The Adventures of Geek Dad: Part Five

Hard to believe it's been a week since my last Geek Dad, it really feels like a lot less.

Well last night was my usual Daddy & Daughter night, but it felt quite uneventful, so I'll probably try and cover the week instead.

Last I left things it was the end of the week. Recently Mummy Moo, Mini Moo and I have been trying 'drinking in' when it comes to our weekly coffee shop visit, but I seem to have jumped ahead; let me take you back 4+ months when my wife and I didn't have our child;

Every Saturday we'd have our trip into town, we'd walk in, grab ourselves a Starbucks and have a relaxing while enjoyable discussion on one of the many benches in our town.

Ever since the birth of our little one this has had to change - but I must be honest, it's not just because of her.

Due to the cold and having a baby daring to wake and be noisy , our trips have been as short as possible, often drinking while walking, but recently we've tried drinking in at the many coffee shops and so far it's working well.

It's been really enjoyable to sit down, have a hot drink and talk about life the universe and everything. Now don't get me wrong, it's not that we haven't been talking, but the past few weeks have felt different.

I'd like to take this opportunity to give some advice to any expectant dads out there: Please, when your baby comes, whatever you do, don't neglect your wife's and your relationship. This probably sounds really obvious to most, but let me tell you, when you've been up for the N'th time in the night, or tired and grouchy, you feel envious because even though they spend most of the day looking after the baby alone, they're still home and not at work, all you'll think about is the things that you used to do but now can't.

In my case this was the following: going out for a 4 weekly meal with the wife, spend whole days and nights on the computer playing games and stay in bed until whenever I wanted.

Yes I know those things are really unimportant, but that's how I felt.

And you know what? She's feeling the same too! She'll even have her own things she feels grumpy and jealous about; you see, it's not that your a bad husband or father, it's that your struggling to come to terms with the life changing event that is child birth!

Think of it this way, your partner has had 9 months of growing the child inside them, they've felt it move and develop and when it was born their body released hormones to force them to bond with it. For men this doesn't happen, and this can leave us feeling alienated from our wives and babies (especially if they're fed 100% on breast as all we get to do are the nappy changes).

This is why it's important to do things like coffee house trips. You get to spend time together, it's not so formal that it's a real problem if the baby starts crying and needs soothing and your also in a situation where conversation and communication is encouraged! I believe it's these trips and our weekly Saturday routine which have stopped my wife and I having any major arguments, and when the home is a happy and stress free environment, then your baby is more likely to be happy and stress free.

Anyway, this week I was finishing off the penultimate book on my Accounting course, this was what I did on Monday and Tuesday. But that's not all! I also managed to squeeze in some more work on Chapel Hill:


First off I under coated it dark brown with spray paint from the local B&Q.


Then on Tuesday I gave it a distance spray of yellow-orange to act as slight highlighting.

Then yesterday I dry brushed the whole thing:


This was done with the film Jarhead on in the background. Possibly my favourite war film currently in circulation.

It was just after this was done that the Mini Moo woke up with a vengeance. Up until now she had been asleep, but now she was awake and needed a feed.

So on goes the universal pause button on my modelling and out comes the bottle.

Next up I took the hill upstairs to my den, rearranged the terrain on my 3x3 board and placed things in a semi usable formation:


There were a few reasons for wanting to do this. Firstly I wanted to see how it looked with the rest of my terrain, and secondly because I didn't actually know how much space it took up on the board.

As you can see, it's sizeable but does not make everything else useless.

Then with modelling glue I attached the tree skeletons and have left them to dry.

So plans for the week/weekend:
Firstly I need to add fine details like the foliage to the trees, I also need to add burnt grass to suitable places.
At some point there is also the task of painting the fences. This is probably what I'll try and do tonight.

And so there we are, I hope you've enjoyed this week's Geek Dad, and I'll see you again next week: same geek time, same geek channel!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley