Birthday

Happy Birthday Éowyn

Tuesday 20th October 2009Friday 11th May 2012Baggie

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!

Party time!

For you

Aaaarrrrhhhh

My first pressie

What can it be?

Not bovvered!

I have been mostly eating yoghurt

This beard real, Dad?

I’ll have this

Auntie Liz’s present

‘Just got up’ look!

Aaaarrrrhhhh!

Just walking with my Nanny Fran

Looking Cute?

Have they all gone yet?

A week off work

Monday 14th September 2009Baggie

As the title suggests I have taken this past week off from work. I had been working so hard in August that I barely saw anyone outside of mediahouse including my wife and child and it was time to right that injustice. It has been a fabulous week spending time with the family and I have loved every moment of it but it has flown by too quickly but at least this site gives me an opportunity to ponder what we did and share it with you. It seems that not only has the week vanished before our eyes but another month has flown by too, or indeed, should I say a year has flown by. It is now September and Lucinda has now been on maternity leave for a whole year, although that will soon be at an end (see later for details).

We had had many thoughts on what to do with this week. Nip down to Devon, travel up to the Lake District but it all involved money and far too long in the car, which kind of defeated the object of a relaxing week for me and time to catch up with the family. It is hard to play with your daughter when you are driving down a motorway and it is difficult to catch up with your wife when you are arguing over directions. So we decided that we would stay at home and take things nice and easy.

That was exactly what we did on Monday, however Tuesday promised to be one of the hottest days of the year (27°C) and so we decided to head down to Brighton for the day. Éowyn loves the sea and we both enjoy a trip to Brighton so it seemed like the right thing to do. We got down there fairly quickly (we had waited until after the rush hour so that, with any luck the M25/ M23 would be clear. Thankfully it was, however you can never be sure with either of those motorways and for once the weatherman had correctly predicted the weather, it was a glorious day. We strolled along the prom (prom, prom?), paddled in the sea, took a walk down the pier and ate fish ‘n’ chips: can you get any closer to a perfect quintessential British day trip to the seaside? Before we left we headed via the studio shop of Sheila Marshall an artist that Lucinda has admired for a couple of years. While on her hen-do Lucinda first saw Sheila’s paintings of cupcakes and sweets and decided that she wanted one. It has taken her over 2 years but we headed back and Lucinda was determined that she wasn’t going to leave Brighton without something by her.

The first of Éowyn’s group of friends (OK, the children of the fellow parents from our NCT group) have just celebrated their first birthday and so the usual coffee morning was turned into a joint first birthday party for the group. As I was off, I was allowed into this inner sanctum of motherhood on the pretence of ‘Official Photographer’ and so if you look on the Flickr pages (link in left hand column) there are a number of photos from the party. I think that they all enjoyed themselves, although it wore them all out and all had either succumb to a nap or left the party completely shattered (some things will not change as they grow older!).

It was another momentous day on Thursday as we took Éowyn to Jo, who will hopefully be our childminder when Lucinda returns to work. Éowyn seemed to enjoy herself, especially since there was a new box of toys to play with, including a drum (no she is not having one at home!). She also seemed at ease with Jo, which bodes well for us. Both myself and Lucinda like Jo and are very happy with how fate has guided us to her. We now have to introduce Éowyn to Jo and gradually leave her with Jo so that she is fully happy to be there when mommy and daddy leave.

This leads nicely onto Lucinda’s work situation. After, what seems like an age and a not too hopeful meeting with her boss she has been given job-share which is exactly what we were hoping for. Her leave of absence has been granted until 21st October, so she gets an extra couple of weeks off and will see Éowyn’s first birthday without having to think too much about work. This will mean that Lucinda will work 2 days on, then have 4 days off and with my shift pattern should hopefully mean that we will only need about 6 days worth of child-minding each month. We realise how lucky we are, now we just have to work out a schedule of dropping her off and picking her up, but that will come.

Our other achievement for the week was to break a habit that we should have broke a while ago, namely rocking Éowyn to sleep. It is just a habit that we have gotten into and never changed, so this work we made a concerted effort to break it and we have. Now we just put her in her cot and leave her to settle herself. It only takes between 10 and 20 minutes, which hopefully will get shorter as she gets used to it. It is quite funny to watch her routine. She picks each of her soft toys up, kind of gives them a hug and then throws them out of the cot. Then after realising that standing up and crying doesn’t get the desired effect (i.e. mom or dad picking her up and cuddling her) she attempts to go to sleep. Not sure if it is just me but on the rare times that I have difficulty dropping off to sleep I attempt various positions to see if that works and Éowyn does the same, however hers are more extreme! I think that she covers every inch of the bed before she finally settles down, but she is learning a new skill and when she realises that it is easier just to fall asleep than to thrown yourself around the cot we might get easier bedtimes.

There are plenty of new photos on the Flickr site but here are a few of my favourites.

Peace and love

Baggie!

Éowyn and mommy in Brighton

In the sea at Brighton

And for my next trick…

Give me a hug!

Hug for the woof-woof

Peep-po

The first birthday party

The birthday cake

Half the gang

Bubbles!

Teaching daddy to read

Completely worn out

At the Zoo

Monday 11th May 2009Sunday 1st January 2017Baggie

As you may recall my birthday present from the family was to be a keeper for the day at Colchester Zoo. That day was Friday. As Colchester is quite a distance from home then part two of the birthday surprise was a couple of nights at the nearby Five Lakes Golf, Country Club and Spa. Therefore we headed to Maldon after morning rush hour on Thursday to take full advantage of the facilities. This was also Éowyn’s first mini-break away. She has stopped at Nanny Fran’s but not since her new awareness has developed and never in a hotel without all of her familiar things.

So after unpacking and settling in we headed to the spa facilities to take Éowyn swimming for the first time. She has grown to like the bath especially since she has discovered splashing but we were unsure how she would take to a swimming pool. This was probably the best introduction since the swimming pool was all but empty so there were no waves from the other people and more importantly there was little noise. Swimming pools can be extremely noisy places especially when they are busy, and we were conscious that this could be a problem when we first took her swimming and we hoped that this would not put her off. Another benefit was that we could take our camera in to capture her first swim, something that public swimming pools will certainly not let you do. As you can see from the pictures below she thoroughly enjoyed it.

She did not enjoy sleeping in a strange cot in a strange room however and awoke in the middle of the night screaming. It took us a while to calm her down, hopefully we didn’t disturb any of the other guests.

Friday was ‘Zoo-Keeper for the day‘ day! We arrived early at Colchester Zoo in the middle of an icy downpour. The day had started brightly but soon deteriorated into a real winter shower. This meant that the zoo was quieter than usual as a day at the zoo is usually a fair-weather day out.

As you can see from the Colchester Zoo website there are three different schemes for the ‘Keeper for the day‘ experience; Lucinda had booked scheme B – the Carnivores, she knows me so well. There were two of us on the scheme, myself and a lady called Jane. We were to report at the Customer Services desk at 11:00am sharp ready for our first task with zoo-keeper Carrie.

We headed straight to the meerkats where we were to feed them live mealworms. We were warned not to pet them (as with most animals at the zoo, they are not pets) as they will bite and have needle sharp teeth, as well as long claws on their forefeet. Meerkats have a varied diet but the mealworms encourages them to forage, since the mealworms when scattered on the ground attempt to burrow into the soil (and who can blame them). However, meerkats have an acute sense of smell and can smell invertebrates up to a metre below the surface. What did surprise me, what that they were smaller than I expected, only about the size of my foot. They were very inquisitive but when they realised that we were out of mealworms they headed back to the warmth of their ‘caves’.

Another tub of mealworms (poor mealworms) in hand we headed to the squirrel monkey cage. Very cute but highly mischievous we were not allowed in the enclosure with them but fed them through the bars of their cage.

The next stop was to an animal that most people have never heard of. The Binturong is a relation of the civet that lives in the forest of Asia. It is also known as the bearcat although it is neither. It is has a thick long prehensile tail with which it can support its own body weight and big strong claws that it uses for climbing trees. As we walked into the cage it came up to greet us, somewhat like a dog and you had to resist the urge to bend down to stroke him. It is amazing how friendly an animal can get when you have a big bowl of its favourite food, it this case fruit, animals pellets and sprats. He definitely had his favourite food: bananas, followed closely by grapes and turned his nose up against anything else until they had all gone. A very cute animal that I recommend that you all go and visit when you next visit a zoo.

We then headed from the small mammals to the carnivores and from Carrie to Vickie. The first carnivore on the list was the Fossa. A very agile relative of the civet that is found only on the island of Madagascar, it is especially adept at hunting lemurs. As with the next few animals on the list we were unable to enter the enclosure for our own safety but the presence of the keeper (with food) brought her to the front of the cage so that we got a good view of her.

Again, the next beast on the list was too dangerous for us to enter their enclosure. The Amur Leopard Dende, is one of the 35 or so Amur Leopards in the world. Probably the rarest big cat in the world, their numbers are threatened due to poaching (both of the cats themselves for Chinese medicine and their skins, protection of livestock in the leopard’s territory and of their prey), deforestation, and genetic inbreeding due to such low population numbers. Vickie however has built a relationship with the leopard such that they are training him to present himself for medical examinations, so that they can listen to his heart (very difficult because he gets so excited when his is interacting with Vickie that his purring deafens the vet) and take blood samples, all without resorting to anethatising him. Dende is so happy to see Vickie that when she approached his enclosure he ran to greet her at the glass, pawing it as a large and over-affectionate moggy. It was great to be so close to such a beautiful cat.

Next on the list was to clean the lions’ bedding. Ensuring that both lions were in the open the shutter was released so that we could safely enter their indoor enclosure. We changed their straw bedding and washed down the area so that their bedroom was fit for a king.

Our final stop before lunch was to feed the margays. Small spotted cats from South America they spend most of their time in trees and so to provide enrichment we hung portions of rabbit from trees in their enclosure hidden in toilet rolls, so that they had to work to get their food and sprayed perfume in the branches of the trees. We entered their enclosures while they were there but they were far too wary to approach us. As soon as we left though the male was straight after the food, while the female found an irresistable urge to rub herself against the perfume. Apparently they like the perfume and rub their own scent into it.

An hour for lunch and we were picked up by Sarah the keeper of the African savanna mammals. The first task was to feed the Red River Hogs, so called because they are red, live by rivers and are hogs. Although omnivores, we fed them their fruit and vegetable course. They displayed a preference for apples, and would not touch the others until they were sure that all the apples had been thrown. Due to their unpredictable nature we were not allowed to enter their enclosure but we could lean over the fence and pet them, always bearing in mind that their jaws are strong enough to crush coconuts and they are quick enough to catch rabbits.

We then walked round to the main enclosure and Sarah told us about their giraffes, rhinos, kudus, zebras and ostriches. Again their unpredictable nature means that we were unable to enter the enclosure. However we were taken to their bedding quarters where we made a bed for the kudus, then we were handed a bunch of leaves and taken to feed the giraffes. It is amazing how big a giraffe is. I think we all accept that giraffes are the tallest animals in the world, but it is not until you are standing next to one that you realise just how big they are. See the photos below.

The last but not least encounter for the day was with the aardvark. Famous for being the first noun in the English language, the aardvark (Earth Pig in Afrikaans) is a medium sized burrowing mammal. Colchester Zoo has the enviable honour of being the only zoo in the UK that has successfully bred aardvarks and their fourth baby aardvark, Draco, was born in January. Aardvarks are relatively peaceful and so we were allowed to enter their enclosure and were encouraged to stroke them. The adults seemed nonplussed as nocturnal animals they barely roused from their slumber. Draco though, as any child was fascinated by the visitors and came over for a sniff and stroke. Sarah even demonstrated how ticklish he is. As she tickled his sides he rolled on his back for you to stroke his belly. What a fantastic way to end a fabulous day.

So if you have ever entertained the idea of being a zoo keeper I thoroughly recommend the Colchester experience, it is without doubt one of the best presents that I have ever had and would jump at the chance to do it again.

Please enjoy the photos below and more on the flickr pages too.

Peace and love

Baggie!