2008

Sleeping through the night

Monday 1st December 2008Friday 27th May 2011Baggie

The second week of my holiday coincides with Éowyn’s 6^th week of life. It has been a week spent mainly at home, enjoying being a family. It has been good for Lucinda and me to have some time enjoying our daughter, selfishly to ourselves. She has seemingly grown so much this week. Apart from the night that we returned from West Bromwich, she has been sleeping well at night, including one night that she slept through! She has begun to smile regularly and occasionally giggle, she also has begun to try and roll over, managing it a couple of times. Her latest trick is putting her fist in her mouth to indicate that she is hungry – that’s my girl! How quickly they grow up.

Monday evening our friends Neil and Emma paid us a visit. It was the first time that they had met Éowyn; unfortunately, she did herself a bit of a disservice by crying for much of the evening. It was also the first time that we had had friends round for a meal (OK a takeaway curry) and a crying baby is something that we (and our guests) will have to get used to when entertaining.

Lucinda has been fighting a cold since Tuesday (her cough is getting worse and the list of medicine that you can take while breastfeeding is extremely low) and so we did not have to think twice (in fact we never think twice) to accept a dinner invite from Lucinda’s parents. As I have mentioned before it is very comforting to know that we have family that live so close.

It was Lucinda’s turn to host the weekly NCT coffee morning, Wednesday; the first time it has been at home. It is good to see that the girls have forged such friendships and are giving each other support. I have meant to organize a pub evening with the boys but as yet that has not happened, will probably wait until we meet up at the official NCT group meet up and try to organize one then, after Christmas.

Thursday, we took Éowyn to visit my work mates. It can feel very much like a family at mediahouse and so it was important to introduce Éowyn to her many surrogate aunties. I think it will the first visit of many, I hope she likes being the centre of attention; she seems to at the moment.

A visit to the doctors for her six week check ended the week. The doctor seemed very pleased with her and Lucinda. Both are doing well and Éowyn was exceptionally well behaved, she did not cry once during the examination. We were very proud of her. The doctor did not seem concerned with her development and has given us some antibiotic drops to help finally clear up Éowyn’s conjunctivitis.

It has been fantastic spending so much time as a family but that is rapidly coming to an end as I only have a week left of my annual leave, so I fully intend to enjoy this coming week.

Peace and Love

Baggie!

Nanny Fran Part Two

Thursday 27th November 2008Friday 27th May 2011Baggie

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!

Nanny Fran Part One

Wednesday 26th November 2008Friday 27th May 2011Baggie

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.