First pictures of Sam

I will be giving him his own blog very soon but for now here is Sophie, Mum and baby Sam.
Thankyou everyone for the kind comments and support, we are all very grateful and happy.
Time to go off the grid for a few days :-)

Soothing I think not

We just got back from the mid-wife and she has initiated the paperwork/carrier pidgeon/smoke message to the various arms of the NHS to get ready for a potential induction. We are not likely to need that (he writes in a weird reverse psychology mind magic type way).
It is set for Monday at 6pm. Its supposed to be Sunday but they are fully booked. I guess lots of people are clenching in the cold weather.

Jan is back playing Zuma on the 360. The music is an infuriating jungle aztec drum with some ping noises as the balls fly. You now the sort of thing you get in these puzzle games.

I have a theory that when he shows up, unlike some babies who need to hear the neighbours theme, or whatever their mum watched on TV to soothe them he is going to need Zuma playing.
I dont think popcap have it on itunes, I must go and look though.
The mid-wife though says everything is all ready to go and things are happening just frustratingly slow for all concerned.

The midwife beckons

Jan has an appointment with the midwife this afternoon. I think she is going to try and entice "baby linden" out with the promise of sweets or some xbox live achievment points.
Things are still happening, regular(ish). It is hard not to get complacent and forget that the mad dash could happen at any moment.
Nearest geek analogy

The 13th Labour

A while back I managed to get the ARG perplex city.com card the thirteenth labour.
I had not been back to it in a while, but clearly it has not been solved. I spent a week solid trying to work it out and got quite annoyed.
I had not been back to it, but in wanting to let people know about Jan's labour I went back and had a look.
So I have still not solved the 13th labour and Jan is still in early labour.
We are still at home, things are happening every 15 minutes or so, they started early this morning. Yesterday it was 20 minutes but started at lunchtime.

Hmmm, not sure what to do now in limbo

We have spent the evening rating and timing various contraction like movements. The need to do something, timing them writing them down is really a replacement for not being able to help a lot. Something is certainly happening but Jan has gone to bed now having sat up waiting for it all to start properly.
So once again I guess I will sparking up Eve( No long missions though.) and a bit of work in Second Life, Snapzilla/Flickr etc whilst I am on standby. I certainly cant risk going to sleep too early!
So apologies to family and friends out there. At the time of writing its not likely to be today and I have given up predicting anything.
I almost did not bother writing this post, but I know if I dont some people will assume we are all systems go for the baby.

Here we go again?

Every 20 minutes since lunch, sounds promising.

Day 725 in the big mother house

Last night things slowed down again. Though it is the most promising flase alarm yet. I have had to tell so many people that I am about to be out on paternity that I am worried people are going to start not believing me.
However Jan is definitely pregnant, lovely and radiant.
Come on "baby linden" lets see you soon the world is waiting :-)

Looks like another late night

Things must be happening, we have the notebook out taking the timings. If you have seen coupling on the TV then you will get a kick out of that.
We seem to be on regular 30 minute twinges. They, whoever they are, say 5-10 minutes and its time to go to the hospital.
Tommorrow is my Mum's birthday so she hopes baby Linden arrives tomorrow as a birthday present.

It must be soon

The midwife visits

The midwife just came to the house. Without too much detail, dilation has started, though not full labour. Jan has an appointment on wednesday that the midwife thinks it is unlikely we will have to go to.
fingers crossed. I am work at home, but not do things that I cant drop in an instant.

Or maybe not

I managed to get to the notebook stage to write down what went where. But as you will see from the amount of flickr photos I have transferred in concerning all things metaverse. Still here......
So I have managed to get up April 4th to July 7th done so far. 279 out of 862 so I have a way to go!
The photos form a large part, or maybe total part of the book I need to write about innovation, politics, using web2.0 and finding likeminded people.

This could be it?

I was busy pushing my 900+ Second Life snapzilla shots over to flickr as a historical record of 2006. I had to stop that and I was busy helping Andy with his mega yacht in Second Life on Hursley, when Jan said. oooooh that was a longer contraction.
So we could be on for tonight. Of course we have had false alarms the last few days, but he must be wanting to get out.
I was joking with Jan that I needed to make sure I had some skills training on Eve, that take a long while. So, thats what I am doing now.

We are still waiting for baby linden

It has been a day of trying to distract ourselves. Sophie was off with her Nanny and Grandad today. That left Jan and I to go for a walk, though not a very long one.
Biggest alarm was Sophie falling out of bed, a big thump just now upstairs.
So it meant the rest of the day spent trying to wait.
Jan spent time on here favourite game of all time. Zuma. So yes I have to own up any achievements on the Z game are not mine on the 360.
I spent an ridiculous amount of time on Eve. I actually managed to get somewhere. A long way to go, but it is a great, not too stressful way to spend the time. It does not need a heads down focus all the time. Though I do think I need to spark up Rainbow Six:Vegas and do something a bit more focussed.

False alarms on the increase plus more Eve talk

We have had a few predlet false alarms. The egg is still being sat on though. The latest was 3/4 hours worth at 5am. Jan was not phased by it and did not bother to try and wake me up. However its progress. It will obviously have to happen eventually!
Many things in life are plannable, start dates, exams, meetings, weekends etc. Organic things like this though are just that in their timing.
I have been filling time with both lots of work around Second Life (obviously) at all times of the day and night and with Eve online.
Eve, and most MMO's and RPG's are great becuase you can spend a lot of time travelling and not really doing much. Tinkering, upgrading approach as mission/quest etc. This is great for relaxation though you can throw yourself into things.
The more I play Eve-online the more I am enhancing my set of anecdotes as to why Second Life worked when it did for me. Second Life has no levelling up. if you want to go and meet people it is purely social skills and time that you spend to get to know whats going on. Sure you spend a large amount of time attending things, or learning to build things but it dos not require you to have spent several weeks training skills to allow you to do a certain thing.
I need to write a proper piece on this with some more analysis of the quantifiable differences, but I have skills to train and a new ship to buy.
So come on baby Linden, save me from this addiction.

Status of the predlet at duedate+1

Still waiting. But signs are good.

three fifths

Well news on "baby Linden" due today/tomorrow is that he is 3/5 enaged. So he is on the way.