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Baby gross out #1

Ok I'm not going to count any run of the mill incidents involving bodily functions, they are to be expected. However, something that I think deserves a special mention occurred this morning...

Changing the first nappy of the day, bleary eyed and slightly distracted by my eldest son demanding breakfast... I suddenly realised that I was holding something unexpected in my hand. The detached remains of the umbilical cord. Mmmm... breakfast anyone?

Photo to follow... >:D

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Tags: Baby, Family, Blog

Mongolian Yurt (part 2)

From the few times I have raised this subject in conversations and the bemused reactions I get, It seems that not many people know what a Mongolian Yurt is. Probably thanks to watching one too many TV programs following Michael Palin somewhere around the remotest parts of the world, I at least knew what my wife was talking about when she mentioned them to me a couple of weeks ago.

To cut a short story even shorter we have just come back from a two night stay in an authentic Mongolian Yurt situated in the Wye valley in South Wales. I am a huge fan of camping but have yet been able to persuade my wife that the UK is warm enough for this even in the height of Summer. However,  the exotic nature of the accommodation and the insistence that the combination of a 1 cm thick felt tent and log burning stove made Yurts toasty warm even in the middle of winter encouraged her enough to suggest this as a short break even in what had been a fairly crappy Autumn.

Getting to South Wales was easy enough and with some pretty good directions from the website finding the farm was ok too, even negotiating the narrow lanes down the side of a pretty steep valley. The site itself was mostly wooded with a few large fields the most conspicuous inhabitants of which were a large number of Alpacas. From the ‘car park’ near the owners house we were driven by some cool looking off-road 4x4 vehicle down a steep field to the bottom of the valley, down a rough track, through a ford in a pretty looking stream and into the main campsite.

There were three Yurts on the site each quite some distance from the other but for the first night we were the only people on site. The yurts are put up on large areas of wooden decking with comfortable wooden patio furniture outside and a barbeque (with free charcoal provided). Opposite our Yurt which was close to the ford, was an open sided wooden kitchen hut which had sink, gas cooker, large American style fridge and the only power on site. Over to one side and a little away from our Yurt were composting toilets which although pretty unpleasant sounding were fine to use and at night beat walking the length of the site in the pitch darkness to where there was a flushing toilet.

In the centre of the site there was an area for campfires which being the amateur pyromaniac that I am I will dedicate a whole separate post to.

A short walk from the site through a wood, across a bridge and up some stairs brought you to the back of the main house where there was a modern bathroom with power shower for use by guests. Importantly, the water was lovely and hot although there were a lot of mosquito like insects in there which ‘we’ (my wife) had to squish before there was any chance of me stripping off to wash.

The yurt itself was really spacious and surprisingly comfortable. In the daylight it was bright inside and at night we had an assortment of candle lanterns, torches and rechargeable LED lanterns (borrowed from the kitchen) to brighten things up. It was furnished with 2 single ‘futons’ (the western wooden fold up bed variety) a single bed/lounger and a kingsize bed/lounger. There was also some ‘mongolian style’  furniture such as a table, cupboard and stools. The centre piece of the yurt had to be the wood burning stove which although disappointingly lacked a glass side to view the flames was not only a very efficient heat source but fun to use.

A selection of photos are tagged with 'Yurt' on my Flikr site.

Corny

Oh we do

like to be beside the seaside...

Monday was a public holiday in the UK so we took advantage of the reasonable weather and headed to the beach at Boscombe near Bournmouth on the south coast. It was a couple of hours in heavy traffic but worth it. We had fish and chips at a nearby pub and then went to build sand castles, what a great way to spend an afternoon!

P.Y.O.

Today we took a trip to a fruit farm near Petersfield and spent a few hours wandering around the rows upon rows of trees and bushes, filling our baskets (and mouths). It was good fun and a great day to be outdoors. Chi-chan enjoyed the whole thing and took it almost as seriously as I did.

Here is a snap of the blackcurrants and blueberries that we brought back home. Oh, and happy birthday me :)

Retirement

There's still some time before I'm ready (or rather able) to retire from working life but today was my mothers retirement party after spending the past 23 years working at the same primary school first as a teacher, then deputy head and for the past 10 years as the head teacher.

It was nice to see so many people turn up for the party (even the local mayor) but it will be strange now that school will no longer be such a big part of her life. For as long as I can remember my mother I have thought of her as a teacher and to be honest... I've never really thought of her as being 'that old'. Another strange thought that just occurred to me is that the only time that I can remember talking to my mother about her age she was 35 only two years older than I am now... weird!

Hair by Maki

I have been considering it for well over a year and finally got around to it last weekend... I bought some hair clippers. Ever since I have been having my hair cut shorter and shorter I have began to resent the expense and frequency of visits to the local barber. At between £8 and £10 a visit for nothing more than a quick run over with the shears it seemed like a good saving to try and do it myself (or rather get my wife to do it for me).

So this morning armed with a £22 pair of shears my wife sat me down in the living room and tentatively started to cut off my locks. We decided to start with a 'number 5' just in case of any mistakes which could then be rectified by going shorter. The initial results were pretty disappointing... I looked like someone who had spent the week playing with handfuls of radio isotopes and washing in heavy water. So we switched down to a 'number 3' setting and started again. This time it was much better and easier to get a tidy result. In fact I was quite pleased with the results.

It will only take two more haircuts before the shears have effectively paid for themselves and then each additional cut will be money saved. Trouble is... I've already started looking at more expensive models of hair trimmer with better features and styling. Might be time for an upgrade soon.

If I remember later I'll add some photos to this post.... :)

Uncle Chestnut

I found out recently that my wife's nephew calls me Kuri-Ojichan. "Kuri" as a shortned form of kurisu (Chris in Japanese phonetics) and Ojichan meaning Uncle. However, what seemed to amuse her a little too much is that Kuri is the Japanese word for chestnut. But thats ok by me... in fact I thinks it's quite a cool name, I can think of worse things to be called.

Whats in a name? pt. 2

Just after our son was born I wrote about how we decided upon his name Chisato Henry. Over the past couple of months several people have asked me why we don't call him by either of those names very often. They've obviously noticed that almost always we refer to him as Chi-chan.

Most people know that in Japanese 'san' is used at the end of peoples names in the same way that in English we would use Mr, Mrs, Miss or Master at the start of a name. There are two other similar suffixes to names in Japanese 'kun' and 'chan' which I thought I'd write about tonight in way of explanation for Chisato's nickname. Either of these two suffixes is the same in effect as someone called Robert being reffered to as Bob or Bobby but each gives a slightly different impression.

The suffix 'kun' is used to address males that are younger or the same age as the speaker. It is similar in use and meaning as 'san' but less polite. At first, just after he was born I would call Chisato 'Chisato-kun'. My initial preference for using 'kun' was perhaps due to it seeming more masculine and tough sounding, 'chan' sounded so much softer and altogether cute. Our use of 'kun' only lasted for a few days though, as very we quickly discovered just how cute Chisato could be.

The suffix 'chan' is used mainly for children and between women. It is also used by children when referring to relatives in "kiddie-speak" for example 'obaachan' (granny) instead of 'obaasan' (grandmother).  Once we grew to know our baby (and more importantly once I could appreciate that babies should be cute) we started to use 'chan'. Chisato-chan sounded a little odd (and very feminine) so my wife suggested that we abbreviate his name taking just the first syllable resulting in... Chi-chan.

100 Days

Today Chisato is 100 days old. Following Japanese tradition (sort of) we cooked a special meal of fish and red bean rice, serving him with his first real meal. Of course it was only symbolic as he wont start solids for at least another three months but the meaning behind the meal was that he could live a happy and healthy life. Traditionally, the meal would have included a whole sea bream representing happiness, umeboshi (pickled plum) as we would wish he could grow old to look prune-like and a pebble to wish for teeth strong as stone.