Category: journal

I wish I’d taken a video of Lola sleeping during her first two or three days of life: she used to do these incredible Bruce-Lee-style kung-fu spasms in her sleep.

She’d be lying there, peaceful and motionless, and suddenly her arms would shoot out to the sides above shoulder height. A really rapid, violent but graceful kind of motion suggestive of someone striking an initial fighting stance. Then immediately she would relax and be back in placid dreamland.

It was a bit scary at first but it’s not unusual, aparently.

We’re off to a local kids-stuff jumble sale type thing. Isa’s shattered as Lola, having slept and fed peacefully all day, kept Mum up a lot of the night. Hopefully, an outing will tire her out a bit and she and Isa can spend the rest of the day crashed out on the sofa while we watch the Wimbledon finals.

On a different tack, I must get into the habbit of making little blog postings — I’ve not written any this week; I think because I’m thi nking I have to sit down and write it all at once. Silly boy.

Lola Cesarina Hooper was born at 09:12 in the Whittington hospital. Seven pounds and seven ounces of indescribable wonderfulness.

And many more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hooperism/sets/72157594183786990/

Isa took some nice pics of our posh new living room a couple of days ago. I should really make a “before and after” set, though you can kind of work it out by looking at our floorboard project set on flickr and then comparing with those tagged june-24-ish.

Meanwhile, we continue to wait. Tum-te-tum.

Before

After

Watchet marina.

Watchet is where Mum and Dad have moved to. On the Bristol channel in Somerset, with a little harbour and marina.

Well, she’ll come when she’s ready–which wasn’t last Wednesday and probably won’t be today, which is  the due date reckoned by the hospital. Actualy, the due date reckoned by us (which, of course is the *correct* one) is next weekend. Maybe she’s waiting until then so as to validate our calculations. 🙂

Anyway, it’s a strange period, fluctuating between anticipation and anti-climax and accepting “good luck”s from everybody.

A lovely day today, by the way; sitting out on the patio writing this — a patio of pristine concrete, thanks to Mike’s recent deployment of his pressure cleaner. Isa, irrepressible as ever, trekked into town today to buy sequins and lace and other stuff. The derth of such items in Crouch End is causing her to consider opening a haberdashery. Sounds good to me.

Mum and Dad are installed (largely by themselves) in their new home and escaped the tyranny of boxes for the afternoon by walking down to the sunny village harbour where some kind of fête was taking place.

“Hello Lola, it’s Daddy!” How bored you must be getting with that. I expect you to give me a suitably withering look when you finally make your entrance 🙂 Not that you’re late — it’s still over a week till the due date; it’s just that we’re ready and waiting and you do keep kicking Mummy’s bladder.

Anyway, I just thought I’d witter some random musings at you while the rest of the country watches England play Trinidad & Tobago in the opening rounds of the World Cup. No doubt I’lll be able to tell if we score from the shouts emanating from pubs and living rooms accross the city. Will you be sporty, I wonder; I really am not, though I am looking forward to taking you to the swimming pool as soon as it’s allowed. And I’ve got a cycling/camping tour of southern France pencilled in for whenever you’re ready.

Gosh, I’m making myself sound all healthy and energetic, but the truth is I’ve become terribly sedentary over the last year. A few salutes to the sun of a morning, some press-ups at night; I do walk, under load, to rehearsal and back every week, but I’ve not got on the bike yet this year and my promises to myself about enrolling in a gym or taking up that Tai Chi class remain unfulfilled. It’s all going to change. Honest.

I wonder when you’ll meet your grandparents. If things go well, I expect my Mum and Dad will be along pretty early on but they won’t be around at the birth because they have to move house the weekend you’re due. They’ve had a rotten year with Dad having a major operation and then a number of complications in its wake that kept taking him back to hospital, leaving him with chronic pain and discomfort and Mum with an awful lot of boxes to pack. Thankfully, Dad does seem to be on the mend now. *hug*

Well, I must think about starting the dinner. Your Mum is just finishing off with a hair client; she’s just powered up the hair dryer. (Ooh — big shout. Did England score?) Smoked salmon with scrambled egg and spinach, I do believe. Yes, somewhat breakfasty, but then was when we concocted the menu: breakfast time.

Right, I’m off. See you soon. (Yes, Lola: a hint :-))

Our anniversary pressie in situ. No time to blog, but you can see out latest pics if you follow the link on the picture.

A photo-less entry–I really can’t be bothered to download the images from the camera, upload them to http://www.flickr.com/photos/hooperism/, and then link them to this. Which reminds me to mention that you can see all our recent pics at the URL I just mentioned. It’s my habbit at the moment to dump all our pics up there: cheap, off-site storage; and they have more bandwidth…

Any road up, all well here. Isa gets very tired, but is coping really well. We hope to have pretty much everything done by the end of the week. Even it some work remains, we’re going to clear all the tools out and pause until we’re in a post-natal state.

So, as I said: good night.

Typical, isn’t it: you get a new toy and play with it for a couple of weeks but then you start to lose interest. Then again, it has been a little hectic. We did force a break, though — took a long weekend on the Isle of Wight which was fantastic: peaceful, pretty, lots of coast; very much not London and our blighted flat. You can see more pics by clicking those below.

That was only a week ago but seems an eon already. Isa caught a fevery cold which flared up the night she got back, and she spent three days in bed feeling really rotten. She wasn’t on top form, anyway — she finds walking and other movements painful and she can’t sleep well because of restless leg syndrome, and she get a lot of swelling in her feet. Add to that her distress at the time it’s taking to get the flat sorted and our little holiday soon faded!

It’ll return, though, when things settle; and so may we, with Lola — we really did like the place, and it’s very quickly reached from London.

Thank you, and good night.