Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - ursula

Travelling with the truffler

2013-04-24T01:22:00+01:00

We're are about halfway through our family holiday to the remote ends of the earth. It has been the first time we've taken Ursula on a plane so we thought we'd make it a big journey while we are at it.

To her credit she was mostly fine with the 24 hours on a plane required to get to the other side of the world. Most of the tears were during take-off and landing when it was hard to explain pressurisation to a 16 month old child. There were a few other snatches of complaint due to tiredness but otherwise it went well. It helps that she is a very cute child who instantly won over the cabin crew who were keen to help keeping her amused. She even had a freshly prepared meal of Salmon Fried Rice cooked for her by the First Class cabin crew.

Before we left the UK I had left Ursula playing in the kitchen while I sorted something out in the living room. When I came back into the suspiciously quiet kitchen I found the following example of toddler OCD:

OCD much?

An interesting aspect of having psychologist for a mother-in-law is the wonderful insight she gives me on how the mind works. It had only been few weeks earlier that we had been talking about a common behaviour that often precedes a spurt in language development. It seems as children start getting their heads around the concept of things belonging to categories they will start sorting their toys (or anything else) into organised piles. Obviously an understanding of the fact things can exist in categories is a prerequisite for understanding a lot of things about language.

I make the distinction between language and speech because the two are very different skills. Language is primarily a cognitive ability to map communicated ideas to abstract concepts. Speech is the vocalisation of that communication and involves fairly precise control of a dizzying array of muscles in our mouth and vocal chords. The mastery of this physical skill takes a lot longer so often the distinction between words is only recognisable to parents and others who spend a lot of time with the child.

Ursula has been understanding basic instructions for some time now and it's now possible to send her off to fetch or carry things with a reasonable degree of success. Combined with her deistic pointing there has been genuine two way communication for some time. However perhaps due to fluke or stimulated by the new environment she's in on holiday we are starting to see an explosion in words. She's had the basic "Dadadada" and "Momamama" for sometime although it's hard to distinguish from the baby babbling she's been doing for a long time. We have long joked about her generic use of "dat/cat" for the cat and then pretty much any other object she was pointing at. Just before we left she had started associating "NaNa" with bananas (a favourite food of hers). We now have distinct sounds for birds, cats, dogs and my favourite "papa" for the Nexus 7 which we call the PadPad so as to avoid confusing it with the Apple brand product ;-)

My mum found my description of all this behaviour very amusing as I swing between proud Dad and scientific curiosity. I will put on the record that I'm not treating my daughter as a lab experiment but I do find the whole development of language and mind fascinating. I understand now why watching your kids grow and develop is so often cited by parents as one of the main joys of parenthood.

2012 a year in review

2013-01-18T12:38:00+00:00

In past years when I would review the year I'd flip back through my blog. For 2012 however I managed on average one post a month and the majority of those were geek related ones which in some ways are a lot easier to write.

The big change has been becoming a parent of course but at the same time I also took back the reigns of management as I became the head of the software team at work. The combined effect has been a year that flew by very quickly leaving a slight sense of bewilderment about where it has all gone.

I no longer feel quite as out of my depth as I did half way through last year. The first 6 months are pretty gruelling in terms of missing sleep and trying to interpret the needs and desires of something that can basically sleep or cry. However Ursula has grown up so fast you soon forget about what she was like and try and re-focus on what's she's doing now.

For starters she's now a fully mobile and operational battle-truffler able to move under her own direction. Next to that she's moved from simply reporting state (happy/unhappy) to communication. Granted every object she sees currently seems to be a cat (or possibly "that") but I suspect her vocal cords just need to catch up.

She's now pointing to objects she wants to interact with including multiple objects she'd like to combine (e.g. Bonjella and teething ring) like some sort console RPG game. She laughs at silliness, enjoys playing around and being chased and basically has a personality that is uniquely hers.

I used to think that it wouldn't get interesting until she learnt to talk but of course my preconceptions about what it would be like are constantly being shattered. Sure it still gets frustrating at times especially for Ursula. She understands more and more of what her parents are saying without being able to respond the same way. As she gradually realises she's an independent being able to manipulate the world around her she's very quickly having to learn that she can't control everything. I suspect that would put teenage angst in perspective if only we could remember our really formative years.

Well this post seems to have turned into yet another one about my child growing up. Other things have happened to me that are not Ursula related but really there not as interesting. Instead I shall try and look forward to what's coming up. The annual February walking holiday is just round the corner and I'm looking forward to catching up with all the other new (and slightly more experienced) parents at that. We'll be up in Manchester (without Ursula) for P&K's wedding which we are really looking forward to. And we'll be off to the land down-under for a much delayed holiday in April. Hopefully the next post will not be too far away ;-)

Everyone likes stats

2012-03-26T23:54:00+01:00

So what has my blogging frequency been like, well I'm glad you asked:

[archive_chart name="Posting frequency over the last 12 months" width="600" height="300" count="12"]

It seems the trend is pretty clear and it's not exactly surprising as my hands have been more than full with other concerns. Despite coming to a phase where the odd hour or two in the evenings is possible blogging is still fairly low down the priority list. This parenting lark does seem to occupy a fair amount of time. So far it's an exercise in trying to balance a number of competing demands. While being responsive to Ursula's minute by minute desires keeps her generally happy we are beginning to see the benefit of following some sort of routine. It seems the oft repeated parental sayings are founded in a degree of experience ;-)

Of course just as we started to establish a successful routine we disrupted it all with a trip up to Manchester. Thanks to some friends parents we were able to set up a base of operations in Bolton. We then proceeded to do the local tour and introduce Ursula to our northern friends. She was very well received on her debut although we suspect the schedule may have taken it's toll. By Sunday she was starting to get a little fractious so it was good to end up at P&C's for a very relaxed evening. We took it easy on the journey down on Monday and have been getting back into the swing of the normal routine.

It was really nice to catch up with everyone we saw while we were visiting. Next time we come up North we will probably try a slightly less hectic schedule with hopefully a less frazzled family. Thankfully next week is all based at home which is a much more familiar environment for all of us!

Rewards

2012-02-17T07:44:00+00:00

As predicted the blogging has dropped off quite precipitously. I still seem to be functioning on a reduced amount of sleep (although Fliss is taking the brunt of the sleep interruption by far). However the evenings are both shorter and much more structured. Eating is slowly moving from a task best accomplished at speed as we alternate baby holding/entertaining duties with each other to one where Ursula is happy to sit in a bouncer/bumbo and watch us shovel food in our faces. We have started getting into the bathing/sleeping routine which currently puts us all to bed at roughly the same time.

However it's still very rewarding. I didn't think I'd get quite so gooey inside when Ursula started smiling at me. Although she's simulated smiles for a while it's mostly been a prelude to some sort of gas incident. She is now firmly into social smiling territory and every time she does it it's like a gift to salve the troubled soul that your at least doing something right. In the time that this post has been brewing (I started it a couple of weeks ago) we have even moved on to giggles and laughs. It's certainly noticeable from close up how fast they start developing their personalities as they move from needing food/sleep/cleanliness to discovery and play.

We have managed to leave the house for extended periods and spent a lovely weekend in snowy Yorkshire on the annual walking holiday with friends from Fliss' time at university. It was particularly fun because there was a spike of new parents with their kids (along with a couple of old hands) along with plenty of helpful hands willing to hold babies when parents needed to do something else. I found is particularly helpful chatting to people a few months/years ahead of us in the parenting game and be reassured about what we are doing. My stated parenting style is to exude a air of calm confidence while paddling like mad under the water to figure out what to do next.

Fliss' mum was very kind to come over and spend the night giving us a chance for a meal at one of our favourite Italian restaurants with just the two of us. It was nice to get a few hours to ourselves to remind us of what life used to be like. However for all the work and disruption that a new family member causes we are happy with our new life and only occasionally think wistfully of our former freedoms. It does also make those periods of freedom when they do happen taste all the sweeter.

In other news I have also been working quite hard at my day job and have recently been promoted to Principle Software Engineer. I'm now responsible for all the software engineers in the company as well as all the software deliver-ables. I'm not quite a drop-in for the old Head of Software as I'm sharing some of the management type responsibilities with the Head of Engineering as I'm quite keen to keep my hand as a developer. 2012 is certainly shaping up to be a busy and rewarding year.

5 years ago

2012-01-02T23:32:00+00:00

I was reminded of a new years party 5 years ago when I rather drunkenly blurted out to Fliss my desire not to be separated from her by geography next time we welcomed in a new year. We hadn't been together that long and she was visiting Oz for her brothers wedding. Happily I've celebrated every new year with her in person since.

This year was not exactly rock and roll as we now have Ursula with us. We ordered a large takeout and set about watching a few films (Source Code, pretty good actually) before heading up to bed before Big Ben struck. We watched the local fireworks from our bedroom window and pretty quickly went to sleep (a luxury these days to be taken when possible). When I think about the last 5 years I realise what a lucky and fortunate man I am to have such a wonderful wife and now a beautiful baby daughter.

Simple State Machines and Other Things I Have Learnt

2011-12-27T13:27:00+00:00

We've just returned from 3 days at Fliss' Mum's house. Although we are still fairly sleep deprived things were made a lot easier by the presence of aunts and grandmothers who offered to take turns tending to the baby. This included one of those rarest of things, time for the two of us spend together without any other distractions. My life has now been reduced to a fairly simple state machine. There are predominantly 3 activities, for now ignoring the fourth: "At Work" which won't kick in until the 10th.

Checking baby is happy

This involves running though a fairly simple set of checks. Is the baby too hot or cold? Is the baby clean? Is the baby hungry?

I have to confess I have quickly developed the parental habit of sniffing around the crotch area of the baby. It is so far the fastest and most effective way of telling if a change is required.

Ursula is starting show interest in things so occasionally the correct action is just to walk around a bit so she can look at new stuff. I have no idea how her brain is assimilating all the knowledge of corners and ceilings (being areas of contrast she can make out) but it could possibly point to a future career as a engineer ;-)

Checking Mummy is happy

Invariably the baby's internal state eventually resolves to "Hungry" which requires it to be passed to Mum for feeding. Although we have been expressing and trying bottle feeds at the moment she gulps way to fast and invariably throws most of it up after the feed. So far we have found feeding "at source" is generally the most effective. However it does tend to immobilise Mum while she feeds so it falls to me to fetch and carry to ensure as many useful things are within reach when required.

Do everything else

The general order being cleaning, preparing food, household chores and finally if I'm lucky something else. Last night I did get a few hours to play through some of the latest CoD which Santa delivered over Christmas. I do harbour some hope of doing some recreational coding over the next few days although my start-up latency is so high that the state machine is often reset before I get into anything worthwhile.

The last few weeks have thrown up a few more interesting discoveries though. One of the more recent ones is that white noise is very restful for babies. We've managed to extend naps in the stroller/bassinet from around 5 minutes to up to 45 minutes by running a white noise app on the phone. My favourite Android app so far is Chromadoze which lovely little ope source app with a rather funky main display for setting the frequency balance of the noise. If I get a chance I may have a play at adding some features more aimed at soothing babies.

What big eyes you have

2011-12-18T18:42:00+00:00

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We've had Ursula at home for over a week now and are slowly getting into the swing of this parenting malarkey. So far we've nicknamed her "Trufflehog" after the manner she searches for the breasts when she's hungry which seems to basically be when she's awake. We are getting a growing amount of the "Quiet Attentive" awake state though. Her fascination is mainly with areas of contrast which to us mainly seems to be corners of the room. I'm not sure how much is down to baby face morphology but one comment that keeps coming up is how big her eyes are. Although I'm bound to be an overly proud Dad I'm fairly sure she's already starting to track objects and points in space. You can play an interesting game carrying her around being guided by the position of her head. A head she seems to be able to keep upright most of the time by herself although she still hasn't mastered the art of pushing up when on the play-mat.

As she is currently not self-propelling the day to day handling is fairly simple. However preparation is the key to success here:

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I'm sure all too soon she will become self-propelling and then our lives will become a lot less sedentary. In the meantime we are feeling quite pleased having made it out of the house several times. We've managed a brief trip into town, a tea-morning and a couple of trips to the pub. Ursula certainly seems to be happy to drop off when ever she is put in the car seat and driven anywhere. This tendency also translates to the car seat being "fitted" to the shopping trolley.

One area we have struggled with is the pram cot which she doesn't like at all - tending to kick and scream while at the same time divesting herself of the layers of warm blankets to shield her from the environment. While wheelies seem to briefly calm her down it's not a long term practical solution. I wonder if she is developing Minbari sleeping habits?

As it has been almost impossible to get her to sleep in the mosses basket we've already taken our first major parenting decision to keep her in the bed with us. It has improved on the amount of sleep we actually get and it makes feeding her fairly non-distracting. We do worry about the advice against co-sleeping but feel the size of the bed makes it a little more practical and we've developed fairly light sleeping habits quite quickly. The feedback from others has been interesting though, ranging from warnings about making a rod for our own backs later to encouragements to go with what works for us. At some point we'll have to encourage her to sleep on her own but it's a bridge we'll cross later on when she's sleeping longer hours.

I've been back to work a few days and have the next two to look forward to until I break for Christmas. I'm already looking forward to what month 2 brings. I'm hoping just a little more sleep and a lot more activity from Ursula.

New Family Unit, Some Assembly Required.

2011-12-07T22:08:00+00:00

I brought Fliss and Ursula home on Monday morning so we now have a complete family unit at home. We didn't do much on Monday apart from appreciate being back in the house with all the attendant creature comforts. Tuesday didn't involve much either but we had both sides of the family visit in the afternoon for a little celebratory drink. So far Wednesday's most taxing task has been a trip to the doctors for a jab for Fliss. We are literally taking baby steps in building up our baby wrangling confidence.

To be fair to Ursula she's not overly demanding as of yet. If she's awake she is generally hungry (and/or in need of changing) otherwise she sleeps a lot. Today we got the first glimpses of a growing interest in the rest of the world, but mainly it's the eating and sleeping that keeps us occupied. It's a good design feature because they are fairly uncomplicated needs to fulfil when operating on a reduced sleep cycle. Still it felt like a small victory to have had a few hours of sleep each last night.

Tomorrow we may tackle the immense task of visiting town to obtain some heavily engineered mammary holders. Before that I need to work out exactly what the minimum functional travelling baby bag is.

Light at the end of the tunnel

2011-12-02T11:26:00+00:00

Ursula is quite possibly the healthiest baby that has ever graced the Special Care Baby Unit at our local hospital. The sequence of events that led us there were more than a little concerning. As we were about to be discharged the midwife observed a leg twitch that didn't look like the standard myoclonic twitch you expect with sleeping babies. This led to a summoning of the paediatric registrar followed by the consultant and her crash bag. At the time we wondered if it was just the hospital stalling our discharge as we were getting impatient to go home having been told the final blood test result was one hour away for several hours in a row.

There are a number of possible causes for these twitches, mostly neurological in nature with various infections including meningitis potentially acquired during the birth. After an examination the registrar assured us the most likely cause would be "just one of those things your baby does". However they obviously wanted to rule out any of the other potential causes. Ursula was whisked up to the neo-natal intensive care unit and plugged up to various monitors and a cannula for monitoring and a series of tests. The experience was a little unsettling but the staff were very re-assuring and professional and obviously used to the shock that affects parents as their newborns get whisked into a room full of hospital beeps and alarms.

So far all the tests Ursula has been subjected to have come back negative. The only remaining possibility is meningitis for which the test involves a delicate lumbar puncture procedure. After 3 failed attempts (wriggly babies are very rarely compliant) they abandoned the notion. As a result the working assumption is it was caused by meningitis and Ursula needs to complete the anti-biotic course she has been on since she moved to the ICU. She has since been moved into the rather more sedate Special Care Baby Unit (less beeping, more space) where she continues to be a hungry, alert and otherwise very healthy baby.

Fliss was discharged on Wednesday and has been going through a bit of a hormonal roller-coaster as she comes home after spending the day feeding and reading to Ursula. However the end is in site and we hope to be bringing Ursula home on Monday evening (or possibly Tuesday morning) once she has finished her course of antibiotics.

The experience has been a little unsettling. It seems I've collected the "Parental Worry" trophy a bit earlier than I was planning. However I remain grateful to the professional NHS staff who have been taking care of our precious daughter where her health and not the cost of her care has been their top priority. Meanwhile I've been back to work for a few days so as not to burn all my paternity before the family is fully assembled at home.

Reaching escape velocity

2011-11-28T20:39:00+00:00

The last few days have been frustrating. Every time we get ready to pack up and come home something comes up. First it was a bout of jaundice which needed seeing to. Now the pediatricians are being abundantly cautious about a twitch she has while she's asleep. This has extended the sentence by at least another 48 hours which is really aggravating. Having a quite day or two to myself to potter and get the house ready is one thing, but at this rate I'll have burnt all my paternity leave before my child gets home.

I feel bad for abandoning Fliss who keeps patiently sending me home to get another good nights sleep. I know it will be all right in the end but it's definitely making me aggravated. I would like my family at home please!

Do the stars shine brighter tonight?

2011-11-25T23:45:00+00:00

This was my thought as I unpacked the car tonight. It may have been the cold weather and clear skies though, it's hard to be sure. I'm currently pottering around the house tidying up and preparing to welcome Ursula to the home tomorrow. I suspect my perspective may have altered in the last few days.

Lets start with the birth. As it approached it felt much like a late night after party when everything was getting a bit hazy. You know the sort, you're sure someone said something profound but it's been a very long night.

For a variety of totally mundane reasons it had taken us 28 hours to reach the dénouement of this particular hospital visit. I'll spare the tedious details although I'll happily give you the story as I remember it over a beer if you ask me in person. 28 hours is a long time to be awake and the sensation of transforming from the theoretical future parent to an actual real one is much akin to being launched off on a roller-coaster of unknown length and duration. I have now joined that biggest of shared clubs - hello my fellow breeders, I can talk about my child now ;-)

Picture of a newborn baby looking hungry

When I was ordered to bed the first night I excitedly blurted the news across the social media. I was worried I would bore my followers with parental ramblings before being reminded there are a lot of parents out there happy to share their experiences. I'll be paying closer attention to what they say in the future on my journey to responsible adulthood.

I've ticked off a few things on my journey so far.

* My baby certainly didn't look like Winston Churchill. I don't know all those other parents cope ;-)
* Nappies aren't really an issue, parental pragmatism kicks in pretty quickly.
* Nuzzling post-feed babies are indeed cute, even to a manly bloke like myself

I'm sure I am quickly acquiring the list of stereotypical parental behaviours. I get the sense it's going to be a wild ride catching them all!