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2007-01-14 09:51:25 Source: Web

It's a sunny hurricane in Gothenburg at the moment! Seriously - it's blowing like mad out there and we had warnings of hurricane force gusts all yesterday evening. But the sky is more or less clear (though as I write, the clouds are starting to build up again it seems). It's pretty odd to hear the raging wind and to look out and see that it looks like quite a nice day according to the sky!

Still no real progress on the earlier bedtime project - mostly because I've been busy as anything the last 2 weeks finishing off my big client project. We should launch early next week, so we're into all the last minute bits and pieces and I'm working all hours. We are however logging Simon's sleep patterns (well, Lotta is!) so that we have an idea of when may be a good time to try and get him to sleep as well as which stimuli (or lack of stimuli) help him to go to sleep quickly.

He's developing so fast though. We had a weigh-in during the week and he's now 65cm long and weighs a tad over 6kg already! He's a tall boy for a 3 month old. Yup - he's already 3 months old as of yesterday. We celebated his quarter of a year birthday at Mormor & Morfar's (Grandma & Grandad's) house. We also opened a teething ring we had which was marked 3+ months - and he has started quite happily gripping it and sticking it in his mouth.

Well, I'd best get back to work. Hopefully some new pics are on the way to the gallery soon - just as soon as I get a few minutes to format them and upload them. Hopefully next weekend I'll get a weekend off!

2007-01-02 22:31:54 Source: Web

It's just gone 11pm and Simon has gone to sleep. We're about to embark on a project to establish an earlier bedtime routine, but have been waiting to get Christmas out of the way first.

It's been a great Christmas and new year - though stressful. Trying to get everything organised, including making 50 cards by hand, while raising a baby and running a company is quite a handful. But we managed. I think we will be less ambitious in our aims next year though.

The celebrations were nice though and we enjoyed both our Christmases. And boy did we get some great presents! And of course, celebrating with Simon was great fun. Though he didn't really know what was going on, he definitely enjoyed watching us open presents on Christmas morning. But if you think about it, everything is equally new for a baby whether it's opening a christmas present, or getting a cauliflower out of a bag as I did in front of him today!

We celebrated New Year with Lotta's folks which we've only done once before. Simon was a little cranky, but fell asleep before the fireworks kicked off, which was good as he probably would have been pretty scared judging by how he reacts when we sneeze or rattle pans in the kitchen! We spent the night away from home which was also a first for Simon and went without a hitch.

So now we're into the beginning of 2007. TrainingTime has begun the year with a full order book for the first few months which is reassuring. The site we are launching in a couple of weeks has been great to work on. A large corporate site built using web standards, plenty of CSS to help people subscribe to the news they find most useful and lots of nice functionality. I'm hoping that it will get a good reception at launch and the clients are great to work with. We're already lining up the next areas of development and there's plenty to do on the horizon as well.

It's going to be interesting to see what this year will bring, both on the company front and at home. Bringing up Simon promises to be full of excitement (and frustration at times), but as he is developing so fast I find myself constantly looking to the future and being amazed by the present.

It's going to be a fun year!

2006-12-13 09:12:59 Source: Web

Simon slept 6 hours in a row for the first time last night. What a shame that I'm suffering from a sore throat that woke me up at regular intervals and that Lotta couldn't sleep between 4 and 7!

We had a great family photo session with a professional photographer friend on Monday evening. Simon was in a great mood, smiling and chuckling right up until the moment we started taking photos ;-) Then he started too get tired and cranky. We still got some good material, but by the end he was flaked out. However that led us to get the best photo of the session which will be adorning this year's christmas cards - so no more clues about that right now!

We're looking forward to christmas, but the preparations are killing me. Getting presents bought and sent off in time to get to the UK, while working on the big client project and trying to keep my hours to a minimum to spend time with Simon and Lotta is a huge juggling act. So far it's going OK, but it's tiring. After the photo session we all fell asleep - at 8:00pm! Much needed and kind of sweet!

The weekends are still the main chance for me to spend quality time with my son. We went christmas shopping on Saturday and I logged 22,000 steps in total during the day (3,500 before 01:00 trying to get him to sleep!) - that's a record, equivalent to around 30km of walking. Then on Sunday we did the food shopping together. I had Simon in a sling and felt like everyone was looking at me, a single father with a young baby in a sling doing the grocery shopping alone. I normally do the shopping, but adding Simon into the mix felt exotic. Nice for me and him though and he was fascinated by the lights and colours around the store.

A week and half left until christmas then and all's well. We're loking forward to a Swedish christmas on the 24th and then a British christmas dinner on the 25th. Simon is to young to know what's happening, but it will be nice for his parents - and next year he can join in the present unwrapping and festivities.

2006-12-03 11:29:59 Source: Web

Some quick landmarks:

Simon can now hold up his head by himself. It's a bit wobbly, but it rarely flops out of control completely any more.

He's enjoying playing "Stand up" where I hold him under the arms and lift him so he is standing. He's got pretty strong legs and definitely enjoys using them.

At the last weigh-in on Thursday he had reached the 5kg mark and is almost 60cm long. What a big boy for a 7 week old!

This week daddy is going away on business for 2 days and 2 nights. Poor mummy! Hopefully she'll have some help from Mormor (grandma in Swedish).

2006-11-26 17:14:27 Source: Web

We've done a lot since the last entry. In fact there are a load of new photographs uploaded to the gallery. Grandad and Yaya came for a visit which was great. We took them out to the Christmas fair at Liseberg amusement park which was a great afternoon out.

Simon has had his 1 month birthday as well and is still growing according to his growth curve. We've had some disturbed routines with sleeping from time to time, but on the whole we're sleeping OK.

We also went and looked at a house the other day. We're not really looking, but there was an interesting 7 room house we saw in the paper and decided it was worth checking out. However after driving there in pouring rain up small and dark 70kph it was pretty clear that it wasn't the right place for us (45 minutes drive into town).

The house itself was pretty exciting (especially the huge cellar area and the gigantic garden), but clearly a BIG project and not at all what we fancy at the moment. In fact, reading between the lines we guessed that the existing owners may well have taken on too much. Some rooms were decorated, others not done and there was evidence of a baby. Wise to take the hint perhaps that a project like that could be waaay too much.

2006-11-12 15:22:26 Source: Web

It's Father's Day in Sweden. That meant that Simon and I got some special bonding time at 6:45 am when I helped feed him, changed his nappy and gave him special tummy massages to help him fart away his trapped wind.

But then at 8:30 after we had gotten back to bed and slept a while Simon came and joined mummy and daddy in the big bed and mummy made daddy a cup of tea in bed and brought him a special card and present that Simon had helped pick out. Now *that's* what being a father is all about ;-)

Simon is one month old tomorrow. This monthy seems to have both lasted forever and flown by. It seems ages ago that we were at the maternity unit and it's almost impossible to remember what it was like before Simon was a part of our little family.

We took him to his firt party out of mummy's tummy last night. It was the yearly party for my cycle club and there were about 80 people who gathered for a meal and rinks at a nearby pub. It was a tight squeeze and the space for the two prams wasn't optimal (we were a little worried about people leaning over the pram to look at Simon with drink glasses in hand). But he and another little friend who is only 8 weeks old were the centre of attention. Unfortunately, as we had been out shopping during the day he was pretty tired and grumpy, so after we'd had a bite to eat and said hello to loooads of people we decided to spare him and head for home. Even if a little short it was a really nice and quite eventful evening out.

So tomorrow we'll have to have a cake to celebrate his 1 month birthday and next weekend his grandad and yaya (nickname for granny, which his half-Greek cousin uses and which has stuck) are coming for a visit - and Lotta's folks will be coming back from a trip to Africa so we'll have a little more support for a while.

2006-11-01 09:48:08 Source: Web

It's the first snow day of the year. Not that it's much snow, just a sprinkling, but it did look pretty impressive in the middle of the night when we were up feeding Simon and the wind was howling and the snow was being blown around. It's his first view of snow, but I don't think that he'll even register it unless mummy should happen to take him out on the balcony today (unlikely!).

It's also my birthday - hipp-hipp blah! 37 isn't much to celebrate and everything is pretty overshadowed by Simon's arrival. I did however get treated to a nice meal and a couple of presents by my Mum and my sister (and of course her daughter) at the weekend, which was very nice. And I got a traditional cup of tea in bed from my lovely wife this morning and a wonderful home-made card with Simon's footprint on! That's a keeper ;-) I apparently have something in the post to look forward to!

As I mentioned, we had a lovely weekend with half of my family over visiting. We were a little apprehensive in advance that we might feel overwhelmed, but it was actually a lovely weekend and Simon certainly enjoyed having lots and lots of adult pairs of hand to hold him and look after him through the weekend. It was his name day on Saturday (Swedish tradition to celebrate saints days that share a person's name) and we invited over Lotta's family and some friends. The afternoon was a real success.

So all-in-all it's been a good past week. We've been getting in some sleep, though it's often involved going to bed at 21.00! And on the work front, the large contract that I was hoping for has come in, which means some job security for a while. Hopefully that's the start of a turning point for the company, though it's still early days yet.

2006-10-22 18:51:17 Source: Web

I've uploaded a bunch of new photos to the gallery.

It's been a nice few days. Our changed feeding routine seems to be doing the trick. Simon is much calmer and has even slept well the last couple of nights, so we've only had one night feed between 01.00 and 08.00, which in it's turn means that Lotta and I have caught up a bit on our sleep and have been able to enjoy the days more.

Yesterday we had two firsts - first bath, which was accompanied by lots of screaming and first ride in the pram, which wasn't. In fact the walk we took was so successful that Simon slept through the whole thing, prompting us to divert into the local pub, introduce Simon to the barman (who's a friend of ours) and take the time to share some toasted sandwiches and an afternoon drink (low-alcohol of course!).

I started writing this entry yesterday and was rudely disturbed by my son's antics ;-) He's now asleep on Lotta's chest after having fed a little and it's 24 hours later, so I have a chance to recap today as well.

We had another first as Grandma bought a Baby Björn - a carrying harness and we tried it out - while Simon was suitable doped up on milk of course. It took a while to work out the mechanism and I was starting to become a little sceptical, but once I got him into the harness it worked perfectly. He stayed asleep and even when we changed over to Lotta he didn't seem to mind. The harness was great because it supports his head and allows us to have hands free. I can defintely see it becoming a part of daily life.

Tomorrow we're off to have him weighed again. It looks like he's gained weight as he has a double chin and his arms and legs have become pudgier. He's eating well now though we still top him off with a bottle. We certainly seem to have found a routine that works for the time being, though everything can change at a moment's notice.

In non-baby related news, I have been chasing a contract that will give me the possibility of hiring an employee for three months at least. I will hear for certain at the beginning of the week, but we've already booked a project-start meeting, which bodes well for my chances. This contract could definitely be the chance for the company to turn the corner and get a little more stability. It's also quite a high-profile company in Gothenburg, so it should hopefully open some doors for me to bid on bigger contracts and at the same time channel some more focus into product development.

I'd best go and finish making dinner. More news from the family as it comes!

2006-10-19 22:17:31 Source: Web

Thhings are starting to fall into place. We went back to maternity for a check-up of Simon's weight today and he's started to go up, which is a relief. Not least because it means that we can drop the silly 4-hour feeding routine (which led to a very sleepless night last night as he came out of phase with the schedule). We're now feeding him when he wants and topping up with formula afterwards to make sure he gets enough.

We're even able to transfer over to bottles for top-up feeding rather than a little feeding cup that we have been using earlier. The idea of the cup was to not disturb his suckling reflex, but as that is now pretty well established and we brest-feed him first we can use aa bottle for tpo-up feeding.

So hopefully transferring to following his rhythms instead of a schedule will let us get more than 1.5 hours sleep at a time. We're not expecting miracles, but even slightly longer bouts of sleep would be welcome. Lotta helped me get a couple of hours sleep this afternoon and she has also had a chance to sleep a little longer, though the pain in her hips is still making sleeping longer stretches difficult.

It sounds like we're focused totally on sleep and routines and what-not, but in fact there are plenty of fun moments as well. We opened some packages from friends and family yesterday and had a nice giggly hour enjoying being parents. And of course there are plenty of times that Simon looks deep into my eyes and I just melt completely. So there is plenty to look forward to and we're for the most part enjoying the new challenges that parenting is throwing us.

2006-10-18 09:22:06 Source: Web

My family is home now. That feels great!

We came back from the Maternity unit yesterday afternoon which was an adventure - first time Simon had been outside and ridden in a car. And of course he slept though the whole thing! :-)

I also picked up our pram yesterday which was fun. Now I've caught up with Dave on that particular gadget ;-) The pram has a solidly built carry-cot which we can use as Simon's bed during the day, then at night we have a cot beside our bed (on my side in case you wondered).

Our first night at home has been a resounding success. We're following a rigid feeding schedule at the moment to get his weight up. Every 4 hours. So we fed him between 11-12, 03-04 and 07-08. My job is to help get him up and awake, assist Lotta with things she needs during feeding and then feed him some expressed milk from the last cycle (and occassionally a little formula). Then I try and get him back to sleep while Lotta expresses some more milk for later.

We managed to follow the rhythm perfectly last night and Simon slept well between feedings. I got around 5 hours sleep in total and finally Lotta has been able to get some much needed sleep as well.

So today we're settling into the new routine. I have a business meeting of all things! It was booked a while back and is pretty important for the company, so it's worth running away for a couple of hours. Grandma is coming by to give Lotta a hand while I'm away, so we're all feeling comfortable about it. Though I'm sure that I will be somewhat distracted during the meeting and will want to be back home!