We’ve been exceptionally delinquent at keeping our blog up to date in the past year, although Karen has just about managed to save our blushes by posting quite a lot of photos of Charlotte and Jessica, which do tell something of a story.

Charlotte’s year

Charlotte’s year has been one of monumental development. It’s quite extraordinary to think that a year ago we had a sociable, crawling little baby or many smiles, but very few words. Now she is an energetic little girl who is not only quite articulate – stringing together really quite complex sentences – but also very polite, with “Please ta”,” thank you” and even “Excuse me, Daddy” coming out of her little mouth.

One very cute Charlotteism that clearly won’t last very much longer is that she is very confused by ‘me’ and ‘you’. Charlotte is convinced that the meanings of these words are reversed, such that her name is also ‘You’. “You do it”, “That’s Your high chair”, “You have it” are easily mis-interpreted by the uninitiated guest to our house... much to Charlotte’s amusement.  Our favourite, however, is “Yay you!”, which is Charlotte’s unique way of letting everyone know that she’s done something particularly impressive.

At the beginning of the year, Charlotte was quite a tricky sleeper. The nights spent pacing around her room and the hall do seem distant memories, but they certainly left their mark on both “Mama” and “Dadda”  - particularly if this immediately preceded one of Dadda’s many 6am flights to Wellington.

Charlotte now almost always sleeps through the night, and will wait patiently in her cot – usually “reading” her books, or enjoying the company of Shepo Bear, Mick the Dog or various other favourites  -  waiting for Mama or Dadda (usually Mama) to come in and lift her out of the cot.

The only disappointment in the past year for Charlotte has been that neither of her two eye operations has been successful.  She has ‘strabismus ‘ – her eyes are not aligned (as can be seen in a number of photographs) and she has no binocular vision. We are seeking another specialist opinion in Sydney in late January... more will no doubt follow.

My favourite moment?  So hard to pick one, but I absolutely loved Charlotte playing her piano as I was playing ‘mine’. There are some very cute photos on the blog, if you can find them.

Jessica’s year

Jessica – being almost exactly a year younger than Charlotte – is somewhat where Charlotte was last year. She is just getting on a major learning trajectory – starting to standing up and surprising us with more words daily. She craves attention from Mama and Dadda, but rewards this with the warmest smiles and giggles you can imagine.

In truth, Jessica’s first year was a really tough for both of us, but for Mama in particular.

Jessica was a normal birth weight but – in a most unexpected departure from both Ellis and Potter family protocols – she shows very little interest in food. As such, she continues to be a lightweight who barely registers on baby weight/ age charts.

As she’s been light on fuel, she’s also been really slow to power through the night. At the most challenging, she was awake for little ‘micro-feeds’ 4-5 times through the night. Karen has had probably two years with no more than 4 hours of consecutive sleep, and probably months at a time with no more than 2 or 3 hours.

Thanks largely to parachuting in reinforcements from Australia – Nana Betty, Aunty Jenny and Aunty Debbie – we’ve now managed to get Jessica onto formula (after resistance that the Red Army would have been proud of), and we’ve somewhat turned a corner. We’ve had a few nights when she has slept through from before midnight until after 6am... including last night – yay!

Jessica stubbornly refused to learn the words “Mum”, “Mama”, “Mummy” or any similar variant. These entered Jessica vocabulary just this week... along with “Giraffe”, counting to two, "dog" and “Grandad”. She certainly knows how to keep Mama waiting. Incidentally, “Dadda” has been part of the lexicon for many, many months – much to my amusement and continual delight.

In the same way that Jessica’s lightweight frame doesn’t seem to have had hindered brain development, her physical development has been pretty much on track. She started crawling just before her first birthday (10^th December), and can now stand without support for a few seconds. She would probably be able to stand for longer but she is so impressed with her achievements that her arms wave around excitement, making balance particularly challenging.

My favourite moment? Her bobbing and swaying with happiness is a much-loved feature of every day, but I particularly love it when she performs a 'fully body wriggle' of excitement when I twirl her around the living room.

For the past week or so, I've been having a bit of a break... I'm not on holiday - in fact, it's me who's working, and it's Karen and Charlotte who are away.

Karen and Charlotte have flown to Sydney in advance of a family wedding over there. Charlotte is getting lots of Nana- and Great Nana-love, and is being shown off to various other relatives. The VISA statements reveal that Karen responding to the help she's receiving by indulging in some serious retail therapy. It's her way of getting me to focus just a little bit more on trying to get the next promotion, I suppose.

Despite the fact that Karen does the lion's share of the baby-minding duties, and I've been getting relatively good sleep at night, it's really stuck home just how exhausted I had become. Although I do miss them both, it's been glorious to have decent, uninterrupted sleep, relax by playing the piano or guitar (without having to worry about waking Charlotte), and to watch the kind of movies that Karen things are completely moronic (but I love). In short – despite working longer hours – it’s been great to slow down.

I’ll be heading over to Oz for the wedding next weekend, so there are a few days more of relaxation before reality bites once more.

On a separate note, we had hoped to get across to the UK in April for a Christening for Charlotte, the 10-year Cambridge reunion and for the relatives and friends to meet our daughter. Unfortunately this isn’t going to be possible due to various work reasons. Clearly we’re disappointed that it hasn’t been possible – especially as I’m conscious that there will never be a good time to be away from work. However, we will try to plan to be over there in the late spring/ summer if at all possible.

No doubt Karen will stick some more baby (and wedding) photos up soon, so do come back.

Dave

This is a blatant advert! I’m hiring for a couple of hard-to-fill roles, and am now casting the net out to the… well, the net, I suppose. If you happen to know someone who might be a good fit, could you please forward the link?

First a little about Telecom Wholesale…

Some aspects of the telecommunications market in New Zealand are a little behind other Western countries, such as the UK. One area where it has definitely been behind is in the provision of wholesale services: i.e. selling services to other telcos or service providers that then on-sell them (with their own value add) to end customers. 

Most incumbent telecos, of which TNZ is an example, start as ‘reluctant wholesalers’: they sell only the services they are regulated to sell. Generally, they do this pretty badly for a while, because they don’t want to “help the competition”. One way to break this behaviour is to separate the wholesale part of the business so that it does what’s right for all customers, not just ones in the same group. This is what BT (and others) did some time ago, and Telecom New Zealand did only recently.

Because of the changes, and the perception that New Zealand is lagging behind in broadband and other services, TNZ Wholesale is very much in the national spotlight right now – barely a day goes by without us claiming serious column inches in the national press.

Strategy Manager

I’m looking for a strategy manager, ideally with a track record within the telecommunications industry or strategic consulting, who can lead major strategic projects (at the level of project manager in a consulting company).

Product Portfolio Strategy Manager

The role holder here is accountable for the products and services strategy and roadmap for Telecom Wholesale, which is essential for the rest of the industry to be able to make build/ buy decisions around infrastructure, product and services investment.

I’m prepared to offer a relocation package to candidates from outside NZ.

If you know anyone who might be interested, please drop me a line and I’ll fire over the full role descriptions, including the skills I’m looking for. 

What a weekend! Karen and Charlotte came home from the hospital and we moved into our new home. It was very hectic and stressful, but very happy with the outcome.

A few people have commented about the lovely furniture in the photographs of the house on this site. The problem is that this is all other people’s furniture. And, alas, they took it with them.

Despite having spent a fortune on all sorts of “essentials” over the weekend, I’m writing this from a $25 moulded plastic garden chair, which for the moment, is part of our dining suite. Karen’s parents, Betty and Clive, are currently sleeping on a blow-up mattress and three rooms have absolutely no furniture whatsoever.

It’s like we’ve wound the clock back to my first shared house in London – existing on whatever we could beg or borrow. Fortunately, we do have a container of stuff on its way from the UK, and we have a few bits and pieces in Australia that we’ll get shipped here in due course. For the moment, however, the only person properly catered for is Charlotte. Her needs are simple: eat, sleep, and – well, you can figure the other one out. She’s better at one of those things than the other two – and I’m sure can figure out which one I mean.

Despite the plastic, it’s wonderful to be living in our new house. For me, it’s a dream house: far nicer than anything I could have wished for in the UK.