2007 on Ricky Moorhouse

Milk

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:57:27 +0000

Abi now knows how to get her milk! First she'll use the sign for milk:

If we don't notice, she do it again with sounds and then sometimes if we're in the kitchen she'll point to her bottles followed by the fridge and the microwave (just in case we've forgotten how to!). One time she even went as far as to get the empty milk bottle out of the recycling bin and hold it up to me!

British Gas Website Regression

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I had an e-mail from British Gas today telling me that my bill is now ready to view online on their website. We use their paperless billing to reduce the junk that comes through the front door, but last time I went to their website (probably about 3 months ago when I got the previous bill) they'd move to a new 'improved' site:

However, their website now only allows me to see one of my 2 accounts (2 - I thought I only had one as a dual-fuel customer!) So if I want to manage my Gas and Electricity online I have to use 2 seperate e-mail addresses. I've phoned them up twice to ask about this and neither time could they tell me when it will be fixed. At least this time they said I could have the paper bills for free until it's sorted. Aparently each of the accounts is related to a unique customer id which is used by the website, so I guess to them I'm 2 seperate people, sharing a name, house, and dual-fuel discount. What an odd system!

Abi, gloves and shoes

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:05:12 +0000

Today we took Abi to get her first real shoes - we'd originally tried to go yesterday, but were too close to the closing time for Clarks so they could just measure her, but there wasn't time to sell us any shoes (huh?). Today we managed to get there in plenty of time, had her measured again and then had to choose the shoes - we ended up with these lovely ones (which Abi really likes):

Abi Swimming

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:00:00 +0000

//flv_ricky('video_swim','abi-swim');

I know this video has been on Laura's facebook for a while, but I wanted it here too as it's sooo cute!

Abi has been doing so well with her swimming and it's lots of fun taking her. Last week, she had her first solo underwater swim - which meant she swam between the instructor and me underwater. (It was only a very short distance, but amazing!) Tomorrow is her last session of the current term, which seems to have flown by, but we're now booked onto the next term so it'll only be a weeks gap in between.

First Step

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:17:43 +0000

This morning just as I was leaving for work, Abi decided that she wanted to follow me as she often does and came crawling after me towards the front door and peered round it as I opened it and then continued to go through the doorway. At this point Laura picked her up and stood her on the floor a little way back from the doorway. She took a step to the side!! I know it's only a little step but it was a big moment for us and we're very pleased with her!

“Baby”

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0000

[Baby -Abi](http://samespirit.net/ricky/audio/abibaby.mp3) (mp3)

First Little Dippers Session

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0000

After problems with the weekend workshop that we'd originally booked on we finally got round to Abi's first swimming lesson today.

She seemed a bit nervous as we were waiting to get into the pool and watching the previous class finish as they did they're underwater swims and being thrown towards their parents. However she loved it once we were in. She loved having the other babies (She was the oldest in the group for a change) around and watching them and seemed to have lots of fun with the lesson itself. She did very well with her holding onto the side and loved her splashing into the pool as usual. The highlight though was floating on her back - she's never been particularly happy with floating and I hadn't got the hang of how to hold her before, but they showed us a different way to do it and she was brilliant - she seemed to love it.

A bath-time song

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Can you go splish splish splish like a little fish? splish splish A fish that goes splish splish splish

A fish goes splish splish splish
But what goes splosh?

A baby giraffe!

<img src="http://samespirit.net/ricky/images/giraffe.png" style="float:left;"></img>Can you go splash splash splash like a baby giraffe?
  splash splash
A giraffe that goes splash splash splash
when he's having his bath splash splash

A fish goes splish splish splish;
a giraffe goes splash splash splash;
but what goes splosh?

An albatross!

Can you go splosh splosh splosh like an albatross?
  splosh splosh
diving in the sea splosh splosh
when he's finding his tea splosh splosh

Watching log files for something

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Found from: techblog:

tail -f /var/log/apache2/access_log | sed "s/rss/Ctrl+vCtrl+[[41;1mrssCtrl+vCtrl+[[0m/g"

This example is looking for people accessing the rss feed so I can see how frequently it gets hit (whilst still seeing what else is going on). With this I spotted that one of the Firefox extensions I was using(piclens) was automatically downloading the detected rss feed with every page access. It's a nice extension and I can see why it does that, but I don't want to be accessing rss feeds automatically and potentially multiple times as I use sites.

Abi’s messy adventure

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:00:00 +0000

This morning just as I was getting ready to leave for work I came back through into the dining room to see Laura and Abi, but Laura was in there on her own. - Abi had gone off for an explore as she's been doing more and more recently. When I got through to the living room, I saw Abi had got some thing in her mouth, and unusually it looked quiet big, so I went round to investigate further and discovered she had the lid to our Nandos' peri-peri ketchup in her mouth covered in ketchup and the bottle was laying on the floor next to her.

New Blog Design

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks I've been reading a selection of articles on design and design theory, so I decided to make some tweaks to my blog design to try out some of these ideas.

Overall the new design is pretty similar to how it looked before, but some of the key things I've changed are:

Tabs now look a lot better</h4

I've changed the tabs to use a roll-over image instead of CSS colours and hackery. This makes it look more consistent across different browsers and I think it looks tidier.

Lawn in a lunch break

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After a lot of annoyances with the rubber mulch that we'd decided on previously for our garden: Abi nearly choking on a piece of mulch; Cats using it as a litter tray; and it loosing it's colour; we decided we'd try a lawn instead. So last Friday I spent my lunch break laying a new lawn in our back garden.

I worked from home for the day so that I could be here for the delivery and to make it easier to get the turf down quickly. By 9 o'clock, the turf had arrived from Denmead Turf and I'd moved it all through to the back garden ready to start so at lunchtime I decided it was worth making a start at laying it and see how it went. The turf went down easily, I really enjoyed it and it was amazing the difference it makes (photos to follow)! Then we had to water it in and make sure it had plenty of water while it settled, which initially we did with a hose, but then decided it was worth getting a sprinkler to give it a better more even covering.

Adventures with Abi

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 13:40:08 +0000

Abi seems to doing so much more everyday at the moment, it's been wonderful watching her developments and seeing her different adventures. The other morning she cleaned her teeth with me after having her face washed. She's so sweet with her little toothbrush - not that there's any teeth there to clean yet. Yesterday and today she's taken to reaching up to the edge of the desk or the table on tip toes and almost hanging off it with her little fingers. Yet another set of things that need to be moved out of reach!

What's been going on...

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Abi

Abi has reached a stage where she's very mobile and getting more adventurous by the day which is lots of fun. She can now crawl really well and will explore the room we're in and venture into the rooms on either side on her own. She's also been sleeping much better - last night she slept through till 5.10, had some milk and is back asleep now. I guess all the activity is tiring her out. She's recently started to laugh in her sleep as well, which is really cute. She also now seems to eat almost as much as us for some meals!

Abi chasing feet (Video)

Sun, 13 May 2007 07:36:31 +0000

Abi seems to have a fascination with feet, and yesterday she decided to go after mine - finding them hilarious when she caught them :)

Garden Renovations

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Over Easter, we put the finishing touches to our Garden changes so we can at last use the garden again! We'd decided that we wanted to find a replacement for the paving that we'd feel happy with Abi playing on, and inevitably falling over on. We considered a few options, but the one we liked best and decided on in the end was rubber mulch.

Firstly we had to remove the paving slabs, which came up much more easily than expected, although it was still a big job as they were fairly heavy. Once we'd done that, we had to put in an edging to hold the mulch in place - for this we decided on log roll edging. We ordered the edging but then when it arrived it took us a while to get round to fitting it, but once we got round to it, it went in well - hard work as you have to hammer each one in so that it goes down to give us the depth we needed (the logs were 6 inches high and the mulch was only due to be 2 inches deep).

Abi getting up (video)

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:13:58 +0000

Abi Getting Up on Vimeo

300th post! Prizes to be won!

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I just noticed that this would be my 300th blog post so I decided to do something a bit different. Firstly, I'd get my wife to write this post. Secondly anyone who comments on this post within the next week will win a prize - the better the comment, the better the prize ;)

My blog started back on June 2003 with this insightful post. Since then I have explored life living in a foreign land, have pondered upon new advances in technological masterpieces such as Firefox and revealed my thoughts on life as a daddykins.

Fun at feeding time

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Abi's now been on solids for over a month, and it's been great fun feeding her them. Now that she's 6 months, she can have pretty much anything, although we're still being careful and introducing things individually. She's so far had lots of purees - both vegetables - butternut squash, carrot, parsnip, potato, sweet potato, broccoli and courgette - mixed in various interesting combinations and also lots of fruit - she particularly seems to like banana and apple (not together - don't think we've tried that yet!). This week she tried natural yoghurt for the first time - which she loved - really odd as we thought it would be a bit too sour for her. It's been messy though - particularly with her raspberries and self-feeding!

Abigail Laughing (video)

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:32:36 +0000

No Content Found

Abi's first (typed) words

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

C bv vvc dfgjyhkjnbh rrgh nnmjjhjucxbvfgnm5hr6t

any ideas what she means?

Abigail Rolling (video)

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Today we were trying to catch Abigail's cute noises on video, and didn't manage as when we pointed the camera at her, the noises changed from happy to sad. However I decided to try and record her playing on her tummy with her butterfly, and she decided to roll!!

2006 - Year of Change!

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

2006 has been quite a year for us - lots and lots has happened and changed. Laura has done a great summary of her highs and lows for the year, and here's my year...

Abi's Jabs

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Today we took Abi to the doctors for her second set of jabs. The waiting was awful - we were both dreading it, and Abi was being her usual sweet and gorgeous self. When we finally got in to see the nurse, Abi burst out in giggles - it was lovely, but we didn't think it would last.

So then it came to the injection and she was quiet, and then a few seconds afterwards had another little giggle! Unfortunatley the second injection didn't have the same effect - she wasn't happy after that one, but it didn't last and she'd soon cheered up and was smiling and giggling again