The Muppets

Welcome to 2013

Monday 7th January 2013Sunday 1st January 2017Baggie

So as we sit Janus-like at the start of his month I will take the opportunity to review 2012 and attempt a prediction of what is to happen over the next 12 months.

So firstly what did we learn in 2012, the year that the Olympics came to London and Britain became really good at sport (except Football)? The World didn’t end; we didn’t fall over a fiscal cliff and the best way of guaranteeing the wettest year on record is to issue a hose-pipe ban in March. From a Bagnall-centric point of view we discovered the joys of all-inclusive holidays and the holiday island of Tenerife. Éowyn had been asking to go on a ‘plane again throughout 2011 and Amélie had not had the joy. We, obviously wanted a family holiday that was easy and would be rain-free and therefore would be relaxing for us too and so we opted for all-inclusive (eliminates the worry of finding child-friendly meals). Tenerife seemed to be a good bet for weather and had the attaction of Loro Parque as well as being the third largest volcano in the world. Both girls were extremely well-behaved throughout the holiday and thoroughly enjoyed the ‘plane ride, the food and the pools. Éowyn discovered her burgeoning love of photography (behind the lens, she has fallen out of love with being the object of the photo) and the horrors of a camel ride while Amélie was content to take the experience in her stride.

Éowyn also discovered the joys of the cinema. She has been a film fan for a long time but going to the cinema is very different, especially when you are three years old. Her first film was The Muppets and she thoroughly enjoyed it, so I bought the soundtrack (on CD – I am still 20th Century when it comes to music) and it hasn’t been out of my car stereo since. Both of the girls request the album before I am even in the car and they know all the words to all the songs. The film therefore had to be bought (on Blu-Ray) and has been watched a number of times. It is a good job that I am a big Muppets fan and I think that it is something that the youth of today have definitely missed out on and I can not wait for the sequel.

The biggest lesson from 2012 however was all about the preciousness and fragility of life. The beginning of the year saw the passing of a number of friends and family members and without wishing to put one life over another possibly the most significant to me were my Dad’s brother, my Uncle Roy and my Nan’s brother, my Great Uncle Albert. And although we are sad at their passing the circle of life continues and in June we were delighted to find out that Lucinda had fallen pregnant for the third time. However our joy was somewhat tempered by the blood results at the 12 week scan, which indicated a high risk of chromosomal abnormalities. Both being of the mind that we needed to know we opted for Chorionic Villus Sampling (CVS) to know for certain. Fortune looked upon us and the results came back that we were expecting a healthy baby boy. Both of us feel that this now makes our little family complete.

Then in early October a second reminder was sent our way with Lucinda suffering from Appendicitis. She has put the initial pains down to pregnancy twinges but as the day continued the pain got worse. A trip to A&E confirmed the worse and Lucinda was rushed into theatre for an appendectomy. It was a close thing with the swollen appendix about to burst (it was already weeping) but she is now fully recovered (apart from a small scar) and it is but a memory and we will not dwell on the statistics regarding pregnant women, unborn children and burst appendicies.

And to end the year Nanny Fran has retired; therefore it is our mission to keep her as busy as possible and with 3 grandchildren she will not have time to put her feet up. As both Lucinda and I came from three child families and so for us it seems quite natural to have three children. However in the modern world that doesn’t seem to be the norm. Indeed, holidays, family tickets and even cars do not seem to have been created with three children in mind. The biggest of those problems is the fact that modern cars have not been made wide enough to fit three car seats across. When we were growing up that wasn’t a problem as there were no car seats. Indeed there were no rear seat belts! However the modern age dictates that a child should be in a child’s car seat (which it right and proper) however to fit three car seats into a car one has to opt for the seven seater, the MPV. At least should we opt for the Ford S-Max (which is our current favourite) then we can take Nanny Fran with us on our excursions!

It seems a bit of a moot question to inquire as to what we are looking forward to in 2013. A new car, a new house (if we can possibly find what we are looking for in our price range) or a change in work premises (yes, after 10 years in the current building we are moving from the surburban idyll that is Chiswick to the leafy business park that is Stockley Park)?

Obviously these are all totally eclipsed by the fact that we are expecting our third child and it is to be a son. With two kids already under our belt we are not entirely newbies to this parenting business but they have been girls. By all accounts the leap from two to three is not as big as either the jump from one to two or indeed zero to one but as Éowyn and Amélie have taught us, no two children are the same. Indeed Éowyn and Amélie are like chalk and cheese in some respects. So where will the latest edition sit? Or will he take the Bagnall children into a third direction. Whatever, as long as the little one is healthy, it will be a fun journey and give me even more reason to update you all via this medium (and, more likely, yet another reason why I will not have time to) and to fill the servers of this corner of the internet with more photos of the growing family.

It will also be a momentous year for our other children. Not only will they have to cope with another child vying for their parents’ (and grandparents’) attention and eventually playing with their toys and upsetting their games but they will have to move in together so that their little brother can have his own room. At the moment Éowyn and Amélie have separate bedrooms but as we live in a three bedroom house the sisters will have to move in together. Eventually they will be in the bunk beds that we have bought but until Amélie is a little older we will just move their current beds into the same room. Therefore there will be a whole learning curve of compromise that they will have to go through.

In addition, Éowyn will be going to school. Not pre-school, but actual full time education. We are obviously anxious that we have chosen the right school and that she will enjoy it. She will be going from being one of the oldest (and tallest) at her pre-school to being much further down the pecking order in a much bigger environment. Although she can be a little on the shy side I am sure that she will take it in her stride. Hopefully the fact that she will be in a more structured learning environment will be good for her.

When we know what school Éowyn has been accepted for, then it will determine which pre-school we will send Amélie to. We have delayed sending Amélie to pre-school only because we don’t want to end up causing ourselves issues with the girls being at completely different sites across the Staines-Upon-Thames (!) area. Hopefully it will not be long until we know the answer.

With a new baby, probably a new car, a new work environment and maybe a new house it is already gearing up to be a busy year. A year that will see visits from two bright comets. The first, Panstarrs will grace the skies around my birthday (and possibly my son’s birth) and the second will perhaps be the brightest comet of our generation, if not the century. Comet Ison is heading our way and should be visible to the naked eye for the last few months of 2013 and at its peak should be brighter than a full moon.

So as portents adorn the heavens and Lucinda and I complete 4 decades on this planet – don’t tell anyone – (I don’t think those two events are related) I leave you a little bit of trivia with which you can impress your friends. 2013 is the first year since 1987 where all four digits are different from each other. Do with that what you will.

And finally I hope that 2013 brings you love and wisdom; the strength to follow your dreams and to learn from your mistakes and the wonder of a child to appreciate the beauty of this World.

Peace and Love

Baggie

PS: The photo below was taken on our Christmas trip to Chessington World of Adventures, at the Sealife Centre there, it was Yuletide so excuse the reindeer antlers!

November’s sky is chill and drear, November’s leaf is red and sear

Tuesday 20th November 2012Tuesday 20th November 2012Baggie

As Autumn strengthens its grip on the land the leaves are changing colour contrasting against the uninspiring greyness that has been the colour of the sky for the last couple of weeks allow the Bagnalls to bring a little colour into your life. We find ourselves sitting pretty between the girls’ birthdays and Christmas and for such a dull and usually monotonous period of the year it has been far from humdrum in the Bagnall household.

In the British calendar Halloween is closely following by Guy Fawkes night (or Bonfire night) on the 5th November. A date which commemorates an unsuccesful attempt at regicide and mass terrorism by Robert Gatesby and his fellow plotters, including the eponymous Guy Fawkes who was caught readying himself to light 36 barrels of gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament by a team lead by Lord Thomas Knyvet. (As an aside Lord Knyvet is quite reknown around our corner of the world, as he was granted the Manors of Stanwell and Staines and his effigy is in the chancel of Stanwell Parish church). Bonfire and firework displays are put on throughout the country and we decided that we would try and see one this year. Unfortunately as I was working at the weekend we had to find one that was planned for the actual date which fell on a Monday this year.

Cleves School in Weybridge appeared to be the closest display and so my friends Andy and Al joined us on a trip to Weybridge. Hats and scarves were the order of the day as the November chill had begun and positioned ourselves at the edge of the school playing field to watch the display. There was entertainment beforehand with halloween themed stilt-walkers and band knocking out covers of 80’s and 90’s rock favourites. The display was not disappointing either and lasted at least half an hour. We were very impressed, although Amélie was a little scared by the loud bangs. There are quite a lot of firework related photos here. I would definitely recommend Cleves School display if you are looking for a firework display next year.

It appears that holiday to Puncknowle has had two positive effects on Amélie. The first, which in fairness was already well on its way, is the fact that she is now sleeping through the night. This means that Lucinda and I will have 6 months of uninterrupted sleep before baguette number three makes an appearance. It is amazing how much better you feel one you can get a good night’s sleep. The second is a big step forward and all off her own back.

On our return from Puncknowle we decided to buy Amélie a potty and to make her involved in the decision we encouraged her to pick one, a dinosaur potty was her choice. We put it in the lounge and thought no more. Then Monday morning she came downstairs and refused to have a nappy on. That was it. No more. Nappies in the day time are a memory. Yes, there have been a couple of accidents but to be honest the transition to nappy-free days has been rather painless. Yes, we do have to clap her everytime she goes for a wee, and she has even begun to take a bow when she receives the applause.

Lucinda is now back at work returning from her appendectomy and holiday. She had to see the company doctor and has been given a gradual restart with reduced hours. These return days have co-incided with my days off. So with our days out of sync it means no requirements for childcare, which has been doubly useful with Amélie potty training and the fact that she has come out in spots. Lucinda took her to the walk-in clinic (no appointments at the doctors) and the diagnosis came back as chicken pox. Fortunately both Lucinda (and it is not good if a pregnant woman gets chicken pox) and I have both had it as children. Éowyn has not had it so we feared the worse with both children going through it at the same time. However, Amélie’s case has been extremely mild (thankfully) and Éowyn has not succumbed to the pox. We have got away lightly. This unsynchronised days off occurs in six week patterns so the next time it will happen will be Christmas week. We both have jobs where public holidays mean nothing to whether we are at work and so it is with Christmas. Lucinda will be working on Christmas day itself and I will be working throughout the yuletide with the exception of Christmas day. The glamour of television.

Not that this will worry the girls too much. Amélie is too young to understand and Éowyn will have her imaginary parents and imaginary brother to look after her on Christmas day. Yes, Éowyn’s entourage of quasi-corporeal companions is still growing. As mentioned above she now has imaginary parents and when they are in the room Lucinda and I become Auntie and Uncle. As you can probably guess her imagination is well developed and her play is quite imaginative and quite regularly makes games up and even songs. She loves to hear stories and will ask you to tell her stories about when you were a child in addition to stories from books. Obviously she is a child of the 2010’s (whatever you call this decade) and so enjoys DVD’s and television programmes too and they all help to fire her imagination.

You may recall that in February I took Éowyn to the cinema for the first time to see the Muppets. Like her father before her she instantly became a fan. So not only do we own the film on DVD but also have the soundtrack on CD. This CD is permanently in the CD player in the car and whenever Éowyn is in the car she requests the Muppets. Not only does Éowyn now know all the words to all the songs, so does Lucinda, and I quite often find myself whistling ‘Life’s a Happy Song’ or bursting into ‘Me Party’ at inopportune moments. Now the fourth member of the family is hooked. ‘Daddy, Muppets please,‘ is the first thing that Amélie will say as you put her into the car. Although I love the Muppets and think that the soundtrack is excellent I think I have to try and find another soundtrack or album that they enjoy as much so that I can have some variety on my CD player in my car!

Julia Donaldson is rightly the Children’s Laureate and the girls enjoy many of her books, indeed Lucinda and I enjoy reading her books too. For those non-parents (and especially non-UK non-parents) her most famous book is probably The Gruffalo (a book I could probably recite by heart) which has made a successful leap to video with a 30 minute animated film. Another of her books has taken a leap into another medium: Room on the Broom , another of our favourites had been turned into a stage show. It is the story of a witch that allows a dog, a frog and a parrot join her and her cat on her broom. Doesn’t sound too interesting? Well there is a twist in the tale and you will have to buy the book to find out what happens.

We thought that Amélie was probably a little too young so we just bought tickets for Lucinda, me and Éowyn for the Sunday show at the Rose Theatre in Kingston-Upon-Thames with the other families of our NCT group. Unfortunately work is extremely busy for me at the moment and it is difficult for me to take weekends off so disappointingly I was unable to go. Rather than see the ticket go to waste we asked Éowyn who she would like to accompany her and mommy to the theatre. Her cousin Megan was the lucky recipient of the spare ticket. Éowyn was extremely excited to be going to the theatre (although I think she thought it was going to be the cinema). The show was excellent and Lucinda, Éowyn and even Megan thoroughly enjoyed it which made me even more disappointed to have missed it. The other members of our NCT group also enjoyed it and all of the children were well behaved throughout the show, which is nice to think that there are alternative ways to entertain our youngsters that does not rely on 21st century technology.

So since Lucinda is at work and it is time for some Daddy time I will leave you with a small selection of photos while I pretend to be a monster.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Scary Stilt Walker

Look at the pretty lights!

Now you look at the lights!

Inflatable Slides

The band

More pretty lights

Whizz

Bang

Ooo-ooo

Manha, manha – Mud!

Saturday 30th June 2012Wednesday 1st January 2014Baggie

June has nearly been and gone and still no sign of summer. Even last week’s Summer Solstice saw no let up in the unseasonably cold and wet weather indeed following the wettest April on record and a wet May this has been the wettest June on record. Something that I am acutely aware of for last weekend I was camping on the Isle of Wight at the annual music festival. As you may have seen in the media the heavy rain and tens of thousands of pairs of welly-clad feet churned the camping fields into a veritable mudbath. Fortunately we avoided the traffic jams caused by the influx of visitors but need not avoid the rain while pitching our tents or the storm (45mph winds and 1 inch (25mm) of rain) that fell on the Saturday night. So after 3 days of mud even the lure of Bruce Springsteen, The Vaccines, Noel Gallagher and other smaller acts was not enough for us to endure another 24 hours of inclement weather conditions. I was at Glastonbury in 1997 and 1998 so I have been there and done that and have no need to try and prove myself to anyone. Lucinda and the girls were surprised but very pleased when a muddy, tired, welly-clad daddy walked through the doors just before noon on Sunday afternoon.

That was last weekend and obviously there has not been many updates this month so what else has been happening in June 2012? With the poor weather it has not been the best of months to galavant through the English countryside and indeed use our Merlin passes. However, we are a stolid bunch with regards to the weather, being English you have to, and it did not prevent us from having a barbecue around Nanny and Granddad’s to celebrate Auntie Cristina’s 40th birthday. We even dressed warmly and ate outside (thankfully it stayed relatively dry).

Éowyn returned to pre-school the next day with a lot of encouragement from Lucinda and me to be good. Thankfully she has heeded this and so far this term we have had glowing reports about her behaviour. I think because she is relatively clever, but also relatively big that she is used to getting her own way and gets frustrated when she doesn’t. All part of growing up but still not good as a parent when you get called in because of her behaviour. With this in mind we have enrolled her in gymnastics classes at Spelthorne gym. Éowyn is very flexible (she will idly stuck her toes for instance) and forever pretending she is a gymnast and so we thought it would be good discipline couple with good exercise. We asked Éowyn if she wanted to go to gymnastics and she became very animated and excited about the prospect. The first time she went Lucinda was running late and so there was no time for Éowyn to think about what she was going to do and happily went in and thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact all week she was excited about going again, however the next week they arrived in good time and Éowyn became nervous and didn’t want to go in and Lucinda had to end up pushing her through the door. It seems very cruel but it was what she needed and again she thoroughly enjoyed herself and so currently our eldest is a fully paid up member of British Gymnastics.

On the weekend between Cris’s birthday barbecue and the Isle of Wight music festival we paid a visit to West Bromwich and Nanny Fran’s. Éowyn has been asking lots of questions lately about my Dad (Granddad Vic). For those of you that don’t now my Dad died in 1987 (25 years ago!) and so not only did Éowyn never meet him neither did Lucinda, since he passed away 20 years before we were married! Obviously Éowyn realises that Lucinda has a mum and dad and I have a mum but where is my Dad, so we have been explaining it to her as best as we can. So part of the journey was hopefully going to go to Dad’s grave and show her where he was buried and being Father’s day it seemed apt. Unfortunately the weather was so poor that we never managed to go, hopefully next time.

Nevertheless a good time was had at Nanny Fran’s even though it was another flying visit. It has been a little while since Nanny Fran had seen Amélie and at the moment Amélie is going through one of those rapid development stages and so kept Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz amused for the entire weekend. Her vocabulary is growing, almost daily and she is now stringing words together to make sentences. Usually surrounding food, things like: ‘My daddy, breakfast please.‘ which is her usual greeting in a morning. Both girls love their families and they gt to see a lot of Lucinda’s side because we all live relatively close but because they don’t see Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz that often they do get very excited when they pop up to West Bromwich. That is not the usual reaction West Bromwich gets from people in Surrey.

As you may remember Éowyn first cinema visit was in February to see the Muppets movie (a particular favourite of Daddy’s too). This month saw the release of the film on Blu Ray and DVD and so it needed to be bought. Since we have bought it, I think Éowyn has watched it half a dozen times at least. It has definitely stuck in her brain because she will quite often burst into verses of Manha Manha, very amusing. There is another song that Éowyn has become fond of singing and that is ‘You are my Sunshine.’ It may be that she has inherited her father’s love of music but unfortunately at the moment it seems as if she has also inherited my singing voicing. Poor girl at least she has her gymnastics!

In addition to a lack of major days out, there is a dearth of photos since the last write up too, hence most of the below photos are from Cristina’s birthday party. We will try harder for the next write up.

Peace and Love

Baggie