Does taking the kids to a restaurant or public place fill you with dread? Me too.

Our lot tend to go nuts in public places. I mostly blame Rachel, who is a force of chaos when the mood takes her. Either way, when we’re in a place like Burger King, they’ll run around like crazy and talk at the top of their voices. OK, shout.

I found myself in Burger King alone with the children recently. As I stood in the queue, the kids started out at one table and started running around. I called them to me and asked them to settle down, issuing that classic parental threat - OR ELSE!!!

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Jake’s about to turn 5 in a few days. I’ve noticed over the last few weeks that he’s getting a cheeky wit about him. He likes to spar and joke with us, but because it’s the holidays, he’s easily bored and frustrated. Sometimes he gets grumpy when he doesn’t get an answer he likes.

He’s a huge fan of science fiction stuff. Sitting in front of the TV right now, he’s rewound the same scene in Doctor Who loads of times now, just to hear him say “Are you my mummy?” referrencing one of Jake’s favourite episodes, The Empty Child. He’s obsessed with Iron Man at the moment - not because of the movie, but because of the old cartoon series running on the satellite channels. You know, the one where Tony Stark looks like a big sleazy pimp on steroids? What a hero…

Still, Jake’s one of the most pliant children. Ask him to do anything for you and he does it without hesitation. I’m not joking. I asked him this evening to pick up some cushions from the living room floor, and he did it immediately. No grumbling, no wasting time.

I just wanted to record a few thoughts about Jake as he approaches his 5th birthday. A sweet, intelligent boy. Still quite shy around new people, and withdrawn when he wants to be. I can see little signs of him maturing and developing his wit.

We’re working at the moment on getting him used to more reading and we definitely need to spend more time with him writing and drawing to prepare him for pre-school in September, but we’ll get there.

There’s not much to say in this post except that Friday was an exceptionally bad day in work. Without naming names, I had a run-in with my line manager, who I feel is either misdirecting me or downright lying to me.

In the first instance, I moved jobs on the agreement that I’d start on the same salary as my last job, then be reassessed after 6 months and salary adjusted accordingly. I’ve spent the last year (no, it didn’t happen at 6 months!) working very hard to bring our IT up to speed. Not only was there a gap in service between the previous IT manager and myself, but the time I joined was a period of massive upheaval for the company.

So, I expected my salary to be reviewed and to be compensated accordingly toward the upper end of the salary scale for my post. But I’ve been chasing this issue for the last few months without success. Eventually, I was told by my line manager that someone in our global IT had vetoed the increase. However, the same manager had implied some months earlier that if I could stop my flexible working arrangements, we might be able to swing something on the salary review. Seriously? What happened to my performance review?

And at the same time, a preparatory audit generated a list of actions that need to be carried out to bring our IT procedures in line with new standards being implemented. Which means the job will become even more intensive over the coming months.

My feeling at the moment is of rage and frustration. Why should I commit even more energy to this company when I’ve obviously been screwed over? I love the job, and the people I work with are fantastic, but the further up the corporate ladder you look, there’s a lot of slimy double-talk and backstabbing to contend with.

I guess every barrel has a few rotten apples. I just need to work out where to go from here.

Those of you who’ve spent time in any of our homes over the years will already know this - neither Lisa or I are remotely houseproud. Life’s too short for housework, so we generally do the bare minimum and occasionally freak out at just how untidy the place gets.

How many times we dreamed of having someone else come in and clean the house down to save us having to do it? At least once a week. Sometimes daily.

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After I walked out of my parents’ house on Saturday, I proceeded to do exactly what I’d promised the boys. I took them out and we had an excellent day together.

I had taken Daniel to a little harbour round the coast called Portbradden earlier in the week. While the weather wasn’t wonderful, we managed quite a lengthy walk that revealed some interesting little places along the coast. It was then that I resolved to come back at the weekend for further adventures.

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I spent a little bit of time tidying up the design redesigning this blog last night. The old design had never completely satisfied me, and I wanted to move toward something a bit prettier. Hopefully this hits the spot.

The design you see is the culmination of me avidly reading a site called PSDTuts, which gives some of the most detailed and inspiring Photoshop tutorials I’ve ever read. Feeling confident, I went over to SXC and downloaded a couple of stock images and began to play around with them.

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Welcome to Familytastic Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

I have a lingering, pissed off feeling following on from the weekend. I had a bit of family drama while visiting my parents, and I want to unload it while I remember everything…

Lisa decided to take Rachel to a family wedding on Saturday and spend a little time with her. Not wanting to consign myself and the boys to a weekend of loitering around the house, we packed our stuff (OK, Lisa packed our stuff) and headed up north to my parents’ house. The idea being that we’d take a big day out - weather permitting - along the coast, and I’d already arranged this with my father that we’d all head out together.

We arrived in the early afternoon, had a cup of tea in their house and I was getting the boys ready when I realised that my old Dad had his grumpy face on.

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This blog, as usual is poorly updated at the best of times. Whenever something nice or cute happens at home, you make a mental note to blog it later. Then by bedtime, it’s gone.

Aha, but not today! Today’s escapade involves a fat dad (me) and two short-arses trying to amuse themselves while the women folk (Lisa and Rachel) went off to dance class for an hour.

Determined not to be stuck bored at home with Jake and Dan growing increasingly restless, I decided to take the pair of them for a walk. I had some concerns about Daniel, because being 2-and-a-bit, it was likely he’d get tired and I’d end up carrying him most of the way. I also had a bit of trouble persuading Jake to come along with me. He wasn’t keen on the idea of a country walk.

Anyway, taking them both by the hand, we dandered out of the street. It wasn’t long before I spied a snail hiding in the long roadside grass. I pointed it out to the boys, and that started a little nature trail of them trying to find bugs in the grass.

Down the road a bit, I gave them a couple of sticks and let them chop the heads of dandelions. One of my own personal favourite passtimes, although it’s more fun with nettles (I decided it was safer not to share that particular point). So, with all this stopping to bash up dandelions, you can imagine the walk took much longer than I intended.

Both of the boys walked valiantly and without much complaint and I tried to keep the walk interesting by pointing things out to them and chatting to them along the way. Jake’s decided that he’d like to go cycling along the road with me someday, and I might do this when I know the road’s relatively deserted.

Anyway, we got home with both of them babbling about how much fun they’d had, so not a bad result, and I didn’t have to carry Daniel far at all.

This is it. The cat who adopted us. Or Swissy as Rachel likes to call it.

The latest news on this moggy is that she attached herself to the woman who lives two doors down from us. She started to feed the cat and ended up making sure it got innoculations and stuff like that. Lisa talked to her the other day and she was surprised to hear that Swissy was still around.

I think the agreement is that we have some kind of ‘joint custody’ arrangement. Read more »