I’m sorry, in what universe …

… is 7:30 am considered a sleep-in?

Um … this one.

Contributions ... please?

Oh. By the way … in my intro I neglected to mention one very important role that you out there can play in the life of this blog.

That of a surrogate parent.

If you come across scenes in your daily life that capture the pure essence of what it means to live life as a parent, then I’d love for you to tell me about it. Better still, snap an image of it and send it in. You know, it’s not as if you aren’t already taking a gazillion photos of anything remotely related to your children.

And before you accuse me of some kind of creepy impropriety, I don’t want pictures of your kids! The stuff of this blog is not your children, it’s what’s around them, and more importantly you.

Send contributions (after reading the legal stuff at the bottom of the page) to:


If submitting photos, please ensure they are as high a quality as possible. And submissions from the latter years of parenting are also welcomed, as it always helps to know not just what is around the corner, but also 10 miles down the road.

So please, go forth, capture, document and submit to the blog. Together we can nurture it from infancy to adulthood, like some kind of bastard child of ill-defined origins raised in a commune.


Oh. I’ve just realised that I am talking as if all of you have, or are about to have kids. Well, I think that’s a pretty reasonable assumption – why else would you be here?

If you don’t, or aren’t, then what are you doing here? Gloating?

Please. Get a life.

Hang on. You probably still have one…


*Legal stuff:

By submitting to "under-nu-management”, you grant Ross de Kretser the non-exclusive right to publish your photo or story on the blog or in any other publication, commercial or otherwise, without compensation. Unless you explicitly state otherwise, your submission implies that the photo is yours, and that you are qualified to give this permission. You accept responsibility for any laws broken in the act of taking the submitted photograph or publishing it.

It’s the little things that make a difference

Old Life:

New Life:

You know at first I used to revel in the absolute essence of diminution embodied in the tiny garb of an infant. Those socks seem impossibly small and their miniature party attire insufferably cute.

But every pleasure has its dark side.

And it becomes apparent when you calculate the result of the exponential formula that has the variables of age and filth generating capacity as inputs and laundering work as the output.

An end result of which the clothes line in the second photo is symptomatic.

Close observers might also notice the different ambience the two images and may be drawn to conclude that I was making a symbolic statement regarding the unbridled bliss of parenthood. Perhaps there was a hidden implication that the life of a parent is filled with radiance and joy, whilst that of the non-breeder is unfulfilled and overcast. Or perhaps it means that lemons are very good for bleaching vomit stains out of whites.

Or perhaps it simply means that the weather was crap in one photo and nice in the other.

Welcome ... to your new life

Well here we are ... finally.

It has now been some time since the arrival of our first child when I thought to myself:

"Wouldn’t it be interesting to put together a tongue-in-cheek observational diary of the ways which our lives have changed now that we are grappling with being new parents?”

Well may that have been an interesting idea at the time, but since that then, one child has become two and, whilst I have made notes and taken photos of many of the little things that epitomise the ways in which everything in our world has been irreversibly altered, I have pretty much done nothing.

And that’s because it was all to be done in my spare time …

… enough said.

Actually that pretty much sums up what this blog will be about… the realities, both big and small of this new life and how it is a universe away from the old one.

We’re under new management now and the way of doing everything around here has changed.

This will be a blog of images and random observations. It will most definitely be in no particular chronological order, as why would it be, when nothing within my life currently is either. In actual fact, expect it to start … and stop … get interrupted and then forget where it was … run off and wipe a bottom … and then perhaps not come back at all.

But don’t take this personally, because it is all part of the realisation and acceptance that we will now come in second place … always.

Finally, comments from the gallery will especially be welcomed, as it is important to reassure ourselves that this is all normal. And if you do comment, make sure to do it in your outside voice, otherwise I might not hear.