Nanny Fran

Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall?

Tuesday 14th December 2010Friday 11th May 2012Baggie

Ten points in the Christmas pop trivia quiz for anyone that knows which Christmas ditty the title is from. Well done, treat yourself to a mince pie and a nip of your favourite Christmas tipple!

This is more than likely the last update before Christmas as I still have Christmas shopping to do and Christmas cards to write, although the Bagnall Christmas message will automatically appear at noon on the 23rd December 2010 and I will try to squeeze a full update in before the New Year to give you all a post-Christmas debrief.

I may still have cards to write and shopping to do, but the tree is up and decorated and Christmas dinner is organised (thanks Nan and Granddad!). At least Amélie has something that Éowyn never had for her first Christmas: a Christmas tree. If you cast your mind back to December 2008, we were so disorganised that by the time we came to buy our tree there were none, so poor Éowyn spent her first Christmas treeless. It doesn’t seem to have affected her and to be fair this is the first year that she has begun to understand that there is something going on and it is likely to be favourable.

We have been trying to introduce Éowyn to the ideas of Christmas (from a secular rather than religious point of view) and as part of that she has her first chocolate advent calendar (a Peppa Pig one) and a Christmas stocking to hang on her bedpost on Christmas Eve. She likes the Christmas Tree and the various Christmas ornaments that have made their way down from the loft and we have been reading a number of Christmas stories (although not The Christmas Story) and keep telling her that Santa will bring her presents if she is a good girl. Next it is Christmas songs, bring out the Slade! Not sure which of the above is the worst.

You will be pleased to know that although Toy Story 3 is still a firm favourite Éowyn will now ask for Shrek, The Lion King and Little Mermaid. Now we have broken the Toy Story monopoly hopefully we can introduce a number of other films from my extensive collection. Interestingly I am sure that she is starting to play with her dolls and stuffed animals more since watching Toy Story. It is perhaps a case of fiction leading reality that somehow a film made from a childlike imagination is sparking the imagination of my child. I quite like that.

As I mentioned in my last update, Amélie has been diagnosed with Cows Milk Protein Intolerance. This has not been clinically proven but since we have switched to the milk powder substitute she has seemed a lot happy and will down her bottle of milk in minutes. Confirmation that it seems to be having a positive effect came from her latest weigh-in which, although she is not creeping up the centile chart, she has at least followed the centile line that she is currently on. In plain English, she has put on the expected amount of weight this week for the first time in a month. It is more than likely that it will be after Christmas before we see the dietician but our greater worry is ensuring that we have enough milk powder to see us through the festive period. We are putting pressure on the doctor to prescribe surplus so that we don’t have to keep returning to the them each week.

In light of the reduced pain that she must be in, Amélie has definitely become more alert and is smiling more often. She likes to sit on her daddy’s lap watching the telly, like Éowyn used to (and indeed still does). Although this does bring out the little green-eyed monster in Éowyn who has to sit next to us on the sofa. I have no problem with that though and it is quite nice to sit on the sofa watching a film with both daughters snuggling into their dad. I’m just a big old softie!

Lucinda and I both find we are bonding more with Amélie, especially since we are now getting more sleep (me more that Lucinda) and the fact that the little mite is interacting more with us. She seems to really enjoy smiling and returns a smile from you with a toothless one of her own. How quick you forget this stage (and all of the early ones) and before you know it they are running around and causing different kinds of mischief. Each stage is wonderful in its own way but I think that Éowyn is at a perfect age at the moment, especially coupled with her intelligence making her a joy to spend the day with. Without wishing Amélie’s life away it will be good when they can both play together. I imagine that Éowyn will try to mother her.

Last week I was struck down with the norovirus. Well, Lucinda had it first and then I caught it off her. Along with the usual symptoms I was running a temperature and my body ached, so I took myself off to bed. Éowyn wondering where Daddy is, wanders upstairs. I am asleep under the duvet when I am woken by a giggles and Éowyn sitting under the duvet next to my head. ‘Shh,’ she says, ‘We’re in a camp.’ Even when you are feeling sorry for yourself that is funny! Lucinda came upstairs looking for her and she whispers to me: ‘Shh, daddy. We’re hiding from Mommy.’ Definitely makes you feel better.

Well those Christmas cards won’t write themselves so I will bid you adieu. Pop by if you can for the Christmas wishes on the 23rd and I will aim to do an update around the 29th/30th. I trust that you all have a fabulous Christmas and if I don’t see you before see you in 2011.

Love and Peace

Baggie

Cousins!

Finley and Amélie

Daddy and Amélie

Me and monkey

Time for another snooze methinks

Close up, sleeping

Elvis has left the bathroom

Time for a snooze

I like Christmas!

A hug for the snowman

Little Pudding

A kiss for the snowman

A week off goes so fast!

Sunday 21st November 2010Sunday 1st January 2017Baggie

I’m sure that someone has got my life on fast forward at the moment, I barely seem to have 5 minutes to myself these days. However when you try to analyse what exactly I have been doing, it doesn’t sound a lot. Although you have to say that I am doing well with this updating lark!

So what have we done with my week off? The weekend saw us pop up to West Bromwich to visit Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz. I woke up Saturday morning with a sore left eye that took at least half an hour before it felt 100%. No reason, seemingly just one of those things. So, after loading the car we were about an hour behind the time we were aiming to leave (isn’t that always the case with children anyhow?). However, as I was lifting Éowyn into her car seat, she was transferring her book from one hand to the other and managed to drag the edge of one of the pages across my eyeball. Effectively giving me a papercut on the eyeball. It did hurt! I was unable to open the eye or stem the streaming tears for about 3 hours, so Lucinda had to drive my car up the M40 (OK for accuracy: the M25, M40, M42, M5) to the Black Country.

We arrived safely and spent a couple of days relaxing with Nanny Fran. Well, relaxing for Lucinda and me but perhaps not so much for Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz. We also took Éowyn for her first ‘proper’ haircut. Lucinda and I have trimmed her hair on a number of occasions but only to keep the fringe out of her eyes. Her hair looks quite good as it is, with her long loose curls so we didn’t want too much taken off, only to give her a decent fringe so that her hair wasn’t in her eyes. Nanny Fran was already booked to have her hair done at her friend’s salon so it was a good excuse to take Éowyn. Considering it was Éowyn’s first time in a hairdressers and the first time she had met Janet she was remarkably good and Janet managed to trim her fringe nicely. It did take a bit of time to coax her into the chair (on daddy’s lap) but as the place was quiet Janet had the time to win her trust so hopefully next time it will not be so difficult. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing and a good night’s sleep sorted my eye out and I was fine to drive home on Sunday evening.

Amélie seems much more settled of late, so perhaps the bottle thing is working. Which is allowing us, but Lucinda especially, to feel somewhat normal. However we are far from being a 100% there and a couple of days she has been unsettled and then Thursday night (first night after going back to work) she did not settle until 0500. I think she knew that I had to work the next day and therefore could really annoy mommy!

We have been feeling a little guilty over Amélie. I think as a parent, the midwife hands you the baby and a whole bucketload of guilt. Being raised a Catholic I am used to carrying guilt about but that of a parent is something different. Everything you do, or don’t do you have half a thought in your head that you are doing your child harm. So it is with Amélie. With Éowyn we had time to devote to her; she was the entire focus of our attention and everything was new. With Amélie we do not have the luxury of devoting our entire attention to her because we have to balance that attention with that we give Éowyn. So at the moment we are going through the guilt that we are not doing as much with Amélie as we did with Éowyn at the same stage.

Nevertheless Amélie is doing well. The bottle feeding seems to be helping and although not entirely a contented baby is significantly more settled than before and we are getting more sleep. Although the first day back to work was met with a disturbed night until she finally succumbed to sleep at 0500.

Amélie has also begun to smile. You are never sure at first whether it is wind or whether a genuine smile, b ut now she responds to your smile with one of her own, definitive proof that she is smiling. She also has very strong legs and will push herself off you. She also moves herself around a little. It is all coming back to us.

Éowyn has been very good with her and always wants to be involved, however when Amélie is feeding, Éowyn becomes jealous. This tends to happen when it is just Lucinda in with the girls, as when I am about Éowyn is obviously getting attention from me (or Lucinda – for now we are on bottles I can do some of the feeding). The jealousy manifests itself as hitting and hair-pulling, which is very strange as Éowyn is so loving at all other times. It is a well recognised phase that they go through and something we have to deal with, without making a deal out of it.

Granddad’s 71st birthday was spent at the local Harvester, the first time that Lucinda and I had been there since June. We avoided the scampi this time. Amélie slept through the majority of the meal while Éowyn kept us all entertained, and a number of the fellow diners, too!

The week has also been noticeable for the Freezing fog that has been affecting us for the last week and the fact that we have tried Purple Majesty. A variety of purple potato with its ancestry in the high reaches of the Andes (see photo of mash below). To be honest, nice to look at but the taste is nothing special and we concluded that we much more prefer Sweet Potato mash. We still have some left so we might try some purple jacket wedges. What next? Red Brussels Sprouts?

Just as an aside. Amélie is beginning to understand what it is like to be a West Bromwich Albion fan. The euphoria of the first couple of months of this Premier League campaign is gradually being replaced by the feeling of been there, done that. The only bright news is that Wolverhampton Wanderers are only not bottom because West Ham United are so bad! Let’s hope they can put an end to this dip in form and remember the highs from The Emirates and Old Trafford.

Peace and love

Baggie

Asleep on Nanny Fran

Sleeping beauty

Asleep on Auntie Liz

Me and big Sis!

Night Fever!

Give me a cuddle!

Nanny Fran and her Grand-daughters

Nanny Fran wears me out

Looking at photos with Auntie Liz

Nice and Comfy

Mommy and Éowyn in Windsor

A cold and foggy day

Give your mommy a kiss

In thought

Purple Majesty

The clocks go back

Tuesday 2nd November 2010Wednesday 3rd November 2010Baggie

The last Sunday of October always heralds the advent of winter, the annual flip back to Greenwich Mean Time and darker nights. It can be no later than it was this year, Halloween, but it still doesn’t sweeten the fact that end of another year is hurtling into view. The end of British Summer Time usually means an extra hour in bed, but as anyone with small children will confirm the juvenile circadian rhythm is oblivious to the precepts of the human construct of hours, minutes and seconds, especially for anyone under the age of 13!.

Quite possibly, some of you may have noticed that October 2010 contained 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays and you may have received an e-mail or a well-meaning associate may have informed you that this combination only occurs once in 823 years. If you still have it, take a peek at your 2004 calendar or indeed wait until you receive your 2021 calendar you will find that the Octobers of those years also have 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. Indeed any month that has 31 days has three consecutive days that occur five times that month. Don’t believe me? Check your calendar out. ‘Ah!’ I hear you cry, ‘But not Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays!’ Look at January 2010 I cry back! It is not as rare as you think. Coincidentally October 2004 was the month that Lucinda and I met, but enough of these temporal tidbits and horometrical hypothesizing and back to the matter in hand.

I have now been back at work for a fortnight and although it is difficult spending all day at work then coming back home and helping look after the kids and the house, I think that Lucinda has had the harder task. Looking after two small children on your own is not easy and work, though manic, is not in the same league as looking after two small children. At least I get to have adult conversations (most of the time) and don’t have think and do everything for others, OK at least I don’t have to feed them!

Michaelmas half term, is traditionally the time of the great Puncknowle family holiday and this year was no different, except that the Bagnalls were not there. Unfortunately as I have only just returned to work and the latest addition is not a month old we decided not to go (at least there would be another bedroom available for others). However this meant that there was no close family support for Lucinda, something that did concern me.

A solution did present itself though. My sister had already taken the week of half term off as holiday and with my mom still not back at work a trip to Nanny Fran for my girls beckoned. This meant that Lucinda had some support, my mom and sister got to spend some time with the kids and I could spend a week concentrating on work trying to catch up with thousands of e-mails I had received whilst off on paternity leave. I think that it all helped and by both of us recharging our batteries (in different ways) it makes the challenge of raising two children seem a little easier.

It helps too that Amélie, is increasingly sleeping between feeds, especially at night. Not every feed and not every night but enough for us (and by that I mainly mean Lucinda) to be able to grab 2 to 3 hours of sleep between feeds. Hopefully this can only get better.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, this last weekend was Halloween. Éowyn, being the popular child that she is, was invited to two Halloween parties. Hence she needed an outfit, please see below for her Pumpkin outfit! Amélie had to have one too, but I think she is a little young to appreciate it!

Éowyn’s speech is extremely well-developed, she strings quite complex sentences together and apes whatever she hears. You have to be conscious of this, especially if cursing but with any colloquialisms, because Éowyn will repeat it a couple of days later, much to your horror. She is also very adept at reading. OK, I say reading she recognises some words (17 on her flash cards – and a number in books) but she will pick up books and point to the words and read them out. Whether this is reading, or just excellent recall is debatable but nevertheless she will pick books up, point at the words she knows and read them aloud. She will turn the pages, and either recall the story that you have previously read to her, or make one up using the pictures. Sometimes the story that she retells is completely different to that in the book, but they always make sense and with regards to some of the ‘In the Night Garden’ books her stories are quite often far better.

OK, it has been a while so I will stop there and let you enjoy the photos.

Peace and love

Baggie