March 2009

First Mother's Day

Friday 27th March 2009Thursday 21st April 2011Baggie

It has been a week of events. It was my birthday, my first as a father, and then of course it was Mother’s Day, Lucinda’s first as a mom. Obviously Éowyn was oblivious to all but nevertheless it is not diminished by that to us. I was at work on both days, but my birthday was made special by a visit from Lucinda and Éowyn and a trip for lunch. My birthday present from the family is rather special and no doubt will warrant a page to itself with plenty of photos for it is to fulfil a bit of a childhood ambition and to be a zoo-keeper for the day. I will be helping to look after the big cats, including a white tiger, before mucking out the meerkats and putting the hippos and giraffes to bed. It is at Colchester Zoo and so we are going to spend a couple of nights at a hotel and spa nearby so that travel in the morning is not an issue and I can take a well-deserved break afterwards.

Éowyn’s first Mother’s day present to Lucinda was to book her a luxury manicure and pedicure; a chance for Lucinda to have some relaxation and time for herself, while Éowyn and daddy have some father and daughter time. Her second present was even better: a full night’s sleep. For the first time in weeks she slept through the night and although that should be a cause of celebration it did not translate into a full night’s sleep for Lucinda, as she was half listening for Éowyn all night.

To celebrate both my birthday and mother’s day Lucinda and I went for a Monday morning lunch in Richmond while Nanny and Granddad looked after Éowyn. We headed for Gaucho Grill, one of my personal favourites. The steaks are to die for but all the food is fantastic, everything is bursting with flavour, and it just goes to prove that you get what you pay for. It is pricy but good food is worth paying for.

Lucinda’s cousin, Alex, his wife Sally, and daughter Isabel have arrived safely from Australia. I am not sure quite what relation that makes Isabel to Éowyn, second cousin I think, but I always get these things wrong. Hopefully we should be able to spend some time with the guys before they head back home.

As I mentioned earlier, Sunday night Éowyn slept through the night. This was due to a double dream feed attack from us. At 2130 I fed Éowyn a small bottle of milk and at 2300 Lucinda fed her another small bottle. This seemed to do the trick and we were patting ourselves on the backs thinking that we had finally sussed it. Unfortunately, she had dragged us into another false sense of security as this trick did not work two nights running.

It did give us some information though. All the books seems to point to the same conclusion: Éowyn was waking up because she was hungry and breast milk just wasn’t satisfying enough for her to last through the night. So we have turned to ‘hungry baby milk’ for the dream feed. First night she took the bottle, she slept though to 0630! Success! Second night, she refused her dream feed and so woke up at 0130. Took the hungry baby milk and slept through to 0730! This is far too premature to even talk about success but if only we can get her to take the dream feed before we go to bed we should be able to get a lie in until at least 0630. If you had told me six months ago that I would class 0630 as a lie in, I would have mocked you within an inch of your life; now I am just grateful!

Anyhow, enough of my ramblings please enjoy the latest photos.

Love and peace

Baggie!

On Maddy’s Lap

Think I’ll snooze now

With daddy in the pub garden

This is fun!

Just posing

And turn to the right

Not the camera again!

What shall I eat today?

Exhausted!

Feed me, Seymour

Wednesday 18th March 2009Baggie

Why do children lull you into a false sense of security. Just when you think that you have got them into a routine, they go and change it all on you. Last week we began a new regime to try to introduce day naps and the dream feed so that hopefully Éowyn would sleep through to the morning and for a couple of days it seemed to be working. Great we thought.

Well, the pick up, put down technique that we are using for the day naps is a lot of hard work and initially she took to it rather well but now it can take Éowyn up to 45 minutes before she falls asleep. Back breaking work. Then she only sleeps for 30 minutes. It is always 30 minutes. Not 23 minutes, not 37 minutes, always half an hour, plus or minus 2 minutes. It is like she has some kind of internal 30 minute egg timer! Sometimes it doesn’t feel that it is worth the effort.

At least the dream feed is working: she doesn’t wake while taking the 10:30pm feed. It still doesn’t seem natural to me though. After a couple of days of sleeping until 0630, she has reverted to waking far too early, between 0400 and 0500; so despite the early success it is fair to say that we haven’t quite cracked it yet.

She is still enjoying her food, although from some of the pictures below you may not believe me. She has added, Papaya and Peas to her menu over the last week, as well as the Banana, Apple, Pear, Sweet Potato and Carrots that she has already eaten. She has a better diet than me!

Her social life is better than mine too. At least twice a week she goes out and sometimes that can stretch to everyday. It is nice to see her interact with other babies. They tend to stare at each other across a room, and if they are close they reach out just to see if the other one is real. It is fascinating to watch.

We went for a long walk around Virginia Waters last weekend, which is hard work when pushing a pram. However, we are now armed with Lucinda’s brothers old off-road three wheeler. Hopefully that will make such walks a lot easier and a gentler ride for Éowyn as the pneumatic tyres smooth out some of the smaller bumps. It will be good exercise for Lucinda and I, to try and shed the extra pounds we have gained since becoming parents. Éowyn is also gaining weight but at a much steadier pace, she now tips the scales at a healthy 16lbs 3 oz (7.342kgs).

Please enjoy the latest photos, I have to go and take Éowyn to get a Mother’s Day card and present, it will be Lucinda’s first Mother’s day as a mother. How cool is that?

Love and peace and happy mother’s day to all moms out there, especially Lucinda’s and mine!

Open wide

I don’t like this

All gone

Leo

James

Éowyn and Billy

Sitting on Daddy’s lap

Coming to get you

Jenny and Leo

I like my food

That was nice

Do we have any more?

New regime

Sunday 8th March 2009Baggie

This week, Lucinda decided that it was time to try and develop more of a routine with Éowyn. For a while Lucinda has had Éowyn in the routine of having a bath in the early evening, before feeding and putting to bed for about 8pm. She would then wake her at 10.30pm to feed her, before putting her down for the night. However there were a couple of unresolved problems. The first was that Éowyn would wake around 5am for a feed, and quite often not go back down; and secondly that she was only rarely napping during the day. This meant that Lucinda was not getting any time for herself, or for us.

So, armed with a friend’s copy of ‘The Baby Whisperer’ Lucinda set about changing this. She is only a couple of days into the regime, but already Éowyn is going down for naps (with the pick up/ put down method) and sleeping a little longer in the morning. She has also instigated the dream feed, where instead of waking her at 1030pm to feed her, she feeds her from a bottle while she sleeps. Although it seems to defy logic that it is safe, surely she should choke?

Food is playing a large part in Éowyn‘s life at the moment. She has only been eating solids for a short time but she has already tried many different flavours. We want her to experience as many flavours as possible early on so, in theory she will not be as fussy when she is older. Well that’s the idea, we will have to let you know how that one pans out. So far she has had:

Banana – didn’t like it at first, but has grown to like it
Apple – didn’t really like it, but we will persevere with it
Pear – really enjoyed it
Sweet Potato – didn’t really like, again we will persevere with it
Carrot – really enjoyed it.

It is a learning process for all of us, but it seems that she prefers the fruit and vegetables when they have been watered down with milk (milked down?). This is probably two-fold: firstly the consistency is closer to that of milk and secondly that the flavour is not quite as strong.

Our friend Andrea came round on Thursday with her son, Jack. He is a couple of months older and so it is nice to know what we have in store as Éowyn follows him down the path of learning. It is also good for the girls to swap ideas and stories. It will also be good when Éowyn and Jack are older and can play together, and should they go to the same school he can look out for her, as he will be just that little bit older.

Enough of my babbling here are the latest photos: