Khazad Guard Baby Boom, or Real Life Hard Mode

Okay, so this post is a little over three weeks late, and will probably not be much interest to most of you, but may go someway to explaining why we have been being so quiet over the last month or so.

Our newest baby dwarf has finally arrived! Our baby girl, Thea Victoria was born on 10th November, after keeping us waiting for nine days. To start with, our local hospital was full so we were sent out of the district. As it happened, the new place was fantastic, almost like a hotel with personal on call midwives, en suite private rooms and an endless supply of toast. Adam managed to bring in LoTRO terminology, asking me if I would like to pop Dwarf Vitality whilst I was experiencing the worst of the contractions, and true to form, I answered yes, and could I use Endurance of Stone… I’m glad the midwife didn’t understand!

The alternate title for this post is Real Life Hard Mode. The first step of this Hard Mode was that I was unable to use any pain relief for the birth, so I would have been very grateful for any additional buff; Shield Wall, In Harms Way, Endurance of Stone would all have been very welcome. Thankfully that whole process didn’t last too long all things considering.

Second part of Hard Mode doesn’t actually sound that bad – the day after Thea was born I caught a cold. See, it doesn’t sound bad. But it is definitely not fun to be coughing and sneezing with very tender abdominal muscles and not being able to take anything to relieve it.

Everything was going very well, the original Baby Dwarf has been magic, being well-behaved, gentle with the baby, and coming close to mastering potty training in what feels like record time. We managed to acquire a newborn baby that actually sleeps at night, only having one or two feeds at reasonable hours, leaving us to play our game a little on an evening. Thankfully Adam has become very adept at playing one-handed, so he can hold the baby at the same time if she gets restless. And then came the third part of Hard Mode. Last Tuesday morning, the baby woke up earlier than usual, leaving us caught short with prepared milk. Whilst making some more, I somehow managed to tip a kettle of boiling water all down my front, badly scalding my chest, stomach and right thigh. My thigh definitely caught the worst of it, with a nasty burn blister larger than my hand. Adam came to the rescue with his first aid skills, and made me sit under a very cold shower for what felt like forever, and then wrapped the worst bits in cling film. He did the right thing and stopped it from being much worse than it could have been, but still, I wasn’t best pleased.

So, this Hard Mode Challenge consisted of dealing with a two-year old, a newborn, and an incredibly painful fire DoT, and still managing to do the Hytbold dailies (although Adam does usually do both of our characters), the Sutcrofts Warbands (Adam was lucky enough to get a well deserved tarnished symbol on one of his Bugud runs) and getting our cappys their warsteeds.

But, with the birth of Vithars little girl a couple of months ago and our new arrival, the Khazad Guards membership numbers have never looked so good. Granted, our six man group play time is rather limited at the minute, but in a few years time we should have enough Guard members for a full raid! Hopefully in a few months things may settle down, and something more akin to normal service will resume!

Until then, we hope you all enjoy the Hobbit (Yes we certainly have a baby sitter booked, and reserved tickets for the 3d HFR version), and we shall try to make more of an effort on post as soon as possible!