My little kid is quite cute

This is my little kid Lucy being quite cute.

Demilitarised Zone

Some time ago I wrote about the dilemma I had making our main living room safe for Lucy. The fact is that we have a environment that is virtually impossible to make child friendly. 3 computers, loads of wires and cables, loads of plugs and sockets, bookcases, rubbish bins, guitars. Basically - carnage. So I decided on a rather orthogonal solution. Rather than make the whole room baby safe - why not divide the room into the safe side and the dodgy side. For a divider I found the Summer Infant Super Wide Safety Gate. So on Lucy's side she has sofas, toys and a big TV to watch "In the Night Garden" on.

And then on the other side of the fence is Ali and my Office. The sad thing is that Lucy's safe side if far bigger so it make us feel like the cages ones :-(

Lucy

It's hard to believe that Lucy is already over nine month old. The childminder said yesterday that she is now more like a little girl than a baby. *sniff*. Everyone warns you when you have a kid that they grow up really fast but I guess you have to experience it to fully understand. And aren't the policemen looking younger ...

Back to Work

So a very symbolic but also slightly sad day today. Ali is returned to work and that means that Lucy will be spending her week days with a child minder. I've been working for the last six months so this isn't a great change for me - but it is quite a wrench for Ali who has spent just about every waking hour with the little fella since she was born.

Our child minder is lovely and clearly adores children. We know that Lucy will have a great time with her and fortunately she just lives round the corner. We have checked her impeccable ofsted report and talked to her awesome references. But the fact is that she could be Father Christmas and we would still feel a bit guilty about not being able to look after Lucy forever.

But wages need to be earned because the mortgage needs to be paid (the banks seem very insistant on this). I'm sure that this is just the first of the many difficult things that we have to do, for instance I'm not looking forward to explaining why she can't have a pony. Anyway, it will always be nice coming home from work knowing that we can give the Spocket a big huggle.

Oh the shame!

As a parent you do what you can, but there are some things that are out of your control. Despite our best efforts it is looking like Lucy is going to be a south paw. A left hooker. Left Handed! Apparently surgery can't help. It look like she is destined to have bad hand writing, an inability to use scissors and an artistic temperament. At least there is a store she can go to visit others who have the same condition...

Obviously I'm joking and we don't care. Both my Mum and Sister are afflicted. But this article is very interesting. And there really is a store for left handed freaks folks. You can find it here.

The Rules

Now I don't want to come over all Alf Garnett but every family has to have rules. This might involve the attitude of the toilet seat or who is responsible for taking the trash out. Likewise cooking duties may be up for debate and loading (or unloading) the dish washer tends to a matter of contention. But there are some rules that are set in stone and one of those is the ownership of the remote controls. If ladies are accidentally given the remote controls that rightfully belong to blokes then they could inadvertently select "Desperate Housewives" or "Ugly Betty" when "Top Gear" and "Police, Stop, Crash, Argh!" would be more appropriate. It might sound patronising and misogynistic but it is for their own good. So imagine my horror to see my beloved 9 week old daughter with her hands on the crown jewels! Doesn't she know the rules!

(Note to Idiots: Please don't think I'm being serious! It's just a cute picture and I'm being cheeky)

FA Cup day

I have supported Manchester United since I was 9 years of age. I went on a school trip to watch the 1977 FA Cup final at Wembley between Man Utd and Liverpool and encouraged by some school friends, decided to support MUFC. As luck would have it they beat their scouse opposition to win 2-1 so my support started off with a flying start. Although the rest of the seventies and the eighties were pretty lean pickings with just a couple of FA Cups to show, the nineties and naughties (otherwise described as the Alex Ferguson era) have been pretty successful.

Obviously once you support a club it is with you for life. Through the good times and the bad times. You can't just pick and choose. Unless your my wife Ali. She started off supporting Brentford FC because her first football match was at Griffen Park. However, as soon as Chelsea started being successful she dropped the Super Bees like stone and started supporting Abramovich's plaything. Just because her best friend Lorna is a (proper) fan of the Blues.

So what team will Lucy support? Well if Ali had stuck with the Bee's I might have allowed her to become a Brentford fan. But since her appalling defection I cannot allow Ali to influence Lucy's football choice in way - so I have had to take matters into my own hands. Especially because Lorna is coming over to our house to watch today's FA Cup Final between ManU and Chelski.

Obviously Muji rabbit will support United as well. Here is the full kit - still with a bit of growing room (it is meant for a nine month old!)

She still needs to get a bit bigger before she will be running around the park with a ball at her feet.

Great Teamwork

On Thursday and Friday most of the folks from the IBM Software group in the UK were shipped out to a big Country House in the sticks for a two day meeting. In this modern virtual world of home offices, voicemail, emeetings, instant messaging and all the other great collaborative innovations, there is nothing that can beat meeting up with Frolleagues face to face, having a few beers and a few laughs and just generally catching up. Of course there was a strong educational theme to the event with a business update as well, but plenty of time to let our hair down an have some fun. Not to mention a "team bonding" session that didn't suck!

Great as it is to meet the whole software team, it is always nicest to catch up with my Lotus Frollegues since these are the folks that I work with everyday even though we are spread all around the country. So imagine how touched I was to get home from this great teaming event to find a big box waiting on my door step. It is a hamper full of great baby stuff from the Lotus Tech Sales team.

It contains loads of cool stuff. Mittens, Rattle, Cap, baby shampoo and soap etc. It was a lovely surprise and couldn't have topped off a great teaming event any better. Many thanks to Brian and all the team from Ali, Lucy and I.

A few pictures of Lucy Elizabeth

Since some readers will be interested in pictures of Lucy whilst others are more interested in my incisive views on life and technology and yet others just want to know how a security ink tag works I won't keep posting them here. Further pictures and Lucy related stuff will be here at lucyporter.blogspot.com.

Headline news - Ports Spawns!

Click for a bigger version. Obviously I will be posting loads of other pictures of Lucy and Ali soon. I suppose I should be painting the spare room pink rather than playing in Photoshop but I know my strengths :-) And before any of you conspiracy theory types think this is all an April Fool joke - here is unadulterated proof that Lucy is ...
a) Cute as a button
b) Quite little
c) Daddy's gorgeous little munchkin

Ain't that cuter than a kitten? Incidentally - funniest text message so far was predictably from Marcus refering to the due date being April 1st "... And she is on time, well project managed!". Ali found that very amusing - but secretly I think she was agreeing :-)