2016

An extra day: a bonus post

Monday 29th February 2016Saturday 5th March 2016Baggie

It only happens once every four years, and although this blog started with the birth of Éowyn in 2008, its (and, obviously, her) birth was in October, long after 2008’s leap day. Therefore despite running for 7½ years it is only the second time that this blog has seen bissextus (the leap day). The first leap day of the blog (and Éowyn and Amélie’s first) deigned a day specific write up so, too, does this second (and Ezra’s first) deserve a whole write up to itself; let’s make it a tradition.

As you may know the leap day is an extra day added to most years that are divisible by 4 (except, of course, ‘end of century‘ years that are not divisible by 400), this is to compensate for the reality that the Earth does not take 365 days to revolve around the Sun. In fact, the Earth takes 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 16 seconds to complete its journey around our local star hence the need for the additional day to keep our fragile grasp on notional time in sync with nature. Therefore, our calendar repeats itself every 400 years, which is exactly 20,871 weeks, which includes 97 leap days. (This extra day is entitled a ‘Leap Day’ because the usual convention is that a fixed date normally advances one day from one year to the next. In a leap year is will advance two days, thus leaping over one of the days in the week). These 97 days are divided thus: 13 times on a Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday, 14 times on a Friday or a Saturday and 15 times on a Monday or a Wednesday. In 2016, we find that the leap day is on a Monday, which, along with Wednesday (the day on which the previous leap day fell) is statistically the most likely.

So what happened on Monday 29th February 2016, in our little enclave of the world?

The new Monday morning regime began with ensuring all three Baguettes were ready for school, on time and leaving the house by 0810 to allow Ezra enough time to walk to school. It was a bright, crisp and frosty morning to greet the extended February. Thus we wrapped up warm and headed off into the winter air. The first destination was Our Lady of the Rosary where I dropped Ezra off for the start of his second week at school; before then dropping Éowyn off at her base and then Amélie off at hers before walking back home and starting my work day by driving around the edge of Heathrow to Stockley Park. Lucinda had no children to mind and therefore was alone in the house for a couple of hours before having to return to Our Lady of the Rosary to pick Ezra after his morning session of pre-school.

Therefore, like the first bissextus of this blog the second saw the Bagnall family members apart (five now as opposed to the four as was then) each in their own environ, for the morning at least.

As usual, Lucinda collected the girls from school but bought one extra home. Amélie had one of her new friends around for an after-school playdate. This, coupled with inviting Nanny round for dinner and taking Éowyn to Brownies made for a busy evening for Lucinda before I walked in through the door.

I had a very meeting-centric day at work (we are going through a very busy period at work with lots of exciting projects in the planning stages). I walked through the door with just enough time to warm my dinner up, say ‘hello’ get changed and head back out to pick Éowyn up from Brownies.

As I returned Lucinda took Nanny back home before heading to her Slimming World meeting, while I read with the kids and put them to bed. Then it was a week’s worth of ironing (see I am a domesticated husband), a quick tidy of the lounge and then relax! The glamour of the Bagnall household on bissextus 2016!

This is a bit of a departure from the usual fare on BaggieandLucy.com and so there are no photos today, although I am hoping (time permitting) to complete a more traditional update with photos (and there are some on our Flickr pages that have been recently added) later this week – although do not hold me to it.

Hopefully Saturday 29th February 2020 will be a little more interesting than today. At least being a weekend there is a chance that we will be together as a family (assuming I am not in a similar role to my current one).

Peace and Love

Baggie

Ezra’s first day at nursery

Tuesday 23rd February 2016Sunday 6th March 2016Baggie

Monday 22nd February 2016 saw an important step in Ezra’s life – his first day at nursery. It is tradition (on this site) that such an important step is worthy of an update all to itself; this is it.

Ezra turns three in slightly less than three weeks and currently the UK Government pay for all pre-school children to receive 15 hours of childcare (e.g. nursery) per week. They are entitled to this from the term after their 3rd birthday until they begun full-time education. Therefore Ezra will be entitled to this for the Summer term when the schools return after the Easter break. However Ezra has never been to school, or to a childminder for over a year, or indeed spent a significant amount of regular time away from Lucinda and thus we felt that it was a little unfair for him go from 0-60 (o.k. 0-15 hours) in one fell swoop therefore we decided to ease him in gently with two mornings a week.

The decision of where to send him was far easier, we only had one place in mind. Indeed his name has been down for over a year because we so wanted him to go there. When we moved to Staines and applied to change Éowyn’s school to the nearby primary we also had to look for a nursery (pre-school) for Amélie. Éowyn’s school has a nursery but you have to commit to either all mornings, or all afternoons there is no provision for children to stay there all day. This did not suit us for Amélie (and it doesn’t really suits us for Ezra) as we prefer 3 full days (and pay the extra half day) rather than 5 half days. Therefore the decision for Amélie was the second closest school, a further thirty seconds down the road, Our Lady of the Rosary (or Grocery, as Amélie used to call it).

Our next door neighbour Kathy works at Our Lady of the Rosary (so Ezra, as Amélie before him) would have a familiar adult face and it has recently been awarded ‘Outstanding’ by an Ofsted inspection; this, coupled with our familiarity of the school, made it a very easy choice. Hence why his name has been down for over a year.

We took Ezra for a couple of taster sessions and he got on really well so I think Lucinda was more nervous than Ezra as we prepared him for his first day at school. We arrived in good time (we have to set out earlier now as Ezra’s school starts at 08:30) and he wasn’t at all overawed by the enormity of the set he was about to take. He confidently strolled into the classroom and immediately begun playing. Amélie said hello to all her old teachers and it felt like he had been going to school for months. We kissed him goodbye and left him quite happily ironing pizza (as you do) and thus begun our new school routine. I dropped Éowyn and then Amélie off and returned home before leaving for work.

Lucinda picked him up three hours later and the staff said that he had settled well. He had played nicely and there were no tears. Our little boy is all grown up. It is slightly upsetting to think that he didn’t miss us, but that is surely what we are trying to achieve. The only down side was that he refused to have a nap when he got home because he is a big boy, but crashed out in the pushchair (he is a lazy big boy) on the way to pick his sisters up from school and couldn’t be roused until tea-time.

So another step on the journey of life has begun for our youngest child. When did he have permission to grow up?

Peace and love

Baggie

Got my water bottle

Off to school – Huzzah!

Not at all worried

Uncle Bill’s birthday

Sunday 21st February 2016Monday 22nd February 2016Baggie

I was hoping to have posted this at least a week ago but with a busy period at work and an intermittent internet connectivity at home (it has been reported to my ISP – don’t you worry) somehow the time has eluded me.

January saw Daddy enjoying weekends at home, and with weekends off it meant that I was able to do the kind of things that daddies should be doing with their kids. One of these important events was to take Éowyn to the park and teach her to ride her bike. Éowyn has had her bike for a while but has refused to learn and with the fact that I have been working at weekends Lucinda and I have not had the opportunity to force her hand. So when the school arranged a road safety awareness week and the children could take either a bike or a scooter in, it seemed like the ideal time to address this skill gap.

The first hurdle was to attempt to stop her giving up before she even got on the bike. With that stage passed it was the back-breaking role of holding onto the back of the seat while she peddled and I ran alongside her. It didn’t take long for her to gain the confidence albeit with stabilisers. After a few trips around the park she was riding barely using the stabilisers. Therefore the next stage will be taking the stabilisers off and getting her to ride on two wheels!

That hasn’t been the only big step forward for our first-born. After a hiatus of over a year she has lost her third tooth. As you may recall she lost two in relatively quick succession and we thought that was going to be the start of the avalanche. However, there was no further exfoliation, edentulism if you prefer, until this week.

The tooth was wobbly for nearly a week before it fell out and we got regular updates from Éowyn. We tried to encourage her to eat food that would encourage it to exfoliate but it did not happen until she was at school and out it came. Obviously, the school is prepared for such occurrences and she was given a small paper envelope in which to place the tooth to keep it safe for home time. This was then placed under her pillow for the tooth fairy. As per tradition, the tooth was replaced by a shiny pound coin (so shiny it looked like it had been cleaned with Cillit Bang).

This loss of a milk tooth occurred at an appropriate time, the bi-yearly dental check-up. This was Ezra’s first trip to the dentist and Lucinda had spent the previous week pretending to be the dentist and asking him to open his mouth so that she could look in his mouth. The training paid off, for at the dentist Ezra was the most comfortable and most compliant with the dentist. Éowyn, on the other hand, freaked out when the dentist looked in her mouth. He did manage to confirm that although she may have only lost 3 of her milk teeth, that her adult molars had come through at the back of her jaw. It was these teeth that he was trying to paint with a protective coating but had to leave because she was so distressed. I think it is time for Daddy to be the bad guy and take her next time.

The majority of the photos below though come from a weekend away in Dorset. Lucinda’s Uncle Bill decided to celebrate his 70th birthday at Berwick Manor in Puncknowle, the scene of the majority of the Badger Moots. Uncle Bill had hired it for the week, but being term time we joined him for the celebrations just for the weekend.

We always enjoy the Badger Moots (we are usually held in the October half-term) and this was no exception. It was a long way to go for a weekend but definitely worth it. Berwick Manor feels like a home from home as we have been there so many times before, so it feels very familiar as soon as you drive through the gate.

We left home late on Friday night (after I had returned home from work) and so didn’t arrive until long after the Baguettes’ bedtimes, however the sight of their cousins gave them all a second wind and so didn’t get to bed until late.

Since we were planning on leaving after lunch on Sunday this meat that Saturday was our only full day in Dorset. We know the west of Dorset extremely well due to the annual Badger Moot and one of our favourite places is Lyme Regis. Therefore we were looking forward to a trip to the edge of Dorset. However, when we looked at the weather report we decided that Lyme Regis was perhaps a little too far to shelter from driving rain and a howling gale.

Nevertheless we did not want to come all that distance and just sit in the house, regardless of how homely it is. So we decided to head just down the road to Bridport to check out the Saturday market. However, the market stall holders must have heard the weather report too and there were only a handful of market stalls brave enough to open in the rain. Therefore after running from shop to shop to avoid the rain we decided that enough was enough and after picking up supplies from the local supermarket headed back to the manor house.

The girls did not mind going back to the house. One of the shops that we had stopped in was Toymaster, a large toy emporium in Bridport where they had spent the shiny Christmas money that Santa had left them, plus the shiny pound coin that the tooth fairy had left. Thus, going back to house gave them the opportunity not only to play with their cousins but to play with their new toys, while Daddy could watch the start of the six nations rugby.

Saturday evening was Uncle Bill’s birthday buffet and it was family time. The large kitchen table seated us all comfortably and it was a good night spent eating, drinking, catching up on family news and putting the World to rights.

Sunday morning started bright although still extremely windy and with Sunday lunch booked for 14:30 we had some free time in the morning so we decided to pop out and visit the nearby town of West Bay. West Bay beach was used in the introduction to the television series ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin‘ and more recently the series ‘Broadchurch‘. Although it wasn’t the weather for filming when we were there. Nevertheless, despite the weather when the girls asked if they could have an ice cream, we decide we would let them, they were by the seaside after all.

So after a Sunday lunch we bid farewell to the birthday boy, Nanny, the rest of the family and Dorset and headed back home ready for school (and work) on Monday morning. It was a long way to go but a thoroughly enjoyable weekend spent with the family in what could be described as a Badger Moot-ette! Roll on October and the next.

Peace and Love

Baggie