Alistair Lattimore

Evie, No More Bottles

Al — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:59:57 +0000

Over the last couple of months, Claire and I have been adjusting Evie’s bottles.

According to the formula, her age and weight she was meant to have two 250ml bottles a day however that rarely happened and she seemed more comfortable with around 200ml.

During September we thought it was time that she moved on from formula and onto cows milk so we made the switch. Of course that didn’t go down all that well, so we reverted to formula and started weening her off it by reducing the amount of formula per bottle from four scoops to three and then to two.

While all this was going on she was quite inconsistent with her bottles as well, sometimes she was drink all 200ml and want more and the next time she would protest after 50ml. As we got down to two scoops of formula in 200ml of milk, we thought it made sense to reduce the volume down to 100ml as well.

Not that long after we were down to a single scoop of formula, started introducing cows milk and Evie was happy as a lark. Next we stopped adding the scoop of formula all together and Evie didn’t seem to mind to much but another month or so later and she decided that she’d had enough of the bottle all together.

Claire and I miss giving Evie her bottle but they can’t stay little forever. Now we give her a sipper cup with milk in it and she is happy to drink smaller amounts of that periodically throughout the day and in the evening after she has had a bath.

Now it won’t be long before she is out of the cot and into a big girl bed!

Shh, The Dinosaur Is Asleep

Al — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:10:41 +0000

Returning home from work on Tuesday evening and Hugo meets me in the garage like normal. However instead of ”Hi Dad!” followed by something very interesting that he has been busting to tell me about, he raised his index finger to his mouth and said “Shhh, the dinosaur is sleeping!”.

At the time I had no idea what he was talking about until I walked inside and discovered his kids sized dinosaur costume sleeping on the tiles with a blanket – it makes perfect sense really, dinosaurs get tired too you know!

Dusty

Al — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:57:40 +0000

I got home from work and Hugo met me in the garage like normal and he says to me:

I’m grumpy!

After checking with Claire about why he might be grumpy, it turned out it was because the computer kept freezing when he was trying to watch one of his favourite shows via ABC 4 Kids.

Claire tells me that it did it a few times and that at some point, the computer was giving her a temperature warning – which I haven’t seen since the days of overclocking CPU’s.

A quick investigation shows that the fan & heat sink for the CPU are covered in dust. The photo probably doesn’t do it justice but the heat sink is completely filled in with dust and the fan blades are coated as well.

I clean everything up with a small stiff bristle paint brush, which Claire graciously let me use and we’re back in business. Claire walks past the computer and on the way to the bedroom tells me that the computer is making a weird humming sound.

Further investigation shows that it isn’t anything usual except that the CPU fan can actually spin properly now as it isn’t being restricted by the dust between it and the heat sink and the additional weight of it caked on the underside of the fan blades.

No related posts.

2011 Blogging Statistics

Al — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:35:31 +0000

At the beginning of 2011, I wrote about how my 2010 blogging efforts and in keeping with that trend – below are my 2011 blogging statistics.

	POSTS	AVG. POST LENGTH	TOTAL POST LENGTH	COMMENTS	AVG. COMMENTS
2004	1	478	487	0	0.0
2005	82	1949	159835	511	12.9
2006	103	1837	189259	865	4.5
2007	127	1977	251150	229	1.3
2008	68	1597	108623	78	0.8
2009	77	2114	162804	104	0.9
2010	81	2147	173969	105	1.4
2011	58	1737	100779	144	1.5

In 2009 I had aimed for between seven and eight posts per month, which I didn’t quite make and in 2010 I thought if I had pushed myself I could average slightly over eight and break through the magic 100 posts per year marker but I still haven’t managed it yet. While my number of posts is down, along with my average post length – I am happy that the number of comments has increased slightly over previous years.

For those that are interested in doing the same, I’ve made the blogging statistics SQL script available for you to use.

30 Day Report: Drink 2 Litres Of Water Daily

Al — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:44:06 +0000

For the month of November, I attempted my first 30 day challenge and it was to drink 2 litres of water daily.

I didn’t think it would have been that hard to drink 2 litres of water each day but I found it to be quite a lot of water to consume during a normal day.

What I did find was that it was really easily to consume the water in days that I attended the gym, where in some instances I’d do over three litres in a day but then over a weekend I’d do a bit less than 2 litres.

Over the course of the month I averaged 1.95 litres per day, so I didn’t reach the challenge goal. However, given that it was such a massive increase from my close to zero daily water intake, I’m actually going to chock it up as a success.

One thing that it didn’t seem to slow down was my coffee intake and I mentioned to Claire that might be one of my next challenges – no coffee or caffeine for a month, yowzer!

Hugo: “I Did A Poo”

Al — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:10:51 +0000

When Claire and I embarked on the toilet training process with Hugo, other than the obligatory accidents that were going to happen along the way, I never thought it’d be that big a deal.

It turns out that when you’re a three year old child, who has been happily going to the toilet in a nappy for the past few years – changing that behaviour is a big deal.

We’d been telling Hugo that since he is big boy now and wearing undies, that he needs to use the toilet and that doing it in his underwear wasn’t appropriate – which he understood.

For the first phase of the toilet training and getting him to do a wee or number 1 on the toilet, we’d been asking him regularly if he needed to go to the toilet. Of course, in virtually every instance he would tell us that he didn’t need to go to the toilet but we persisted.

After Hugo had done a number of wee’s on the toilet without a lot of fuss, out of the blue he came up to Claire and simply said that he needed to go to the toilet – Claire nearly fell over. We realised at that point, that we just needed to stop asking him and let him tell us when he needed to go and that has been working great.

Now that he was a professional wee’er, Claire and I started asking Hugo if he wanted to do a poo or number 2 on the toilet. We asked and Hugo would say that he didn’t want to do a poo. We prodded him about it and he’d reiterated that he didn’t want to do a poo. We tried convincing him to stay on the toilet a little longer, without success. We discussed with him that his little body needs to do a poo, that everybody poo’s and that it is normal but we got nowhere fast.

Hugo held onto his first poo for a number of days until one morning, just before I was about to head off to work – it came out, in his undies and I think he was devastated it’d happened. He knew and wanted to do one in the toilet but it just didn’t pan out that way and I think it scared him a little. That was the beginning of him stonewalling Claire and I on every single attempt to even discuss him doing a poo on the toilet – he wasn’t interested at all.

Over a week had passed and still no poo from our little man. We tried a few different types of foods, Belinda suggested pear juice, Claire tried prune juice and a strawberry milk – all without any success. We persisted and continued to ask him semi-regularly like we’d been doing trying to get him to do a wee and prompted him every time he was on the toilet but still no luck. Then one day, Claire convinced Hugo that he should have another go, she was sitting on the floor of the toilet for support, which he wanted but then insisted that she didn’t watch and plop, his first poo on the toilet!

We thought that now he has done his first poo on the toilet, it’ll be like what happened with doing a wee on the toilet, he’ll be an old hat at it in no time. Turns out that wasn’t the case and he held onto the next one for several days & then on Boxing Day another present arrived in his undies.

Not to be disheartened, he’d be going to the toilet for a wee like an absolute champion so we just kept asking him from time to time if he needed to do a poo, but he wasn’t that interested again. At this stage, we were hoping it wasn’t going to be a repeat of the previous time where he held it in for over a week.

This afternoon we were rewarded with an absolutely amazing big boy act, he told me that he needed to do a wee. I helped him get organised for that and left him be and then I hear a plop followed by an excited voice exclaiming “I did a poo Daddy, I did a poo!”. I nearly couldn’t believe it, I wasn’t sitting with him in the toilet, I didn’t ask him while he was on the toilet and it just happened.

Claire and I are so proud of Hugo for doing a poo on the toilet, especially since we didn’t even need to help him out this time. Hugo is really proud of his achievements as well, he asks Claire and I if we’re proud of him and if Grand Ma, Grand Dad & Granny are proud of him also – it really is a delight to see such enthusiasm and excitement on his face and in his voice.

Now we just need to keep at it and with a bit of luck, it’ll begin to happen on a slightly more regular schedule and next thing we know – he’ll be a professional poo’er as well!

Hugo: “I Did A Big Wee”

31st Birthday

Al — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 08:13:39 +0000

Wholly schmolly, I’m now officially 31!

My birthday started with with Claire, Hugo & Evie greeting me in bed. Hugo ran into the room and wished me happy birthday for the first time, which is more than a little bit special.

Claire found some beautiful paper and ribbon to wrap my presents in, it was a shame to unwrap them really but you’re forced to on your birthday – hehe. I was incredibly spoiled for presents from the family this year & received:

a brown denim pair of shorts & a pair of nice shirts
Steve Jobs biography
Mission Impossible 3 & The Social Network on DVD
Lindt chocolates
iPhone dock

After presents it seemed reasonable to bring our weekend ritual of McDonald’s for breakfast forward a day, which while Hugo doesn’t understand days of the week yet – he was more than happy about.

Unlike virtually every other year, we broke tradition and didn’t visit Hogs Breath Cafe for lunch and instead made our way down to a new, local cafe called Luv-A-Coffee not to far from our place. Sterle, Lorraine & Jean joined us for lunch which was great, especially since Sterle was feeling under the weather. I’d only been there once before for morning tea but the coffee & cake was delicious. Lunch certainly didn’t disappoint, I had a ‘small’ serving of spaghetti bolognaise and it was more than I needed for lunch.

After lunch we rolled our way back to our place, enjoyed a chocolate cake that Claire made and Hugo decorated with purple sprinkles & fire fighting candles to top if off. The cake was really nice, Hugo & Evie certainly enjoyed it yesterday and today.

For the afternoon we stayed at home, watched Robots on DVD which is one of Hugo’s favourites at the moment and mucked around at home. Late last night I ventured out to the movies with Shea to see Tower Heist featuring Eddie Murphy & Ben Stiller which was a good watch.

A quick thank you to all my family, extended family & work colleagues for calling or sending me an SMS and also to everyone that dropped me a line on instant messenger and facebook as well – well wishes on your birthday are fantastic.

Onward and upward, 32 next year!

Hugo: “I Did A Big Wee”

Al — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:08:30 +0000

A few months ago Claire and I thought we’d begin the toilet training process with Hugo. At the time, he was quite interested in it but despite our best efforts and Hugo generally wanting to participate in the whole exercise, we didn’t make it very far.

After putting toilet training on the back burner for a couple of months, this week Claire thought she’d give it another go and see how Hugo responded this time around. Off with the nappy, on with his tiny undies and the toddler toilet training had begun.

We have a potty downstairs and a little ladder with a smaller seat attached upstairs. I was thinking if he was going to make any progress early on, it’d be on the potty. To my surprise however, Hugo has taken to the normal toilet with his ladder really well.

During the week I got a call from Claire, where she was so excited she nearly jumped down the phone line to tell me that Hugo had just done his first wee on the toilet. Claire gave the phone to Hugo and he proceeded to tell me that he’d done a “big wee” several times.

Today Hugo has been without his nappy and in his underwear virtually all day, in which time we’ve had two big wee’s on the toilet. We tried to persuade Hugo that maybe he should think about doing a poo as well but that was a bit much at this stage.

I’m so excited about the whole thing really, our little boy is growing up.

Paper Towels Are Not Created Equally

Hugo Learning To Ride Three Wheel Scooter

Al — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:20:05 +0000

For Hugo’s 3rd birthday, he received a fantastic three wheel scooter, helmet and sunglasses. Initially he wasn’t too sure about the whole thing, then it was all the rage and then it went out of flavour again.

Recently it is back in his go to toy list again and he’s been scooting around the house on it and I’ve been encouraging him to push, scoot and glide instead of constantly pushing in an attempt to get him to build his balance.

On the weekend, we popped over to the park near our house to give Hugo a go in a bigger space. To start with he was just happy riding his scooter across the width of the basket ball court but then I suggested that he ‘chase’ me around the outside edge instead – success!

Every indicator at this point is that Hugo will be right handed. However, oddly he was riding his scooter goofy with his right foot on the scooter and pushing with his left leg. While we were circling anti-clockwise, everything was a-okay. When we switched to go around clockwise, Hugo was unsteady as I expected as it is a little harder to turn the same direction as the leg you’re standing on. He stumbled a few times and fell off once but got straight back up and kept on going, which is the main thing.

Next step, hooning & the beginnings of a simple trick!

Having trouble viewing them embedded video, watch Hugo Lattimore Learning To Ride A Scooter on YouTube.

Evie Learning To Walk

Je m’appelle Evie

Al — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:30:53 +0000

One evening recently while getting Hugo changed, Evie was playing in the room with us.

Evie loves exploring all of the nooks and crannies in the bedroom, opening cupboards, draws and unpacking virtually anything she can get her hands on.

One of Evie’s favorite things is hats, they make her smile every time she or we put one on her. Of course, a hat to a toddler is a very flexible concept & is quite easily interchanged with undies as needed.