Where to start…
It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to put my thoughts down in this medium, for a number of reasons.
The main excuse (and it is an excuse) is that two years ago I changed jobs. Moving from a small “standards organisation” that operated in the financial services sector. From a role that I’d done 8 years, where I’d built up a team of people around me who I trusted and had complete confidence in delegating things to. In short a job I could do standing on my head, leaving plenty of time free to tinker about with the emerging web technologies (like Blogging, RSS and WordPress etc.).
In the summer of 2008, I move to a small software company, to lead the client project development efforts. And, as you can imagine in a small start-up company, pressures on delivering to some significant clients and on moving the organisation into a position of profit, it’s been a bit of a struggle with not enough hours in the day. Especially when combined with the family.
There are other reasons for not spending time writing, that are almost as good as the dog eat my blog post… Up until a few months ago, I had the excuse of having a PC that was almost 7 years old. This although state of the are when we got it, peformed like a dog, taking a good couple of minutes to boot, which was enought of an excuse for me to use for not keeping the sites/software up-to-date (so I couldn’t use the new iPhone app for authoring posts). Additionally, the last time I tried to update the site, I suffered from technical challenges (that shouldn’t happen to a 20 year IT veteran) such as corrupting the site, without having an up-to-date back-up, causing me to lose the last few posts I’d made (back in 2008) – an object lesson that I plan not to repeat.
But, now I’ve got a new shiny Quad core pc – with 2TB of disk, I don’t have any excuses (except for work!), so I now plan to try an post more regularly – at least monthly.
Back to the reasons behind starting this blog, to record the ups of being a parent, for selfish reasons only. So that in years to come I’d have a diary of the important stuff that happened as the kids we’re growing up. As you can imagine there so much that’s happened over the last couple of years that I just don’t know where to start, especially as I’m pretty disappointed with myself for not keeping this up and missing recording some of the the most entertaining and rewarding events of my life. Honestly, there’s been some many time when I thought “that would have been good to blog about”.
Think the best place to start is with a brief bio on each of them, so catch-up on who they are and give you my view of their little personalities, that reflect elements of both Tracy’s and me, but they’re not clones and I love spending time having fun with oth of them.
Hannah
The eldest – has always been a very bright inquisitive little girl, who enjoys having fun and is very creative, if a little controlling (but in a nice way). She likes to know how things work and is always asking questions. She started school about two months ago, and is getting on really well with her reading and writing. She’ll be doing better than me in no time – and is already challenging my spelling ability! That said, just like her mum she does enjoy her sleep and gets a little grumpy if she doesn’t get enough
Luke
The complete individual… He’s now four, and almost ready to leave home, except for the fact he doesn’t want to eat with cutlery. Not that he can’t, it’s just he’s chosen not to, for reasons he might explain to us one day. Although he does have issue with his sight, I don’t feel this is going to hold him back, the world will have to adapt to the force that is Luke Teasdale. He’s such a happy little chap, unless you ask him to do something that he doesn’t want to – in which case you get a very clear “no” and that’s the end of it.
So, to summarise the last couple of years, works been challenging but fun. But, the best thing it spending time with my beautiful wife and fantastic children. Each time I come home I smile so much when I hear “Hi Daddy!” from either of them…