Liam – aged 5 weeks

Liam is now aged 5 weeks. The time since he was born has flown.

He has been weighed regularly, and at the last weigh in he was 10lb 8oz. Since he was born he has put on 3lb 2oz in 5 weeks, which is pretty good going. Liam definitely enjoys his food! He looks quite different from the day that he was born. All his newborn wrinkles are gone now, he’s really filling out.

He has begun to smile a lot more now, Gemma managed to get this photo the other day:

Ellie is still really fascinated with him, giving him lots of kisses and cuddles. She’s been really great with him, always wanting to give Gemma and I help with changing him and feeding him. Hopefully they’ll be the best of friends when they’re older.

It seems mad to think that he was only born 5 weeks ago.

Woken In The Night

What’s the most unusual way that you’ve been woken in the night?

The other night Gemma and I were woken at about 4 o’clock in the morning by a really strange noise from outside. It sounded like someone was dying. A really loud groaning sound. I got out of bed to investigate.

I looked up and down the street. Nothing seemed obvious, I couldn’t see anything or anyone who would be making such a noise. But, just as I was about to return to bed there was the noise again. My attention was now focused across the road. And there was the source of all the noise!

One of our neighbours was hanging out of his bedroom window throwing his guts up. Not the most pleasant sight to greet my eyes at that time of the morning. He had his whole torso out of the window and was being sick on to his porch / garage roof below. The roof was angled away from the house towards the street and so there was a small river of sick running down the roof.

Why he couldn’t go to the bathroom, I have no idea! After laughing a little at his position, I returned to bed.

Only to be woken again an hour later by the same retching sound, and another torrent of stomach contents running across the roof. I went back to sleep shortly after before having to get out of bed to go to work.

The river of sick was still there as I was leaving for work. It was so obvious to any passer-by what had happened. Luckily though, by the time that I got home from work later that day all traces of the incident had been removed.

Insulating our house

This weekend my Dad and I began the big job of putting insulation into our loft.

My Mum and Dad arrived fairly early in the morning to enable us to spend the whole day at it. My Dad and I set about getting ready, while my Mum was looking after Ellie while Gemma was at work.

The first job that we had to do was to install two fluorescent lights to provide more light rather than the one solitary light bulb that we had originally. This was a fairly easy job as there was already an electrical supply, so all we had to do was to run some extra cable and install a junction box.

Once the lights were installed, we began the task of moving most of the things that Gemma and I had accumulated over time to one side of the loft so that we could make a start with the insulation and also begin laying the floor boards.

Starting from one side of the loft, both me and my Dad were perched on boards laid across the rafters, so that we didn’t fall through the floor to the bedrooms below, we started laying the insulation between the rafters. Fibreglass insulation is not the best stuff to work with, it gets very itchy. Long sleeved tops and gloves highly recommended!

The most awkward part of the whole process was getting the insulation right into the point of the rafters, as there is not a lot of head room there, so you are having to work on your stomach. After successfully installing the insulation in between the rafters, we moved onto putting some of the floorboards down so that we would have a more solid base to work from.

We added some batons across the rafters to add some extra support to the floorboards, and to raise them slightly so that they were not squashing the insulation down too much. Once the first lot of batons were secured to the rafters we set about fixing the floorboards to the batons. This was by far the quickest part of the job so far. Once we had screwed all of the boards down across one width of the house, we decided that would be enough for one day, and conveniently, that’s what the rechargeable drills thought too!

The next day, my Mum and Dad arrived early again to carry on from where we had left off the previous evening.

We began by shifting most of the things around in the loft onto the new floorboards so that we could concentrate on putting the insulation and floorboards down in the central part of the loft. As can be seen in the photo, progress in this part was pretty good as there was more room to work in, and the boards went down reasonably easily. But then progress slowed down a little as we had to cut all the boards down so that they would fit between the rafters, but by mid afternoon we had completed most of the central part.

Then we got to the hatch area. This proved to be a little trickier. We found that we’d need to move the light switch and also build up a step to go over the water pipes that were located on one side of the hatch. As it was getting late we decided that we’d call it a day.

It was looking really good by the time we had finished for the day. Two thirds of the loft area is now boarded out so that we have more storage space, and hopefully, the house will be warmer too.

Phase 2 of the project will begin in a couple of weeks after Mum and Dad get back from a long weekend away for my Dad’s birthday.

Many thanks to my Dad for the hard work put in, and also to my Mum for keeping Ellie entertained over the weekend.

See you in 2 weeks.

Gardening and Me – Who’d have thought it?

My Mum would be so proud!

Yesterday, I spent most of the day tidying up our back garden. It’s been a bit neglected over the past couple of months, mainly due to the glorious British weather.

The grass had been quite overgrown around the edges and also grass seed had gotten on the borders, when we had reseeded a few areas a few months ago. I started by trimming back the overgrown edges, which led to me not keeping them straight as I should have done, partly due to fact that the edges were so overgrown that you couldn’t see them! Once trimmed, I then had to square off the edges so that they looked neat.

Once the grass was done, it was time to start working on the borders. This was the biggest job by far, as the grass seeds had properly taken root. It was hard work, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Just don’t tell my Mum!

The only down side to it all, is that my back is now in agony. It has got better throughout the day, and only really hurts when I have to bend. Should be ok for work tomorrow.

The Look of Gareth’s Blog

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been looking at different themes for my blog. For a long period of time I was using the “Cutline” theme, but decided to take a look at some different themes.

As I decided to do this, the guys at WordPress.com added a new feature to the system – the Theme Preview. Good timing or what!

Anyway, armed with this new tool I began looking at other themes that are included in WordPress. The favourite ones that I liked were:

• Blix
• Chaotic Soul
• Fadtastic
• Freshy
• K2-lite
• Ocean Mist

I thought that they all looked really good, but they just didn’t feel right.

Maybe its cos I’m a creature of habit, and that I’m not keen on change. But in the end I decided to stick with my “Cutline” theme. I think it looks professional and clean. Who knows, maybe in the future I may end up breaking my habits

Will this rain ever stop?

I really can’t believe how long this rain has gone on for.

While we’ve had a lot of rain here in Wigan we’ve been lucky regarding flooding, as quite a few areas of the UK are still under water. Many people have had to leave their homes and stay in temporary accommodation. And I don’t think that there is going to be any let up in the weather according to the forecast.

The weather has caused all sorts of problems for everyone. Daily life has been disrupted for many people. Sport has been affected, most notably Wimbledon. It has been way behind schedule, up to 2 or 3 days in some competitions.

It will also be interesting to see if there will be any rain for the British Grand Prix this weekend. This could make the racing very interesting indeed, and sort the men from the boys!
Silverstone is already under pressure to perform at the weekend and I hope that they can deal with all eventualities. They have made a lot of improvements to all of the facilities in the last few years, and will continue to do so. Hopefully the car parks will hold up to the pressure that they will be put under.

I’m just hoping for an exciting race, with plenty of overtaking (I can dream!)

How stupid do they think I am???

Got another one of those scam emails the other day saying that I’d won the Lottery. They must think people are stupid. Why do people fall for this???

I mean the English is appalling for a start, and they obviously can’t afford a spell checker. Another big clue is the fact there using a “Yahoo” email address. If this was really from the “National Lottery” surely they’d have their own email addresses!

The basic message in this email is, please give me all your personal details so that we can take as much money as possible from you and your bank account!!!

NATIONAL LOTTERY HEADQUARTERS:
P O Box 1010 Liverpool,
(Customer Services)

OFFICIAL PRIZE NOTIFICATION

An Evening Out

It’s not often that Gemma and I get to go out for a meal, but yesterday we took the opportunity. Ellie had gone out for the day with Nana and Grandad, and her cousin Dafydd to Chester Zoo, and was staying over at night.

We went to a lovely Italian restaurant that we’ve passed loads of time on our way into Wigan.

The restaurant is called La Cava and when we arrived it was very busy. which is always a good sign . The waiting staff were very friendly from the outset, and were very attentive and checking that everything was ok.

The food was very good, and great value too. They had a good selection of items on the menu, to start with Gemma had ribs, which just fell off the bone, and I had calamari, which was very good. To follow, Gemma ordered a Margherita pizza, which was large to say the least (luckily we were able to parcel up what Gemma didn’t manage to finish, and have it the next day ), and I had Penne Gratinate, which was really delicious and well cooked. Hats off to the chef.

Gemma and I both thoroughly enjoyed the evening out, spending some quality time together. We will definitely go to La Cava again.

UPDATE 31st May 2007: Added pictures of Ellie and Dafydd’s trip to the zoo