A major milestone was reached by DDWT Junior today – he did is very first wee wee on the toilet! Considering we’ve only been potty training him 8 days or so, it was a major achievement in terms of his development. For anyone who is or has gone through this process, I’m sure you’ll all agree that patience and timing (i.e. when to actually tackle the subject of potty training) are key to success or failure. Don’t get me wrong, we haven’t got it cracked yet, but we’re making great progress!!
Bouyed by the above events, we decided to do something different this afternoon (i.e. not Swans related!) and headed off to the McArthur Glen outlet village in Bridgend. Having been in the past, we were pleasantly surprised to see how much it had improved over the last year or so – with even more ‘high street’ shops now added to an already long list. A special mention must go to the Cadbury’s shop – and in particular the 400g bag of Cadbury’s ‘Mishapes’ for £2.99 – a must have for any chocoholic.
With the retail therapy out of the way we headed off to Porthcawl for a final treat – a routine which I remember well from my childhood – a walk along the promenade via the chippy. We opted to go to “Beales” chippy – no relation to Ian I’m sure, but you never know – with Mrs DDWT and myself opting for the steak & kidney pie with chips and DDWT Junior going for a jumbo sausage.
All swilt down with a nice cool can of coke and orange tango!
With the sun beginning to set, the view across the bay was amazing with the bright orange sun glistening across the waves. Thankfully I had my digital camera with me, so I took a few pics. Regular visitors to Porthcawl (and locals of course) will be very familiar with the locations – mainly taken from West Drive and the Esplanade.
I’m feeling quite despondent as I write this, knowing that my week’s annual leave has now come to an end and it’s back to work on Monday. Why does the time always seem to fly by during the holidays, maybe it’s because we are enjoying ourselves so much – or at least that’s how I console myself anyway.
I was chuffed to learn that PlusNet had upgraded (for free) my broadband connection to 8MB today though, so surfing the information superhighway and downloading mp3′s, video’s et al is in even more super quick time (and what was I saying about time!). I’ve been with PlusNet for the best part of 3 years and I’ve always found the service reliable and most importantly affordable. I’ve got the full package ‘Broadband Premier‘ for £21.99 per month – which in a nutshell is an 8MB broadband with unlimited downloads and 250 MB webspace with some trimmings. If you looking for an ISP, check them out they’ve got lots of packages on offer.
DDWT Junior is also making steady, if rather somewhat messy progress, on the potty training front with him at least now sitting on the toilet (with the help of a toilet ‘ring’ and Mrs DDWT of course). It was difficult to keep a straight face tonight though as he erm, well lets just say ‘floated a log’ whilst having his bath – his reaction wouldn’t have been out of place in a Jaws movie (and I confess to humming THAT tune when it happened). We shouldn’t laugh I know, but it was so funny at the time and it was better than crying – bless him. We made sure we didn’t laugh in front of him though or otherwise it would have made the matter worse.
Talking of the little fella – well not so little anymore – he now weighs bob on 2st 9.5lbs.
It’s been a hectic, painful and somewhat weird day today. What with moving offices in work, pulling a hamstring and being home alone (as DDWT Junior and Mrs DDWT have gone off visiting relatives in Aberaeron).
With our office move planned to start at 9:30am it all went belly up thanks to some administrative cockup, i.e. the removal men had been booked at different times and as a result they all turned up at different times. Shambolic.
So with time on my hands and needing to let off steam, coach and I took the opportunity to do our lunchtime run this morning instead! Our time of 23:13 for the 3 mile course was pleasing, the hamstring twinge/pull I felt with about half a mile to go wasn’t. I carried on more out of sheer frustration than anything, but it looks like I’ll be needing to rest it for a few days at least. Not a happy bunny. On a more positive note, at least the office move was underway by the time I returned!
Come 5pm with the move completed it was time to head off home – to an empty house. Daft as it sounds it was really eerie and whilst obviously it was nice to have some P&Q it wasn’t a feeling I’d like to get used too. Being the soppy bollocks that I am I was missing DDWT Junior and Mrs DDWT loads – and our early evening phonecall just made matters worse. Still they’ll be back tomorrow and normal service – and noise levels – shall be resumed.
I actually spent this evening messing around with ‘Drupal‘ an open source content management system (CMS). I’ve been trying a few of them out lately – Mambo, Joomla, to name a couple as a couple of my new clients what to use a CMS for their websites. I’m still leaning slightly towards Joomla as my preferred choice at the moment though.
Despite the somewhat indifferent, we (coach and I) headed off down to Verdi’s ice cream parlour – not for ice cream I hasten to add – but for our usual lunchtime bike ride.
It’s only a 9 mile roundtrip, which isn’t much I know, but we way we look at it is that it’s something and that’s a whole lot better than nothing. The other statistics for the ride – average speed of 13.7mph and a 43 minutes journey time – gave an indication of the weather conditions we encountered, i.e. strong winds and heavy hail showers!
In fact the hailstone showers were so bad, they were literally pinging my bell and riding directly into the hail shower (at speed) felt as though I was being continually ‘pricked’ by needles – on my face. Not pleasant!
All swilt down with a nice cool can of coke and orange tango!
