Diary of a Gay Dad. I am a full time dad to five young children.

Mother to my 2 nieces Zoe and Hannah and nephew Daniel. You will be sorely missed Louisa Laurie who passed away suddenly on Monday 27th January 2020. I will always remember you with love. Rest in peace dear heart…

Well, last of tonight’s ‘Bay Pics’ to show. Caleb snuggling up with our biggest baby Remus (and Gracie). He was such a happy baby, so easy going, so chilled. I can see why big sister Tara kind of adopted him. Wow – they are really so close. Some proper writing and updates tomorrow I promise. But I hope you enjoyed today’s little bout of nostalgia…

And we come to our Aaliyah! Well known for sucking her fingers! Though she has done well over the last months – sadly a few weeks ago she has taken up her old habits once again. She had stopped for maybe 3 months. Looking back she has her fingers in her mouth in almost all of her pics! Now, if Tara can stop sucking her thumb at nighttime, I am sure that there is hope for Aaliyah.

She would be around 12 months at this point as this was the summer of 2016. Again, like her brother Thor, a very committed contender for getting crawling under her belt! Well done!

Baby Thor at just 6 months old. Not quite ready to crawl, but I remember that it was funny to see him attempting to push his bum in the air trying to propel himself forward. A very determined little fellow. But he was quite the screamiest baby of all time.

Perhaps I will finish the trip down memory lane in a few hours time with Aaliyah and Caleb and a few of their baby moments at home, here in ‘The Shires’.

Remember that I did not get home with all of the children, being born abroad for some time! Eighteen Moons in fact. Perhaps I will post a few pics of my time in India (Eight months), Thailand (5 months) and finally Nepal (5 months) in a couple of days. The story is of course available via the Amazon platform, simply by searching ‘Eighteen Moons’. An extraordinary and hopefully inspiring story! Thank you for reading.

Almost the same moment as Amritsar’s picture was taken, but as you can see, Tara was a little more grumpy on this specific day.

Tuesday morning now and all about to leave for school. Maybe a few baby pics of of little Thor later!

No Carb Sunday roastie – no problem! Roast Chicken (of course), steamed asparagus, garlic butter green beans, braised Savoy cabbage and chicken cracklings. Who needs the roast potatoes!

We all laughed and laughed and laughed. I played this 10 times and actually had tears!

What do you think of our afternoon in front of a green screen? A few more videos to follow! Aaliyah took a back seat, though she did dress as a ballet dancer…

I thought the carb free pizza was a big success, though john enjoyed it (he doesn’t like omelettes), he only referred to it as an omelette that tasted a bit like pizza. I would definitely eat it again, but I doubt that John would given his comments. Why don’t you make your own mind up? Oh, P.S. Mine had the 3 anchovies on it – yum yum.

Thor, Just sent to bed early, He had given Caleb a mighty right hook, just missing Caleb’s jaw. Caleb already crying as Thor had pushed him from the sofa. I sit here now, alone with Aaliyah. She has spent the last 35 minutes consuming her peanut butter and Dadda’s homemade rasmelonberry jam sandwich. She is sat there just looking at it. Now finishing the last of her orange squash, she has given up on the sandwich and any hope of dessert.

John is picking up the girls who have been at a friends birthday party these last 2 hours and I am now sat with Aaliyah and Caleb in front of the TV. Both are concentrating, no screaming or being silly. I think that Thor is the catalyst to a lot of the trouble with the little ones play and games!

The dogs have just gone mental as Tara has rung the doorbell on their return. Just made the girls a sandwich as there was no food, just a snack at their owl themed party!

Okay – worst mood of the day award has to go to Amritsar for this mornings 1hr+ unimaginable rantings. When she decides to have a barney (screamy session), damn, she can do it for England. She is actually worse than all three of our ‘little ones’ put together when her grief reigns its fire.

I’m planning on making pizza tonight! What! Pizza, but how if I am not eating flour. A triple egg omelette as a base, with homemade tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni and anchovies! A no carb delight for sure. Maybe try it yourself some night!

Just one year ago – our boy Remus 😂

Well, I am back after a couple of days in London where I slept lots and enjoyed the relative silence of it all. I came back on the train this afternoon and realised that yes, the children are a little on the rowdy side in my general week, but the main stresses of living my life at this point are our two Dalmatians Remus and Gracie, namely Remus. He’s just there in my face 24 / 7. I do love him dearly and now that the children have gone up to bed, he is settled with Gracie on the sofa. But when I start to prepare the grownup meal for tonight, he will spring into action once more!

Some dramas with the children in my absence, but I won’t bore you with that now. A bit more on our big family life being lived here in ‘The Shires’ at the weekend.

Thank you once again for reading!

A third frosty start to the day, here in ‘The Shires’. Not quite the frozen tundra, but chilly enough! The rainwater in the wheelbarrow has frozen solid.

Well, regarding the diet, what can I say? Though not entirely ‘Pre – Agrarian’, we have made one or two compromises. We even ate a 70% cocoa mass Lindt chocolate bar last night (Woohoo)! That was right after a dinner of Salad Nicoise on a bed of crisp spinach leaves. Omitting the boiled potato was key to ‘de-carbing’ this amazing French classic. Didn’t miss the spuds at all! All combined with a homemade salad dressing, what’s there not to like? I de-skinned 4 tomatoes, thinly sliced a red onion, blanched some very fine green beans and boiled 5 eggs (shelled and halved). Now don’t bother with tuna in brine or oil. Spend the bit extra and buy the tinned, pre- drained tuna steaks! So much better. Bejewelled with black olives and anchovies aplenty.

Another red prawn Thermidor tonight served up with butter braised Savoy cabbage!

For me, a day of fasting tomorrow, just water for hydration.

Feeling a lot firmer, though this diet isn’t really about the weight loss as I want to replace any internal fat loss with muscle mass! This I am achieving with relatively light exercise. I don’t really do anything that would lead to a sweat. I’m not a big fan of aerobic exercise as I have had some joint pains in recent times. Sadly, the truth is that the diet isn’t really helping my elbow pain. I guess that there is not enough seal blubber in my diet (hahaha)! I have started back on the cod liver oil and glucosamine sulphate supplement tabs! Like life, you have to make a few compromises in order to make things work don’t you?

Thanks for readying.

2 pirates, 2 ballerina’s and Caleb have finally settled down to watch Disney’s Moana. A morning spent mostly in their room, pretending to tidy up! Daddy lying down for a rest and Caleb now sat at feet playing with a stethoscope! Oops, he has just broken it! Oh dear – his capacity for destruction really is unparalleled.

Lunch was a success. The children love fried eggs and French fries. Thor’s egg has to be with a broken yolk! I remember that I used to insist on that also at his age. Daddy had 2 eggs and 3 sausages and I had a 3 egg cheese omelette and sausage. Feeling full and contented! Stir fried pork strips with onion, peppers, sugar snap peas and bean sprouts with lashings of soy sauce and a dash of sesame oil on the grownup menu tonight. I think cheese and ham sandwiches for them!

Life really does revolve around food, doesn’t it? I think that it is the least we can do to eat well, whatever the budget or type of diet one may be on!

Although being well behaved on the whole today, I did not venture up the top floor! However, I constantly asked them if they had made a mess and if their room was tidy throughout the day and ‘Yes Dadda’ was the consistent reply from them all.

Since daddy’s return 45 minutes ago from Dublin, their behaviour has escalated to deafening decibels. Daddy has just lead them upstairs to shock, horror and disbelief of the extremely messy pig sty that was once their bedroom. All I can hear are Aaliyah and Thor’s screams and daddy raising his voice to them all ‘come on tidy up, tidy up’.

There were probably several minor flash points over the last 24 hours that I could have reported on tonight – but the here and now seems to be the reality of today’s summing up – five very messy little people with very little remorse.

The carbs were very much enjoyed on John’s Birthday, though I did not gorge! Okay, there were two almond croissants for breakfast, a slice of toast with marmite at lunchtime and a dessert at the restaurant in the evening and finally a packet of crisps, though I wasn’t hungry, just before midnight. Oh, there was also that tub of Haagen Das the previous night at 12.01an…

The little people, now upstairs, our nanny Sindy off for the weekend and John in Dublin tonight. There is rather a lot of shouting coming from the top floor. No doubt it will settle in an hour or two.

I did a 36 hour fast yesterday and finished that with sausages and cheese omelette a little earlier today. A bit of light exercise, you know the score!

I’m not sure if I have lost any weight as of yet, but that’s not the main objective to my pre – agrarian diet. General health is the target and there seems to be another 30 days plus until my birthday and the end to the project. Though I do expect that I will make some serious lifestyle changes because of this experience.

Nikki our babysitter said that she would see us in 2 weeks on a Friday, meaning that I will have to factor in another ‘day off the diet’ but I imagine that I will go a low carb route and just enjoy a restaurant meal without triple fried chips! Damn, they sound good atm.

Remus and Grace are snuggled up on the sofa and I am binge watching a Netflix series called Travelers. My sneaky bit of Sci-Fi in Johns absence.

I’ve enjoyed my reassertions at anchor.fm and created 2 podcasts today, starting at the very beginning of my diary! It is so weird listening to oneself isn’t it? Now available on Spotify, just search for Andi Webb I guess! Or you could just friend me on FB! Andi Webb London should find me. And NO! I don’t have that many friends – lol, poor old me…

Thank you for reading.

As tonight’s title would imply, who trumps the field when it comes to who’s best? I am of course talking about children aged 4 – 6 (almost 7)! In certain behaviours I think they are pretty much 50/50 when it comes to things like their emerging abilities in arts and crafts, but where do the boys come out on top? And indeed, where do the girls? Tara is an amazing football player and at this age gender stereotypes don’t really apply!

They were all great as babies, that is probably excluding Thor with his screamy, almost nightmarish articulations! I remember playing opera at loud volume to settle him for his night time sleeps. John actually put his cot on my side of the bed so that I could cope with his nightly screamies! Go figure – though that was a long time ago now. His and Caleb’s developments have proved that they both still hold onto the power of pure scream, though they are specific with whatever it is that is bothering either of them, very unlike baby screams that seem to be much about anything and everything!

I’ll put an element of just being loud down to age, as Aaliyah gives as good as the boys if she is annoyed about something or other. A minus here for the girls however as Aaliyah will not convey the actual thing that is (excuse the term), pissing her off, where as the boys will immediately point fingers and cast aspersions!!!

I realise the reality of both Tara and Amritsar being from a slightly different gene pool, but they really are so very different when it comes to their general behaviour and the volume of their occasional dissatisfactions. Is there a genetic link going on here? I hope not as we are all born equal and I believe that when we die, we do so on equal terms. Some of us took more and some of us gave more! But nature reclaims us and converts our elements in much the same way.

Okay, today the boys were fighting at the dinner table. A lash out here and a lash out there. Some kicks and some shouting, but they both held it together enough to finish their food and no one was seriously hurt. Aaliyah on the other hand moved the table whilst Tara was beneath the said table, crawling into the corner space, as with the table turned, she has difficulty getting to her space at the table as it is blocked by the provisions cupboard. Aaliyah had inadvertently hit Tara in the head. Some shouting and crying later, Tara settled and Aaliyah went crazy and even screamy with apologies. Poor, dear Tara. Naughty, but repentant Aaliyah,,, They all give equally when it comes to hugs and statements of ‘I love you’ however.

So all in all, I think that the girls feel remorse a little bit more than the boys. I also think that with the boys, a little feud can certainly run the course, though it burns out very quickly. But are the girls more focused on getting their own back at a later time, opposed to just dealing with a situation in the here and now!

To be truthful, I couldn’t properly decide on who had the upper hand at this age. I had to ask Sindy, our nannies opinion! She kind of confirmed what I had rightly considered. And that was that boys bring it out into the open, they are a lot more straight forward, using a raging scream, a kick or even a punch with their sibling in order to settle a dispute. The girls on the other hand are a bit more subtle with things – a later revenge seems like a more formidable and pre-planned endgame.

Sindy’s leaving comment tonight was that with the girls, in a few years time, we ‘ain’t seen nothing yet’! Oh dear – roll on the the next stages of the human condition!!! I believe it is a bit more settled for all from the ages of 7 – 10, so a little respite for now at any rate.

Another visit to the Vineyard restaurant. A great low carb menu if you exclude the dessert! Mind you, I’m feeling so full after eating relatively small portions. That might be slightly down to a late lunch of mushroom lasagna. Yes, my carbohydrate binge today was 2 almond croissants for breakfast and a 3pm lunch of mushroom lasagne. If anything the pre – agrarian concept does is shrink that stomach a bit – the internal one that is! Who really needs a gastric bypass – just some willpower to stop shoving carbs into your system will definitely do it.

I am looking towards a day of fasting tomorrow. Sausage, egg and bacon on the menu for John. More on the diet on Friday.

We did enjoy the Haagen Das at midnight when John opened his card and gifts. Plus the bottle of bubbles. He likes antique silver, so I pushed the boat out and found two 1930’s single stem vases at an antiques market. London hallmarks, he likes that!

Caleb was next to wish him happy birthday as he decided to come downstairs at 4am!

Once back from school everyone was excited to see daddy who promised to come home early (6.15pm) and we all enjoyed birthday cake together before bed.

Thor did comment to daddy ‘your birthday isn’t very long today as it is almost time for bed already’ but up they went and Nikki arrived at 7.30pm allowing us to head out for dinner! A good day I have to say – the carbs were a treat, but to be honest, I thought I would go into town and gorge on a Big Mac and fries! I did not. Instead I am looking forward to tomorrow’s fasting! Am I for real? lol

Almost time to wake up John to wish him happy birthday and offer him the luxury of chocolate and ice cream. This shit was really once a luxury. How did our society end up serving up these kind of calorie rich luxuries for freaking breakfast! Yesterday my friend Richard explained that he had a visit to the hospital. Over 40% of the casualties in accident and emergency were morbidly obese!!!

What has our society chosen as the ‘Normal’ in the idea of freedom?

I have no political opinion on this forum as you know – but please? enough is enough!!!