Break a leg!
I have done a little bit of amateur dramatics in my pre-parenting days. I can’t claim to be blessed with huge amounts of talent for it, and the adrenaline rush is like nothing else, but I’m very proud of the few productions I was able to be a part of. I’ve played a WW1 soldier,…
Andy’s Man Club
*Warning – this blog post contains sensitive content around discussions of mental health I’m lucky to work for a company that seems to value employee welfare and development as more than just tick boxes on an HR checklist. In the 2.5 years that I’ve worked there we’ve had really interesting and involved discussions around a…
Access Denied
This happened a few months back and I’ve been meaning to write it up for ages now. I teased a bit of it in my last post, So much to update, but I think it warrants its own post. Back in the height of the summer, we made use of the annual ‘kid’s week’ which…
So much to update
Hello there! I haven’t forgotten about Allergen Dad, I promise! It’s just that 2024 ended up being fairly, well… full! So much has happened since my last post and I need to update on all of it. I may give snippets of updates here and there on a few things and then expand on the…
Oh dear, Zizzi
“Not the best” – this is how my very good friend would describe this day. This is fairly ‘hot off the press’ and I’m writing it frustrated. Frustrated with the experience but also frustrated with myself for not knowing better after years of dealing with allergies. But before I can tell this story, I need…
Letter to Father Christmas
It’s been a pretty intense run-up to the end of the year with work keeping my anxiety levels pretty high and an ever-increasing to-do list seeming to get ever further away. But we did manage to sit down at the weekend and write our letters to Father Christmas, and I thought I’d share mine with…
The dreaded dropped nap…
I’ll start with a leveler. Three kids is hard. It’s wonderful and rewarding and beautiful and fulfilling. But it is also exhausting, draining, intense, and tough. I sort of joked when the third one (Griffin, for the sake of a moniker) came along that I now had more children than hands. I didn’t realise that…
IKEA: the wander-full, everyday…
I’m not usually one to do this but we had a frustrating allergy experience the other day which I think is worth drawing attention to. So you’ll have to forgive me for indulging in a bit of a rant. We decided upon a family outing to IKEA. Having the house so regularly being viewed whilst…
In Dorset? I’d recommend it to anyone…
Well that was quite a week… I think it’s fair to say that 2023 has been quite the year so far. The arrival of a third child and all of the madness that ensues; the highs and lows of thinking we’ve found a new house, loosing it, and then trying to sell our house again…
Party of Five
It has been quite a week! Baby number three arrived in remarkable circumstances at the beginning of the week. Born at home, a handful of millimetres away from where Piglet was born just over 7 years ago, baby Griffin entered the world in the middle of the night. On one hand it was the perfect…
Birth Plan
We’re up to that point. Baby #3 needs their own birth plan. I’m finally getting my head around the idea that we’re going to have 3 kids. Yes, one more kid than I have hands! A lot of the focus over the last few months has been on getting ready for the arrival. From trying…
Podcast madness! It’s back.
Free From Humour is back for season 2. I would love to say that it’s finally become the professional, mature consumer peer review that its content deserves. But if anything this episode is more chaotic and bonkers than usual. The brief (I feel that’s a better word than excuse) was to try a select a…
Three’s a charm
Here’s to sharing… I got quite a surprising piece of good news the other day. Turns out we’re adding another Piglet or Dragon to the family. By next summer, we will be a family of 5! I say surprise… …I probably shouldn’t be entirely surprised; I know enough biology to know how these things work.…
Little people in paradise
It’s been a while… Things change so quickly at the moment that it’s difficult to keep up! But there have been a few events in the Allergen Dad household that are worth giving an update on. So, quick check list: Moving house? Not yet. Mrs Allergen Dad starting her new career? In progress but reliant…
Big steps for little feet
It’s been a fairly momentous month in the Allergen Dad household. Things have moved on a lot since I last posted a blog: Dragon is now 9 months old and, judging by her appetite, enjoying the full capability of those ever-so-sharp two bottom teeth that she’s so proud of. Piglet has just turned 6 and…
9-bar, finely ground bean water
Sounds nice doesn’t it? No? How about medium-dark roasted coffee beans grown at high altitude, finely but consistently ground into a light powder, tamped tightly into a ~18g ‘puck’, pre infused with near-boiling water and then perfectly extracted by (optimally) high pressure water for roughly 30 seconds to make a tiger-striped, aromatic, crema-topped velvety 40g…
New Job
Thoughts on a first day Well… not quite the start to my first day in a new job I was hoping for. I arrived at Slough train station in plenty of time only to find that all trains running between London Paddington and Reading were suspended. Roughly 90 mins later I was finally on a…
All change please!
Change I’m not sure I’ve ever been particularly good at it. I remember (or have reconstructed the memory from having it recounted to me) that we were meant to move house when I was little. In ways I can entirely relate to now, we had, then, outgrown our Victorian terrace home and needed something with…
2022: Two too
Well it’s been a long time! Apparently May was my last blog post but in truth I haven’t been that active as Allergen Dad across 2021 at all. There are multiple reasons for this but actually I’m much more interested in looking forwards at this point than looking back. There are some big things to…
Sleep, oh how I miss you…
It’s going to get worse… That’s the sad truth of the matter! We have a second child coming in August and although I have blocked out any memory of the sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn child, I am painfully aware of the fact I will be a walking zombie by the end of…