Here’s an excellent analysis of suggestions for baby names. I’m guessing American, but…..

Poking around the hard drive, I came across this picture. I thought it was pretty nice, then surprised myself by reading the EXIF headers by finding that I’d taken it. Modesty aside, I thought it was one of my better pictures (although some smart arse photographer types would probably find shitloads wrong with it. The benefit of getting up at 6:00am to travel to the City for 7 months is that you get to see plenty of nice sunrises like this.

Well, that took me a while, didn’t it? Mark Richard Connolly was born on Tuesday morning in the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading at 9:23 am. For the record, he was 7lbs 9oz, or 3440 grams in new money.

I was there for the whole thing, which was interesting – much calmer that Luke’s birth by a long shot. A bit of an anti-climax really. We arrived late, as per usual, and were told that Judy was being ‘done’ first which was cool. The prepped her straight away and she was wheeled down at 9:00am. The spinal was a bit worrying, but the bloke seemed confidant and calm. Everything is prepared and finally the consultant turns up in a bit of a flurry and gets started. Mark was dragged out at 9:23 and the stitching was done by 9:45 – they had Jude in the recovery room by 10:00….not too shabby.

Mark is a cutie, but we couldn’t see who he resembles, as per usual. With Luke, we knew he had Judy’s eye straight away but this time it was hard to see who he takes after. After a few days, things started to de-shrivel and flesh out a bit and now he looks like Luke did when he was born, minus the scary but transient facial palsy Luke had from being pressed against Jude’s hip for a few weeks. We’ll see how it goes – the blonde hair is a surprise.

Hmm…seems like both of us forgot our wedding anniversary last Wednesday. Had to be reminded of it by a friend.

It’s not such a big deal for just a 4th anniversary, IMHO, but some people seem to think it’s a big deal. They probably don’t know us I suppose.

Still trying to sell our house. We’ve had a couple come around twice and they seem really keen. The second visit was on Thursday night to see how the house was in the dark. I’ve never really worried about being slightly isolated here and neither has Jude, but it seemed really important to them. We got a call yesterday saying that they really, really like the house but that the missus was still afraid of the location. “Can panic buttons be added to the alarm system” was the big questions. “Yep, no problem”. “Can we have one in each room….?” “I suppose you could…if you really want them”. “What about security lights with infra-red detectors”….and so on and so on.

Some history there, me thinks but as long as they buy the place, what do I care?

Very little bloggage last few weeks, since most of my time was spent in Dublin, my home town, working for a large bank – no doubt a major contributor to the large scale rape of the third world. (poor joke, this stems from a discussion I had with a relative about BIG BUSINESS).

Now I’m back in the UK, I don’t see myself travelling anywhere for a few weeks – the next little connolly is about to pop out – estimated date of arrival is the 25th, around noon or so. We’re fairly sure about the date and time, since we’re having one of those maligned caesarian sections, you know the ones that you shouldn’t have, since ‘natural’ kiddie birth is the new black? (See Gwyneth Paltrow’s teachings). Sod natural, Luke was a natural birth and that was 27 hours of labour followed by a forceps and plunger delivery complete with something close to female circumcision, some infection that couldn’t be cured by antibiotics or prayer, 15+ health professionals and a family that was is total shock for about 6 months.

This time around, it’ll be different I’m sure. We’re more prepared now that we were first time around, but to counter that, the NHS has gone a little more downhill – we’re probably about evens now. I’m sure that it’ll all go so well we can pause to thank those health professionals that came before us to make the system what it is……..

We’ll see. Still don’t know the gender, but I’ve registered the markconnolly.co.uk domain name just in case. If it’s a girlie, we’re hosed…