Party

The fourth quarter is upon us, the nights are drawing in and the girls have completed their first month at school. In the last write up Éowyn was enjoying school while Amélie was in tears and begging us not to take her to nursery. So is that still the case?

Éowyn is still enjoying school and has got use to the fact that it is five days a week. It has not, however, been completely plain sailing since the beginning of September. There were a few days when Éowyn became upset and said that she didn’t want to go to school. Sensing that something had happened at school, Lucinda asked her what the matter was and had anyone upset her. Lucinda’s fears of something from school were soon allayed, it was something much closer to home: me. To be exact the lack of me. It has been a very busy period at work and I have spent long hours away from home. Although for Éowyn’s (and Amélie’s) first week or so at school I’d managed to trim the hours a little (a dark weekend helped – a dark weekend is a weekend with no Premier League football) the hours had begun to creep back. With Éowyn spending every weekday at school, and me working into the evening and at weekends, the girls were only seeing me in the morning. Not exactly what one might call quality time as it is all about shepherding them through breakfast, getting dressed for school and eventually out the door and into the car.

That was a wake up call and although it is difficult I have to strike the correct work/life balance and make the time I do spend with the girls special. With that in mind I asked Éowyn if there was something that she wanted to do with Daddy when she got out of school. Her first choice was to go the cinema – result! Unfortunately there were no suitable films showing at our local picturehouse (Vue Cinema, Staines). So it was the back up plan: baking some cakes. Therefore, armed with ingredients and a large mixing bowl we entered the kitchen and did not leave until we had made some fairy cakes. A simple gesture but it seems to have worked wonders; she is much happier. I can not rest on my laurels however and it was serious kick in the butt. With an imminent house move in the mix it is going to be a very stressful time for all the family and we can’t take our eye off the effects it is having on the children.

Amélie on the other hand, has gone from hating school and crying whenever we dropped her off to running into school. We are not entirely convinced that she is loving it but she knows that she has to go and is quite happy to go. There are still the questions about whether we are taking her to school but at least there are no tears when we tell her that she is going. Definitely a big step forward and just in time for her birthday.

Yes, the big news of the inter-write-up period is the news that Amélie has turned 3! Saturday saw our middle child’s third birthday. Unfortunately weekends are my busy days and so although I could push back the time I started I still had to go into work so I was unable to spend the whole day with her, which was upsetting. I was there when she opened her presents however, and was tasked with the job of extracting the toys from the packaging – not the easiest of tasks especially when you are trying not to damage the toys or indeed your own fingers! So although I wasn’t there for the bulk of the day I don’t think that she missed me too much as she had the distraction of a small family party around Nanny and Granddad’s with her cousins Lauren and Maddie. She was still awake when I got home from work (a little late – but it was her birthday!) and was full of excitement with the presents that I hadn’t seen and the fact that she had been playing with her cousins.

It was her second birthday party. The week before she had had a pirate themed birthday party around Nanny Fran’s with Nanny Fran’s other adopted grandchildren. Lucinda and I were not at the party however for we were taking advantage of Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz leaving our brood with them while we were approximately 60 miles away. One of my university friends Neil was marrying (I think the official term is entering a civil partnership – but I prefer marrying) his partner Paul and therefore when we received the invite to their big day, Nanny Fran’s services were booked. We had a great time, catching up with my university pals which was good as I rarely get to catch up with them, even the ones that live quite close. Unfortunately again the pull of work was strong and we had to leave early the next morning – before we had managed to say goodbye to them – the joys of working in television! I drove back to Nanny Fran’s, dropped Lucinda off and headed straight to work. Lucinda then drove back later with the girls.

Although it was Amélie’s birthday last Saturday, Sunday saw a third birthday party in just over a week, but not a third one for Amélie, but an early one for Éowyn. As regular readers of this website may recall Éowyn was the last of our NCT class to be born and the group of us that still keep in touch try to organise a joint birthday party for them some midway point between the beginning of September and Éowyn’s birthday on the 17th October. As fate will have it, this is usually around Amélie’s birthday, so I am sure that in her mind it is also for her. This year the venue chosen was Alice Holt. Run by the Forestry commission, Alice Holt is a few miles south of Farnham and excellent venue for the kids with plenty to do. The girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves and were full of stories of the giant woodpeckers and owls in the habitat trail. Again the call of work meant that I wasn’t able to go, but not only were the girls full of praise for the woodland so was Lucinda, so when work calms down and we have a fine day I think a trip to Alice Holt is in order.

With all work and not a lot of play when my friend Andy saw an offer for a half-day’s Owl and Eagle experience at the Birds of Prey Centre in Old Warden I jumped at the chance to do something for me! This was our second time, we took advantage of a similar offer last year, and again thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It is great to be so close to such beautiful creatures and the only disappointment was that it wasn’t a full day’s experience. There are plenty of photos on our Flickr site including the moment that a moody female Bald Eagle decided to give Andy a little nibble. Well, he probably deserved it!

So before I leave you, just a quick note to say that the house move plods on but it now looks like all of our finances are in place and we could be exchanging before the next write up. That probably means there will not be a write up until November! (I am joking!)

Enjoy the photos and keep your fingers crossed for a smooth house move.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Push me!

Higher…

Wheeee!

Coming through

Hold tight little brother

Down we go

Where’d they go?

The wooden throne

Just playing

Party time

5th birthday

Blow out the candles

Daddy and Ezra

Cheeky Grin

Rockstar

Emotional Phonecall I

Emotional Phonecall II

Emotional Phonecall III

Cheesy Grins I

Cheesy Grins II

Cheesy Grins III

Birthday girl (and big sister)

Amélie blowing out her candles

The last piece of cake

So a couple of weeks after we announced to the world that we are expecting our third child, our second child celebrated her second birthday. Yes can you believe that Amélie is 2 years old. This time in 2010 we were on the way to St. Peter’s hospital and thankfully the road conditions were not the same as they were this year as there were road closures and heavy traffic around the area and I can’t imagine trying to battle your way through heavy traffic with a wife in the latter stages of labour!

As a modern father I have (so far) managed to be off work on all of my children’s birthdays and Amélie’s second one was no exception, in fact I managed to organise myself the entire weekend off. Amélie’s birthday was last Friday and on Fridays Éowyn goes to pre-school and this Friday was no exception. However before we took Éowyn to pre-school she helped Amélie to open her birthday presents. Amélie obvious wasn’t entirely sure why she had presents but didn’t care too much as her big sister opened a Peppa Pig treehouse and nothing else then mattered. We did manage to wrestle it from her grasp so that we could take Éowyn to school before heading out for the day’s adventure.

With the impending third baguette due in March we have come to realise that Lucinda’s Nissan Micra is not going to cope with three car seats. In fact, most cars have difficulty fitting three car seats in, hence the proliferation of MPVs on the market. Unfortunately most MPVs simply replace the boot (trunk for my American readers) with two seats. This obviously is handy and does allow extra car seat space, unfortunately it usually means that there is no boot (or trunk) space, which when you have pushchairs and the general accoutrements that goes with children is a real disadvantage. Not all MPVs are made equal though and the balance is to find one large enough to accommodate the three car seats and the progeniture paraphernalia without feeling that you are driving a van (especially when you have been used to driving a Micra) and, possibly more importantly, without breaking the bank.

The model that seems to tick the majority of the boxes is the Ford S-Max (not only does it have seven seats and boot space but it is wide enough to get three car seats across the middle row meaning that as a family of five we could keep the back two seats down turning it into a very large estate car). So it was with this in mind that we took a trip to Car Giant in Shepherd’s Bush to look at their current crop. Unfortunately none of the ones that they had in seemed to be right and when you are spending that kind of money it needs to be right. There was one that had caught our eye when we looked at their internet site but unfortunately in real life this particular individual did not inspire love and affection from either of us so we decided that we would walk away and keep looking there are plenty more S-Maxes in the sea.

Returning back home, we picked Éowyn up from pre-school and then Amélie completed her birthday day at home playing with her new toys with her big sister. It is probably the first time that Amélie has things that Éowyn really wanted and I think that Amélie realised this and suddenly became very possessive of her presents. Time for a lesson in sharing, for both of our children.

A relaxed Friday afternoon melted into an equally relaxed Saturday morning. However there was a big family outing planned for the evening. Hollycombe Working Steam museum, near Liphook in Hampshire is, as the name suggests, a working steam museum with an Edwardian steam-driven fairground alongside the obligatory steam train and traction engines. It is open all summer long and although it closes for the winter in September and October it opens for evening admission which, with the autumnal dark nights, adds a magical element to the fairground. It is somewhere that Lucinda’s family try and visit each year but unfortunately we have not been able to make it for the last three years for one reason or another, in fact the last time we visited Éowyn was a baby.

We arrived at Hollycombe about an hour or so before it opened and Lucinda’s dad fired up the camping stove and cooked us all sausage and bacon sandwiches. We provided desert with Amélie’s birthday cake (a cake that she was unable to eat because it contained milk – so she had her own chocolate brownies that Lucinda made especially for her) before buying our tickets and heading into the museum. As we entered the museum we noticed that the steam train was running. This was the first time it had been running on an evening that the family had visited and therefore it was too good an opportunity to miss, so we paid our £2 and climbed onboard. This really whetted the girls’ appetites for the fair and so after disembarking we headed to the full size carousel. Again both girls thoroughly enjoyed it and Amélie didn’t want to get off. Fortunately there were plenty of children’s rides for them, a junior roundabout, juvenile dobbies, austin cars and the children’s chair-o-planes and they enjoyed all four. We were unsure how they would react to the chair-o-planes but we need not of feared, they loved it! In fact it was a bit of a struggle to get them off each ride and more than once they were the only children on the ride and made the operator send them round twice. I would thoroughly recommend a night trip to Hollycombe for kids, young and old and imagine what it must have been like for your great-grandparents visiting one of these at the turn of the 20th Century.

We ended the weekend in style at the Village Centre in Englefield Green at a joint 4th birthday party for Éowyn and the other children from our N.C.T. group. It was just coincidence that is was 2 days after Amélie’s birthday, it was planned to be somewhere in the middle of the span of the N.C.T.’s group’s birthdays. The Village Centre was a great venue for the party and was just the right size for the group that we had invited, it felt cozy without feeling too crowded and had plenty of room for games. Sharing a children’s party certainly takes the pressure (and the expense) off one family. We all had responsibilities for different aspects of the catering and we all organised one mass participant game each. As a consequence of sharing these responsibilities it meant that the stress was reduced (or at least shared across six sets of parents) and thus as a parent you could actually enjoy your child’s party. There were tears (it wouldn’t be a children’s party without them) but on the whole the children were very well behaved and we keep them entertained long enough to prevent any serious altercations. It was good to meet up with our N.C.T. group even though it was difficult to sit down and chat for any length of time,as a parent that is something that is now second nature.

Now work beckons and my mini break is over, the wide world of sport stops for no man, but before I leave you just an update on Éowyn’s quasi corporeal companions (imaginary friends to you and I). Dizzy, it seems, it a naughty boy but no bad deed goes unpunished. The other day Éowyn calmly informed us that Dizzy was in hospital. He had tiptoed out of the house and got squished by a car. Do not fear he is alright but it seems that his place in Éowyn’s affections has been relegated slightly and now there is a new brother called Connor. Connor it seems looks like an old man in a paper hat. When I suggested that Connor was an old man I was rebuked, ‘No Daddy, he just looks like an old man.‘ So now you know. He also will only wake up if you speak to him in Russian. Éowyn’s quasi corporeal companions are not limited to people, Russian or otherwise, she currently has a cat called Stephanie and a dog called Giggly. Either she has a fantastic imagination or she can see things that are hidden to us cynical adults.

Peace and Love

Baggie