Gremlin’s Fireside Chat

Fortunately Maeve has recovered from her virus and is back in the creche. Every day I notice new things about Maeve – like for example she can feed herself with spoon and fork. Her baby babble has increased a lot both in its range and its diversity; Maeve also tries to copy what you say. Maeve can also hold a pen in the right way for writing – as in how an adult would hold it and not like a crayon in her fist. Fine motor controls there daughter.

Maeve gave me her first “proper” kiss today – any by proper she pursed/puckered up her lips before kissing me good morning. Bernie explained that the creche had told her that Maeve was a part of a group of three girls (all who moved up to a bigger class together) were seen by the creche staff hugging each other and kissing – all very innocent and sweet for the smutty minded amongst you.

Today we spent visiting grandma, my sister and the Aoife the new born baby.

Maeve has contracted some unspecified viral infection (according to the Doctor); Maeve is running a temperature and has started having a rash. Today we know where she contracted it from and that poor baby has had it for a week and still out of the creche; This means that Maeve will be out for the week – causing chaos in her working mom and dads professional lives.

Yesterday her mom worked from home, today I did it.

Maeves has been pretty good. Her temperature varies between hot and normal. When she is “hot” she is thirsty and drinks a lot of fluid then falls asleep for an hour or so. When her temperature decreases she is back to her boisterous self happy and laughing. But its still a lot of work.

This evening, Maeve definitely threw her first temper tantrum. It came about after we gave her some chocolate and as with children it becomes caked all over her face and hands; at this point Maeve went to my wife for some comfort and cuddles – and the lovely lady my wife is, she provided; Only to become covered in chocolate slime. My wife was naturally unhappy at this and put Maeve down. Maeve came over to me and I said “don’t come to be me with that chocolate face” – and which she wailed and howled in an obvious tantrum, in her mind rejected by both her parents; Maeve stomped off into into her toy room and we saw her throwing her toys across the room and upturned her table howling her little head off.

Took ages to calm her down.

Heard recently about people who try to get the best MPG out of their cars thus saving money. Apart from being a bunch of misers there is a lot of self discipline in controlling speed etc to get the best out of your car (best oil/parts/tyres etc required) being anal retentive would be high up on my list of assumed requirements for this “sport”.

Anyway, Me, the Wife and baby Maeve were going into town for a shopping trip we decided that the best way to do was through Dublins port tunnel – a 4.5 KM tunnel which goes from the M1 near the airport to the docks near the city centre; Its usually very expensive but at weekends its only 3 euro and there being a GAA match on the alternative route would have been a nightmare. We hit the tunnel south-bound entrance at the perscribed 80KM/H and put the car in neutral and left the rest to Gravity and momentum. With the slight decline we managed 4KM before the speed dipped below 50KM/H.

All rather inane and simple fun…

I noticed yesterday and today how tall Maeve is growing … I am not too sure exactly how tall Maeve is, but she can now open doors (just), peek over the bed matress, and peek over the fire-guard. What really brought it home was changing Maeves nappy this morning.

The first nappy change of the day is usually undertaken on the changing board that sits on the top of the cot Maeve sleeps in. When we first got the cot 17 months ago Maeve was barely bigger than my hand and was barely an “island” in the “ocean” that was the changing board. Now Maeve fills the board and her legs pops over the end of the board.

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[09:00] My friend Will says he gets spam on the feeds …. is this true? I hope not.

[10:00] Something is very very odd. When I look at the feed using the google and yahoo readers then the spam is there. When I use firefox, agregator, WGET etc and I don’t see the spam. Very Very odd. Not much I can do until I get home though.

[22:42] Yes my site has been hacked… but fixed and hardened now (I hope) in accordance with these guidelines. A  good site that helped me with this issue are JungleG and the usual Wordpress support – thanks guys.