I am not lying about the 600 images ...

Now I am beginning to understand where all of the powerful emotions come from... already I am protective, proud, and besotted.

It is something that only the reality can give you any idea of what it is like. People offer you their wisdoms but not until the baby is yours does any of it make sense.

Thank you to everybody for their best wishes and gifts.

I won't be able to help myself showing you images of our beautiful Ida Valentina but will try to get back to my 'knitting' as soon as possible.

The day before Ida was born

See, I did help!

We arrived home to a Wreath from our neighbour, Ann, and a sign from our staff

When I travel I get to look at myself from a distance. I get to stand away from myself. I get to look at others and wonder at the differences.

Luis is the antichaos.

Simple, dark, well pressed clothes.

Colour coded order, and all that might be random has been carefully placed that way.

At any time a thing could be found with ease.

Or

Crumpled, multicoloured, and often displaced.

Everything is everywhere.

At any time a thing could be found with luck and persistance.

A full life filled with fractions and disorder, but sometimes the chaos gets too much.

Should I colour code my life?

Just a  question.

Hugs

Johannes

Jo Grams (my wife) is 20 weeks into the project and doing fabulously.

We have declared our space  a no horror story zone.

How is it that everybody has a story about 'the things that go wrong' that they feel compelled to share?

Our friends have been good about not giving advice, or more precisely not trying to tell us that they know best!

But its weird that all of a sudden the world is full of opinions.

For this moment we have decided to have just one child.  But we are coming under the scorn of some for not yet planning the second.  Hell, we want to know if we can cope with the first before we consider the next.  Yet here we are having to justify taking one step at a time.

Can you imagine the outcry!  I recognise the developmental and social expertise gained by having children in the company of other children. But what I struggle with is the need to make that decision now.  Our child will not grow up in isolation.  That is the important thing.

Everything will change ..... This I believe to be true.  It is part of the Chaos theory.   How it will change will be determined by a million different things.  About 989,000 of those things will be out of our control.  So we will embrace the changes and move with them.

Is it just us, or is this a normal force of human nature?

How do you filter out the great information from the opinions?

Why scream into a paper bag?

I am certain there must be a therapeutic advantage ... but surely the release of your angst into an open environment is far more beneficial.

But what if someone were to hear you?

I had breakfast with my godson on Sunday. Waffles with fresh Strawberries

Oscar is crawling standing and stumbling.   He has learnt the power of screaming ...he doesn't see the need for a paper bag.

If anybody comes near he will look them in the eye, confirm their participation, even feign a small smile to draw you into a sense of being loved back ... then there is a blink, a rapid welling up of tears, and he lets rip with a rush of blood and the loudest wail!

He wants to be heard! Is it a call for help? or an ingenious test for parents!

He is not worried about what people think of him he just wants to make sure that they do!

Then there is just that time of the year when in an effort to maintain your composure amongst the chaos of Christmas traffic and the thin red line between calm and mayhem, you just wish that you had a bag to scream into so that when you face your clients you can maintain an appearance of things being under control.

Today, our last day of business before Christmas, is one of those days. ... its not the clients, its the crazy stuff that happens in town!