the cousins together!

as mentioned in the last update, here's James and Katie just chilling away this afternoon!

Great Gran H arrives from England in a few days, i am sure she is going to love seeing them!

be excellent to each other!

smiles from James

hey everyone

surprise, surprise, it's another update with another cute picture of James :)

Michele took some really great pics today, this being one of our favourites (one of several thousand). he's been quite active and vocal, he seems to be developing quite rapidly! that said, Michele seems to wish for me to cease and desist with trying to encourage James to have as his first words "8 Ace", "Ace" or any variant thereof.

his cousin Katie came to visit today, and the two of them condescended to share the large donut thing James has to lay on. i will have a think and a see about uploading the pics!

otherwise, all is well here. James went on a massive expidition at the weekend - Baby City for what can only be described as the king of prams, Wimpy to see all his friends there and sit whilst Mummy and Daddy ate, and then off to see his Grandma Monica and his, erm, Great Grandmother or "Groot Ouma" in Afrikaans, i think.

i have just changed my cellphone's message alert to The Who's Baba O'Reilly. it is most excellent.

anyway, admire the pic!!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!

James - aged 6 weeks

heya everyone

well, this time it was bathtime for his weekly progress picture update! he cried a great deal at bath time to begin with, but now he seems to love it. having a bath does tend to help settle him for the night!

otherwise, Michele went for a check-up at the doctor today. many of you will be undoubtedly thrilled to learn that, apparently, her spleen is in the right place. i had no idea that it was under threat of movement, so there you go.

James also went on a shopping excursion with Mummy & Granny today. i believe they had some Wimpy too, lucky things!

as we are at the six week stage, James earlier this week had the dubious pleasure of having certain necessary innoculation injections - he cried for about a minute afterwards, but was soon fine again. i shall be crying for quite some time no doubt - i set up some investments for young Napoleon today. will cost a bit month by month, but it means that when he hits 18 (2023!!!!!), we should be able to send him on his way to buy some wheels and set him on his way to University. he can buy his old man a pint if he is feeling generous, i guess.

ho hum, probably loads of other things to speak of, but they have escaped my mind right now. oh yeah, some film reviews :

King Kong : not as bad as i expected, but nothing happens for an hour and it is still just Jurassic Park with an absolutely enormous monkey stuck on it.

Hostel : looked ace, woefully disappointing. for an 88 minute film with a really warped plot, it manages to drag its feet and be very dull and combersome.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang : saw it again. it is still a most excellent film.

i am sure there is something else i/we watched but have forgotten about. i guess that is a review of whatever it was in itself.

be excellent to each other!!

take it easy, son

here's James just deciding to pose for the camera for a bit. enjoy!

James aged 5 weeks (ish)

hey everyone

OK, this pic was a day after 5 weeks, but this is one of the best we have of him. hope you like it!!

all is well on this side of the world - off for 6 weeks' injections for the little fella, a few days early. i am sure he will be fine, i just hope his mother does not lamp the nurse when he starts the inevitable crying!

for my chum Sinbad

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this pic is for Sinbad's Metallica avatar. appreciate it.

four weeks

hey everyone

well, here's the "little" fella at four weeks - 4.7kgs now, and getting taller every hour, never mind every day. i cannot imagine who he is taking after :)

all is well - he's still sleeping through longer and longer, i think some six hours is the latest record he has achieved!!

tomorrow we are taking him off on the joys of shopping - to, surprise surprise, baby city to get some more wet wipes, nappy bags and everything else that we can rememeber to! i could have stopped off myself during the week, but we have to be brave and bold at some point and take him out and about to places other than to see his grandparents! i figure the odds are with us - how busy and hectic can a trip to a baby store on a Sunday be? they could be famous last words, i suppose, but we shall see!

a special hello to Mike and Anne, as well as Sarah - thanks for checking in and seeing what i have gotten around to putting on this site!! hope all is going well with you guys!

thanks very much to all the anonymous surfers who have taken the time to send some very nice comments about beautiful young James. it still feels weird and improbable that anyone reads this site, so it is rather nice to be wrong!

otherwise, we kind of watched Pitch Black and The Chronicles Of Riddick last night, mainly to see what the fuss was all about. i kind of got through PB, it being a halfway decent and somewhat liberal retelling of the old Flight Of The Phoenix story, with a touch of Mad Max 2 thrown in for good measure (no bad homage since it was made in Australia). as far as Chronicles of Riddick, however, i was soon asleep during it, for it seemed to be far too Borg-esque in plot and it has not been all that long since i saw those Star Trek films or episodes. neither film was bad, but it is not like i am angry at myself for watching them earlier.

be excellent to each other!!

1987

good morning

well, it's an astonishing 19 years ago today that my Uncle Colin took me to the Manchester G-Mex to see the great, great Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

i will never forget the gig, my first ever and it was and is my favourite band of all time.

does make me feel somewhat old, but nonetheless Frankie were playing full volume in the car this morning!

James slept for a new record six hours straight last night - i am feeling rather awake for the first time in a while!!

watching something or other

hello

here we are watching something or other on television. looking at the rather sad, depressed and bored aspects of our faces, i suspect it involves the increasingly useless whims and ways of Middlesbrough.

i assure you we were all somewhat happier after whatever it was was switched off!!!!

James aged 3 weeks

hey everyone

a delayed update (blogger now being dead slow does not help), but here's a picture of James aged three weeks. i am delighted to say he is healthy and happy, and getting rather big!!

according to Michele, he finds me messing around with Prince music rather soothing, so i guess we will be playing more of the purple one on a night. he seems to quite like the Foo Fighters too. actually, i just made the observation to Michele that, whereas Dave Grohl was only 33% of Nirvana, he was conversley more than 66% of the talent of the band.

i have also (ahem) obtained video footage of David Lee Roth performing Jump with the Boston Pops Orchestra thing. it says it all that he spends most of the time attempting to hide in the orchestra pit.

be excellent to each other!

and another dinnertime pic

and one more pic of me sat with James as i sit and try and work out how to hold the bottle properly and best for him.

ten points if you can name the cat on my t-shirt, and describe what he used to look like!

with all these pics, i hope i am not turning the like of James into the Truman Show!!

be excellent to each other!

Hungry James

well, if there is one thing we know for certain about James, it is his appetite! the guidebooks are all pretty much out the window; he eats when he wants to eat. nothing wrong with a healthy appetite i guess!

it is not often i either get the chance nor the confidence to feed him - his Mummy does a most excellent job of it. however, i do try my best to help out and spend as much time as i can with him!!

a Mini Mini-Me?

hey everyone

just a quick James/Napoleon update for you all. he seems to be developing quite a knack for doing impressions - here he is doing his best Dr Evil pose! alas, could not get the camera ready for when he was doing it really, really, really well!

nearly three weeks on and James and Mummy are doing very well!!!

James's advert

hey everyone

hope you had a good time saying farewell to 2005 and have thus far had a most excellent 2006!! we were in bed by about 11pm - catching sleep whilst James did!

here's the newspaper ad my folks took out to mark the arrival of James in the world. i am sure some of you will want to see it!

otherwise, all is well on this side of the world. James is getting bigger and beautiful every day, and Michele has really got the hang of motherhood - she is rather something at it!!

i spent New Year's Day with The Colonel, showing him how to get his DVD-R working. he seems to have the knack of it now, and i have no doubt at all that he will be running off discs with no hassles. nice one, since he has taught me so much over the years it is nice to be able to reciprocate the ability!!

James had some visitors today, our good friend Maria and our "friend" Sinbad. i must say i was somewhat disappointed that James did not say his first words today - James spent five minutes in the company of Sinbad but did not say what most people normally do to Sinbad after spending that kind of time with him. alas, i cannot use that word on this web page.

meanwhile, for all my years in education, i have been left unsure as to what is the correct grammatical way to say "James's". i believe the "'s" is correct as we are reffering to something pertaining to James in the singular, ie there is not a gang of James', it is something that is James's. feel free to correct me on this one if you have a different view!

oh well, what do you know, a halfway decent update for a change!!

be excellent to each other!!