thedeadone.net » Sophie

Wife’s new blog: Insomniac Ramblings, a Frenchie in Ireland

Mark Cunningham — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:22:53 +0000

My wife has recently started blogging and seems to be getting a great kick out of it. Though she doesn’t share the same interests (online at least) as me, if your a reality-TV geek and like stuff like Dancing with the Stars or the Bachelorette you’ll probably like my wife’s blog, so check it out: Insomniac Ramblings.

One of the many “joys” of having kids is…

Mark Cunningham — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:18:34 +0000

One of the many “joys” of having kids is the family-communal-getting-sick-together weekends.

Kids get sick. It’s part of growing up, builds up their immunity. It is even more common if your kids are in creche or school as they’ll get sick “6 or 7 times in the year” (as our Doctor once told us) as they’ll pick up what ever is going from all their little friends.

What’s worse is, if they get it, you the parent will probably get it too and their siblings will as well. Which is what of course happened to us last weekend. Tristan (our six month old baby) got sick on the Thursday. Friday night and Saturday I was sick. Saturday night Alice (our 3 and bit year old daughter) got sick and on Sunday Sophie (my wife) felt off and today she’s out of work sick. Great weekend!

Bow down before your new leader: Tristan!

Mark Cunningham — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:56:43 +0000

Maybe we should have called him Lord Oberon instead of Tristan. Sophie suggested Puck more than once. I think he must have a wicked sense of humour appropriate to Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night fairies. I think he looks a little like a troll too: all wrinkly, hunched and curled and with really long arms! I was tempted to make him a little paper mache club.

But he is so adorable: small, soft and cuddly, you can help but love him. When he tries to lift his little head, his motions are like those clay-motion monsters from the seventies/sixties (you know like Jason and the Argonauts). I just want to hold him the whole time.

(If you want to see more pictures of Tristan, see my wife’s page. You’ll need a password, but just ask (leave a comment, send me an email, call me, etc.) and you shall receive.)

We thought little Tristan would be born a week before the due date, which was Monday. Sophie’s waters were low and so we thought he’d be induced. Well when that day came, everything was normally! He wasn’t coming out early.

Sophie started to get a bit potty at home, not able to do much, waiting for him to come. The due date, 18th June, came and went. Tristan was doing fine and was not going to come then.

Sophie’s blood pressure started to rise. But still, he did not want to come. So we decided it was better to induce the birth and it was all planned for Friday morning. So Thursday comes: 21st June, Summer solstice, first day of summer (if you go by the French), Midsummer night, the day when lots of pagans dance naked in the sunrise… we get all the stuff ready, travel all the way over to Grannies with Alice, our three year old daughter,… when Sophie starts to get contractions. The day before he was to be induced, he decides to come out! I told you he must have a wicked sense of humour.

A slightly mad dash across the M50 (not too busy at 9pm on Thursday night btw), arrived in the hospital with Sophie dilated about 2cm. In about an hour, 5cms. He really was coming now. At about 11pm, the epidural started to take effect on Sophie.

Alice had been a completely different kettle of fish. She came out early after being induced. Sophie’s blood pressure had been very high and there had been protein in her urine. And the labour was long, I think 8 hours or so. And in the end she had to be suctioned out. She came out screaming, with red hair. This time I was able to watch his little head push through. He started to appear, I think, around 11.30 or so, half an hour to midnight. And…

Tristan popped out at 11.48pm, 12 minutes to go. He didn’t have much hair and we couldn’t tell the colour. Instead of screaming… he just went for a sleep. That’s my boy!

Update: Sophie has corrected me on a number of details.

Tristan’s due date was actual the Tuesday 19th June (2007), not Monday the 18th.
Alice’s labour took a total of 12 hours, not the 8 that I was present for…
Alice was delivered used a forceps after the suction failed.

Baby born last night!

Mark Cunningham — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:29:01 +0000

Details to follow later…

Waiting for baby… mad week!

Mark Cunningham — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:55:16 +0000

Lost sunglasses and had to face the glare of the sun for a whole weekend. Lost my house keys. Discovered the car windscreen was cracked. Was so tired, nearly fell asleep in the middle of dinner but somehow managed to put my daughter to bed with a story and song before falling asleep completely. Work is the usual manic, little rest with everyone else on holidays. I’ve also got a sore throat, sore eyes and a bad cough.

All at the same time as waiting for the call! When I get the call I have do a one hour mad-drive across town and then back again (drop my daughter with her Granny) and then head directly to the hospital’s labour ward…

Oddly, the weather doesn’t help. The car is too hot, I’m sweaty all the time, it’s too bright when I drive and why the hell do I have a cold when it’s so god-damn nice… but I guess that’s just my current inhibition about relaxing these days.

Sophie, my wife, is equally tired. She’s just read for baby to pop, but there isn’t much else to do but wait. She’s at the spicy food stage… which is small blessing for me as normally Sophie can’t stand spicy or hot food. Well she still can’t stand spicy or hot food, but she’s willing to try it, hoping it’ll make baby come sooner.

Maybe this time next week, there will be no posts. This will probably be a good thing. I’ll be listening to the cries of my second child rather that shouting out to the echoing dins of the web.

It’s terrifying and exciting time. My biggest fear is that my cold will get worse and I’ll get light-headed during Sophie’s labour and, potentially, faint near the end of it. Last time, it was eight hours with Alice. I coped well (I think). When Alice was born it was the most emotionally charged moment of my life, it is simply impossible to describe. I think my first words were either “she’s got red hair” or “she looks like me”. But I remember those eight hours, while I couldn’t do anything but look on and hold my wife’s hand.

I’m not sure I’m ready.

Love is spam!

Mark Cunningham — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:33:37 +0000

It’s my wife, Sophie’s, birthday today. I had flowers sent to her work. She sends me an email with the title “I LOVE YOU” as a thank you. But apparently:

This message is considered Spam by Symantec AVF and was deleted.The message has been marked for deletion and the message body, replaced with this text.

Love is spam!

Nintendo DS Lite; I’m a grey gamer!

Mark Cunningham — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:35:46 +0000

I rarely play computer games. I don’t have the time, what with a 2 year old who’s potty training and silly long commute times. My little spare time gets devoted to writing, if I have the energy left.

Despite that, an ad on TV for the new Nintendo DS Lite caught my eye. It was not a flashy action packed yokey. Instead it showed a young boy playing Super Mario Brothers on the old NES game console. That made me chuckle, remembering back to playing that same game on same console when I was kid. But the ad comes in two parts; the second one shows a man (meant to be the grown-up kid I guess) playing the “New Super Mario Brothers” on the Nintendo DS Lite. Fuck. I was hooked. I wanted one. I wanted to play Mario Brothers again. And then, before our holidays, my wife goes out and buys it for me, along with the Super Mario Brothers game and that Brain Training one. An early birthday present she explained to me.

We did buy a Gameboy Advance a few years ago. I bought it for Sophie (my wife) so that she would stop using my PDA as a games system. After the initial novelty, we stopped playing fairly quickly. Sophie reverted to playing my PDA again. It wasn’t the games that were at fault, it was the screen. You had to be sitting under a strong light before you could see the screen properly. If you sit outside with it, you couldn’t see anything. I called it the Toilet-boy, because the best place to use it was when your sitting on the toilets with the light on overhead.

The Nintendo DS Lite has incredible brightness. It makes a world of difference. Can play it anywhere. It’s even brighter than my PDA and it feels more like a PDA with the touch screen and stylus. I have Advance Wars for the Gameboy Advance (Gameboy Advance games work on the Nintendo DS Lite too) and it’s such a difference to see it clearly. And over the holidays both of us played the handheld nearly all the time. I guess I’m one of those “Grey Gamers” that Nintendo have been marketing and seemingly managing to penetrate.

The New Super Mario Brothers is fun and playable. I thoroughly enjoy just playing. I have two complaints however; first you can’t save wherever you want, only after a castle level or spending “gold stars”. It’s a pain having to play through three to four levels before you can save. My second complaint is that I can’t get my wife off it. She hasn’t got the knack of Mario yet and finds the whole thing frustrating. She swings the Nintendo left and right as if the motion will save her from a mis-timed jump (a sure sign of a new gamer). But she’s addicted. She has even committed the carnal sin, played it in bed with me beside her trying to fall asleep. Something I wouldn’t have ever dared do myself.

Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training is great too. However it makes me feel stupid, but I guess in a good way. Sophie is pretty much better at everything than me (besides Mario of course). She’s managed over a week to get the Brain Age of 20 (the lowest it can be according to the game) while I’m still being reported as 40. But the daily training is good, at least for improving mental arithmetic. It’s not perfect however because I started to realise a few cheats. For example, the “calculations X 20″ time how quickly you can do 20 simple calculations in your head. It deduces 5 seconds for each wrong answer. However, when if I’m not sure of the answer, it’ll take me slightly more than 5 seconds so, if I want the best time, I just answer wrong and keep going. Not really in the spirit of it. Still, the point is mental exercise and it’s good at that. I love the little features like graphing and comparing with other users and asking you to draw something from memory and then it compares it with the other users’ attempts. I wonder is there a “Learn French” version of Brain Training?

I’m tempted to buy more games… like Mario Kart that was one of my favourites from the SNES way back when. Still, I don’t think I’m going to become a World of Warcraft player anytime soon. I simply don’t have the commitment for it.

Update: I tried the “Brain Age Check” on Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training, the day before coming home on my holidays and I got an age of 21!

Another uneventful weekend

Mark Cunningham — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 20:07:15 +0000

Another weekend. Going to be fun, going to be tiring. Not that we’re social folk, but having a family is both exciting and tiring. We feed the ducks, had lunch in pub and then jumped in the car.

As we’re driving that the N4 at 70 miles an hour, I had this innate thought in my head that I couldn’t get rid of. Really pointless. I was trying to figure out how to respond to a certain pedantic troll on the Redbrick boards. I wanted to imply that he (or she) was a pedant and troll without saying so and I wanted to also make a relevant point and spark real discussion. It can be done, I have done it before.

Then I was jumping out of the car barely before it stopped, wrenching the door open to where Alice our baby was in her seat. My heart pounding in my chest, Sophie was desperately trying to push open her door but couldn’t because of the massive dents and damage…

Yea we crashed. Scary stuff. But all three of us walked out of it okay (if a little shook up). Alice was fine; she only woke up when we stopped. It could have been a lot worse but thanks to Sophie’s driving, the car didn’t flip or spin.

I think the car is a total write off but I’m not a mechanic. Being the bad blogger that I am, I took no photos nor intend to. You know we didn’t know what we’re meant to do after something like that… as it turns out your meant to call the insurance company and probably the Gardai unfortunately it involved a lot of waiting around by the side of the road.

Still, things are a little weird for the rest of Saturday but we’re chilling and Alice is in great form after it. And I think I’ve figured what I should post in my reply on the boards…

All is Good!

Mark Cunningham — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 15:17:00 +0000

I must apoligise for not providing an update in so long. The last news I gave was well before Alice was born and now Alice is three months old!

Things are good. Not perfect but who wants perfect?

Alice, our precious little daughter, has got wonderful red-hair, falls asleep when I read her Cat in the Hat before bed and has started to make gurgling sounds. She sleeps like an Angel at night so I guess we’re pretty lucky.

Sophie’s been doing a really good job of providing updates on Alice including tons of photos on her blog (the link is on the right but you can go from here). I’ll put some photos up here once my site is fully working again (just orgainsed “vhosting” so now everything is avaliable @ thedeadone.net).

Alice is now three months old. She keeps her eyes open and smiles, laughs and grins often. She makes the cutest gurgling sounds as if trying to speak. To know that she is also healthy and strong for her little age is blessing.

The biggest complaint we have is that we’ve lost all our spare time, where the feck did it go? We get enough sleep at night but taking care of Alice is tiring after coming home from work and Sophie is worn out from taking care of her during the day. I’ve only started now going back to Karate and gaming again. Which pretty much explains the lack of updates (well plus a three week holiday too).

I did manage to make a new release of rbFriends. Totally revamped from Beta 2 and now Beta 4 has transparent dialogs (which work okay :S). But other then that I’m pretty stretched. I’ve nearly finished Lost Heroes, soon I will be sending it out to be rejected from any publisher I can find.

The big worry on our minds is that we haven’t managed to sell our apparment yet. It’s been on the market a while now and we’ve changed estate agents once already. We’ve had about three offers which have all fallen through for one reason or another.

And on top of that, the struggle to find a decent house in an okay area that is also within our budget is tiring and wearing on both of us. Sophie spends hours on the phone with estate agents orgainsing viewings and driving around during the week with Alice in tow to see possibles when I’m in work.

Anyway, though I don’t get to the cinema anymore, life is good. Not perfect. Just good.

Date set for Civil!

Mark Cunningham — Fri, 19 Jul 2002 12:16:02 +0000

22nd November 2002

Thats the date I’m getting legally married to Sophie (aka was Dauphin on RB). They’ll be a big party (orgainsed curtesy of me mum) that evening.

It seems to have struck Sophie more so then me. Theres finally a date from which point we’ll be married in the eyes of the law (and taxes).

Still, the religious ceremony isn’t until next year May 2003 in France. I’ll have to dress up for that one!

thedeadone.net » Sophie

Wife’s new blog: Insomniac Ramblings, a Frenchie in Ireland

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