experiment

In case you are wondering what on earth is going on around here—or rather, why on earth nothing is—isn't it obvious? I'm conducting an experimental study of the effect of neglect on the developmental trajectory of a blog. And while you wouldn't do it with people, there isn't a blog ethics committee yet to discourage me.

6:37am. Time to head to work...

tired

Tired. Seems to be how I'm feeling much of the time. I'm coming to feel fairly strongly that this commuting thing isn't for me, with the experience no doubt magnified by taking the slower option of catching the train every day, with the more-than-occasional lift with my brother on hold as he is away for a fortnight. Thursday placed an emphasis with trains being delayed in both directions leading to spending almost five hours commuting. That's just nuts.

So we're now thinking seriously about looking for houses south of the city, which would place us near bus routes that pass my work. Housing down there is much more expensive—we may well need to settle for a two bedroom place—but it will be worth it for the extra family time. I realised on the weekend how tired I was, and that I didn't think I'd want to continue the commute even if we weren't having a baby. I can't imagine what it would be like once the baby is here.

Bronwyn meanwhile says she was having some spells last week where she was paranoid about getting to sleep. She's had some stressful times with school too. There've only been a couple of days she's felt as tired, and she puts it down to the stress, not the pregnancy! That's been going well.

So that's our latest progress. Now, we just need to be mortgage-eligible... (Read, permanent employment contract.) And there has indeed been progress on the job front. But you're not getting it in writing, until I do... So you'll have to wait!

backlog

Well, on Sunday night I finally sent out an email update, telling the world—or at least about 200 of them—about our arrival in NZ, what we're doing, and about the baby. It's been interesting. Apologies to those who were just slightly and perhaps a little reasonably offended that they didn't even know we were back in New Zealand. Though posting these apologies here is a bit pointless though, since if they were readers of this blog they'd clearly have known everything already!

I'm massively behind on electronic communication, and beyond all the spam I've been deleting we have over 100 genuine emails from individuals to respond to, many of which I haven't even had time to read. So it was that today I had to deal with not just one but two pairs of friends that have babies on the way as well, that had I been reading I would have known about some time ago. Way to go both of you! I won't name names, but feel free to out yourselves in the comments if you wish.  : )

Meanwhile, while the watching-DVDs-on-the-train story is a good one, I've only done that once. However, I'm getting a lot of reading done, over 200 pages since yesterday. I've finished the more-than-rather-controversial On Becoming Babywise yesterday, and am on page 100 exactly of the (much more widely accepted) Penguin History of New Zealand. But I think I'm going to need to put the laptop in the bag at least a day or two a week, and try and use some of the time to clear correspondence backlog...

So hang with us. It's not just you, we're neglecting everybody, so there is a kind of egalitarian flavour to our distain at least. Hopefully it won't last.

Oh. And I had a job interview today. I'll keep you posted.  : )

two

Ha! Two in a row...
What? That does so count as an update.

Shutup.

trends

Well, it's a worrying trend when we haven't even had the baby yet, and already my update schedule has been shot to pieces. Just continuing the bad, I couldn't even select a photo for the new header from something I took last month, because I've discovered I didn't shoot a single image in April. Unbelievable. So we're harking back to Doubtful Sound, from the 31st of March, which admittedly was well worth a review in any case. But man, we've felt busy.

It's funny, because it hasn't been the “sorry you missed us, we were just in Prague you see” kind of busy we've grown accustomed to. Rather, it was the “man it is complicated to have nearly all the carpet in a house replaced while you're living in it” kind of busy, and the exciting “I'd better iron this shirt tonight 'cause 5:45am is quite early enough to get up without adding that” kind of busy.

Which, really, suggests you should just stop reading now, not just because I sound so pathetic, but worse, because I sound like I'm trying to sound pathetic. Which is pathetic, really.

But we're well. Baby growing well, according to scan at 19 weeks 5 days on Friday... uncooperative, like the father, but growing well. (The baby wouldn't roll over onto it's back for the ultrasonographer.) But we now know it's definitely a boy... or a girl... And I have even felt it kicking, just once, a couple of weeks ago. That's quite early, apparently, for a first pregnancy. I'm a junkie already, though haven't yet been able to feel it again. Bronwyn continues to be well too. She started teaching again last week, back at High School. A bit of a challenge, right now. I think they are lucky to have her.

And I'm managing the commute. I've read The Da Vinci Code and even an entire book on the traps of Real Estate (...agents, mostly). Once I even watched a 42-minute episode of Star Trek on my laptop with earbuds during the 50 minute train journey down, watching another episode on the return journey. Geek paradise. I quite frequently catch a lift with my brother too, and as long as we avoid peak hour traffic, that saves about an hour of my day.

Meanwhile, with half the pregnancy gone, we're trying to look beyond the birth and actually take some time to thinking about the parenting-a-neonate process. It's a minefield of ideas out there...