Obituary

100,000 words and bipedal motion!

Baggie

We have seen 100 posts, we have seen 100,000 hits and now we have hit another milestone 100,000 words (total words across all posts and pages).  Yes this website now has more words than the average novel.  Impressive ne pas? I never realised I was so verbose or that so much has happened to this enclave of the Bagnall clan over the last 40 months or so.

However, that is not the greatest achievement since the last update.  For the greater accomplishment is that my second child can now be truly classed as bipedal.  Yes, last Thursday (19th January 2012) Amélie just decided to stand up in the middle of the floor and walk.  Not just one or two steps but half a dozen.  The encouragement that she received spurred her on.  Within minutes that total was up to 11 and by the end of the day had nudged that total up to 12.  I suppose because she has been cruising for so long her legs have the strength to support her, she has the balance to carry herself but she is just lacking the confidence to continue.  It will come, with encouragement it will not be long before she will leave her crawling days behind her.  She will happily hold your hand and walk for yards and hopefully the more we do this the more this will give her the confidence to strike out on her own.

Now usually on Thursday morning I would be at work, however I still had a number of days left over from last year’s entitlement to use by the end of January and therefore, fortunately, I was at home on annual leave for the week. It was good to spend some time at home but it wasn’t the most exciting of times (apart, obviously from Amélie’s first steps!).  Lucinda took some time off too but with Amélie already booked to go to Jo’s and with Éowyn still at playbox myself and Lucinda had time to off together but there was no time to enjoy that for we decided that we would attempt to straighten the house after the Christmas period.  Not that the house needed that much straightening but it was more an opportunity to go through the kid’s toys and either take the ones that they never play with down the local charity shop or put away the ones that they have outgrown.  Then finding space for them all, either in the toy boxes (yes plural), Éowyn’s bedroom or just tidied away.  It felt good to get back some of the house!

We also managed to take advantage of my tastecard (for the first time!) and go for lunch, which was good to spend some time as a couple rather than a mommy and daddy, although there is still that little voice in the back of your head saying, Keep an eye on the time, you have to pick Amélie and Éowyn up.  On the Thursday we also managed to invite friends of ours, Neil and Emma, around for an evening.  So we managed to put the girls to bed early (not that early but early enough for us to enjoy our evening) and to their great credit they went down and we heard not a peep out of them all evening.  It was good catching up with friends especially Neil and Emma who we hadn’t seen in over a year.  It is amazing how quickly time passes us by and if truth be told we have a long list of friends that we have not seen in over a year, something that perhaps we need to rectify in 2012.

We also took advantage of the time off to head up the M40 to West Bromwich and Nanny Fran.  Éowyn gets very excited about seeing her Nanny Fran, so much so that she didn’t take advantage of the 120 mile car journey and sleep but rather stayed awake for the entire journey asking the epitomic question ‘Are we nearly there yet?‘  They start early don’t they?  However this tiredness manifested itself as grumpiness and misbehaviour, so there were a number of trips to the re-instated Thinking Step.

In fact, there has been quite a number of trips to the Thinking Step of late.  After many months without even the threat of a trip to the Thinking Step, Éowyn has been a regular visitor of late.  There are a number of reasons for this, namely: She is doing 3 days a week at school, plus trips to her childminder’s so she is missing her afternoon nap (I know the feeling) and getting tired and when she is tired she gets grumpy and her behaviour get worse; Amélie is getting a lot of attention of late, especially with regards to the encouragement that she is getting with her walking and her increasing vocabulary, so jealousy plays a part; She gets influenced by the behaviour of other children (as all children do) so making sure that she realises that just because her friends do it, it doesn’t mean that she has to (I think that is going to be a battle for many years to come!); and I have been working some long hours so she doesn’t always see me and Lucinda has, obviously, returned to work so she is not always seeing Lucinda either.  Plus she is probably just going through one of those phases where they try to push the boundaries and see what they can get away with, which is going but it puts pressure on us to keep the boundaries well defined.

Despite her frequent forays to the Thinking Step Lucinda treated Éowyn to a special day out last Wednesday.  A Peppa Pig live stage show was enjoying a run at Richmond Theatre and so Lucinda and Éowyn and her friend Christine and her daughter Arabella took the short trip down the A316.  Éowyn was completely enthralled by Peppa Pig’s Treasure Hunt (a puppet show) in complete contrast to the last live show that she saw which was the In The Night Garden live show, so much so that at the interval she got a little upset that it was over.  I think this is because, unfortunately, between booking the In The Night Garden tickets and actually going Éowyn grew out of the phase and was no longer interested in the antics of Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy (not to mention the hosts of other similarly named characters).  Now, Peppa Pig is a different matter, it is by far her favourite show and with trips to Peppa Pig world and a bed full of cuddly Peppa Pig characters I think it will stay her favourite for a few years to come yet.

Unfortunately I must end this update on a sad note.  My Great Uncle Albert passed away just after 1505 on Friday 27th January 2012 aged 90.  He had been ill for a little while and while the loss of any one is always sad in some ways his passing is a blessing.  Uncle Albert was my materal grandmother’s brother and was an inspiration.  He gave me my first paid job (in the despatch department of Accles and Shelvoke packing slaughter equipment: bolt stunners and cartridges) the summer after my GCSE exams.  He also ignited my interest in genealogy, tracing his own family tree back to 1546.  He also typed (with one finger and a lot of correction fluid) his wartime memories dubbing himself (in his self-depreciating style) Churchill’s Secret Weapon on an old manual typewriter.  The reasoning behind his monicker was that shortly after he completed his training the war in Europe ended.  Then, as he set foot in Asia (he was posted in India) the war in Asia ended.  Obviously, the enemy did not want to engage Albert Wyton in battle. He is now at peace with his wife of 64 years (my Great Auntie Iris), sleep well both, reunited in love.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Great, Great Uncle Albert and Éowyn Vera
You can have this Uncle Albert
Great, Great Uncle Albert and Amélie Iris
I’m gonna get you!
Come back!
And Smash!
Keep watching…
Whey-hey!
Nothing happened
I defeated you with this spoon
Sisters!
Mu ha ha ha ha!
Emotional phonecall part IV
Big cheeky grin
Mommy and Éowyn
The power of the iPad
Kiss the iPad!
This is as good as an iPad

Flaming June! We have movement!

Baggie

Apologies for the language in the title but it is doubly apt, both in terms of the weather we have been promised for this month and the fact that it is June!  May flew by so quickly and as you regular readers will have noticed I only managed one update all month.  Very remiss of me, you will be going off and reading other websites if I am not careful!

As you will know May is quite a busy month at work with the end of many of the sporting seasons that we cover. Not saying that June and July are empty but let’s just say that the freelancers are picking at bare bones during those months at mediahouse.  This we hopefully allow me to spend a little more time with the family and take precious days off to take advantage of the weather (and the Merlin passes!).

With all this time between updates no doubt you will be expecting a plethora of anecdotes (is that the collective noun for a group of anecdotes?) and a gallery of photos (again?) unfortunately you may be a little disappointed.  I have been a busy boy!

The biggest news of the last few weeks is that Amélie has begun to move.  I hesitate to use the word crawl, she kind of creeps.  Not in a commando elbow over elbow kind of creep more by sheer willpower and energy-sapping full body motions.  But it is movement.  Like her big sister this initial movement has primarily been in reverse.  It is that Goofus bird syndrome all over again.  Amélie however is still not rolling over on her own accord.  I think it is because she has learned that if we put her on her back and she cries loud enough, we will either roll her over or pick her up, or Éowyn will go over to her and see what the matter is and entertain her.  Éowyn is very good like that.  She seems to know exactly what to say or do to make Amélie laugh.  Amélie will quite often have complete giggling fits when her big sister makes strange noises, or pulls silly faces at her,  and Éowyn seems to revel in the adulation from her little fan.  Thus I don’t believe it to be laziness, the lack of desire or the inability to roll but merely an extreme manifestation of tool use; where other members of her family are the tools!

Amélie has had a bit of a torrid time of late with her teeth.  Not that any have come through yet but she is definitely feeling the pain of teething.  Her little cheeks are red, she is dribbling and anything that is within reach is stuffed into her mouth and given a good chew.  If you put yourself in their little booties, it must be an awful pain and not knowing what it is must make it worse.  Although it is something that we have all been through and it hasn’t affected us that badly.  However teething certainly affects the parents.  With Amélie is so much pain she finds it hard to sleep.  Understandable.  However that in turn means that Mommy and Daddy aren’t allowed to sleep either.  Three days of sleep depravation is difficult.  We had forgotten how difficult it was.  I don’t think that it is helped by the fact that we now also have Éowyn (in a nice way).  For when Éowyn was going through the same at least we only had to care for her.  Now we need to be fully compos mentis with her during the day after we have been up all night with Amélie.  Also I was on shift work so it wasn’t a case of no sleep but I only need to get through one more day at work.  Now it is no sleep for three day and I still have 4 more days at work!

Éowyn is using the slight perceived weakness and the fact that Amélie is seemingly getting more attention to push the boundaries again.  She knows the pattern of how we ask her to do things.  Nicely at first, then more firmly, then more firmly then a three second count to punishment (naughty step, quiet time, telly off, etc).  She is now waiting until 2 of that countdown before even moving to do what we have asked her to do, when previously it was rare that we would even begin to count.  She is a little minx and it can be very frustrating on less than 3 hours sleep. 

She has also has begun to bite.  We were warned about this but other friends that about the age of 2 ½ years that kids find that they can hurt each other with biting.  Well, Éowyn has discovered that too!  However I think that may have been cured.  She had bit Lucinda a couple of times but had not bitten me.  Not until the other night.  She bit me on the arm and it hurt (in fact it drew blood!).  In a mixture of pain and anger I shouted quite loud (louder than I normally shout, although still relatively calm) at Éowyn  and told her that she was naughty.  Unfortunately not only did my voice come out louder than usual, it also came out deeper than usual (and for those of you than know me that could be quite scary).  It did scare Éowyn and she was quite frightened to come to me for a while.  In fact I had to sit with her and give her a cuddle to make her feel a little less scared.  I did explain that the reason Daddy shouted at her was because she had bit him and that it was naughty to bite and that she was not to bite anyone again.  It seems that although it wasn’t the method that I would have chosen it has worked, for she has not bitten since.

Apart from the biting, Éowyn has been a joy (as always).  She picked up a cardboard roll (from the centre of the toilet roll) out of the recycling bin the other day, put it to her eye and said ‘Ah-arr Captain!‘ in her best pirate voice.  We then had to be pirates for the rest of the night.  Not that I am complaining, it was great fun.  I have also introduced her to the delights of my favourite show when I was a child, The Muppet Show.  I have a number of Muppet Show DVDs and so we sat a watched one together (to try and wean her off CBeebies and Toy Story 3).  I wasn’t sure that she enjoyed it, although she did sit there and watch it.  The next day, however, she said, ‘Daddy, can we watch Kermit the Frog again.‘  That’s my girl!

Continuing the pirate theme we took her to Legoland (those Merlin passes are wonderful things) to see the Pirate show they put on (which as an aside is very well coreographed and well worth watching if you are there).  We explored a little more of the park that we hadn’t visited last time (although again we had chose half-term and it was quite packed), but because of the number of people we didn’t get to go on many things.  However she completely surprised us by asking to go on a ride on her own.  It was one of those ride where a swing is suspending on a carousel.  We explained that if she went on it, that she wouldn’t be able to get off until the ride stopped.  She was happy with that.  She we sat her in a swing on the inside of the ride (so it didn’t go as fast) and was delighted to see how much she enjoyed it.  In fact she was swinging the seat from back to front to try and make it go faster.  No fear!

Before we visited Legoland we had decided to measure Éowyn, to find out how tall she was.  So we got her to stand against the wall and we made a little mark with a pencil on the wall and measured it to the floor.  She is 98cm tall (just over 3 foot 2 ½inches in old money) which for a 2 ½ year old is quite tall.  Unfortunately we didn’t factor in the barrier this broke.  So while Lucinda was on the phone to her Mom and Éowyn was desparately vying for her attention a little light must have go off in her head.  She picked up the very pencil we had used to mark her height and went over to the same piece of wall and drew all over it.  I suppose we deserved that one!  Fortunately in light of the kitchen upgrade we had already decided that we were going to redecorate the remaining downstairs living areas and so that has just cemented that decision.  Thanks Éowyn!

We have some sad news in the past week, Lucinda’s parents West Highland Terrier Harvey was put to sleep.  He was an old dog that had lived a good life but he was in a lot of pain and there was nothing that the vets could do.  It doesn’t make the decision any easier and it doesn’t make the pain any easier to bear knowing it was the right thing to do, especially for Lucinda’s dad.  We have tried to explain to Éowyn but she is a little too young to understand and with probably just forget that he isn’t there any more, which will be a shame as she would quite often lie on the floor next to Harvey.  He will be sadly missed.

I will leave you with a few photos and a promise not to leave it so long before the next update.

Peace and love

Baggie

Look at me!
Amélie
Leave me, I’m asleep
What are you doing?
Cheeky sisters!
Sisters
Running! It’s great!
On a train!
Harvey

Century Celebrations

Baggie

The Keen-eyed among you will have noticed that this is a very special post in the history of this website.  This is the 100th article written for baggieandlucy.com.  Yes, 100 different times I have sat down and transcribed the latest goings-on of our little family – that’s nearly a book – and hopefully 100 times you have sat down and read them. These 100 articles consist of 9 static pages (the Major Events) and 91 posts (the regular updates); over 70,000 words, nearly 1000 pictures and have received nearly 90,000 hits.  Not bad for 2½ years of stolen time.  So we would like to extend a big thank you to you (our readers) for popping by and enjoying the trials and tribulations of our growing family and we look forward to the next milestone, our 100,000th hit (by my reckoning some time in late August, early September).

As if to celebrate this milestone the weather, too, has been kind to us with an early summer in time for our late Easter.  Temperatures of 25°C in April are definitely unusual (hottest April day since the 1940’s apparently!) but more than welcome however it probably infers that we will have a dull and wet summer.  So enjoy it while it lasts!  With that in mind the Bagnalls are not shy to take full advantage.  We are quite fortunate that we live fairly close to three major theme park attractions:  Chessington World of Adventures, Legoland and, closest of all, Thorpe Park.  Therefore when we discovered that you can trade £40 (it has since gone up) worth of Tesco Club Card vouchers for an individual Merlin Pass we jumped at the chance.  The Merlin Pass is almost a must have for families in our situation, it allows free entry to the three aforementioned theme parks plus many other attractions around the country as well as giving you discounts on purchases (including food) at those places.  Since both Éowyn and Amélie are (for the time being) free to enter all of these attractions, two adult passes were all we required.  Thus armed we must take advantage and get our money’s worth.

The first on our list was Chessington World of Adventures.  Mainly because, if you recall, Éowyn had asked to go to the zoo and see a tiger (and a giraffe(!)).  Chessington World of Adventures begun life as a zoo in 1931 and although the theme park that has developed around it (since 1987) is possibly more famous it still retains an impressive collection of animals (around 1,000) including the all important tiger (two actually, Sumatran to be specific) although sadly no giraffes!

We only spent a few hours at Chessington (with a Merlin pass it doesn’t matter, you can always come back!) and only really concentrated on the zoo (and food) side of the park.  Viewing the zoo through adult eyes is never a good thing and in places I felt that it showed its age and is indicative of the sorry state of zoos around the world; a male lion (albeit of the Asiatic subspecies) with a single lioness a pride does not make!  But the wonder on Éowyn’s face as she saw a tiger pace inches away from her on the other side of a glass window is what you need to take away.  Her fear when the male lion roared to warn the lioness away from his food is something that can not be captured in a book, or even on the best of the wildlife documentaries.  There is something primeval that is triggered when you hear big cat roar, the part of the brain that remembers being on the menu.

She thoroughly enjoyed the zoo and kept talking about the lions and the tigers (‘The daddy lion roared: Get away from my Dinner! I was scared‘).  Chessington also has a monorail (called the Safari Skyway) that travels over the zoo and so while Lucinda fed Amélie (who was as good as gold all day), Éowyn and I took the circular route over the cages.  Not exactly the best view but it was a good trip for Éowyn especially since most of the rides in the area we were in, were unsuitable for her.  I think that was the impression that we took from Chessington that it is probably a little too old for Éowyn but a good alternative than taking her to a dedicated zoo.

In order to make a Merlin Pass pay, you do not have to go to the attractions that many times.  In fact for us, twice.  Hence we are already in profit as the following week we headed to Legoland.  Now I love Lego.  I loved Lego as a boy and still love Lego now.  Not obsessed by it as some people I may mention but I think it rightly deserves the title of Toy of the 20th Century, but I was intrigued on how a whole theme park based around Lego would work.  Now interestly, since it was Éowyn requesting to see tigers that took us to Chessington, Legoland is actually built on the site of what was Windsor Safari Park and was the world’s second Legoland (after the one in Denmark).  It is the third most visited theme park in the UK (after Alton Towers and Thorpe Park – both included in the Merlin Pass) and most importantly is aimed a three to 12 year olds.  Thus making it ideal for Éowyn and her friends and more likely that we will return regularly.

Again, we only spent a couple of hours around Legoland (because we can) and thus just scratched the edge of the park (I was surprised how big it actually is).   However this time Éowyn did manage to go on some rides.  Far from being scared, which we thought she might be, she loved it and didn’t want to get off when each of the rides had finished.  We had feared that half way around the track she would have been asking to get off or to stop the ride.  Nope.  Not our little Éowyn; Again!’ was the cry.

The hot weather has bought out the huge mosquitoes again.  Where there is pleasure there must be pain.  We seem to have a number of different species around our corner of the globe, with the biggest being close to an inch long with stripes along thieir   .  Who needs to go to the zoo when you have tigers in Stanwell Moor.  That drone at night when you are just about to drop off to sleep is one of the most annoying noises in Christendom.

Éowyn has taken another step in her development this week.  She had her first plaster put onto a cut.  She fell over while out with our childminder and Jo put a plaster on her elbow.  Éowyn was very proud of it and very upset when Daddy took it off to look at the ‘wound’.  She didn’t cry because it hurt when I took the plaster off, as I thought she might, but because it was her plaster and she wanted it back on.  I am such a cruel Daddy!  Then on Good Friday Lucinda and her brothers took all the cousins to Woking Leisure Pool.  A great time was had by all and both Éowyn and Amélie loved it but on leaving the pool, Éowyn slipped and cut her toe.  The lifeguard was very good with her and gave her another plaster.  They are obviously badges of honour now!

Before I leave you, a quick ‘Happy Birthday’ to Nanny Fran for last Wednesday, and for those of you interested we are hoping that our kitchen will be finished before Friday’s Royal Wedding.  It will be bliss to have, not only, a working kitchen but the rest of our house back.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Safety first!
I like driving in my car!
Watch out!
My first queue for my first ride!
Hello Dad!
Pooped!
Wheeee!
More!
Do we have to leave?
It started innocently!
Twisted Firestarter
Now that’s what I call a fire!

Just as I was about to post this update I received some bad news, hence the slight delay.  A friend and colleague Marc Aberson passed away on Easter Sunday.  He had a heart attack while cycling with friends near his home in Gloucestershire.  He was 48 years old (although until his memorial service we were not sure.  It appears that he had told a number of different people, with different ages, that he was the same age as them.  It brought a smile to our faces when we found out!). 

I have worked with Marc for nearly 14 years and was a hard-working bloke, always willing to help and get stuck in.  Nothing seemed to phase him at work and he always had a smile on his face.  He has been a mainstay of our VT department during that time (even while he studied for his degree) and has trained many of the guys that have passed through our doors.  He was a true gentleman and will be sorely missed.  He leaves a partner and two sons; our thoughts are with them.  Sleep well Marc.

Marc Aberson
Twisted Firestarter