June 12^th 7pm sleeping peacefully

He's had a difficult first day. Had his lungs pumped out last night and spent the day in the special care unit. Melia and I think he looks much better after his antibiotics kicked in and they've taken out of the strange printed circuit board thingy and all his monitors and attached machines. He's still in the special care unit tonight but with only a couple of tubes: one for glucose drip and one into his stomach.

June 11^th Here he is

James William Rushby Taylor was born 5pm on June 11^th. He was 8lbs 2oz. and wiggled a lot. Still does. Doesn't enjoy nudity much. Mum is fine.

I thought James would be interested in his dad. In fact he spent the first hour of his life fascinated by the England Three Lions shield on my shirt. Much more interesting than my face!

Tim's Breeding Programme

Before the birth

Melia and I are having children. Well, that is to say we're having at least one.

Soon I shall indulge my pure evilness by snapping cute pictures for the purpose of embarrassing them when they're teenagers.

But for now, I'll post some pictures of what's going on in the nursery.

Here's a teddy bear. Normal people would buy a stencil from Homebase or some such, but no: I had to make my own with a Stanley knife and a plastic document wallet Melia bought me to convert into stencils. Not sure about the balloons, but I'm pleased with the bear.

The walls were a right pain. I only needed to fill one crack and fill in four plugs in the wall. I ended up putting on five coats, repainting the lot. That's what comes from all those layer of oil glaze: not easy to touch up. I'm going to write down the colours I used for wall and to stain the varnish lest I forget.

Tomorrow a new floor goes down.

And here it is.

Now I'm going to have a brief pause on the nursery while I decorate our bedroom. Phew! Baby better not come early.

Here's what our bedroom looked like at 9am Thu 20^th April 06

and here's what it looked like at 4:30.

Finally, after working all day, I can put a bit of colour on with the big brush. And this is what it looked like by 7pm

And after another day's painting first coats are on. Time for a break for St. George's Day. We're going out!

May 31^st

Bedrooms and Nursery are all done. Here's one of the nursery. That's the teddy bear I had as a little boy in the corner. Could do with a good scrub.