Kids woke me up in the middle of the night and I couldnt get back to sleep so I went outside. With binoculars I watched two bright objects that traversed across the whole sky very very fast. I am sure they were satellites. They were two fast and bright for planes and too longevid for meteors.

I was sitting next to Edith in the front room whiling away some time before bed.

"Are you going to be a sporty girl or a lazy girl when you grow up?", I asked.
"Sporty girl", she responded.
"Are you going to be a clever girl or a dumb girl?"
"Clever girl"
"Are you going to a mean girl or a kind girl?!
"Kind girl"

Edith paused for a second,

"I'm gona be barbie"

Okaaaay.

Like an idiot I managed to forget my password to my own blog. There was no password recovery mechanism. One of my workstations 'remembers' the password but I have no idea what it is. I installed wireshark and snooped the HTTP traffic as the browser logged me in. Thank god for no HTTPS! Having said that, even with HTTPS I could have used Fiddler which can spoof a certificate.

Argh! Edith climbed into Tom's travel cot just before lunch and emptied a box of beads into it. The kind of thing that Tom loves to put in his mouth. I told her she needed to clear up the beads before she got her lunch. 20 minutes later she was still refusing. The telly was off, there was nothing to do in the playpen, she just sat there. In the end I had to clear up the beads and multiple threats including toast of lunch and confiscation of her beloved Rolly Pony and 'new' doll's house. I followed through on my threats but she didnt seem bothered.

I did a half marathon for the first time this year, coming in at a respectable 1:41:24. Thats about the same as last year I think which is crazy considering how over weight I am and that last year I was training for a marathon. It is five minutes slower than by best time which was on the same course though.
It felt really good running in a race again. There were lots of long hill climbs and some epic (for me) battles. There's nothing like pushing your self up the hill and keeping pace with a fellow runner then managing to pull ahead of them and stay ahead. It was especially good a couple of times as my fellow competitors were making lots of noise and breathing very heavily whilst I was making minimal effort. Great stuff.

We went to Monkey world on Saturday and met Debbie and Martin and their little girl there. We had a great time though the kids seemed to enjoy the excellent adventure play grounds more than the actual monkeys...

It was great to see Debs and Martin again before they leave for NZ. I cant believe its seventeen years since we first met. How the hell did that happen?

Tom is standing up! He started pulling up to standing in his cot at the weekend (time to lower the cot!) and now he is doing it everywhere. He is very pleased with himself.

Helen and Jamie are away in Paris until tomorrow so I am at home with Edith and Tom. The day started badly as we missed Edith's ballet. We got ready a bit late but we're out the door before I realised we had a weeks worth of frozen snow crusted onto the windscreen. Ballet starts at 09:20 at and 09:20 I was still chipping away and had only cleared about 10x10cms. Edith was not happy. Then we all sithered and slipped our way down to the bike shop where I took the plunge and bought a replacement bike.

After lunch we walked down to the park. I took the PhilNTeds so Edith could ride in the slippy bits. Unfortuntly she feel asleep. First I knew about it was when I noticed her head resting on the buggy mudguard. So then I made her walk all the way to the museum to keep her awake. When we got there, the buggers had closed two hours early because of the 'adverse conditions'. Standing in the bright sunlight, with clear skys, thawing snow and clear roads I couldn't quite see what they were talking about.

We made it home okay and it was a pretty good day. Tom was jolly and Edith was good company. When she's being good, which is most of the time, she is joy to be with. I love the way she is so cheeky. She is a great wind up merchant.

i finished the day off with a thai takeaway. Now I feel too full and generally fat.

I ran in today even though there had been a fresh fall of snow in the night. I think it was harder work but it wasn't too slippy under foot so I made it to work in 45 mins (been doing between 42 and 45 recently) and back in 42 (did 38 twice last week).

It was fun!

After a bitterly cold weekend it snowed heavily last night. Today there was between 10 and 20cm of snow on the ground. No buses. I had to drop Edith off at nursery then walk the six miles to work. It took over an hour and a half. When I got there at 09:20 they made an announcement (via email) that we should all go home!! I waited until three before leaving. Another hour and a half back. Sigh. Who knows how I will get in tomorrow. What are the chances of the buses running? Should I try and run in?

The gears have been wrecked since I came off on the ice in December. And they are getting worse. The brakes are a shadow of their former selves and last Friday the rear break arm sheared off. I had to take it off completely and ride home in the dark in pouring rain with no rear brake. Not clever.

I am thinking of buying a new bike. Its not worth forking out for a Halfords one again. It degraded very quickly and their servicing is poor. The cheapest one from the bike shop is £300. I want to get it from a shop rather than online so that I can get it serviced regularly.

One the other hand, not cycling in has meant my legs dont feel as tired. Both nights this week I have run home from work in 38 minutes or less. That's three minutes faster than I have managed for the last couple of months.

Having said that, the bus is terrible. Four pounds for a service which leaves you standing around in the cold for at least 15 - 20 minutes at either end, is crowded, full of noisy teenagers and is often late or in the evening, non-existent.

I am very tired. I am as close to the edge as I have been since Jamie was a baby. I have not slept through myself for several weeks now (since before xmas at least). Every night one or two children wake up or I wake up and cant get back to sleep in the bed. Then I end up on the sofa, which I used to think of as comfortable but now I hate. I have a crick in my neck which can be really painful from lying with my head wedged at an angle against the sofa arm.

Well, I didn't get to bed that early (23:30) or manage to sleep thru (01:30 I woke up and went downstairs) but I did have the best nights sleep for a long time last night. The kids were all asleep from about 23:00 to 06:30 which is pretty good going. The real key was that I slept on Edith's old cot mattress rather than on the sofa after I retreated downstairs. It is too short for an adult as my lower legs were on the floor but its a damn sight better than that bloody sofa.

Yesterday I did the first run over fifteen miles I have attempted since last April (wow, how did it get to be so long!!). I had done lots of child care (IMHO) on Saturday so Helen owed me the time to do a proper run on Sunday. She slept in so it was ten before she was up and I didn't get out until eleven. Three hours since I ate (can you guess what happens?). I had mapped out a new route which I have been piecing together for a few weeks now. According to my manual map wheel it was about 17 miles. Quite a distance, especially since I have been on a strict diet this week. Turns out I had measured wrong. It was twenty miles of hills, mud and cold wind. I did manage over 17 miles before having to run walk the last three. When I got back I was in a state. Helen was going mad, partly because I was an hour later than I should have been, partly because thats the natural state to be in after three and half hours with my kids on your own and partly because I had lots of chores to do which wont going to happen. I spent the rest of the day in that awful limbo of being so thirsty but puking heavily whenever I drank anything. I did manage to help Helen put a mattress in the back of the car (she had to get it out herself) but that triggered more vomiting.

Oh well! Not a bad tally for the week, forty miles run, over thirty cycled and six pounds lighter (on the day after puking)!

Did the Buntingford 10 in a respective 1:15:36 today. Better than I had expected given that I was dragging all these extra kilos around. There must be something about the hills on this course that makes your fats bits drag, I experienced the same sense of elephantiasis of the arse I did on the same race last year. Chatted to some other Striders before and after the race which was nice and got some good training tips for the marathon in the new year.

On the way to nursery on the bike with Edith on the back we saw a moped loose it on a corner and come off. It was very cold and icy. I dropped Edith at nursery and started to cycle to work when I had a similar problem. I was breaking gently as I approached a junction and the first wheel just appeared to go in a different direction. Next thing I knew the bike was toppling over and I was on the floor. Not too much damage, just some grazes and a couple of small tears in my jacket and gloves.
I have to say as the morning has progressed my legs and arms have got stiffer. Part of this may be due to last nights run but it is mostly down to the fall.
All this makes me nervous taking Edith to nursery on the bike. If she had been on board when I fell then that would have been a lot more unpleasant.

Saturday was the end of Edith's first term at ballet and I got to sit in with the other parents and watch the lesson. Considering how nonplussed she was about the whole thing at the begining of term it was great to see her joining in and really enjoying herself. She did insist on hold one of the teachers hands almost all the way through. They did walking around on their tip toes and skipping and lots of waving of hands which I can see will progress into something more like ballet. It was great.

Edith has been dry at night pretty much ever since we got her potty trained but we have had her in pull up nappies in case of accidents. Everything was great until she discovered that she could wee in these and not get wet. Then, every night, she wees in her nappy. This week, being the most cunning daddy in the world, I bought some pampers Princess pants. They are bright pink and have pictures of Snow White and other assorted princesses. The big selling point is... the princesses disappear if you we on them. A great incentive for Edith not to wet herself.
Well I was right. Edith is now determined not to wee on the princesses. It has become a BIG THING. The joke is on me however. For the first three nights every couple of hours "Daddy daddy, I need to wee on the toilet". I have to get up, go into her room. Tell her to go to get out of bed. Tell her to go to the toilet. Then spend half an hour convincing her to go back to sleep. Sigh. Still, every morning the nappy is dry and the princesses are still in residence.

After a very busy four months where we have not been taking enough pictures and various computer problems have prevent easy upload, I have updated the photo album website. I am now using F-Spot to manage the originals and one of the nice features is a graph showing the number of pictures captured each month. You can spot the three months where we have had a new arrival in the family with ease. Other than that, there always seems to be a peak in the late summer, early autumn. Probably something to do with decent weather followed by the birthday season. Other than that the only trend seemed to be that we never take many pictures in January. Go figure.

It's Sunday morning and I am sitting in the front room watching rubbish Scooby Doo with the kids. Edith is sick and I am too tired to do anything else. Helen is asleep in bed. This week has been long. Everynight this week has been distrurbed in some way. I did all the feeds Friday night to try and give Helen a break. Then last night I did the 23:00 feed and then was supposed to get some sleep. Unfortunatly Edith had a temperature and I was up from 02:30 until 05:00ish looking after her. Jamie got up a few times to join in the fun. I was allowed to sleep in until 08:30. Given that I have been up with the kids every night this week, apart from Wednesday when I was in Helsinki, its no wonder the face looking out at me from the mirror has more wrinkles than an elephants bum.