2009

First Father's Day

Baggie

The last couple of weeks have not been so emotional as before the previous write up.  Although, in fariness I have been away, again!  I must have the most understanding wife in Christendom since this is the second time I have been away.  Every year Lucinda’s brother Michael and his friend Neil have been to the Isle of Wight music festival, since it was revived in 2002 and their merry band of hanger-ons has waxed and waned and included me for the first time last year.  This year there was five of us and although the line up was not as appealing as in recent years the weather stayed fine and a good time was had by all.  Although a weekend away with the lads was great I have to say that I missed being at home, Éowyn is changing so much and growing so quickly that I don’t really want to be away from her for too long!  ‘Soppy old git’ I know!

Éowyn is without doubt a little daddy’s girl.  On my return from the Isle of Wight I walked into the lounge and she just beamed a smile at me and as I sat on the floor to play with her she just sat a giggled at me.  The giggle turned into a full belly laugh, which made me laugh and we just sat there, on the floor, laughing at each other.

Unfortunately, nestled around the trip to the Isle of Wight I have been working and due to the long days I don’t get to see Éowyn as she is usually asleep when I leave for work and in bed when I get back.  So the weekend was a chance for us to catch up on each other.  I’m not sure who gets the most enjoyment out of those days, her or me.  Friday we spent the morning playing, mainly with her Duplo Lego bricks.  Well let me rephrase that, I build a tower out of the bricks and Éowyn knocks them down, then picks one up and starts chewing it.  Each time she knocked them down I would clap to encourage her and it wasn’t long before she began to ape me and start clapping herself.  Very exciting for her to have a new trick.  This is coupled with the lip-smacking that she does when either you say ‘Give me a kiss’ or when offering her food that she learnt while I was away in the Isle of Wight.

Friday afternoon saw the three of us at Windsor Leisure centre to take Éowyn swimming.  She loves swimming and we are encouraging this as much as possible.  It also wears her out, which was our ulterior motive as we were going out on the evening to a friend of ours, Kerry, 30th birthday party.  Mike’s (Lucinda’s brother) girlfriend Cristina had bravely offered to baby sit for us.  So for only the third time since she has been born we went out for an evening together.  Fortunately Éowyn was on her best behaviour and never stirred so Cris had a very easy night and hopefully will volunteer to babysit again!

Kerry’s party was very good especially for Lucinda who saw many of her workmates that she had not seen for a while and was a chance for her to catch up on the gossip.  She has a meeting this week in an attempt to work out when she is going back to work and in what capacity.  She is not due back until the end of September the year is zooming by and it is best to sort these things out sooner than later.  It is hardly credible that Éowyn is 8 months old but she passed that landmark in the week and it is hard to imagine life without her.

Sunday marked my first Father’s day but Éowyn did not mark it well.  She had gone to bed on Saturday night with a bit of a temperature, and a concerned newbie parents when we went to bed a few hours later we checked on her to see if she was still hot.  She was and so we tried to take some of the covers from her and she woke.  As she was still quite hot and now awake we decided it was probably best if we gave her some calpol to help bring the temperature down and hoping help her sleep.  Éowyn was having different idea.  It was 0430 before she decided that she would finally go to sleep.  Not the best of Father’s day presents.  She woke at 0800 the next morning.  The lack of sleep and slight temperature was making her crabby and she fought her morning nap, only falling asleep at 1100.  We had been invited around to Mike”s house for a barbeque to take advantage of the good weather and to celebrate Father’s day as a family with Steve and his family and Lucinda’s parents also invited. At 1330 Éowyn was still asleep and so we had to wake her and feed her so that we could get round Mike’s for 1400.

It was nice for Éowyn, even though she was still a little crabby, to see all her cousins again and they are getting more excited about her because she can now begin to play.  It will not be long before she is chasing after them and getting in their way and upsetting their games.

And finally congratulations to a friend from work Ian and his wife Debbie on the birth of their daughter Millie Jennifer on Saturday 20th June.  Welcome to fatherhood Ian.

Peace and Love

Baggie!

Like father, like daughter
Cheeky laugh!
That’s funny!
They don’t feed me!
Will you be my friend?
Can you do this Jack?
I’m standing!
Look at me!
I’m so grown up!
‘Tis a magical place
Chillin’ with Daddy and Maddie
The power of the ball

Stand Up!

Baggie

It has been quite a busy and emotional week and a bit since the last update.  The week started quite brightly with fine weather as befits the start of June.  Éowyn took full advantage of this in her new paddling pool.  Each morning we took her into the garden to have a splash, which is a very easy way to give her (and us) a wash!  She thoroughly enjoys being in the water and it is something that we want to encourage.

Our friends Neil, Emma and Kerry met us in Chertsey for a walk along the Thames on Thursday.  As with all good walks a meal at a pub was in order and we incorporated this tradition with Thames Court being the goal for the half-way stage of the stroll. We were also introduced to the hobby of geocaching by the guys.  It adds an added interest to a walk and it is quite nice to be part of a secret club where muggles walk by geocaches unaware of the hidden treasures lurking in the undergrowth.

The weekend started with an invite to the evening-do of the wedding of friends of ours Stuart and Sharon Hellyer.  This was Éowyn’s first wedding and she did very well considering she was in a new place, with new people and long past her bedtime.  However by 10pm she was getting really grumpy and we had to say goodbye while the night was still young.  We wish Stuart and Sharon all the best for their future lives together.

Monday we took full advantage of the fine weather and headed to Windsor to meet up with Lee and Caroline and their daughter Georgia.  Caroline and Lucinda meet up quite regularly so the girls know each other, as well as 7 ½ month olds can.  They don’t really play with each other (as yet) and Éowyn took full advantage of her advanced manoeuvrability and went in for Georgia’s dummy while she unsuspectedly sat in the sun.  I suppose she has a long memory from the time that Georgia punched her in the face while they lay on our lounge floor.

Nan and Granddad took us to the Harvester in Windsor Tuesday evening where Éowyn was on her best behaviour once again, until she swallowed a large chunk of the bun that she was chewing and began to choke.  Fortunately the first aid training kicked in and a swift slap to the back dislodged the offending lump but unfortunately brought up a quantity of vomit too.  Not the nicest thing to happen in the middle of dinner.  Éowyn was nonplussed by it all and was none the worse for her incident.  This was the second time in a week that she had bitten a large chunk of food (the first was a baby ricecake last Thursday) and choked, fortunately I have been on hand both times and have not panicked but it is quite upsetting and Lucinda finds it especially so.  We are being extremely careful now with the kind of foodstuffs that she is being given.

As you may recall from the last entry Éowyn’s Great-Great Auntie Iris passed away and Thursday was her funeral.  So although it was nice to see the family and Éowyn got to see her Nanny Fran, it was a shame that it was under such circumstances.  We were a little concerned taking Éowyn to the funeral service as she is a little young to persuade her to behave but we had needn’t fretted.  She slept through the service at the crematorium, which was a little embarrassing since she takes after her dad and snores.  So when the minister asked all to take a minute to reflect on Auntie Iris and pray silently, all that could be heard was the dulcet tones of Éowyn‘s snoring.  I think that Auntie Iris would have found it amusing as a number of people suppressed their sniggering.

She was a good tonic for the people there and a nice distraction.  During the memorial service she was as good as gold, except for continually tapping her Auntie Liz on the back causing her to turn around.  Then at the wake, she crawled around the hall, trying to escape from her daddy and hoping for people to drop crumbs off their plates.  She also begun to say the two words that we have longed to hear: ‘Momomomomomom’ and ‘Dadadadadadadadadadad’.  Well not quite the words but definitely the sounds.  She also got to meet some of the relatives that she hadn’t as yet had the opportunity to meet, including her first cousin once removed Mark and her first cousin twice removed, my first cousin once removed Ray and his wife Pat (that is if I have followed this table correctly).  She also received a couple of presents a nursery rhyme book from her Great Uncle Michael and Great Auntie Yvonne and a hand-knitted doll from her first cousin twice removed Pat.  She is a very lucky little girl to have such generous relatives.  Thank you!

We stayed the night at Nanny Fran’s so that they could have an extended play time, which I am not sure who enjoyed the most.  We also visited her Great-Grandma and for the first time took her to place some flowers on my dad’s grave, her Granddad Vic, for what would have been his 63rd birthday; not that it means anything to her at the moment but more for Lucinda and me.

To complete the triumvirate our next door neighbours, Cliff and Vicky had a baby boy in the early hours of Thursday morning.  Congratulations to them and welcome to the world little one.

In this hectic week of births, deaths and marriages Éowyn has also begun to pull herself up on furniture.  The first time was just before the last update on the 27th May and then nothing for a couple of days, but now she is constantly pulling herself upon and standing for quite a while.  She has taken a tentative step or two but it has, so far, always thrown her off balance but nappies are great shock absorbers for little bottoms.  I don’t think it will be too long before she is walking.  We are not ready!  Keep an eye on this space.

Peace and Love

Baggie!

In my paddling pool
Splash!
Naughty children
Georgia
I’ll have that!
Too much fun!
With my nanny!
On granddad’s lap!
Do I look intelligent?
I can hear the sea!
Can I have one?
Cheeky!

My First Holiday

Baggie

As you can probably guess from the title of this entry, Éowyn (and her parents) have just returned from a week’s holiday in Devon as a break for Lucinda’s birthday.  This was Éowyn’s first holiday (we are counting the trip to Colchester as a mini-break) and so an important stage in anyone’s life and the furthest she has ever been from her place of birth.  To ease her (and us) into the idea of family holidays we hired a three bedroom cottage from one of the guys from work.  It is in the South Hams village of Noss Mayo overlooking the Newton creek and Yealm estuary along with it’s twin from across the creek Newton Ferrers.

The Devon and Cornish peninsula always appear (to an outsider like me) to have peculiar microclimates and towns only separated by a few miles can experience very different weather.  This is in no small part to the geography of the area, high moorlands, V-shaped valleys and numerous coves and inlets, providing shelter or acting as a funnel depending on the direction of the winds.  And so it was the case with our trip.  The forecast wasn’t good according to the national weather reports and we feared the worse.  The week did start a little wet but soon gave way to warmer, drier weather.

Noss Mayo and Newton Ferrers sit either side of a V-shaped valley and as such walking anywhere was hard work and kept you fit.  There is a voss that links Noss Mayo to Newton Ferrers which is accessible at low tide else it is a longer walk to Bridgend to cross the creek .  Due to the timing of the low tides we only managed to cross the voss once, and then only just.  The tide came in quiet quickly and by the time we had crossed to the other side the voss was completely under water.

We took it relatively easy on our holiday and didn’t really do too much driving once we were there.  We spent a day in Padstow to meet up with a friend of Lucinda’s from university.  Ruth was down on holiday with her boyfriend Rob and their dog Rooney.  It was the first time that they had met since leaving university, although they have kept in touch regularly via snail mail.  They have vowed to keep in touch via letters instead of e-mail/ text message/ instant messaging/ social networking sites and a plethora of alternative ways of communication that permeate modern living.

One of my good friends Andy popped down for a day or so and took the headland walk out of Noss Mayo.  We took it very gently and took most of the afternoon, especially pushing Éowyn in her pushchair.  The views were spectacular and would highly recommend it for anyone spending sometime in the area.  The walk ends at the Ship Inn which is the perfect place to end such an adventure.  The staff were very friendly and the food fantastic, if a little pricey but you could not grumble about the size of the portions!

The only other major excursion we did was to visit Delamore House in nearby Cornwood.  It had an exhibition of sculpture and paintings.  Not usually my kind of thing but some of the sculptures and you can see on the Flickr pages were excellent, especially the work by Oxfordshire artist Daren Greenhow, anyone that can make a Veló-ciraptor out of old bicycle parts (get it? Veló – ciraptor.  Oh, forget it) gets my vote.

Éowyn seemed to really enjoy herself during the whole holiday and, apart from the first night, slept through the night.  This is probably due to the fact that she had both her parents undivided attention for a week.  She also took another big step on her development is so much that we stopped her dream feed.  Now she is regularly taking solids the need for that extra feed disappears but we were still nervous to stop it.  However, there has been no adverse reaction and the fact that she hasn’t woke is proof that she no longer needs it.  She is now an adept at crawling, and has been readying herself for the next stage: walking.  She regularly pulls herself up to her knees but as yet has not found the strength to stand.  Yesterday that changed and for the first time she pulled herself to a standing position using the pouffe.  Her latest entertainment though is to crawl into the kitchen and watch the washing machine.  If it isn’t on she gets quite annoyed and bangs her hands on the floor.  I suppose it is better than being a telly addict…

They told me this was a telly!
Can’t work this straw thing
Mid-crawl
Mommy and Éowyn at the harbour
Noss Mayo boats
Noss Mayo at night
Cheeky smile
Veló-ciraptor
Mommy and Éowyn

Unfortunately upon our return we have had some bad news.  Éowyn’s Great Great Auntie Iris has passed away.  She had a bleed on the brain caused by a cerebral aneurysm and although initially it did not seem life threatening she contracted an infection and her condition worsened.  She passed away on the morning of Sunday 24th May 2009  at the age of 88, one week short of her 64th Wedding Anniversary.  Our thoughts are with her husband, my Great Uncle Albert.  Rest well Auntie Iris.

Great-Great Auntie Iris
Great-Great Auntie Iris