29th February

An extra day: a bonus post

Baggie

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

 

An extra day deserves an extra post!

Baggie

It only happens once every four years, and it is the first time that it has happened while I have been writing this blog, so it deserves a whole write up to itself.  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 take into account the fact 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.  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 2012 we find that the leap day is on a Wednesday, which I suppose is statistically most likely.

This is also Éowyn and Amélie’s first leap day and thus the first one I have celebrated as a father.  I have celebrated nine previous leap days and have not given them much thought but as I enter double figures and because this website is all about our children and our growing pains of parenthood, momentous occasions, like a leap day should be celebrated.

So what happened on Wednesday 29th February 2012?

Our first family Leap Day found this Bagnall enclave in four different places.  Lucinda at work (Heathrow airport), Amélie at Nanny and Granddad’s (Stanwell Moor), Éowyn at pre-school (Staines) and once I had dropped the girls off I headed to work (Chiswick).  Lucinda had a 0530 shift start so was up at 0430 and out the house by 0500.  Amélie decided that the house should all be awake at 0400 so Lucinda missed out on 30 minutes of sleep and I on 3 hours.  Amélie seems to have fallen into the habit of waking up early and then crying.  We have tried the controlled crying (which is difficult because listening to your child crying is never easy and her cot is still in our room) but Amélie notches it up a gear when that doesn’t work and issues forth the most piercing scream that is only usually heard when you trap your fingers in a collapsing deckchair.  There is nothing wrong with her, she just wants to be cuddled.  We need to address this before the lack of sleep causes us severe problems!  We have a plan!

The dull overcast sky did nothing to help with the monotony of the drive into work and the heavy eyelids fighting those missing three hours of sleep however as I came off the M3 onto the A316 ahead I saw a Honda Civic.  I recognised part of the registration plate as one of my colleagues and a quick hands-free conversation later he realised who was tailgating him and we continued the journey in convoy.  I like the coincidental nature (possibly even synchronicity) of this seemingly mundane occurrence.  For not only were our cars half a second apart (and in the same lane), we both drive the same make of car and we sit on adjacent desks (and until recently did the same job on opposite shift patterns).  He drives in from Southampton and thus doesn’t really have a choice regarding road into Chiswick but I have 3 main roads I could chose from and the M3/A316 combination is the longest of the three.  However, I had heard that traffic was particularly bad (it is always quite heavy heading into London at rush hour) on the alternatives so I went for the long way round, trusting that it would be the quickest, I wasn’t expecting to see anyone I knew.  I have no idea of the odds involved but I would hazard a guess that they are exactly one million to one for as everybody knows (thanks to Terry Pratchett’s novel Mort) that million to one chances happen nine times out of ten.

Unfortunately nothing quite as exciting happened for the remainder of the day and after a very meeting-centric day at work I headed home really feeling the continuing lack of sleep.  So once the girls were abed (after I had to play fairies and Peppa Pig with Éowyn – she has taken to wanting us to play with her and her toys before going to bed rather than having a story read to her) myself and Lucinda sat down for about an hour before heading to bed ourselves.  It is all glamour and parties in the Bagnall household on a Leap Day, don’t you know!

This is a bit of a diversion from the usual write up and so there are no photos I’m afraid especially since it is only a couple of days since the last update and 18 photos!  (Hey, it only happens once every four years).  I will leave you now and go and put some of The Monkees’ tunes on to celebrate the life of Davy Jones, who died of a heart-attack at his Florida home on this Leap Day aged 66.  Our thoughts are with his family.

Peace and Love

Baggie