Andrew's blog

The newest addition to the Ruthven family shot into this world with great gusto and enthusasim on Thursday morning. Dad was in great shock at being woken up at 2:20 am, when contractions began, then a mere 2 hours later at 4:32 holding his son - Adam Ruthven. Mum was in even greater shock at arriving at the hospital to be told that she was ready to push!

Mum & Dad are both incredibly proud of Adam, weighing in at 3.6kg (7lb 15oz).

Dad & Brooke brought Mum & Adam home on Friday morning, where we've had to readjust to once again having sleep deprivation.

Brooke is thoroughly enjoying having a baby brother. She is being a perfect big sister, helping us care for Adam, even helping with nappy changes! (We're hopeful this will continue...)

It seems to have been ages since we last uploaded any photos. Oops.

• 19 - 21 Months (I've add some Christmas photos to this one)
• 22 - 24 Months (I'll continue to add photos to this one)

Other good news is that Susanne is pregnant again, w00t!

It seems to have been ages since we last uploaded any photos. Oops. To make up for that here is a double whammy:

• 16 - 18 Months
  
• 19 - 21 Months (I'll continue to add photos to this one)
  

Also, a huge congratulations to Susanne's sister Debbie and her husband Jeff for the birth of their first child Ellie on Saturday morning.

Wow, another 3 months, time for some more photos! Brooke has really started walking now, she has two speeds, standing still and 100km/hr. She is definitely keeping us busy!

I've also discovered that I'd forgotten to upload her birthday pictures. I've uploaded them (and a few others) to her 9 - 12 Month album. Oops.

In other news, we're now living in Belmont, and enjoying it, even though the lawn is really a swimming pool.

We've had some exciting developments with Brooke, she's been crawling and "cruising" for a few months now (she can even crawl up and down stairs!). She finally has teeth! 4 weeks ago a tooth appeared and 6 days later another one popped out next to it. And it looks as though another two are about to come through on the top. Brooke has settled into daycare 5 days a week now that Susanne is back at work, and both of them seem to be loving it!

Brooke's 1st birthday is just over 2 weeks away, wow! Where has the time gone? Here are some 9 - 11 Month photos. I'll upload Brooke's 12 month photos into that album shortly after her birthday so I can include some birthday pictures.

Wow, we've been busy! Has it really been that long since we last uploaded any photos? As a bonus here are photos of Brooke between 5 and 8 months.

The current exciting news is that Brooke has started crawling, not very fast yet, but she is getting faster!

Andrew's Mum has also uploaded some more photos.

We have another instalment of photos of Brooke.

I've decided to move to a monthly posting of photos instead of every 4 weeks as I had been doing.

And yeah, a bit late this time... However, Brooke rolled for the first time a couple of weeks ago. That was pretty exciting!

Update: Err, weeks, not months.

We have another instalment of photos of Brooke.

Wow, not that overdue this time...

And a big thank you to Andrew & Heather for the loan of their digital camera which most of our photos of Brooke were taken with, we really appreciated it.

Also, Jill (Andrew's Mum) has put up some photos as well. Thanks!

Somewhat late, but I've uploaded another batch of photos of Brooke.

Update: Correct the title...

Last wednesday Susanne, myself and Brooke went along to the Babes in Arms sessions of Shrek the Third. It is pretty cool, a 10am screening of a movie where babies and young kids are made more than welcome (in fact, the tickets are half price as well). No one cares if they cry and/or scream because their own kids might be doing it as well!

It was quite nice to be able to go to a movie again (it has been a while). Brooke (actually, all the babies in our group) slept straight through the movie, which made it even more pleasant!

We all really enjoyed the movie, it was definitely good fun!

On a geeky note, I did notice the amazing job they did on animating the hair of the characters. A few days later I was reading the latest issue of the Linux Journal and read the article titled Linux Feeds an Ogre, where they discuss how the hair was one of their achievements in creating Shrek the Third!

I've just uploaded some more photos of Brooke, who is now 8 and a half weeks old. Wow!

Update: As of 2007/06/14 Brooke is 12 lb (5.45 kg).

Okay, I've finally uploaded some photos of Brooke. I've decided to try out PicasaWeb, so the photos are here.

Debbie (Susanne's sister) also has a gallery with some photos of Brooke available.

Annoyances with F-Spot exporting to PicasaWeb are that it doesn't upload the tags or the comments. Oh, also it doesn't synchronise, it re-exports all the photos each time.

Update 1: Actually it does upload the comments, but I didn't notice because the export exports a new copy. So I had to copies of each photo. One with comments, one without.
Update 2: And, look, only 6 weeks after Brooke was born, not a year!
Update 3: Fix the first link to PicasaWeb.

On the topic of birth announcements, at Catalyst we have an internal IRC channel for general chit-chat and communication within teams. We now have a habit of setting the topic of the main channel to announce new staff members. On the 14th of April the topic was set to:

New staff: François, on L7, New person: Brooke Rose Ruthven, 9:10am, 14/4/2007, 6lb8oz (congratulations Andrew & Susanne)

Thank you karora for setting the topic!

At some stage Brooke might move into the "New staff" classification, who knows?

We have a new arrival, a little girl, Brooke Ruthven!

She was born on Saturday the 14th of April at 9:10 am, weighing in at 6 pound 8 ounces (2.95 kg, but the metric system seems wrong for babies...). Mum and Brooke came home on Monday evening, and are doing very well. A proud Dad managed to survive the labour experience with both hands intact, just.

We're having fun settling into a life style that involves sleep deprivation and smelly nappies.

We'll hopefully post some updates to this blog over the coming weeks. Photos should start to appear on our gallery sometime soonish. But to show off our little girl, here are a few photos.

(Why the LCA2007 tag? Check out the t-shirt Susanne is wearing...)

Update: Thanks to Graeme for putting some photos up here!