Triskaidekaphobia

Ezra’s 2nd Birthday

Baggie

No signs of triskaidekaphobia or indeed friggatriskaidekaphobia on Friday 13th March 2015, for this auspicious day saw our son celebrate his second birthday.  Ezra was born on the 13th March 2013 weighing 8lb 13oz, with all those 13’s there is no way he can be superstitious about that prime integer.   Not that at two years old he has any inkling of the nature of superstitions or indeed that it is even his birthday.  There is no doubt he will get used to the idea of having a birthday on a Friday 13th, indeed he only has to wait for 5 years and 2020 for it to happen again.

Unfortunately I was unable to take the day off work and both Éowyn and Amélie were at school, Ezra spent the majority of his birthday with his mum, but even his mum wasn’t able to spend the full day with him.  This is because she has an even more pressing arrangement: an invitation to Éowyn’s Mother’s Day concert at school.  Therefore while Lucinda spent an hour at a concert in her honour Nanny came to look after her youngest grandson.

We could not let Ezra’s day pass that easily though, could we?  So I left work early arriving back home at 16:00 just in time to look after Amélie and the birthday boy while Lucinda picked up Éowyn and her friend Billy from Spanish after school club.  Our neighbour’s boy, Blake, then joined us to make it a little more of a party atmosphere.  Yes, they were both ostensibly Éowyn’s friends but both are boys and they know Ezra very well and to be perfectly honest Ezra hasn’t really got any friends.

When you have you first child you join the local N.C.T. club and meet new parents in the same situation, forge friendships and the children naturally become friends.  Indeed Blake and Billy are children of friends that we met through our N.C.T. class.  This is not the case with the second child, although there some from our N.C.T. group have gone on to have a second child giving Amélie a ready-made friend, but it is certainly not the case with the third.  Thus Éowyn has had ready made friends since her birth, Amélie and, even more so, Ezra are going to have to go out into the big wide world and make their own friends.

Éowyn and the boys were a little hyper after a long week at school and so we had to mould that energy into games.  Lucinda had set up a treasure trail for them, with clues pointing to the ultimate prize.  With a bit of prompting they solved the clues and retrieved there Red-Nose Day related prizes.  Yes, not only was Friday 13th March 2015 Ezra’s second birthday it was the 30th anniversary Red-Nose Day, a day that saw them pass the £1,000,000,000 mark.

After a rest for a party meal musical statues and musical bumps were the next focus for their energy with more prizes, this time in the form of sweets and before you knew it Ezra’s party was over.  There was just time for him to blow out the 2-shaped candle on his birthday cake before bed and a well-earned rest for Mommy and Daddy.

It was not, however, Ezra’s only birthday party.  The weekend prior to his birthday, was an F.A. Cup weekend (although less said about West Bromwich Albion’s performance the better) and as such there was no Premier League football (not strictly true as there was one errant match that had been rescheduled to take advantage of both teams lack of interest in the F.A. Cup).  Usually this would mean a weekend off for me, however IMG doesn’t like me taking weekends off.  This weekend saw the start of our latest acquisition Major League Soccer.  Since this is the start of a contract and not really sure what we were going to get or exactly what we were doing with it, I went in to shepherd the first weekend.

Now for those of you for who the letters MLS or indeed Major League Soccer mean nothing, it is the United States version of the Premier League (although without being too unkind the standard is some way off the latter).  So with evening kick-offs on the West Coast of the United States this meant overnights for yours truly.  It has been a long time since I have done overnights and although in themselves it wasn’t too bad, I have felt jet-lagged ever since.

Nevertheless this did mean that although the day time was for sleeping, with three little ones this wasn’t going to happen that easily (although I did pretty well on the Saturday), we could do something during the day.  Therefore we invited Nanny Fran, Auntie Liz, Auntie Mary, Great Uncle Michael and Great Auntie Yvonne for a celebration of Ezra‘s birthday.

Lucinda’s mum and dad were away for the weekend in the Isle of Wight else we would have made a bigger event, although with hindsight the fact that I had only had 3 hours sleep did start to take its toll and so I was glad there were only 5 guests.

I think Ezra enjoyed being the centre of attention although being the 3rd sibling he wasn’t the centre of attention for that long.  His sisters hogged the limelight as much as they could.  However, they were not the one getting presents and since it was his party we let him open the presents that we given him.  He was very excited with his Peppa Pig Weeble set.  As mentioned previously it is his favourite programme (although he insists on calling it Georgie Pig) so having his own Peppa Pig characters that his sisters have to ask him to play with gives him a little more power.  He also received some more wooden track and a new train for his train set.  Now he can play choo-choos with a bigger tracks and even had points so he can have a second route.

With all the new, boy-related, toys that he received for his birthday the toys that he has taken to bed and played with the most was, somewhat predictably, the cheapest. While buying Ezra’s birthday present Lucinda saw the first edition of a collectible magazine set.  With all those collectible magazine sets, the first edition is 99p to entice you in.  This magazine set was aimed at young children and was about my favourite subject as a small child, dinosaurs.  With the first magazine you received an adult triceratops and a baby tyrannosaurus rex.  We thought he might like them but did not foresee the fact that he will not put them down and they would take precedence over his weeble George.

With the advent of Ezra’s second birthday comes the next health care check up.  When you have your first child you look in the books and the guidelines to make sure that your little one is meeting all the targets (or in Éowyn’s case exceeding them all), this becomes less important as the second and third come along.  Nevertheless when a letter comes from the doctors wanting you to make an appointment to check on your third child’s development you start to look at the list of targets and mentally tick them off.

Ezra is meeting and exceeding them all except the target number of words.  By a child’s second birthday they expect them to know 50 words.  When we received the letter we though about all the words that Ezra says and could not make it passed thirty.  Slightly concerned about this I jokingly said to Ezra that he needed to pull his finger out and start saying a few more words.  He has taken that chiding to heart and is seemingly coming out with a new word or two everyday and stringing them together.  We haven’t seen the health worker yet but Ezra now knows his fifty words and all is good.

Two days after Ezra’s birthday was Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday, whichever you prefer.  As usual it wasn’t much of a rest for Lucinda as I was at work but, as mentioned above, there was a celebration at Éowyn’s school on the Friday before (Friday 13th, Ezra’s birthday and Red-Nose day – what a busy day).  The Mother’s day concert started with songs sung by the children followed by cakes and cup of tea for all the mums.  Not exactly relaxing considering everything else that was going on, but it is the thought that counts.

I will leave other family related news to the next update and let Ezra have an update all of his own for his birthday (well, nearly all of his own).

Peace and Love

Baggie

 

What’s it like up there?
Ezra’s birthday cake
That’s Mommy’s cake
I’ll eat Mommy’s cake
Give me that cake!
Too late!
Super George makes his plan
Snow White helps
Ezra on his birthday
A head and shoulders shot
Extreme Close-Up
My cake
All this is mine
And you’re not having any
I like cake
And make a wish
Blow out that candle
Open this!
Do I look grown-up?
Amélie on Red-Nose Day
Red-Nose Day shenanigans

 

A new home for the Bagnalls!

Baggie

And so the house move saga comes to an end and a new chapter in the lives of the Bagnalls begins.  Yes, Friday 1st November (two weeks after we exchanged contracts) we completed and took possession of our new home, while still retaining possession of our old home.

House moves are very rarely straightforward but this has seen its fair share of twists and turns.

We first saw the house on Monday 13th May 2013 (another 13 to add to the various 13s following us about this year – no triskaidekaphobia here) and fell in love with it.  It was the first and only house that we saw that we liked for both the house itself and its location.  Although far from perfect (is there such a thing?) it ticked a considerable number of boxes, including the majority of our major boxes but was over budget.  We chatted about it and decided to go above our budget and put a cheeky offer in.  Not surprisingly the offer was rejected but we were in no position to increase or indeed make any kind of counter-offer for we did not have a buyer for our property, so we sat and waited.

A couple of weeks later, the sellers had not had an offer on the property (and neither had we) and they said that they would be prepared to accept a lower offer than our cheeky offer, if we could start the purchase ball rolling.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have an offer on our house so that opportunity passed us by.

Then we had a day of mixed emotions.  An offer was made on our house that we accepted but on the same weekend an offer was made on the house that we were buying that blew us out of the water, we simply could not match it.  At that moment it looked like we were going to be homeless with our buyers looking for a quick sale (which suited us too) and no house suitable for us to buy.

Then the twists of twists.  Two days after accepting the offer on our house BAA submitted a new proposal to the Airports Commission (the Davies Commission) for the expansion of Heathrow Airport.  Stanwell Moor is nestled between Staines Moor, the western section of the M25, the King George VI Reservoir and Heathrow Airport and as such has been encroached before by the construction of the reservoir, the construction of the M25 and, more recently, the construction of Heathrow’s Terminal 5.  The South West expansion proposal however was the first time that it has been threatened directly.  The South West expansion proposal for the third runway at Heathrow airport will see the complete destruction of Stanwell Moor, the village that the Cathralls have called home for the last 50-odd years.  Obviously this is only a proposal, one of nearly 50 that affect the South East of England, and there is no reason to believe it will be the one that the Airports Commission give their backing to (indeed that backing will not come for any of the proposals until at least 2015) nevertheless it is a sword of Damocles hanging over the village.

In complete fairness to our buyers they investigated the situation thoroughly including calling council members and the Heathrow commission hotline.  However, they decided that it was a risk they were not willing to take (and I can understand that, as they were moving into the area and as such have no emotional ties to Stanwell Moor) and thus pulled out of the purchase.

This now left us with no house to buy and a house that no one was likely to buy.

There was still time for one more twist.  The chain for the alternate buyers was looking decidedly dodgy and the sellers were becoming nervous and they asked if we could up our offer and they would then go with us.  We still had no buyer for our house and we could not match the other offer but we spoke to a financial adviser to seek the possibility of releasing equity in our current house by turning it into a buy-to-let (or strictly ‘let-to-buy’) and scraped all our investments together and put in a final offer.  The sellers spent a couple of days mulling the options over and decided to go with us.  The rest, they say, is history!  We have the house that we wanted but have become reluctant landlords in order to realise that dream.  Assuming we can rent the property out without too many void periods or anything going tragically wrong then we should be fine, at least in the short term.  Depending on the Airports Commission decision this may either be a short experiment or a potential pension investment.  If we can’t rent it out or the void periods start adding up it could be a money pit that bankrupts us.  Life for the Bagnalls is never boring!

So it is goodbye Stanwell Moor, hello Staines-Upon-Thames (yes, this is its official name!).

Peace and Love

Baggie

Stanwell Moor
The Bagnall’s first home
Bagnall manor

What’s in a name?

Baggie

At 05.25 (GMT) on Wednesday 13th March 2013 in the hospital of St. Peters, Chertsey, Surrey our third child, and first son was born weighing 8lb 13oz (4.01kg).  Unlike his sisters he doesn’t seem to have inherited the Badger ears but does have the Bagnall nose as so will have to learn the Bagnall nose rub.

Now usually this is where we would officially announce his name and explain any meanings (if any) behind the choice of name.  Unfortunately Lucinda and I cannot agree on a name.  Now you may think that we have had nine months (and at least 5 knowing that he was a boy!) to make this decision but the names we had on the shortlist don’t seem to suit him.  That may sound a like strange and maybe it is the sleep deprivation that we are both experiencing but we will take a few days to reflect but rest assured you will be the first to find out.

His arrival in this world was relatively straightforward.  Yesterday afternoon Lucinda started feeling some discomfort that she likened to period pains.  We were not convinced until later that evening that this was it.  Yes, he was a couple of days late but that means nothing.  However Lucinda’s parents were put on standby for baby sitting duties  I explained to Éowyn and Amélie that it was possible that Bilbo bump (the nickname that he has had in the womb – and one we are fighting against it becoming his real name) wanted to come and meet them.  If he did then Mommy and Daddy would go to hospital and when they woke up Nanny and Granddad would be here.

It was about 23:30 when we decided it was time, Nanny and Granddad came round and we drove to St Peters.  Maternity triage was full and we had to wait for over an hour before Lucinda was examined.  The midwife recognised Lucinda and so when the examination confirmed that it was action stations she took us up to the labour ward and managed to secure us a pool room for the water birth that Lucinda had craved.

So it was 0130 and we were in labour.  Although triage was full the labour ward seemed relatively empty.  Thus the student midwife (Georgina) that was accompanying the midwife was able to spend a lot of time with us.  She was very bubbly and gained our confidence which was crucial during the birth.

With a water birth it is very much hands off for the midwives and so it was with Bilbo Bump’s birth.  Lucinda was guided through the birth by Georgina, who was excellent, but it was down to Lucinda who once again went through the whole of her labour with her TENS machine and then when she was in the water: gas and air, it is not a good idea to use a TENS machine in water!  The birth was relatively quick, even without the assistance of gas and air and we were soon holding our son.  Once again Lucinda was immense and I was very proud to be her husband.

The beauty of having an early morning baby is that we were able to be discharged by early afternoon and so for the first time, Lucinda (and the baby) did not have to spend a night in the hospital and we were able to be a family straight away.  So we left St Peters in the bright sunshine of a cold March afternoon (indeed our arrival at home was greeted with a short sharp snow shower!) and headed for Nanny and Granddad’s to introduce the new addition to his sisters, his Nanny and Granddad and Nanny Fran, who had driven down from West Bromwich as soon as she heard that she had a grandson.

So Baby Bagnall was born on the 13th day of March, in the year 2013 and weighed 8lbs 13oz.  With all these thirteens flying about I don’t think that he will suffer from triskaidekaphobia.  Indeed he has been born on a rather auspicious day, not only was the comet Panstarrs visible in the Northern hemisphere but it was also the day that the Roman Catholic Cardinals chose a new Pope to lead the Roman Catholic Church.  Jorge Bergoglio the Archbishop of Buenos Aires was voted Pontiff and has chosen the name Francis I.  He is the first Pope from Latin America and with the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI it means that for the first time in nearly 600 years there are two living Popes.  A momentous time.

So Éowyn and Amélie will have to share this website with their brother and I will attempt to keep you all up to date with the growing pains of our growing family.  Lucinda and I would like to thank you all for your kind messages and look forward to introducing our son (and announcing his name) to you all in the coming weeks and months.

Peace and Love

Baggie

And here are the photos I am sure you have all been waiting for:

I can hear the sea
Yes, it is comfy
Nice and relaxed