Day 31: Invisible Violin and French Horns...

Today I tapped on the mirror to get Oscar's attention and he turned to see where the sound was coming from. To check it wasn't a fluke I called Mummy over and he did it again! And he said 'oh' twice while I was playing him Flanders and Swan on youtube. I couldn't get him to repeat that for Mummy though. I suspect he was teasing me.

"I once had a whim and I had to obey it to buy a French horn from a second hand shop. I polished it up and I started to play it in spite of my neighbours who begged me to stop."

Day 30: 1 Month Old!

Time certainly flies when you're having fun. Fun and not much sleep that is. Actually, if you add up all the bits and pieces of sleep you get, it comes to a fair bit. Not as much as one would like of course, but not *awful*. Tasha and I are tag team sleeping, so I stay up late to give the dream feed while she gets an early night and she handles the mornings while I stay in bed but get woken up by phone calls, the dustmen, the cats and the postman.

Day 26: Yay for summer!

If there's one thing that kills anaglyph images it's compression. Unfortunately sites like blogspot seem to re compress files over a certain size! That's why some of the images here look great and some have ghosting in places. I've been experimenting with smaller file sizes to try to stop blogspot recompressing. If I do the compression I can control the ghosting a lot better than the automated system they use!

Day 29: First time sitting on the Dragon!

We have a disused railway line nearby that the local council have turned into a place for joggers with iPods to get hit by cyclists with no bells.
People also come there to put their dog poo on display which is nice.

When the men with chainsaws came to thin out the trees, some artistic chaps took it upon themselves to carve out various objects into the stumps. The most impressive of these is the Magic Dragon. We discovered the magic when walking with our friends and their kids (including a few godchildren and a smattering of nephews) a few years ago. If you sing the Magic Dragon song he sometimes gives you sweets that seem to magically appear in his mouth while you are sitting on him posing for a photo!

Two versions this time, one for red/cyan glasses, the other for freeviewing (cross eyed or parallel)

Day 28. Life without the nipple shields?

Oscar has never been a natural latcher-on, so we, (I say we, I mean Tasha of course) have been using little silicone covers that are easier for babies to get on with.
Last night Tasha gave it a go au naturel and he went for it! Seems like the shields have trained him :)

Day 24. Michael Jackson.

All I need is a balcony and one white glove.

Day 25. Baby swap

Years ago, before the dawn of musical taste, I was in a pop group with my old chum Peter Spring. We went on tour with Peter Andre, made CDs and even appeared on the Big Breakfast. Radio 1 played our song and then faxed our agent to say how much they didn't really like it.

Roll on to present day and Pete is a director and producer of TV shows for Premier League football. He hangs about with football stars and that's how I ended up filming Rio Ferdinand and scoring the comedy football show 'goals and gaffs' with Rory McGrath.
Here we are together holding each others' new babies. Molly is six months, so a little taster of things to come. She feels heavy!


Here also is Grandma, or as I know her, Mum. With just enough negative parallax to pop out without making your eyes hurt. (see Jaws 3D!)
Mum is keeping us going with cheese and onion scones and fruitcake. Fruitcake is just what you need with a 5am feed! For balance I ought to point out that other Granny is also providing sustenance. Unless a burglar came in today while we were registering Oscar with his GP and left us a rhubarb crumble.

Day 24. Lo-fi 3D

Shopping at Waitrose a few days ago we found our car seat didn't fit the trolley. This meant I had to carry him or put the car seat into the trolley with the shopping. Doing that made for some interesting comments and predictable jokes 'what aisle are they in then?', but wasn't very practical as it cut down on shopping space considerably!
When we got to the till I realised that when Oscar had thrown up on me before we came out and I had quickly changed, I had left my credit card and cash in my vomit soaked jeans. Luckily the bank was within walking distance and the cashier recognised me so let me draw cash without my card.
Today we were worried that we might be becoming hermits so made an impromptu dash out to Tesco where we were pleased to find that our Primo Vaggio carseat does fit onto their trolleys. The only trouble with the Tesco system is he is so high you can't see the front of the trolley so we kept crashing into people. Luckily a three week old cute baby is the ideal antidote to trolley rage.
I usually use a pair of Canon 5Dmk2s or Panasonic Lumix cameras but
these pix were taken with an iPhone.

Day 23. Few pix from today

Today I wondered about baby clothes. A lot of them have little pockets. What is he going to be keeping in there?

Day 23. Other boy still doing fine.

Long before Oscar, our 'other boy', Solo ruled the roost. His nose is not too far out of joint now though, as he still manages to squeeze on to a lap, whether there's a baby there or not. Our other cat Gretel has gone from running out of the room when she sees Oscar, to coming up and having a sniff. Neither are very keen on crying though. But then again, neither are we.
Here is Solo out in the sun doing his Lion King impression.
The top picture is in 'Universal side by side' mode. If you can do those 'magic eye' pictures then you'll be able to see this in full colour 3D without any glasses. Try going cross eyed! Click the photo to open a larger version.

Day 23. Looking back a few months

Today we took Oscar out for a little walk in his pushchair. When Tasha was getting excited about pushchairs months ago I was thinking they were pretty much of a muchness. Put him in a supermarket trolley if you like, what difference does it make?
Once I held him that first time however I had a strangely different perspective. Suddenly I thought we needed a pushchair that was basically made of motorcycle helmet material, with air bags, bumpers and an alarm.

A few months ago I was lucky enough to be working at AIR studios, filming my producer friend Rupert Cobb as he recorded an album with a new young artist called Grace Ashton.

Here I am sitting in front of the impressive desk in the amazing control room.

Day 22 pt. 3 Feeding time!

Day 21 cont. Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?

Following from our lunch we barely had time to come home to feed the chickens before we were out again to friends Phil and Jen for dinner!
I got some good advice just before Oscar was born. If people want to come round to see the baby that's fine. But make them bring dinner!
We are very lucky and have had a steady supply of meals from great friends. It really has helped. The lack of sleep makes concentrating on planning food a real chore.
We were just about to go shopping to buy food to make and freeze in preparation when Tasha's waters broke!

Day 22. Temperature.

Getting the baby temperature right is very important! So say the books. And the midwife. We have four thermometers in the house and they vary in temperature by 3 degrees! Which one to trust?

Remember, click any photo to see it bigger!

Day 22. Starting to be more aware of his environment

Today Oscar seems a lot more interested in the world around him! He is looking around and staring intently at bright coloured toys.
Last night I got the full on exorcist stylee projectile vomit while burping him! Quite scary actually, I wasn't prepared for the noise! A bit like a mini fire hydrant. Luckily I had muzzy on hand. (muslin square, 'muzzy', a term we have inherited from our friends Jen and Phil. Amazing how many of those you can go through in a day.
Today we got the baby monitor out to try for this first time. About 10 minutes before we needed it. That's when I read the instructions and learned you need to charge it up for 16 hours before you can use it! Luckily I had some rechargeable ready I could swap.
We put him down for his 7.30 nap, which the book we are reading says is when we get to eat. Unfortunately he hasn't read the book and decided this was the time to really learn about how loud a sound he can make when left alone.

Day 22. Visit from Apprentice hopeful Adam Eliaz

His real name is Sid Pelling apparently.

The Family

Here we are laughing after setting the timer and constantly getting perfect 3D images of us both looking awful!

3D Yoda Baby!

A gift from Chris, Rea, Laura, Nathan!

Don't you just hate those pushy parents who force their taste on their kids? Pun intended.

Day 19 gifts!

We have received a mountain of cards and presents for Oscar! One of the latest was this wonderful cross stitch from our chum Rea.
You'll need red/green glasses to see this properly. Note the brown 'superbowl' / (used by Channel 4 recently in the UK) glasses won't work.
I will start adding images in anaglyph as well as the universal side by side format, so people who can see 3D by going cross eyed or like the old 'magic eye' images will be able to see them without glasses.

Day 21. First time as a Dad-who-lunches

Oscar is now 21 days old, we are keeping up with the tag team sleeping. I'm up until around 2am when Tasha takes over responsibility... In theory he doesn't wake until around 4.30am, so if she gets to bed on target at 8pm it works out nicely. That's the theory anyhow!

The time felt right to get out and about to show him off today. Tasha was invited to lunch with a friend and as I am 'at home Dad' for the time being, I thought I'd join in the fun. My little side by side 3D rig was charged and ready so we set off to see what this women-who-lunch thing was all about.

Apparently it's all about tea, nice lunch, sharing stories of childbirth horrors, paranoia, anxiety and cuddles.

One mum who overheard a group of boys at playgroup inviting hers join in "come on, let's play terrorists!" Thankfully we won't have to deal with that for a while. Came home exhausted and full of cheesecake. Why so tired? All we did was talk and eat. Took a few 3D stills, will post later!