King Pippin

The Doncaster Choice

2013-10-29T18:38:00.001+00:00

Bobby was the Doncaster decision-making champion 2024. In independent assessments run by

Direct Line, his purchasing, holidaymaking, hiring of staff and critically, not claiming on his pet

insurance has led to the calculation that he made the best decisions in the whole city. Now he was

going head to head for the Direct Line Choice of the North title and had a week to be as astute as

practicable. Now he found himself at the top of a flight of steps pushing a piano. Toward the drop.

The dilemma was twofold:

a) Winning would gain him W-List celebrity status straight off. He would be broadcast

throughout, meet U and even V-List celebs and, critically, have his less-pertinent affairs de-
listed from the Public Register, meaning he could block them on his profile.

b) Winning doubtlessly would ruin his life. He didn’t need a Life Consultant to tell him that.

So his only solution was to make some bad decisions. He had already got drunk and poisoned the

cat, but the likelihood that his receipts would be mis-read as an act of financial acumen followed

by an effective and healthy degree of drunken solace (records weren’t always great at showing the

order of unrecorded events).

So. This upright Piano. For a moment he hesitated. He weighed up his options using various systems:

1) Loss Aversion People are more averse to loss than they are for

making gains. Clearly, fucking up a piano was a bold move, would this be

seen straight through?

2) Framing After any change people tend to see how they are better off.

Could this be re-framed by Direct Line with their über-meta-data as

somehow cathartic. It was true that he never really played the piano and

had endured years of nagging from his mother about lessons with plenty of

counter-whinging.

3) Rationality Breaking things is rarely as irrational as it would seem. When

the red mist descends somehow it is always the cheapest or ugliest vase that

whizzes past the heart-breaker’s head.

Bobby took a deep breath. He scratched a little. Turning, he leant for a moment, his sweaty back

arch against the cool pinewood of the piano’s end. Maybe this was a little obvious, still the exercise

had surely done him good – he’d skip the gym in the morning. He turned, bent his knees and

trundled back into his apartment.

Networking for a job

2012-10-20T00:39:00.000+00:00

I have been fascinated with this subject for some time, by which I mean that I am on LinkedIn and I encourage the unemployed people I work with to apply speculatively for work, but it wasn't really until an article in TES gave me a name, Julia Hobsbawm, that I started getting hooked.

So to find a job what have I learned?

Your approach has to relate to where you are aiming to go. There is no point searching for a job at a particular company by reading the paper every week and hoping they have advertised. Broadcast search for more general positions (job search engines, trade press or agencies) and
Identify people you know who are well connected. For example, using touchgraph.net to analyse your Facebook friends.
The people who are most likely to help you find a job are not the one's who know you best, make sure all your contacts are working on your behalf.
Ask to try a shift in a job sector you're interested in, just to see if you like it!
Ask for advice from people who you know are knowledgeable or successful in their field.
Try mixing in new social circles, try a different walk to the shops, a hobby or an evening class. You never know who you could meet by steeping a little out of your comfort zone!
You need to get ahead of everyone else and in the back door, if possible, by getting to know the key people. Even if they are moral people who believe in fair recruitment processes to give everyone a chance, they will make their minds up about their opinion of potential recruits within moments of meeting them. You can get ahead of this by making contact when they are not in a recruitment context.

Julia Hobsbawm is a professor of Networking (daughter of Eric Hobsbawm, the eminent British Marxist Historian, who passed away in the last few months). She may be the only professor of Networking, as it did seem to cause a stir in the media, though, this may simply be due to her also being a professional in the world of PR. I downloaded an mp3 of her inaugural speech, which named dropped a few further leads: Mark Granovetter and Angelo Barabasi amongst others.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/julia-hobsbawm-professor-networking-elitism

Julia Hobsbawm's inaugural speech in full: http://traffic.libsyn.com/ei/julia_hobsbawm_lecture.mp3

Malcolm Gladwell writes in a highly accessible style on a range of topics from, to the benefits of coffee and tea. He uses a lot of anecdotes to provide context tot he theories he is promoting.
There are loads of fascinating articles on his website, and his books are easy to find.
gladwell.com

After Gladwell's book Outliers was published about the attributes of highly successful people, Bill Gates apparently disagreed that his success was as attributable to the 10,000+ hours of work he'd put in to get Microsoft up and running, as to the setbacks he'd overcome in his career.

Influence

2011-11-23T20:15:00.010+00:00

Coming to the close of my PGCE at long last, it has been a long slog and I am just brimming at the seams waiting to find the perfect teaching job and actually get on with the job of coming up with exciting lessons and having a class to teach. One of the last things to do is some reflective writing about teaching.
I heard yesterday on Brain Culture (Radio 4) about how children do not respond well to being congratulated on how intelligent they are. The studies they feature showed that children performed better when being rewarded with the old carrot for how hard they are working. If congratulated for being intelligent, when children are struggling with something the displeasure of this not meeting their identity as someone who can do things causes them to dispair, whereas those who think of themselves as hard-working are more likely to work hard ata problem. The programme then continued withthe presenter giving a very leading interview with some advanced maths students, but we'll gloss over that.
There is no reason that these theories shouldn't work with adults, too, we may just take a bit more prodding as we are somewhat stuck in our ways.

Anyway I've been thinking a lot about influence and persuasion and how they matter as a teacher. I read Freakonomics last Christmas and read Superfreakonomics cover to cover whilst I was ill the other week, which starts in its' introduction that the authors' writing had a unifying theme; "people respond to incentives". An interesting point in both of these books were what incentives people respond to. Self-image was very important; Acting in accordance with our self-perceptioon of our identity to re-inforce who we think we are was a strong imperative in many cases. Another book I read whilst ill was Yes!: 50 secrets from the science of persuasion which had an excellent example of how social pressure (what others are doing, using the hook of keeping up with the Joneses) can be even more persuasive. Customers staying in a hotel were more likely to re-use their towels if told how many others had done so than if they were told of the environmental benefits.

Persuasion can be broken down into 6 , "universal principles of social influence." says Robert Cialdini:

reciprocation
authority
commitment/consistency
scarcity
liking
social proof

The final book I wanted to mention, unlike my usual selection is a little older: The Brain Book is almost as old as myself, but the theory in it is still strong. It shows how the brain sets about remembering things through association. In Brain Culture(2011) the plasticity of the brain was discussed and children who visualised this idea of neurons making connections said they were better at remebering other topics. This may be less to do with self-aware neurons and more to do with consciously forming patterns of images and associations. The stronger your images and associations, the more bizarre and multi-sensory the more imprinted upon your brain they become (Brown, 2007; Russell, 1979).
So, for example I've (tried to) memorise Cialdini's list above by imagining teaching someone to cook from a recipe (reciprocation). The person being taught is particularly objectionable and needs persuading in a forceful manner, so the recipe is barked out like a Seargant Major (authority), which transforms the learner froma nobody into the lowest in the kitchen (comi chef= commitment), magically putting a chef's hat on their chavvy smelly unwashed greasy hair and forcing them into the servitude of stirring treacle (consistency). However the learner runs off with a girlish whimper when a spider (audibly) plops down onto a pool of treacle (scare-city) and starts licking (liking) it. The spider than invites all it's friends to eat treacle and they all get drunk (social) and have a spider party because the mixture is alcoholic (proof). It's not a the best example but you get the idea. To improve it I would make the images more personal and more rude/offensive/sexy (this emotional context would make it more memorable). The more layers of meaning and multi-sensory you make your images the better. Similarly in teaching there are many ways that youshould show subject in a variety of ways (PLTS, Domains of Learning and Bloom's Taxonomy all being examples). Not only can techniques be described to learners so that they can remember well, but but bringing a subject to life in - and to some extent out of- context, it can add layers of meaning to the learning and make it more memorable. This not only means you are doing what you have a basic responsibility to do as a teacher, enabling learning in those who struggle with a subject by presenting in a way accessible to them but also that you are making different associations for other learners and engraining this knowledge in their neuron patterns.

References
Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Society [Radio broadcast] BBC, BBC Radio 4, 22 November 2011 16.00 [online] Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017cfkq [Accessed 23 November 2011]
Brown, D., (2007) Tricks of the Mind London: Random House
Goldstein, N., Martin, S. & Cialdini, R.B. (2007) Yes!: 50 secrets from the science of persuasion London: Profile Books
Levitt, S.D. (2006) Freakonomics London: Penguin
Levitt, S.D. (2009) Super Freakonomics London: Penguin
Russell, P. (1979) The Brain Book London: Routledge
Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills - Skills - Key Stage 3 and 4 - National Curriculum [online] http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/skills/personal-learning-and-thinking-skills/index.aspx [Accessed 24 November 2011]

Survey into part-time work amongst Higher Education students

2011-10-02T12:37:00.004+00:00

The last big project I have for my PGCE si to carry out a research project.

I have put together a quick survey to collect some data about university students doing part-time work. If you have ever been to university or know someone who has, could you take 2 minutes (or pass it on) :
http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/careers/pgcesurvey

Thanks,

Pippin

Samantha Erin Richards Sadler

2009-07-23T20:55:00.003+00:00

Hey there,

I've realised for those sensible friends of ours who haven't joined the hordes on Facebook that there are no photos of my beautiful month old (month tomorrow, anyway) daughter.

View a slideshow here

Warm-up for Reebok Bristol Half Marathon

2008-09-15T10:39:00.001+00:00

For the last month I've been working on the Bristol Half Marathon. On the day I was responsible for College Green, which meant that this was about as close to the race as I got. It was a great day and I got some really good feedback from the runners. Maybe next year I'll run.

SJ Esau - Under Certain Things

2008-07-09T00:23:00.004+00:00

All flued out.

2008-02-10T16:42:00.000+00:00

It's been a really beautiful February day here. Out the window, the drunks haven't been the only one's in the park for once, people from all over have been out picnicing and reading papers. My favourite park regular, the old Chinese lady who does evening Thai Chi on her own each night, has just left as the sun disappears and the day starts to cool. And us? We've all been indoors all day feeling rotten. I caught Amon's cold that he picked up at nursery - he's now started 2 days a week, and seems to be on course for picking up every bug one by one - and Rosa's got a hyperactive thyroid. According to Wikipedia and her, this sucks. It means at night when she should by all rights be asleep she's lying there with her heart going like the clappers trying to sleep. She's really exhausted now, and can't even sleep in the moments she should be able to. This coincides badly with her return to work after maternity leave and now Amon's had to move onto formula milk for fear of getting her medication through her milk.
We even failed to make it out to the back yard to start the gardening off afresh. I failed to get a job in the Council's allotments team recently, which only served to remind me that I should have been taking care of the garden over winter.
Feeling truly sorry for ourselves, I shall leave you with some good news: babies. Our friends Viv & Ali and Emily & Will have both had babies since I last wrote.

The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust

2007-12-10T23:12:00.000+00:00

This album is by one of my favourite artists in ages.
It's FREE or $5 (about £2.50) to download, depending on how much you want to pay.

It's also been produced by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame.

Have a listen, on me, go on. If you like it - have it - completely legally. It's yours (although obviously your a cheapskate if you don't pay £2.50, direct to the artist, no record label involved, to get your copy).

Have a listen

Back from holiday

2007-11-10T20:30:00.001+00:00

We've been away to Budleigh Salterton, where we rented a cottage for a week.
It's a bit tricky getting anything done wit' baby, as you can tell by the plumetting number of posts in the last few months (this in no way correlates to the fact that work banned access to blogspot.com from our desks).

Sugar, talking of having no time, I gotta go, but before I do here's some pictures of Amon from a while ago:

This is from the Lake District earlier the year ...

... Amon no longer fits the bucket bath, being the weight of the avergae year and a half yearo old and the height of the average one year old.

The ol' family beer stick

2007-10-02T00:08:00.000+00:00

I've been reading up on brewing over at this amazing (well informative, at the least, maybe you're not all as fascinated with the why and wherefores of beer) site

There was a time when the role of yeast in brewing was unknown. In the days of the Vikings, each family had their own brewing stick that they used for stirring the wort. These brewing sticks were regarded as family heirlooms because it was the use of that stick that guaranteed that the beer would turn out right. Obviously, those sticks retained the family yeast culture. The German Beer Purity Law of 1516 - The Reinheitsgebot, listed the only allowable materials for brewing as malt, hops, and water. With the discovery of yeast and its function in the late 1860's by Louis Pasteur, the law had to be amended.

Single Use Items

2007-08-06T22:49:00.000+00:00

No, I'm not talking about disposables that get chucked once done with. I thought I'd share a secret and indulgent passion of mine ... I really love kitchen gadgets that serve one singular and niche purpose the more bizarre the better (although I have an irrational dislike of garlic crushers).

As you see in the little animation below, I bough an egg slicer the other day. To me they are the epitome of this kind of item.

But let us not forget the noble toothpick, or olive fork, or even better the pickle fork with spring action. My grandmother had one of these and I've wanted one ever since. I can't explain how they work but they are a marvel of victorian engineering akin to the canal system in my warped mind.

What other items bring joy to my heart when rummaging in the drawer for some tool or other?
Pizza cutters, mandolins, pestle and mortar, scone cutters, coffee makers, cheese slicers, flour dusters; God they're lovely.

The only problem is I have a perfectly good knife and my brand new egg slicer from Aldi makes the egg look like this:

Last ever Ashton Court Festival

2007-07-20T23:08:00.000+00:00

OK, this video isn't from Ashton Court, but I found it on You Tube and the sound quality and snippet of music is a better representation of SJ Esau than this video of him at Ashton Court by Rabid Pounder.

Anyway the sad news this morning is that the company that organises Ashton Court every year is going to go into liquidation after Sunday of the festival was rained off and everyone lost out, not least of all, poor Damon Albarn who didn't get to headline on Sunday and now never will. He must be gutted.

Ashton Court sponsorship plea+

2007-07-08T12:51:00.000+00:00

There's a very sad neglected, lonely-looking page I've found, asking for sponsorship for Ashton Court.

As of writing it reads

Money Raised: £115.00 Amount Remaining: £30,270

5 Days remaining: it's hardly worth it is it? Bless 'em! 'em, in this case being "Snappy Start-ups", an Ad /web design Co.

Further adventures in babyland

2007-06-24T21:58:00.001+00:00

Lately Amon has begun to laugh a bit. It's heart-meltingly good and when he does it, we regularly just spend ten minutes singing and dancing, doing monkey impressions and beating each other up violently all in an effort to get him to repeat that little grimace.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I spent an absolute age the other day boucing him in his chair and getting him to gurgle whilst pointing my camera-phone in his face. Even with the flash off, before the photo is taken a little red light comes on to take a light reading, and this always surprises him out of laughter. Except once. When the bouncy chair was bouncing too fast to capture it. Damn.

Nevertheless; More photos:

And some of family holding him:

Mum

Dad

Christopher

Beth

Actually enjoying my job

2007-06-21T23:06:00.000+00:00

I've been setting up a conference and publishing a Good Practice Guide over the last few weeks and working long tiring hours (ontop of having a gloriuos baby boy to come home and care for).

It has been weird actually enjoying my job and when all this is over and I'm back to stationary orders and mis-management, I thoroughly intend to go out there and find a job I can enjoy like this all of the time.

Listening to SJ Esau on Last FM

2007-06-14T18:10:00.000+00:00

I'm happy listening to my friend Sam (and people who are, apparently, a bit like his band). on Last.FM.

Try it! It may make you happy too!

You can find me here on Last.FM

Facebooked

2007-06-14T17:16:00.001+00:00

Oh dear, I seem to have got hooked on Facebook over the last couple of days. How very addictive it seems to be.

Fortunately all my attempts to hunt down old Uni friends and school chums have fallen short, or I wouldn't have found time to write this.

Try it - it's the new Myspace! (oh ... dear.)

More homebrews

2007-06-14T16:57:00.000+00:00

After the fun I've had making beer, I've gone a bit brewing-crazy.

I got some wicked old cider bottles for putting my beer in, they have glass screw-stoppers with rubber seals to stop them bursting. And they feel properyl 1930s. the problem is some of my beer's gone flat as some of the seals are probably from teh 1930s!

A couple of months or so ago I went out to the countryside where my mum lives and got a load of dandelion heads (it was St George's Day: the best day for picking dandelions, apparently) and oak leaves.
The Dandelion wine has now breweed and been bottled, and the poak leaf wine has finished bubbling and will be bottled in a month or two.

For my birthday my mum gave me a load MORE elderflowers (ontop of the stuff I got just before Amon's birth which I turned into wine and cordial and now I've got three bottles of elderflower cordial)

I also have a gallon and a half of ginger beer which I made at the weekend for my birthday (30th dontchaknow)

The Ginger beer tastes good, I used a really good recipe from CJ Berry's classic book about brewing. It tastes a bit lemony, fairly gingery and has a hint of cream of tartar - a substance I haven't quite figured out yet. My main problem is that I can't figure out how to kill off the yeast without making it go flat. This means that it slowly gets more alcoholic and I need to release the pressure in the bottles every day. I discovered this this morning when I took the champagne cork out of the demi-john it was in and all the CO2 that was liquidised within it turned suddenly to gas and with a whoosh which sent the cork rebounding off the ceiling spurted all over my living room.

Brewing's excellent fun!

The League of Apathy

2007-06-04T09:34:00.001+00:00

So, yeah.
I founded the League of Apathy (yes, that was me!) back in 2002 and thought I should mention it to someone.
Umm, like, here's our* manifesto, which is a kind of work in progress I haven't yet finished.

League of Apathy Manifesto

The League of Apathy is the true way towards the enlightenment of people, betterment of the planet and all that jazz.
Note to self: Think of a second comment
Ignore idiots.
Get it wrong the first time and you're unlikely to be asked again.
Putting things off until later could be a good idea, unless it's too much bother
Things can be best achieved through the natural gestation of the apathetic.

to be finished later...

*I say "our", it's just me really, and I think Alex might have joined once. If anyone else wants to join the League, do let me know, and we'll, umm, have a cup of tea or something.

People's Republic of Stokes Croft

2007-05-22T21:24:00.000+00:00

I am very impressed by PRSC (The People's Republic of Stokes Croft)'s work. It has been set up to turn what is otherwise an area of deprivation in Bristol, into a recognised area of culture.
Stokes Croft is right on the edge of St Paul's in Bristol, an area, for those who aren't familiar with Bristol, which has a long history of social problems peaking in some big riots in the early eighties.
Stokes Croft is also right at the start of one of the cities major transport arteries northbound from the centre, so it has quite a substantial percentage of Bristol's populous passing through it each day.

With this in mind The People's Republic ...
Have set up returning the area to its' former glorious state of colourful, tasteful advertising, with signage and Billboards. the idea is if they can get all the parts of the area which are neglected or tagged, and get proper graffiti artists and other murals and artwork up to beautify the area, then how nice would that look?

On Tuesday 15th, they organised a whole load of people to turn up and paint the boards outside of the homeless persons hostel which I live. I had forgotten all about it until I walked passed, with Amon strapped to my chest in a Baby Bjorn carrier. Then I rushed home and got this photo, which I stuck up and varnished with interior varnish in an attempt to keep the weather off.

I'm so glad to have got involved in doing something to improve where I live and to take part in something so unique and apt to the area.

Update on parenthood

2007-05-21T16:52:00.001+00:00

So everything is still going amazingly. Baby Amon is in great health, and somehow, we know not how, Rosa and I are struggling through.
As if he wasn't blessing enough already, he's started sleeping for longer at nights after only two weeks (touch plyboard desk he sticks or improves on this), so we (as in Rosa) get woken up twice in the night for feeds, burps and changes which is bearable.

Little Amon still doesn't do a great deal, holds fingers in his hand, stares at interesting patterns of light and dark on the wall, especially when you're trying to show him so cool mobile or over-priced toy.
His favourite game, and it's a cool little trick, is to wait until you've just changed him and then do a big one, or alternatively, wait until he's naked and then do a "fountain". It's a classic and we have a whole load of fun, cleaning up and washing things constantly. We're not even on the washable nappies yet (I know, there go my eco-credentials, although are disposables are largely biodegradable).

Here's a slideshow of photos (if it works, if not follow this link to my photobucket account)

Babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies

2007-05-13T18:08:00.000+00:00

Some highly amateur theories on childbirth:

Boys fart
Boys fart more because it is more likely their father's burped and winded them as a baby, therefore they learned it is good to fart around men.

Jiggles = wiggles
Babies wriggle around a lot, as their digestive systems don't do much, and this shifts the food in the right direction for them and gets them going

Perfect little poos
Obsesive Compulsive parents seem to be fascinated by baby poos. I first thought this was just because midwives ask you to keep a check on how often baby poos to make sure he's all working alright, but now I'm starting to think, that little babies don't have a lot of expressions, and one of their major functions is poo production, so maybe that parents just like to see the bbay expressing themselves someway. I'm tired. I don't really know what I'm getting at here, please ignore me.

Amon Zach Richards Sadler.

2007-05-09T17:39:00.000+00:00

Not the prettiest photo in the world, but at least his eyes are open in this one.

We have finally come to an opinion on our little baby's name.

The decision was a tricky one. Jasper, Harry and Finn or Finlay were all names we were considering recently. We wanted a name with 2 syllables for the forename, we like Biblical names or old names, but nothing too popular.

I got Amon from Amon Tobin, a musician I like. I met him when he played the Thekla in Bristol at a gig John Stevens put on and he was a thoroughly nice chap.

Rosa favourite has always been Zac, mostly, I think, because she fancies Zach Braff, the actor (from Scrubs) and Zac Goldsmith the environmentalist (from The Ecologist). She will probably claim she just likes the name, but ...

Amon is very happy right now because his mother's milk has come in and his no longer having stinky yellow colostrum on a drip-by-drip basis. Please let me know if you want a blow by blow detail on his poo, I believe it's something all parents are weirdly fascinated by and we are developing a chart of his progress to date - kerwow!

More later.

More new on our baby

2007-05-07T16:33:00.000+00:00

Here is our little baby giving his arm a suck.

Rosa had a long labour that started when I got back from a poker night. She had been having period pains about every fifteen minutes for a few hours, but they got a lot stronger and regular when I got home.

We turned the lights down low and tried to settle down for the night, although Rosa didn't like to lie down as she had to get up when the contractions began and moan whilst on all fours, with her arms up on her gym ball (large inflatable silver ball).

From midnight until seven she had contractions every five minutes, we phoned the midwives at one am, when we =sure this was "it" and at four they came to check how we were doing. At seven Rosa's sister, Beth, joined us to help out. Beth was fantastic, she sat calmly by Rosa, rubbed her back stroked her hair and held the glass as she had water through a straw.
The labour carried on and on and by about midday tRosa's waters still hadn't broken and she was dying to get into the birth pool (a large pool-in-a-box which is brilliant. It's an enormous paddling pool with wide, heigh sides and room for two people comfortable, or four intimate 'friends').

Unfortunately her temperature was quite high and the midwife was worried that if she got in the pool her labour might reverse a bit (stop having such regular strong contractions). By about 2pm, she was allowed into the pool, took the TENS machine off (a little device which does magic - can't be arsed to explain, sorry.) and got in.
It was probably about 3pm, when she was still labouring away, we allowed the midwife another internal inspection to see how we were doing. and as most her cervix had dilated and the baby's head was coming right down, the midwife said she would burst the waters. She got a little plastic stick with a hook on the end, inserted into Rosa's vagina and with an enormous splash all this water and muck came out. Rosa couldn't see at the time, but I was crestfallen to see that it had lots of brown and green bits in it.
This doesn't mean that the baby's disintegrated thankfully, but it did mean that the amniotic fluid (waters) had myconeum (baby poo) in them, which was dangerous for the baby, if he had inhaled any of them. From here on the baby would have to be closely monitored and specialised equipment would need to be on hand if there were any problems.
Gone were our hopes of a relatively relaxing birth at home.

The ambulance came at half three. I feel as I write this that I'm going on a bit, so if you're still with me, this about the same feeling we were having at the time, your average labour would be finishing up by now, whereas Rosa had been crying out to push for about an hour and hadn't yet been allowed that privilege. In fact for the next hour and a half all of her remaining energies were used up just straining against her muscle's urges to push.

Eventually, though she was exhausted and despairing she lay on the bed on her side and as she pushed I could see a baby's head starting to appear. At five o'clock a shit-covered little baby boy stuck his head out from between her legs, facing her bum and blinked. Two pushes later he was out and started crying like you would not believe. He was wrapped up warm and had a little hat put on him, and that is as you see in the video at the top of this post.

Rosa had to stay over at the hospital in case there were any problems with his breathing or anything else. But so far, he has been perfect. Hallelujah! Here are some pictures from my visit today:

I came back to get some rest myself before the baby came home and all I've done is laundry, emptying the birth pool and this post. I can't help it I'm too excited.