Next week it will be quieter and then I will take it easy.
I think I have been saying this since the year started. I am sure that we all have. How is it that we manage to fill our lives with so much activity? How can there be so much to do? And why do we have to do all of it?
I clearly remember those days as a child when I was thoroughly bored. Nothing grabbed my fancy as I listlessly walked circles around the house. And yet I would gladly trade some of my business for some of that time now!
I am my own worst enemy when it comes to time. The moment I have nothing to do, I fill that void with all sorts of things. As soon as I see the back of one project, another one twice as exciting rears its enticing head. And then I am sucked back into my endless cycle of rushing to get it all done. Moments to spare are not appreciated until I don’t have any of them. I really cannot remember having very many this entire year. I have this notion that a number of spare moments are waiting for me just around the next week, but I am almost prepared to admit that I have been wrong. There are none in store for me at all...
I am a little frightened at the thought!
Don’t worry, next week I am going to...
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Screaming and screaming
Famous last words!!!
Tuesday night saw me posting a line about having absolutely nothing to do. It did not last long...
Isabella was awake by nine o clock, screaming her head off in pain. She was inconsolable to the point that her whole body was shaking. We managed to get in a couple of ten minute sleeps through the next couple of hours. At around one in the morning, our ears ringing and our concern at an all time high, we decided that we had better get this child to hospital.
But she fell asleep in my arms, apparently exhausted. We tiredly got back into bed expecting another ten minute nap and were surprised to be woken about two hours later, Donna still fully dressed.
Somehow we made it to the morning; all three of us tired and unhappy. This being our third child meant that we had a number of theories as to what was wrong with her. Obviously she was in some serious pain, but from what? Donna had her off to a nurse friend of ours to have her checked out before we spent an extraordinary sum of money to enter the paediatrician’s rooms.
The diagnosis was simple.
Teeth!!!
We did not see that coming...
Anyhow I have learnt my lesson; never will I claim to have absolutely nothing to do again!
Tuesday night saw me posting a line about having absolutely nothing to do. It did not last long...
Isabella was awake by nine o clock, screaming her head off in pain. She was inconsolable to the point that her whole body was shaking. We managed to get in a couple of ten minute sleeps through the next couple of hours. At around one in the morning, our ears ringing and our concern at an all time high, we decided that we had better get this child to hospital.
But she fell asleep in my arms, apparently exhausted. We tiredly got back into bed expecting another ten minute nap and were surprised to be woken about two hours later, Donna still fully dressed.
Somehow we made it to the morning; all three of us tired and unhappy. This being our third child meant that we had a number of theories as to what was wrong with her. Obviously she was in some serious pain, but from what? Donna had her off to a nurse friend of ours to have her checked out before we spent an extraordinary sum of money to enter the paediatrician’s rooms.
The diagnosis was simple.
Teeth!!!
We did not see that coming...
Anyhow I have learnt my lesson; never will I claim to have absolutely nothing to do again!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
In and out of office
Today was a fun day!
I started off with a little work and then mixed it up with the shovelling of sand on our new building site. Squatter house number three was up but had to be moved about a metre backwards so as not to encroach on a property boundary. It should be finished by tomorrow, and then onto house number 4!
After getting in the foreman’s way, way too many times, I made my way back to my office. More issues got sorted. With last night’s leftovers in my belly, I headed on my way to see the progress on my old car. She had been home for a number of weeks but my overseas parts arrived last week and so off she went for the rest of her make over. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for the statements that will unlock the SA Police Services and ensure I get new chassis and engine numbers.
I drove the old girl around at great speeds and with much joy! The steering is butter smooth, the engine sweet, and the automatic box slick. My good man Peet, the mechanic, has even refurbished her old starter motor and it now works like a charm. At long last I can see myself using this car as my daily ride; it sure is going to be fun!
I managed to get back into my office before an afternoon coffee meeting with a mate to solve the problems of the world.
Now here I sit, back in the office, the kids in bed, the television off, and absolutely nothing to do. What a wonderful change!
I started off with a little work and then mixed it up with the shovelling of sand on our new building site. Squatter house number three was up but had to be moved about a metre backwards so as not to encroach on a property boundary. It should be finished by tomorrow, and then onto house number 4!
After getting in the foreman’s way, way too many times, I made my way back to my office. More issues got sorted. With last night’s leftovers in my belly, I headed on my way to see the progress on my old car. She had been home for a number of weeks but my overseas parts arrived last week and so off she went for the rest of her make over. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for the statements that will unlock the SA Police Services and ensure I get new chassis and engine numbers.
I drove the old girl around at great speeds and with much joy! The steering is butter smooth, the engine sweet, and the automatic box slick. My good man Peet, the mechanic, has even refurbished her old starter motor and it now works like a charm. At long last I can see myself using this car as my daily ride; it sure is going to be fun!
I managed to get back into my office before an afternoon coffee meeting with a mate to solve the problems of the world.
Now here I sit, back in the office, the kids in bed, the television off, and absolutely nothing to do. What a wonderful change!
Friday, May 14, 2010
Oh Mom
Mothers are actually incredible beings. Listing all of the reasons for this bold statement would probably bore you to tears, unless of course if you are a mother!
Instead I will settle with my main reason for this amazing claim, which is the person of my wife. But I could also include my mother, and my wife's mother, and just about all mothers.
It is not unusual for dads like me to be very wary of babies. I did not play with dollies or spend hours dreaming of the day I would have myself a live one. My experience with babies started the day the doctor delivered my first born, and then plonked him into my open inexperienced and well suntanned arms. The race was on for me to develop my well hidden baby talents before baby moved on to toddlerhood. Needless to say, I was very glad when he exited his baby days and took his first steps at nine months. The error of my thinking was soon revealed as my walking boy catastrophe could go where he wished but had no communication skills whatsoever!
I was a little more prepared for baby boy number 2, in that I had built bigger arm muscles through learning to surf. Matt got old and wise rather quickly and knows pretty much everything at the ripe old age of five. Now I enjoy debating the benefits of nuclear fission with him on the odd occasion!
Matt had arrived just three years behind Luke and so I could reap the benefits of my vast remembered baby experience, whilst watching my wife handle him from a good distance.
Work afforded me the wonderful luxury of being able to escape into the relative bliss of my car, zoom into peak traffic, and doze my way into the office. There the day would pass in a haze of sleep deprived email responses and sporadic outbursts at meetings. Understandably my stress levels would rise significantly at the end of the day as I feared my return to the mother ship. Walking in the door, an urchin would automatically attach itself to my leg, and I would find myself juggling a laptop, and a screaming baby that had been aggressively thrust into my arms. A fine welcome home indeed! In time I got better at leaving the laptop at work, dodging the crawling limpet, and screaming louder than all of them. It didn’t help matters but boy I felt good!
Bring on baby number three! Just five years on and my baby memory banks seem to be worryingly empty. Perhaps there was never very much in them to begin with. Baby number three finds me working at home, a significant change from that long gone age. Now I am immersed in the new life of a growing baby and am appalled at what I have discovered.
Donna spends just about every waking moment with baby Isabella, as well as a number of non waking moments! Life for her has become an endless stream of dirty nappies, gurgling, crying, eating, puking, and variable timed naps. There is also a fair bit of screaming, and the jury is out on who is louder, mother or daughter!
I look on in horror as Donna calmly deals with the inanely boring routine of rearing a baby, and then mixes it up with the continuous demands of mom’s taxi. I certainly missed all of this whilst beavering away at work. I am beginning to think that it is far easier to bash out business plans, create national strategies, deal with belligerent customers, and fire some staff, than devote your waking day to the needs of a young mushroom completely unable to communicate.
I have come to the conclusion that there can be no substitute for a mother’s love and no doubt mothers pay dearly for that love in terms of their sanity. I do need to come clean and publically announce that I could not do it!
In just a couple of months (or perhaps a year or three), my daughter will proudly don her pink wetsuit and tightly grasp her pink surf board under her arm. Then perhaps I may be on my game then!
For now, I can but bow respectfully to my wife and thank her for her incredible patience with all of the rest of us, for her great sacrifice in terms of her body and her time, and for the endless quantities of love that she pours into this new being. Our daughter!
And to all the other moms out there – you guys rock too!
Instead I will settle with my main reason for this amazing claim, which is the person of my wife. But I could also include my mother, and my wife's mother, and just about all mothers.
It is not unusual for dads like me to be very wary of babies. I did not play with dollies or spend hours dreaming of the day I would have myself a live one. My experience with babies started the day the doctor delivered my first born, and then plonked him into my open inexperienced and well suntanned arms. The race was on for me to develop my well hidden baby talents before baby moved on to toddlerhood. Needless to say, I was very glad when he exited his baby days and took his first steps at nine months. The error of my thinking was soon revealed as my walking boy catastrophe could go where he wished but had no communication skills whatsoever!
I was a little more prepared for baby boy number 2, in that I had built bigger arm muscles through learning to surf. Matt got old and wise rather quickly and knows pretty much everything at the ripe old age of five. Now I enjoy debating the benefits of nuclear fission with him on the odd occasion!
Matt had arrived just three years behind Luke and so I could reap the benefits of my vast remembered baby experience, whilst watching my wife handle him from a good distance.
Work afforded me the wonderful luxury of being able to escape into the relative bliss of my car, zoom into peak traffic, and doze my way into the office. There the day would pass in a haze of sleep deprived email responses and sporadic outbursts at meetings. Understandably my stress levels would rise significantly at the end of the day as I feared my return to the mother ship. Walking in the door, an urchin would automatically attach itself to my leg, and I would find myself juggling a laptop, and a screaming baby that had been aggressively thrust into my arms. A fine welcome home indeed! In time I got better at leaving the laptop at work, dodging the crawling limpet, and screaming louder than all of them. It didn’t help matters but boy I felt good!
Bring on baby number three! Just five years on and my baby memory banks seem to be worryingly empty. Perhaps there was never very much in them to begin with. Baby number three finds me working at home, a significant change from that long gone age. Now I am immersed in the new life of a growing baby and am appalled at what I have discovered.
Donna spends just about every waking moment with baby Isabella, as well as a number of non waking moments! Life for her has become an endless stream of dirty nappies, gurgling, crying, eating, puking, and variable timed naps. There is also a fair bit of screaming, and the jury is out on who is louder, mother or daughter!
I look on in horror as Donna calmly deals with the inanely boring routine of rearing a baby, and then mixes it up with the continuous demands of mom’s taxi. I certainly missed all of this whilst beavering away at work. I am beginning to think that it is far easier to bash out business plans, create national strategies, deal with belligerent customers, and fire some staff, than devote your waking day to the needs of a young mushroom completely unable to communicate.
I have come to the conclusion that there can be no substitute for a mother’s love and no doubt mothers pay dearly for that love in terms of their sanity. I do need to come clean and publically announce that I could not do it!
In just a couple of months (or perhaps a year or three), my daughter will proudly don her pink wetsuit and tightly grasp her pink surf board under her arm. Then perhaps I may be on my game then!
For now, I can but bow respectfully to my wife and thank her for her incredible patience with all of the rest of us, for her great sacrifice in terms of her body and her time, and for the endless quantities of love that she pours into this new being. Our daughter!
And to all the other moms out there – you guys rock too!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Sleeping like a baby
Wow last night was wonderful and absolutely terrifying!
Dear Isabella has had a terrible cold over the last couple of days. Any sleep that she has had, has been interrupted by coughing fits, which results in her waking up screaming. It is so difficult to watch her struggling and not be able to help her understand it all.
Our nights have been eventful considering she has been waking up every two hours on a good stretch, and every couple of minutes on a bad one. Mix in some incredible storms with huge winds, and our lives have become more sleep deprived than ever!
Last night we were in bed by 22h40. I awoke for the first time at 04h00. Confused and disoriented. How on earth could I have slept through Isabella’s continuous waking? Even worse, how could I just leave my wife to sort out baby all night?
Donna was fast asleep and so I got up to check the bottles. I counted them a couple of times to make sure. All three were there and still full. It made no sense, as it meant that Isabella had not woken and been given a bottle, impossible! I noticed the monitor was off and so I turned it on, listening for a moment to the ominous sound of silence. Now my mind started to work, was she sleeping soundly or had something more ominous happened to her?
I was trying to decide if I should check on her and risk waking her when she suddenly sighed. Relief flooded my body, she was fine. Donna woke up a little later, groggy and asking some rather nonsensical questions about the monitor as she could not work out how it had gone on. Some conversations should really not take place in the depths of the night! We did manage to work out that our daughter had been asleep for seven hours.
Isabella eventually woke up just after 6h00, nine hours after she had gone to bed. Donna and I had managed an unbroken 5 hours of sleep each. Incredible!!!
Now, I cannot wait to make my presence felt on this day!!! Amazing how in moments of darkness there can be these incredible flashes of light...
Dear Isabella has had a terrible cold over the last couple of days. Any sleep that she has had, has been interrupted by coughing fits, which results in her waking up screaming. It is so difficult to watch her struggling and not be able to help her understand it all.
Our nights have been eventful considering she has been waking up every two hours on a good stretch, and every couple of minutes on a bad one. Mix in some incredible storms with huge winds, and our lives have become more sleep deprived than ever!
Last night we were in bed by 22h40. I awoke for the first time at 04h00. Confused and disoriented. How on earth could I have slept through Isabella’s continuous waking? Even worse, how could I just leave my wife to sort out baby all night?
Donna was fast asleep and so I got up to check the bottles. I counted them a couple of times to make sure. All three were there and still full. It made no sense, as it meant that Isabella had not woken and been given a bottle, impossible! I noticed the monitor was off and so I turned it on, listening for a moment to the ominous sound of silence. Now my mind started to work, was she sleeping soundly or had something more ominous happened to her?
I was trying to decide if I should check on her and risk waking her when she suddenly sighed. Relief flooded my body, she was fine. Donna woke up a little later, groggy and asking some rather nonsensical questions about the monitor as she could not work out how it had gone on. Some conversations should really not take place in the depths of the night! We did manage to work out that our daughter had been asleep for seven hours.
Isabella eventually woke up just after 6h00, nine hours after she had gone to bed. Donna and I had managed an unbroken 5 hours of sleep each. Incredible!!!
Now, I cannot wait to make my presence felt on this day!!! Amazing how in moments of darkness there can be these incredible flashes of light...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Thoughts about Thoughts
I have not made any deep and meaningful posts of late. They all seem to have been about the goings on of my life. I was hoping to make this post a deep one, until I realised that I had no real deep stuff to blog about.
This is a little worrying as I consider myself a bit of a thinker. Have I not been thinking lately? Has my depth of thought been blurred by the constant need to meet deadlines, invoice clients, and meet all of my obligations? Let alone catch some sleep between the endless waking of my baby daughter?
The little reading that I have managed to snatch has been rather uninspiring. My morning prayer and mediation sessions have gone out of the window in my frantic bid to get some sleep. Life seems to have filled up to overflowing with meetings and more meetings. I suppose it is little wonder that clever thoughts have failed to trespass my synapses.
Man, I hate living life on this superficial level!
There is no doubt in my mind that although I am super busy, I am hugely ineffective as clear thought has migrated with the change of seasons. Yet I know that It is in times of business one most needs to make time for a little bit of silence. Without silence there is no time for reflection and thinking; and certainly no time for personal growth.
Now all I have to do is say NO more often, and remove the clutter from my life, in order to create more time. Some people are going to be a little disappointed, but then again, others are going to be much happier!
This is a little worrying as I consider myself a bit of a thinker. Have I not been thinking lately? Has my depth of thought been blurred by the constant need to meet deadlines, invoice clients, and meet all of my obligations? Let alone catch some sleep between the endless waking of my baby daughter?
The little reading that I have managed to snatch has been rather uninspiring. My morning prayer and mediation sessions have gone out of the window in my frantic bid to get some sleep. Life seems to have filled up to overflowing with meetings and more meetings. I suppose it is little wonder that clever thoughts have failed to trespass my synapses.
Man, I hate living life on this superficial level!
There is no doubt in my mind that although I am super busy, I am hugely ineffective as clear thought has migrated with the change of seasons. Yet I know that It is in times of business one most needs to make time for a little bit of silence. Without silence there is no time for reflection and thinking; and certainly no time for personal growth.
Now all I have to do is say NO more often, and remove the clutter from my life, in order to create more time. Some people are going to be a little disappointed, but then again, others are going to be much happier!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Back to the 80's
I took a strange trip down memory lane last night. Strange because some of the people that joined me there, looked like they had yet to leave...
My wife somehow scrounged up two tickets to the Alphaville / Spandau Ballet Concert. Free tickets to an eighties party meant we had to make serious plans to be there, albeit at the last minute. So there we were, two old teenagers surrounded by thousands of other aged youngsters desperate to relive just a little bit of their youth.
It is not often that bands come back 20 and 25 years after they have made it big!
Alphaville sounded desperate, the band rocked hard but the lead singer sounded as if he was not part of the original plan. Spandau Ballet was a complete surprise. Tony, the lead singer sounded just as he always had, and the live music was brilliant!
My wife somehow scrounged up two tickets to the Alphaville / Spandau Ballet Concert. Free tickets to an eighties party meant we had to make serious plans to be there, albeit at the last minute. So there we were, two old teenagers surrounded by thousands of other aged youngsters desperate to relive just a little bit of their youth.
It is not often that bands come back 20 and 25 years after they have made it big!
Alphaville sounded desperate, the band rocked hard but the lead singer sounded as if he was not part of the original plan. Spandau Ballet was a complete surprise. Tony, the lead singer sounded just as he always had, and the live music was brilliant!
We had fun! And I managed to pick out a couple of hairstyles that I just must have when I grow some more hair on the front of my head!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Tooth Mouse
Matt has been wiggling one of his front teeth for ages. He thought it really cool to bend it all the way forward and let it snap back into place. Yesterday, it parted company from the rest of his teeth.
He was incredibly proud as this is the first tooth he has lost. He showed it to all his mates and any teacher who would take a look. One of his friends told him he had to put out some cheese when he went to bed to entice the tooth mouse to leave a bigger donation for his tooth.
Last night he oversaw the 'lets maximise the return for my tooth operation'. He arranged a piece of cheese. He then asked his mom for something to put the cheese on. Quick as a flash he brother said, 'A mousetrap?'
Now imagine the whole family rolling on the floor in laughter!
He was incredibly proud as this is the first tooth he has lost. He showed it to all his mates and any teacher who would take a look. One of his friends told him he had to put out some cheese when he went to bed to entice the tooth mouse to leave a bigger donation for his tooth.
Last night he oversaw the 'lets maximise the return for my tooth operation'. He arranged a piece of cheese. He then asked his mom for something to put the cheese on. Quick as a flash he brother said, 'A mousetrap?'
Now imagine the whole family rolling on the floor in laughter!
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