Ummmm

Had the baby......................... no time to write!

Class reunion - who looks like a bee bit their face.

We went out last night and saw some of your Mums old school friends for the first time in many years. It was strange seeing these faces all matured, some better preserved than others. Edie still looks younger than all of them. Whether its that olive skin that gives the illusion or something else im not sure, she is damn thin which seems to make you look younger, i wouldn't know about that. We went back to the local mall which is where your Mum hung out all the time as a kid and teenager. Even I spent a lot of time there when I was living at my grandparents. It is highly likely that we passed each other on a number of occasions, went to the same movies, ate at the same restaurants, shopped at the same stores. I would love to be able to transport back and see how often we crossed paths. Our subconscious would know as it picks up everything. I wonder if it can be done by hypnosis. I find this idea fascinating, that we would pass as strangers and then one day spend our lives together.

Pips got bitten by a bee on Friday night and we had to rush her off to the animal hospital at 11:30 at night. She puffed up and her heartbeat was very rapid. It seems to happen a lot with these two; six times we have had an emergency of things outside our control. It took her all weekend to recover. She had a nasty scab on her leg where she was bitten. Earlier that night we were at my Auntie Trixie's house for the last get together before my other Auntie and cousins flew off to London. Lilith was fascinated with you; she kept feeling Mums stomach and her eyes would go wide.

Took some great photos of Mum out in the garden holding flowers in a black dress. I cant wait to take pictures of the both of you out there. I think my love of photography is coming back again with a vengeance now i have good subject matter. I have always wanted to take pictures of people rather than places. Bigger challenge.

Tens - Unit Muscle Stimulator or instrument of torture?

I just recommended The Dice Man to a Goth in a second hand book store. I love recommending stuff to people, and The Dice Man can have a huge impact on people. I bought 7 books for just $25, I wonder if this is still possible for you. Remember I was talking about being a plumber, well now I like the idea of running a second hand book shop. Actually I am making myself appear more flighty than I am. Its just that I don’t really want to do this current job forever, I would like to find a job I really will enjoy, so I am just considering different options rather than suddenly deciding I want to be a spruiker for example and start to stand outside shops unannounced with a microphone.


I have not even worked out what year it will be when you read this. Let me do that now. Amuse yourself for a moment………………………………………. Ok its going to be around 2026 I think, I don’t trust my maths when working out whether you count the end of the year or the start.

I think its time for a Mum update, let’s check the score board for the latest stats - Mum has been getting the CTG scan weekly since week 35. It measures the heartbeat and uterine contractions (if there are any). You have been very active indeed and the doctors get quite surprised at the accelerations. You are a very active little baby. Everything has been fine and was again this week. She then went for her doctors appointment (this is all at the Hospital) to get her blood pressure taken and provide a urine sample to check the protein amounts. They also measure the uterus to make sure you are growing to schedule, which you were. This time she also got to have a scan to see where your head is and make sure you are in the right position, which again you are. You still favour the left side. Back to the blood pressure for a second; it was on the cusp of the high end which worried the doctor a bit because that has been really good all the way through. Of course once the doctor described all the symptoms of high blood pressure suddenly they all appeared. So for the last two days she has had to wee into a large milk container which is basically to check for preeclampsia. The end result of this would be to bring you into the world a bit earlier. We are not so concerned because after she saw the doctor and did a few other things she went back down to the nurse who has been so nice (and we are trying to set her up with Chas) and asked to do the blood pressure check again. It was fine so go figure. She is also having regular Braxton hick’s contractions without too much discomfort or really any pain. Speaking of pain - she also went to her 'tens' appointment. Tens is a Unit Muscle Stimulator that she can flick on as a distraction to labour pains. It’s a tiny thing but powerful. She put these little patches on my arm and turned it up and it was awful, im afraid I screamed like girl in a 50's horror flick.

But I gotta say, she’s HUGE now. I took some photos of her and it is so strange because the rest of her is normal size, actually smaller than before she was pregnant. When she is on the bed lying on her side, her stomach sort of spills away from her torso like it has melted a bit.

I realise it is very very close now and we finally get to meet. I'm not sure I have totally prepared myself for all this happening any time soon. Life still goes along as normal and yet in a few weeks everything will change. A lady at work says you can’t really prepare. I wish I could pop in a time machine and see myself with you; I just think it would help me place myself as a father. I seem to need visuals to make things real for me. I learn best by being shown things. So I guess my learning begins when your Mum introduces you by pushing really hard!

This weeks 'Friday Affettuoso' - a John Cale cover

This weeks 'Friday Affettuoso' is a wonderful cover of John Cale's masterpiece 'I keep a close watch'. Originally released on Helen Of Troy it also appeared on Music For a New Society.

John Cale is one of the few originals (other notable is Bowie) willing to push himself into new aural landscapes whether it sells or not. From his work with Velvet Underground to his solo work, there has been no compromising. He has also produced such artists as The Stooges, Nico, Patti Smith and Jonathan Richman.



Other John Cale recommendations - Paris 1919, Vintage Violence, Slow Dazzle, HoboSapiens.

Star Trek in the morning, husbands warning

Its 5am and Mum has disappeared again. I can uncurl myself from my fetal position at the corner of the bed and spread out like a snow angel and make contented little gurgling noises. Mum is in the living room watching Deep Space 9. She has been getting up around 4 or 5am more often now. She wakes up sore and very alert to all kinds of distracting noises, like me and my bizarre sleeping noises that range from sudden snorts at the back of my throat to smacking my lips and going Ahhhhh. A few minutes of that and she gives up and gets up to eat some nectarines and drink another litre of milk. Her taste buds must be playing up because she keeps handing me these bits of fruit to eat claiming them to be the most perfectly awesome taste sensation ever. I sink my teeth into these barely ripe delicacies and am hard pressed to find any taste in them at all. Its like eating wet foam.

You are turning mums placenta into an indoor rock climbing arena. You are moving all over the place although your preference is the left hand side. You then shimmie over so your back is on Mums right hand side which makes her tummy all misshapen. If Mum is not in the correct side in bed you give a few kicks to communicate your displeasure. She cannot wait to sleep on her back again, her favoured position. She has even found that she is getting pains under her ribs, as you push up with your foot or bum into her already squashed innards. She has to stand up and move around a bit to push you back down again. I got some great footage of you moving around a few nights back. Sadie was amazed by the ruckus you cause in there.

Nan Baker is taking next year off golf to help out with whatever is required. You Uncle Baker is actually telling his Mum that she better not spend more time with you than with his boy. The hilarious thing is that not once have they let him stay at his grandparents in 11 years. They don’t invite her down or contact her unless they want something, and now he is jealous because we will be letting her look after you. There are some real numbers in this world and our family has its fair share.

I have another great saying for you - 'as attentive as a three-toed sloth on cooking sherry'.

Listening to John Safran Podcast on Triple J.
Learning all about promiting websites by using key words for search engines to pick up.

Loving my hair at the moment, im beginning to look like a 70's hearthrob like Shaun Cassidy.


I get the impression reading other Parenting Blogs that these posts will not be anywhere near as large or often as they are now. Sleep takes precedence.

Carns is bored

Carns is bored,
originally uploaded by The Dad Diaries.

When is this kid going to arrive?

Scribbit's Write-away contest

Scribbit's Blog is running a write-away contest with the topic "My favorite day". I thought i might add this Post as my entry. Hope you like.

My favorite day has not occurred yet. Some people would say "you can’t have a favorite day if it’s in the future you silly man", but all I can say to that is pish posh. The day I am referring to is the birth of my daughter, which by all accounts is set to be Christmas day 2007 (and no we are not calling her Holly). There are those detractors and nay sayer’s out there who smugly like to remind me that there is no guarantee of things going according to plan; that all kinds of problems can arise and that you must be prepared for anything. Well duh! I have never been under the misapprehension that anything in life is guaranteed; I certainly do not recall signing a contract on the non-proliferation of bad times before becoming a twinkle in my Dad's eye. For you to fully appreciate what joy is you must first experience suffering. Sometimes the two can appear together like some unholy marriage of convenience. I am prepared for things not going according to plan, but I won’t relinquish my belief that the birth of my little girl is going to be my favorite day. We are bombarded by televangelists and the like telling us to have faith, and im not saying that I totally agree with their method but I must concur with their sentiment, but with a twist. In order for you to have faith in something higher you must first have faith in yourself; faith in your abilities, in your strengths, in your partner and faith in the future. To quote Timbuk 3 - "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades". So my faith remains unshaken by the what if's of this world. I must hold on to the belief that there is good in this world as well as bad, and I refuse to turn the birth of my child into another reflection on uncertainty. I claim this day as a good day, a joyous day, my favorite day.

More holidays to Apollo Bay, less work please

It’s getting real close now. Down to weeks. Your Mum has put a towel on the car seat just in case the levee breaks. "I work on the levee, mama both night and day, I work so hard, to keep the water away. It's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan, gonna leave my baby, and my happy home". My job is my levee too, I resent it enough now let alone when you arrive. I still want to be an at home Dad for you. Your Mum enjoys her job and gets all the holidays whereas I hate the job and get very few holidays. I would love to be around for you as you grow up. Its not always possible however, we shall just have to see. I hope we have given you enough of our time that you don’t feel short changed.

This weekend was another backbreaking chain gang of chores entirely of my own choosing. I have been painting so much that on Friday when I took Nan to the MSO concert I was barely able to applaud. My arms shaking violently as I strained to raise them and provide yet another encore opportunity for the conductor. You’re Mum and I have been to five concerts this year for the MSO. This last one we decided I should take my Gran for a night out. It was at the Town Hall instead of the usual showier venue. Nan told me that the last time she was in the town hall was for the Bing Crosby appreciation society club dance when she was 17 (that would make it around 1946). She talked about all the places she used to go on nights out and for lunches. She went on a date with an English sailor once and was escorted back to the station where he shook her hand and said "Thankyou I had a lovely time, good evening Miss Howie". I told this to your Mum and she just rolled her eyes and went "gypped". She has a dirty mind sometimes. My Nan also volunteered in a canteen in Collins St where she made sandwiches and coffee for the servicemen. She met my Grandad from memory working in Myer together. I will be getting all these stories and adding them to the diary later. I told her I want to video them telling all kinds of stories about their life for you. The great thing about digital format is that we can just shoot for hours and store it on a hard drive. The stories she tells me are so amazing, such a different life to what yours will be, although it is my intention to make sure you experience some of the same things they did. Volunteering at old age homes, tree planting days, things like that.

Grandpa tells me that when he was an underage house painter he used to have to carry all his equipment, including the ladder and paint tins in the train with his bike. Can you imagine that now? If you want evidence for how lazy we have become just look at the beginning of this paragraph. Poor little Dad has sore arms because he has done a little painting for Gods sakes. I milk it for all its worth once I get back upstairs, making wincing noises and rubbing my arms like I just wrestled with Zeus. So by the time you have arrived she has already got a good 15 years Mothering experience from looking after me.

I just read a Blog about a guy whose ear hair was mistaken for a stray bit of clothing fluff. I commented that I have so much fuzz on my ears that if I stand in front of a light it looks like I am growing angel’s wings out the side of my head. I also have either chest hair creeping up to my chin or a beard which is losing the fight against gravity and moving down to my chest. In the last year my eyebrows have established a few rogue hairs which have broken with convention and decided to create an upper canopy, which may provide shade for the shorter well behaved hairs but does nothing for my faces symmetry. By trimming the offending hairs to their regular size begins a vicious cycle that only exacerbates over time. For once you trim that hair the surrounding hairs think this is an opportunity to take over the position of head boy. All of a sudden you have a race for the sun on your hands, as your eyebrow begins to look more like a pair of hairy caterpillars on growth hormones. Give it a few years and I won’t need to wear a capped hat.

Your Mum is having weird baby dreams. She just told me about this one this morning. She went into labour and so I rushed her to the hospital. Then we are sitting in the waiting room and the nurse comes up to us and hands the baby over to her. She couldn’t remember having it though and asked me if she had to take any drugs. I told her no and she did really well. She then uncovered the baby who was all wrapped up including her head. She was beautiful, but then the more she looked the more she started noticing dog features, the eyes got bigger and the face started sprouting hair and the ears got pointy. By the end she said you looked exactly like a Chihuahua.

Christmas is soon upon us as well, a fact that I am sure you are tired of hearing because it will fall so close to your birthday. I was talking to my Nan about how the Christmas spirit of community and group celebration is virtually gone from the workplace because they don’t wish to spend the money on their staff any more. I said that this is part of a bigger issue and one in which will effectively wipe out the concept of loyalty and pride in your work. People are now thinking if they can’t even be bothered giving us a decent Christmas party why should I put in any effort? Cost cutting does not save money for a company. It breeds apathy and resentment which then effects performance and the bottom line. I can remember going to our local social Club when I was a kid to see Santa. It was a venue where people can meet and have a drink, eat dinner, have a dance etc. They put on a great day for the family for all the Club members. Santa would even come in a helicopter (he would sit in my grandparents leather chair which I hope will come to us). It was damn the expense and let’s give them a great time to say thanks for being a member. This does not happen any more. The Club itself is now just another venue built around pokies machines. Well I will try my best to make sure you have a ball during Christmas. I will aim to get the street involved and have a big Christmas party in the park for everyone to come to. Am I an idealist or has it actually come true? I hope that I have risen the occasion and done everything I can to make you a well rounded person.

So anyway, back to Bach. The Friday concert was the best yet, Bach is my favourite music. It just speaks to me and I don’t have to struggle to understand it and I am never bored listening to it. What is different is that his music often doesn’t have any melodies that you immediately recognise or even remember once the piece is finished. It’s those intertwining lines of melody that don’t really go anywhere that appeal to me. It doesn’t really go anywhere, you don’t recall strong repeating themes repeating and then given variations in different keys and tempos. It doesn’t always resolve itself in obvious ways that someone like Mozart is so good at. Its music of the ether, Gods music. It is the kind of music you can listen to for years before it becomes too familiar. The perfect desert island disk would be Bach. We also listened to a new Clarinet Concerto by Ross Edwards which was wonderful and finally Beethoven's 5th which is also one of the most perfect pieces of music ever created. It was a wonderful concert and im glad I got to share it with my Grandma.

Im sitting here on the top floor looking out to the Dandenong ranges. The dark grey clouds are hovering low above our house and lighting strikes light up the sky. Rain has become more precious than oil.

Bought the Definitive Rolf Harris and 'The most relaxing Bach album in the world'.

Listening to music we can play during your birth, here are some I found today -


Shostakovich - Symphony No.9 in E Flat Major, Op. 70 - Moderato
Haydn - Symphony No.22 in E Flat Major, "The Philosopher" - Adagio
Hayden - Symphony No.26 in D Minor, "Lamentatione" - Adagio (Chorale)
Mahler - Symphony No.1 in D, "The Titan" - 3. Feierlich und gemessen, nicht schleppend
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.14 "Moonlight" - Adagio sostenuto
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.8, "Pathetique" - Adagio cantabile
Beethoven No.6, "Pastoral" - Allegro ma non troppo