Catching Up

Well, as Jono says, we are a bit behind on Ellie updates but I'll try to redress that!

She's now 11 weeks old and growing fast, as babies are wont to do! She has been very good at going to bed at 7pm, having a change and feed at 10.30m and then sleeping through until 7am. She's most definitely dropped her middle of the night feed. Some mornings though she wakes at about 5am and wants to get up then, which isn't too pleasing for her poor parents!

The last few nights Ellie has been very reluctant to go to bed at 7pm and has literally screamed the house down until we've brought her back downstairs. It isn't that she's hungry or even that she wants a cuddle, she just isn't ready to go to sleep. Once she's on her play-mat she's perfectly content to play for an hour or so before she's put to bed again. Strange child!

Ellie is getting very good at reaching for things now. We need to get a photo or video of her playing with the butterflies on her play-mat. She reaches out and strokes them, then gives them a good bash with her fist! She hasn't quite worked out how to grab them yet but she does hold onto things like her bibs and the blankets when they arrive in her hand.



Here's a pick of her at 9 weeks...

She's having a good nap in her Moses basket, which she isn't going to fit in for much longer!





Here's Ellie at 10 weeks, having a good splash in the bath with me...she loves having baths with us because they are deeper and she can float and have a good kick.




Here she is again, just after her bath, having a look at her teddies with her head up. She doesn't really like being on her tummy much but it's supposed to be good for babies to do it in order to develop their neck and shoulder muscles. Try telling Ellie that!!



Here's one last photo of our little bean, just over 11 week old. She looks so adorable in her fluffy coat with ears on!!

Ellie during Week 8 - a little bit behind

Well Ellie will be 10 weeks old tomorrow and we've been trying to post a picture of her every week. We've taken the photos every week but just haven't posted them up.

Here is week 8, when we all went out for Sam's birthday to a really nice Italian restaurant in Shrewsbury that no-one had been to before.

Ellie groaned and grizzled lots and we got disparaging looks from one of the other diners when she cried but it was a pleasant evening with good food and good company.

Happy Birthday Smee...

Where have we been?

Well, it's been a while since we last posted due to lots of reasons, primarily we've just been really busy.

I'll give an update on the house and maybe Smee can tell you about Ellie?

The house is coming on in leaps and bounds although currently it is in its worst state ever, at its lowest ebb. All the ceilings are down, all the plaster is off the downstairs walls, wires are hanging everywhere, floorboards are up, most of the windows are smashed , the front door has been broken into so many times it may as well not be there, bricks are missing on most walls, there is a thick layer of brick dust over most surfaces and it always seems to be colder inside than out!

All that said we are really happy in that all the hidden demons are now exposed and we have a really good idea of what it will take to reinstate the place. A couple of demons aired themselves in the form of wooden lintels above most of the windows. Some are rotten and need replacing but we knew about two so a few more will be ok. We had a bitter sweet discovery that quite a few of the walls are made of sandstone, the same as Shrewsbury Castle, but we will have to re-render inside and out to preserve the construction and to protect as much as possible against damp penetration.

The damp proofers have removed the downstairs plaster and injected all round. Its weird to see all the small holes and little puddles but this shows they did their job. It comes with a 30 year guarantee and some of the rear of the house has an old membrane anyway. The guys will be back after 1st fix to replaster the walls and then we'll really see a big difference.

The doors and windows are on order, we managed to change the 'hand' of the main entrance door at the last minute today and we've gone for an archway between the porch and the kitchen.

The roof is nearly finished. There were minimal breakages and just one pallet of reclaimed tiles was required. The barge boards at the gable end will need replacing but only when we can get the scaffolding up once the electricity cables have been isolated.

Here is a close up of the 4 inch gauge of the roof battens. 66 up each side to give a 22 foot pitch. A real pain in the arse according to the roofer!


Here we can see one half of the kitchen, the utility room and downstairs toilet. Believe it or not?!


Here is the other half of the kitchen and the porch. The keen eyed amongst you will notice the studwork wood laid out on the floor. These are the positions of the walls we are adding back in.

Next up is the master bedroom complete with twenty layers of wallpaper.

This is the living room, with a view into the kitchen. That doorway will actually be blocked soon, and re-opened into the dining room which is to the right, through the 1.5 foot thick stone wall. If you look closely you will see the seismic crack that runs through the house, top to bottom. I think it was this crack that prompted the buttress and tie bar to be added at the far end of the house. The crack, according to the structural surveyor, is very old and hasn't moved for years. The filler is horse hair so I am inclined to believe him.


Finally you can see the landing area from the bathroom / bedroom 3. There is more studwork to go in here but you can see a good deal of what the house is made of, namely lathe and plaster ceilings.

Sleeping through!

I forgot to mention - Ellie gave me a lovely birthday present last Tuesday, she slept all the way through from 10.30m to 7.30am! Hurrah!

She's spent the last week and a half sleeping until 5.15am most nights. We didn't even reduce her middle of the night feed to encourage her to do this - she just dropped it by herself!

We had our first overnight trip away on Monday night, to Mark and Katie's. I'm glad Jono has an estate car! We had so much stuff - for just one night!- that we almost filled the car! Ellie was very well behaved and liked meeting baby Alice. She also slept through until 7.30am again, and last night she also slept through until 7am. I'm glad she's finally giving Mummy and Daddy a longer sleeping spell!

Poor Ellie

Ellie had her first lot of immunisations on Thursday and she was feeling quite poorly and sorry for herself yesterday. She screamed pretty much non-stop from 5pm to 11.30pm but then she went to sleep until 5.30am so she must have been feeling a bit better...or she was just knackered!

Today she has been a little better, and feeding better too, but when she has been crying she's been doing it really pathetically and squeakily.

The past few days she has been being really wriggly and is managing to spin herself about on her back. She can almost spin herself through 90 degrees now!

Here we go

Well yesterday marked the start of the main renovation with the scaffolding going up for the roof to be re-built. They could only do the front and back of the house, not the rear, because the live power cables attach to the side of the house. Not to worry, the repointing can be done off towers or ladders and the roof can be done from the front and back.

I went up today to take a photo on my way back from work and managed to get there just as it was getting dark. According to Foxy (our builder) the timbers are in very good condition and probably none will need to be replaced. This means we might be able to get the loft floor timbers uprated (replaced) to allow us to floor it and be in spec regarding building regs should we want a loft conversion. As usual its another task that is so much better done at this stage to save lots of hassle and cost in the future. The problem is that if we carry on doing all these speculative jobs we'll end up spending too much. We have to draw the line somewhere. Maybe once we've sat down with Foxy and gone through the rest of the jobs we'll have enough in the budget to sort the loft floor out?

Anyway, here's the photo, you can see tiles on the scaff ready to be put back on once the felt and battens have been added and replaced.

Little Miss Cutiepie

I just had to add this photo to the blog too, as Ellie is looking so delightfully adorable! She's watching her mobile in her cot...

It's Ours!

Oh...and the house is ours at last!

I had a call from the electrician I met up at the house last week and he's come in over £600 cheaper than the other electrician, so that's good news. All we're waiting for now is the plumber to come in cheaper than our first quote.

Jono and I will be going up to the house this weekend to do some clearing and burning of debris and rubbish. The more we can do ourselves, the less the builder has to do and so the less we pay! Obviously if anyone wants to volunteer for some manual labour in a gorgeous location, they're more than welcome!!!

Mother's Day

Having got up at 7am to see to Ellie, I went back to bed at 9 for a quick nap whilst she had hers. She'd kindly arranged with Daddy for me to have breakfast in bed, which was nice, and she'd even made me a card and written in it. Her writing was a bit wobbly but not too bad at all for a 7 week old!

We went out later on for a family meal with my sister and my mum at the Four Crosses just outside Shrewsbury. Here's a pic of Ellie with Uncle Shaun (who finally managed to get a nice long cuddle with her, without anyone stealing her off him!).


Here's a nice piccy of my mum, Isabel and Sophia too...