Fighting The Flab

Hello folks, once again I am going to try and revive this blog... as I have had nearly a 2 month break, I would like to say not a lot has happened, but I would be lieing, as we have had lots happen in that time.

A brief recap of December....
Christmas came, and went, in a flurry of family, feasting and present giving. It was also Albert's first Christmas! We hosted it this year and had family around us the whole Christmas season, and to be honest I could not think of a better way of spending it!

Albert on his first Christmas

Kerry went mad with the grub at New Year!

Kerry and I

We hosted new year as well! Which was another party and fun time with more food and booze... (See a pattern?) Again surrounded by family and close friends. I have posted a couple of photos, and once permissions are sought might even post some more!

So December was in general a good month. :o) In fact, I lie, it was a great month. I loved every moment of it. I got a great present from Kerry as well, a Sony alpha 35 with a couple of lenses and some filters. It is a camera I have admired for a while from a distance as I could not afford it. It was the ideal gift and I did not annoy anyone by taking over 4000 pictures in the space of a week! Well, OK maybe a couple of people lol...
I hope Kerry liked her presents as much as I loved mine. I think she did.

Its Saturday! :o) not that it makes a lot of difference in my life as I am still heading out to work at 7am, although should be back by 11, well that is unless the M25 does the same thing it did yesterday. Yesterday I was quite local with my jobs, the furthest away being Guilford. I traveled in all about 150 miles, which should not have taken me long. However, it took me over 6 hours to do that distance! The M25 for whatever reason, was being a pain. Flooded here and there, accidents and break downs all over the place. 3 hours plus to go junction 4 to the Dartford tunnel! Grrrrr.
So today and I am working in London, just around the corner from the Gherkin building, which close up looks impressive.

Anyway, Albert had his 8 week check on Thursday and a couple of injections. His check showed him to be fine and a very strong (Dr's words not mine) baby!! Go Albert :o) Then he had his injections... which kinda upset him for the rest of the day, he screamed the Dr's surgery down, then the house and just wouldn't settle at all :o( still a day later and he was fine again. apparently he doesn't like being jabbed by sharp bits of metal.... go figure...

Callum is off training this morning with a new football team in the Southend A division, so I hope he does well there, he really is a talented goal keeper, just hope the nerves dont get the better of him.

Stay safe :o)

Well it has been a pretty uneventful couple of days in the Dennis household. I have been working and Kerry has had her hands full with the kids! Amazingly she has not killed any of them yet, and still finds time to run the house and fit in some Zumba! She is totally amazing :o). Albert is getting big, he is now in size 3 nappies (not sure how the sizes work, but they are the ones I have to buy now) and his cold seems to have abated some what. This has had a knock on effect where he is eating properly (well technically I think its drinking) and now has started sleeping for longer as well. The last 2 nights he has managed to do 7 hours straight both nights :o) I thought I would use this as an excuse to post some more pictures of him, heehee.

Minutes Old

2 Month Old

2 Weeks Old

Month Old

 So there you go a few pics from his short life so far. Yes I know he is gorgeous :o) But then he has his mum to thank for that!





On a slightly different note I have noticed Dan has been writing comments, which is all good. His blog is well worth a read if you haven't come across it before. I loved his baby checklist which he rewrote as a basic program for me to understand, which has proved so helpful recently I decided to steal it and post it here.

10 RUN "FOOD"
20 IF NOT "FOOD" GOTO 30
30 RUN "BUM"
40 IF NOT "BUM" GOTO 50
50 RUN "WIND"
60 IF NOT "WIND" GOTO 70
70 RUN "CUDDLE"
80 IF NOT "CUDDLE" GOTO 90
90 RUN "BUILD A BRIDGE"
100 END

The only problem I find is that I now have several bridges with no where to put them, so I think I will drop them off in Dans front garden :o) lol.

So, Sunday went by, after the naked Zumba incident we started into the Garden (I was still wearing my dressing gown whilst we did this). Cut the grass, moved the trampoline and table around and generally tidied up a bit. It now vaguely resembles a garden again :o) After this we chilled, watched a film, Just Go With It, which was OK. I like Sandlers work, but this one took me a while to get into it. Not sure why, just didn't seem to sparkle from the off, and it has to be said was a very predictable story line, but it was OK to kill a couple of hours.

Monday was an office day at work, with most of the analysts going through the really exciting audit bits and pieces and making sure all the new publications and regs are being met by us. We have to do it now and then and it is as bad as it sounds, but in the industry we work in, it is a necessary evil, I mean anyone would think this asbestos stuff could kill you...

Kerry went off to Zumba tonight, and that is when Albert started screaming. I don't mean crying, which I tune out quite well, I know I am a terrible father, but I mean screaming. Changed his bum, he screamed, fed him, he screamed, winded him, he screamed, cooled him down, he screamed, warmed him up (No Dan, not in a microwave) he screamed. To the point where after an hour I was considering phoning, my mum, my father in law, even thought about calling Dan (D'oh).
After some thought, which very much went along the line of:
don't panic, 
your new at this, 
babies cry, 
its natural, 
he might be hurt, 
perhaps he got stung by a wasp (no wasps around), 
check him anyway, 
good plan. 
So an in depth examination of Albert, after 15 minutes of this and Albert still screaming I decided that the wasp sting/ insect bite was out, and all his major limbs were still attached. Yet he was still screaming.... changed his bum again (Albert doesn't like dirty nappies) still screaming, tried to feed him again, he took about 3 ounces and promptly passed out 21:45. He slept then till 05:20, no night feeds nothing. Straight through. EXCELLENT! Although he still doesn't seem right... Oh well, I do try not to panic, but I think its natural, still at least I didn't start calling everyone and causing a major scene... Only I know how close I came to that. ;o) Shh don't tell anyone..

It started at 5am when Albert woke up this morning, thanks Albert... anyhow, I got up, fed him, changed him, settled him down again (or not as the little git wouldn't go back to sleep) got up went downstairs and put Deep Space nine on, we sat watching that whilst the house slowly woke up. By 9am everyone was up.

Yummy!!

I love Sunday mornings, especially as I rarely have to work on a Sunday. I made a breakfast of boiled eggs and soldiers...

After tidying up and feeding Albert again, Kerry and I decided we would break out the new Zumba game she bought yesterday whilst at Lakeside.
Now let me explain what Zumba is for the uninitiated, Zumba is a workout, lets not get this wrong, yes it uses Latin and calypso beats, but it is high energy bouncing about.. something I relished with open arms...

Let me explain, that Kerry has being going to Zumba classes for about a month now, I have not. Kerry has rhythm and style and I do not. Kerry knows some of the moves and, yep, you guessed it I do not. Kerry also has leggings and a top on... I however, am in a dressing gown.

So we started... Fired up the X Box and the Kinect and we were off! Bouncing about, following the on screen person... It was brilliant. Then the scores came up at the end... Kerry Zumba Pro, Myself Zumba Jamming... So with new vigour and determination I watched the tutorials, I studied and gave it another go... Zumba Jamming. Kerry, without breaking a sweat, Zumba Pro. More training, more tutorials, more goes... I score Zumba Jamming and a lot of laughter from the settee... Kerry thinks naked Zumba is the new thing... I think I should pay more attention to my dress and less to the competition I am hopelessly taking part in... Oh well, at least the kids were out...

Seriously... Zumba... Love it... give it a go!!! I am going to classes... so watch out for the big bloke with no rhythm jumping up and down like a loon for  a while! That will be me! :o)

Awww the little one.... he is now 53 days old and is doing really well. At the moment he has a cold of sorts and as such is being a royal pain in the **** as he cant breath properly, so isn't eating properly, as such he is now sleeping less than a couple of hours at a time. Other than that, he is perfect.
Weighed in at 12lb 9oz last week and was 58cms long which puts him between the 75th and 90th percentile, or as the lady at the clinic said, a big boy!

This is him earlier today! I know cute isn't he? lol.

Kerry is totally amazing as well at the moment, balancing everything going on within our lives and looking after Albert. It is impossible to say how I would cope without her running around, especially at night, Kerry does the majority if not all of the night feeds at the moment as I have to get up for work.
Did I mention Kerry is amazing? Well she is.

OK, so technically it is not the babies first feed, as Kerry has been dealing with that since the birth (well, she is breast feeding and apparently I can not do that! Who knew?) but we have started expressing milk as there are a couple of events Kerry wants to go too, and will be away from the baby for longer than normal, so I will have to feed Albert.

So, as I said we have been playing with the milk pumps (and no, that’s not as dirty as it sounds) we did some research online and bought the Mothercare Electric Pump mainly because of the price and we decided we wouldn’t need to express too often. So after a few days Kerry had a go with it. On her first attempt she expressed nothing, but pointed out it hurt bit, on her second attempt we achieved 2 oz which doesn’t sound a lot but is almost enough for one feed. (I noticed that this pump makes a very distinctive noise when switched on and using the pressure relief valve, rather reminiscent of a cow mooing, which of course I pointed out) Fortunately Kerry saw the funny side of it and we had a good laugh whilst she expressed the next time. On the third attempt Kerry expressed 3 oz, so we are getting better at it. :o)

Anyhow, Kerry wasn’t feeling great the other day so I suggested that I used one of the bottles as it wouldn’t keep much longer, and she agreed. So, there I was, bottle in one hand, baby in other, ready for the first time I would feed Albert. I have read about it, watched it and to be honest was looking forward to it. What I did not realise was quite how difficult it could be lol... it is quite a balancing act. One that I hope becomes easier with practice! We managed it and moved on to the winding (which I have a lot more practice with).

It was an amazing thing and I look forward to the next time I can feed him which hopefully wont be too long. I think we are going to try and get the moo pump out tonight so hopefully we will have some more milk for next week.

So Albert James Mervyn Dennis arrived on the 27th June at 01:33 weighing in at 8lbs 2.5oz (3.7KG) he is now 1 week old!! Well done young man... (yes I am new at this, so will no doubt waffle on about how cute he is for ages... If you don't like this sort of thing check out Dan's blog, who waffles about everything, and moans a bit as well...)
 The birth went well, with Kerry doing an amazing job, labour started at about 7:30 and was quite slow up till about 11, when it suddenly went into warp drive! An ambulance was called and we were deposited at Southend Hospital, the paramedics were good (even if the woman did threaten to hit me for asking Kerry if she was OK...) but the midwives were amazing! So calm, so matter of fact. Albert flew out into the world, and I think even caught the midwife out a little bit.I did get to cut the cord, which was very cool, if a little bit weird, cutting the 2 most precious things in your life with a pair of scissors. Anyhow, here he is at about 4 Min's old!