Time seems to evaporate around babies, I think there's some sort of distortion field. I keep sitting down to post something on Monday, but its somehow Thursday again. And that's after I took a day off to get some housework done, visit geekweevil, visit goldengrove's sister for tai chi and dinner... er, at least we're busy I guess :)

We continue to try to find new ways to settle Hamish. Bizarrely, carrying him outside works - he stares at the sky, at random plants, and so on. Go back inside, screaming. Back outside, silence. Taking him outside in the pram just gets icecream on him, but that might not be a causal relationship. He's started making noises that aren't slurping or screaming, which can be hilarious when its mid complaint - "waah waaah waaah oooo waah waah".

Hamish has got to visit all sorts of places in the last week or so - the paediatrist (fuck you, doctor who was 1.5hrs late for a 10.45am appoint, fuck you in the neck), Ainsley's baby shower, goldengrove's first mum's group, and over to the Cath & Morgan's last night - so we're getting really good at loading him (and the pram) in and out of the car. This is probably a good thing, as we're looking at taking him up to Barham (NSW, near Kerang, past Echuca) in early December to visit his greatgrandparents.

He's still at the screaming meat stage really - his eyes seem to focus on us sometimes, but its really hard to tell if that's just random or actual looking. A few folks have said that babies tend to smile at you sometime between 6 and 12 weeks, but that might be a developmental thing rather than environmental - if so, we have to count from when he was meant to be born, rather from his actual birthday, putting us about 4 weeks behind. I got to play with Calum (Hamish's 2yo cousin) a bit last night, which was fun, and reminded me that the meat stage is just something to be worked through before getting the kid stage.

Been a bit slack with photos, will see this weekend...