Happy Birthday Éowyn

And so the year has turned full circle.  Yes, as you may have guessed from the title of this update our first born is now a year old.  She reached this milestone on Saturday (officially at 04:01), although in fairness to her it has just passed her by. However as proud parents we wanted to celebrate this achievement and so hosted (at Lucinda’s parents house) a birthday party for her little friends and our immediate family.

The last few weeks have been a little stressful for not only have we been preparing for the party but gearing up for Lucinda’s return to work.  The 21st marks the occasion of a return to the adult world after nearly 14 months in the land of nappies and coffee mornings and understandably Lucinda is not looking forward to it.  Hence I have taken holiday from my job so that I can look after Éowyn while Lucinda is at work.  Éowyn has only spent a couple of hours alone with Jo (our child-minder) and so it seemed unfair both to Jo and to Éowyn to then leave her for two shifts. However, in order to build a relationship between Jo and Éowyn I will be taking her there for one of the afternoons. This gives us all a safety net and Lucinda piece of mind to just concentrate on getting up to speed with work.

Éowyn’s party was good fun, if hard work, especially since there was about half a dozen other one-year-olds and about the same of older children. Éowyn appeared to revel in the fact that she was centre of attention and on a number of occasions went up to other children and either hugged them or stroked their hair saying ‘Aaarrrhhhhh’.  She was nonplussed about her presents, they just didn’t interest her, however the Butterscotch Angel Delight was another matter.  It was a big hit with all the children, and a number of the adults too!

We have to say a big thank you to Lucinda’s parents for letting us host the party at their home and especially to Lucinda’s mum and Cristina for helping set everything up for the party.  A special thanks to Éowyn’s cousins Lauren and Maddie too, then were a big help making sure that everything was just right for all her guests.

Éowyn was on such good behaviour and really enjoyed herself, probably because she was surrounded by all the people she loves including her Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz who came all the way down from West Bromwich.  Another visitor that popped over to wish Éowyn a happy birthday was a Brown Shrike.  Usually found in India and South East Asia it is a very rare migrant bird to these shores (to Europe in general) but this one decided to take up residence at the northern end of Staines Moor for the week of her birthday, and so did a horde of twitchers looking for a glimpse of it.  Stanwell Moor has become a car park and although I can appreciate the excitement it becomes more than slightly frustrating when driveways and entrances to private roads are blocked by parked cars.

In other news Éowyn’s walking is coming along nicely and has recently beaten her personal best of 7 steps and now stands at, unlucky for some, 13.  she now has 6 teeth and her favourite things are mobile phones, car keys, wallets (or purses) and knocking things down.  Make of that what you will.

I will leave you now to the photos but not before I wish my daughter a very

Happy Birthday

Peace and love Baggie!