Updated Photos

I've added a few photos to the Web Album from the trip to Radcliffe.

Lara Health Update

Lara was weighed yesterday, she's up to 11lbs 3oz or 5.08kg, which is still "above the line" in her little red book for her age. She's not put quite as much on as we expected, but we assume that's down to her cold and her not feeding as well as normal, but still nothing to worry about.
She's still got her cold, but the saline drops I found and just time itself seem to be helping, it should all pass in the next 3 to 5 days I hope. She still refuses to go off to a deep sleep in the evenings, we feed her and bathe her and put her to bed but she dozes and wakes, and usually it's not till she has her late night feed around 11pm that she actually gets off to sleep properly.
I feel a tad guilty as I've become accustomed to Lara waking in the night now, so I rarely wake up when Olga has to get up to feed her! I'm normally oblivious until Lara wakes around 6-6.30am and Olga brings her into our bed. It does leave me to enjoy the weird sporting dreams I've been having this week. Last night I was playing golf and the night before I was queuing up to have a go at motor racing, but I woke up before I could get into the car!
Any dream experts out there? Post a comment...

Mishka Swims!

Here are some photos and a video to prove it, Mishka can swim! He didn't like going in, and either had to be pulled in by his leads or literally dropped in (there is a carrying handle on the back of the lifejacket!), but once he was in, and so long as he was away from the sides of the pool, nature took over and he swam. Scientists say that a 5 minute swim is equivalent to a 5 mile run, so although he was only doing 2 lengths of this 5 metre pool at a time, it should have been enough to tire him out.
We'll do another one or two sessions in here in the Spring, then we'll take him down to the Thames and see if he'll swim in there!

Liverpool & England - what a relief!

Phew, Liverpool edged past Inter on Tuesday night, but they insisted on putting their fans through the mill for the first 85 minutes. After all the (justified!) criticism he's received, Benitez was the only manager of a British team to come out of the first round of matches with a win...

And then England go and tie a one-day match! I've Sky-plussed the highlights but I don't know when I'll get to watch them.

The Weekend Report

The girls seemed to enjoy their night out on Saturday. Olga and I took our time getting our jobs done on Saturday morning and afternoon, but it was nice for them to relax in the very swish Novotel for an hour before going out to meet Lucy's friends at 7pm. It was like the United Nations in the pub, there were 2 and a half Russians, a Ukrainian, a Pole, 2 Koreans, 2 Libyans, a Saudi, an Equatorial Guinean, a Kuwaiti, and even 2 and a half English Then I left at 8pm, taking the half Russian, half English Lara with me, leaving only Simon to keep up the Home Guard. Even he speaks fluent Spanish!

Lara was a bit skrikey through the night, and my cough was at it's worst, which made for a rather broken night, but it was nice not to be under much time pressure on Sunday morning, as I wasn't going over to pick Olga up until mid-afternoon, thanks to this late-check-out deal the Novotel was offering.

I was in a bit of a quandry on Saturday afternoon, over the Liverpool v Barnsley FA Cup game. I guess I couldn't really lose either way, with cousin Ryan being the assistant manager at Barnsley.
I recorded Match of the Day but I've not been able to bring myself to watch it yet!
Barnsley have drawn Chelsea in the quarter finals, at home. The BBC are showing it, so I hope Mindy irons Ryan's best tracksuit!
Tonight is Liverpool v Inter Milan. I wonder if Benitez might play his strongest 11 players, or if he'll continue to select his starting side in the same way most people choose lottery numbers.

Get yer trunks on, Mishka!

This photo isn't of Mishka, but if everything goes according to plan, I could put one up later this week of him swimming.
Swimming is very good exercise for dogs, and we'd love it if Mishka would go bounding into rivers and lakes when we take him on walks (safely of course!). There's a farm not far from Wycombe that has kennels and a doggy swimming pool, so I booked him in for a "Help Swim" on Thursday lunchtime. We get their pool for 25 minutes, and for this session the pool staff will put a lifevest on Mishka and entice him into the pool, as he's never been in water deeper than his chest before. They're used to dealing with nervous dogs, but Olga assures me that terriers are very good swimmers, so I just hope that once he realises everything is OK, he'll enjoy swimming and we can take him down to the Thames in the Summer and have a whale of a time chasing ducks. And rowers.

Squash, anyone?

Something else that might have a factor on my feeling better today is that I played squash last night, for only the third time ever. Chris Rose needed an opponent, and I'd not done any exercise since cricket nets nearly a month ago. I lost every game, but at least I could hit the ball from time to time, I just need to learn to move once I've hit it, rather than admire the fact that I actually did hit it.


It did cause a minor crisis this morning when I thought I'd dropped my wallet at the gym, but when I called them no-one had handed it in (the kind of people who frequent a gym in Marlow would hand a wallet in, I suspect, especially one with mostly receipts and foreign currency in it and very few pounds). Anyway, to compound the issue, when I got back from walking Mishka this morning, our neighbours were having their windows cleaned. I'd spotted the van earlier, and seen that they cleared and repaired gutters too, and I knew we had a leaky gutter at the back of the house. One of the window cleaners suggested that I might need my gutters clearing, and we settled on a price for cleaning the windows, and clearing and fixing the gutters. Of course I couldn't pay him as I'd "lost my wallet" (the look on his face was almost worth the anguish I was going through), so he's coming back tonight for the cash. In a throwback to the "good ol' days" I also need to pay the milkman tonight!

I found my wallet on the floor of the car, it had fallen out of my pocket on the way to the gym....

Latest Update from the Snot Control Centre

Today is day 9 for me, day 7 for Lara and maybe day 1 for Olga.
Yesterday Boots came to the rescue, I found the only product that you can use on babies under 3 months old to clear a blocked nose; it's called Nasosal, it's just a saline solution you drip into her nostrils, but whether it was a coincidence or not, Lara slept from 4am till 8am this morning, where as she almost always wakes up at 6am and 7am. Quite how many time she woke up in the night, I don't know, as my other find in Boots was a cough remedy similar to a potion Mum gave me last weekend when I first got the hint of my cold. You know how most cold remedies make a big deal out of being "non-drowsy"? Well, what good is that when your cough is worst at night and you want something to help you sleep?! This remedy contains chloroform (the chemical composition is shown above, I imagine you knew that already!), amongst other fun things! How cool is that?! Once my cold is better I can douse a handkerchief in it and subdue the guards if I need to break into or out of somewhere.
I have started to feel better today, just as Olga has reported a sore throat.