Parental Anecdotes 2.0

And yet another blog post proving that I have had my head buried in work and family for such a long time that it’s now September, meaning 6 months have flown by since my last Blog post. Geez. Lots has happened. Work got busy. Alex grew some more and started speech therapy (he has been diagnosed as having Apraxia of speech) and is coming along in leaps and bounds. Tash started a new job. I got all technological and acquired smartphones for Tash and I. Busy, busy, busy life.

But what I wanted to share in this blog post was another joyful moment of parenthood I experienced last night. Alex and Tash went to bed early as they were both exhausted giving me a couple of hours of Peace and Quiet (TM). I watched a movie and then played a game on the ‘puter. Just before I shut the ‘puter off I decided to browse through the folder marked “Alexander”. While trolling through the hundreds of photos of my son I found a folder marked “Playing with the New Camcorder”. I open it to find some AVI files of Alex. In one of them he is “helping” his mother water the garden. What he is actually doing is spraying everything in sight with the hose. At one point he finds the outlet for the downpipe off the shed roof and begins spraying water up the pipe. After a couple of seconds, the water begins to run out again, at which Alex squeals with delight. So he sprays the water again and, after another delay, more water comes out. He’s fascinated. He does this a few more times before the video ends. It was really nice to watch.

I love watching my little boy discover the world. He just finds so much happiness in the simple things and I love sharing it with him, even after the fact.

AMUSING SIDE STORY: Two nights ago I was getting ready for bed when I heard Alex grumbling in his sleep. He’s had some nightmares recently so I thought I’d check on him. As I entered the room he sat up, still sound asleep, and belched rather loudly. After the belching was done, he giggled and proceeded to lie back down as if nothing had happened. All still sound asleep. I had to creep out so I didn’t wake him with my laughter. It still makes me laugh. Heh. THAT’S my boy!

So 20% of 2011 is gone?

Wow. Three months gone. And what a three months it has been. Alex turned two. My wife and I each officially got another year older. We once again celebrated the Christian hijacking of a pagan holiday as well as the turning of the year. I watched as my hometown (Brisbane) flooded to levels last seen when I was just one year old. I’ve been to Melbourne and Canberra (in that order). Alex started at Childcare. Wow. A very busy time. So much has happened it’s hard to know what the most significant event is. I’m thinking its likely best to just leave it there and pick up anew when I get a bit more time to write more.

I’ll write more about the Tigershark conversion I mentioned a while ago along with completed pics as they turned out better than I had feared. Plus they have lights and sounds! Wheee!

But for now, let’s just agree that it’s been a helluva time since I last posted, shall we?

Where HAVE you been?

Wow. The months fly by. Its such a cliche but at the same time its not uncommon to look up and think, "Geez! Where did that time go?". And so it's been for me. So what has been keeping me so busy?

Gaming.
I've mentioned my liking for the miniature games Warmachine and Hordes before. What I may not have mentioned that I am a volunteer rep for the company that produces them. For those of you not familiar with these games and their parent company, Privateer Press, we reps are called Press Gangers (Privateer Press - Press Gangers; get it?). Each year in Australia we hold a National Championship for these games to crown an Australian Champion. Its normally held at GenCon Australia, formerly Australia's "Premier Gaming Event" and this year I volunteered to run it. About 8 weeks out from the event, GenCon Australia announced they would not be running this year due to "financial concerns". This created a few hiccups around the traps but eventually we found a new venue and ploughed ahead with running our National Titles anyway. I wanted to make this event the biggest and best Nationals ever seen and to that end I wanted to give every player a prize-pack for coming along. It was quite a lot of work getting it all together. I could bore you with all the details but to make a long story short, I ran the event (with much help from friends and fellow Press Gangers), the players played and walked away with their swag of stuff and the various champions walked away with a swag of prizes. I thought the event went along pretty well on the whole but it ate a large chunk of my spare time.

Work.
I won't say much about work as you never know who's reading your blog and don't want to unnecessarily offend certain people. Suffice to say that I've had some big issues at work and have been focusing on getting under control there. Its been pretty stressful and I'll be glad when its all sorted out some more or I go on holidays a few weeks (yay January!).

Family.
Before you get worried, my wife and son are fine. We still have a few sleep issues with our boy but they are slowly improving. He goes to sleep much better now than he used to, he just gets pretty restless some nights and finds it hard to settle himself. We're working on it. Other than that, our boy is a pretty happy lad who is fairly easy to take care of. He has his good days and bad days but on the whole, the good far outweighs the bad. My wife is enjoying being back working at least two days a week and feels like she's contributing something (as if looking after our son wasn't enough). No, my family issues have been with one of my brothers. He suffers from pretty severe depression and recently it got the better of him. Thankfully, nothing tragic happened but it was touch and go for quite a while. While I didn't have to deal with most of the problems, it still made me worry a lot at a time when I had lots of worries already. Depression is a very serious mental health issue that many people don't realise is quite so bad until they have to deal with it (and I didn't deal very well with it I have to say).

But thank heavens a lot of it has passed and things are looking up. I hope to be blogging more regularly in the near future. I'm heading to Canberra to play in an Apocalypse tourney being run by my mate Bart in January and I am really looking forward to it so to motivate myself to get my figures ready I'll try and blog about my progress. Stay tuned.