2008

And so my three week break (from work) begins.  The idea being that I can give some support to Lucinda and hopefully get Éowyn into some kind of routine – well that’s our plan, Éowyn may have different ideas, it’ll be fun to find out who’ll win.

The week started quite quietly with her first visit to Early Bird at the Harvester in Windsor, in honour of her Grandad’s birthday.  However she was suitably nonplussed and slept through the entire dinner, at least she wasn’t screaming the house down.

Wednesday was the usual mother’s coffee morning and again she slept through it.  Lucinda is beginning to think that the other mum’s think we have the perfect baby and that she never cries.  I’m sure she puts it all on to make us look like liars.  She certainly can scream and cry the house down.  Usually at 3 in the morning, when the night seems like it will never end.  Following the coffee morning was the visit to the clinic and news that she had broke the 10lb barrier and now weighs 10lb 7oz (a 38% increase in weight in less than a month!)

My good friend Sanjiv popped round on Thursday to meet the little one.  Yet again, she proved her parents liars by sleeping through his entire visit, including a visit to the pub for lunch.  She doesn’t just sleep you know!  Honest!

The weekend was the big event, the other reason why I took 3 weeks off.  We took Éowyn to visit West Bromwich, and especially to visit her Great Grandmother, my Mom’s Mom.  As you can see from the photo below her Great Grandma was overjoyed to meet her, even though it makes her feel old.  So we had four generations of Bagnall’s (well McGinns and Bagnalls to be precise) in one room, a first for our family!

On Saturday there was a steady stream of visitors from my Uncle and Aunt, to friends and neighbours, she was the centre of attention and again she was not fussed.  I think that she likes it.  It is amazing how a child brings everyone together and how fascinating watching a child can be, like staring into the flames of a fire.  There must be something primeval about it, a kind of genetic conditioning.

We also took Éowyn visit her Great-Great Uncle and Great-Great Aunt, my nan’s older brother and his wife, my Great Uncle Albert and Great Aunt Iris.  Another bridge across the generations.  Uncle Albert has traced his side of the family tree (the Wyton side, my maternal grandmother’s side) as far as the 1540’s and now he has met the generation that will take the family forward.  I suppose that with longevity increasing this will be become a more common sight, even for those of us that hail from the Black Country.

There are still many more family members for Éowyn to meet and so a second trip up north is planned to continue the introductions to the family, a visit to the Hawthorns as well as the important task of allowing Nanny Fran (and Auntie Liz) some serious cuddle time.

Until next time, peace and love

Baggie!

I have been lax of late updating the website, but I think that you can all appreciate that there is something else that is more important that has a greater hold on my time.  But I have a couple of hours in order, to try and bring you all up to date with the latest happening in the life of the Bagnall family.  I will start with the week starting the 10th November.

This was my final week at work before the start of three weeks of annual leave.  However, it was my long week at work.  (For those of you that do not know, I work a shift that involves 12 hours days but only 7 of them a fortnight.  One week consists of 5 days (60 hours!) the second week only 2 (24 hours).  So on average I still work 42 hours but I do get relatively more days off, but when I am at work, it is a long day.)  So Lucinda would have the responsibility of looking after Éowyn all by herself.  Something that would be a strain so early, but my mom, relishing the idea of having plenty of time with Éowyn volunteered to come down for a couple of days to help.  This was a god-send as Lucinda expressed (even though the health visitor pooh-poohed the idea of expressing so early) and Nanny Fran fed Éowyn her middle of the night feed allowing Lucinda and myself some uninterrupted sleep.  A big thank you to Mom for doing this, even thought I know she enjoyed it, it did feel like we were taking advantage.

Éowyn seems to miss her Nanny Fran whenever she has been around and tends to have a restless night the next night, as so it was this time.  Unfortunately this scuppered our plans to take Éowyn in to visit the girls in the office.  People were very generous at work with presents for Éowyn and everyone is genuinely interested and looking forward to meeting her and so we had decided to take her in on my day off and introduce her to her surrogate aunties.  However, a hour or so of sleep is not conducive to such a visit and so it has been postponed for a couple of weeks.

Here are a few photos from the week, hopefully you can see how much she is growing.