An extremely belated update!!

Well, as the title says, this is rather belated. It's due mainly to the fact that since we moved to the sticks and had to switch to AOL for our broadband, the cheeky buggers keep blocking access to our blog host.

So, what's been happening? Ellie has had her 1st birthday party, attended by lots of her friends and family. It was absolute pandemonium for a couple of hours but a good time was had by all.


Here she is congratulating herself for blowing out all (one) of her birthday cake candles!!


I returned to work, and then left again to start maternity leave! It was quite nice to have a break from looking after Ellie all day but I really missed her too. It was nice for her to spend lots of time with her cousins and Nicola. She still goes to nursery once a week - she absolutely loves it there and barely gives us a backwards glance when we drop her off!

Ellie took her first steps on my birthday and now walking is most definitely the preferred way to travel! She's had her first shoes, which she really loves and spends all day toddling about all over the place.


Here's the little darling looking a bit pensive about walking on the grass!









We had a terrible shock in March when my step-dad Paul passed away suddenly in his sleep from a heart attack. Obviously this was totally unexpected and has been very hard for all of the family, especially my mum of course. The funeral went really well, as far as funerals go, and was extremely well attended - over 200 people were there. We shall miss him a lot and it's very upsetting that he didn't manage to meet his two new grandchildren - our new bean and his daughter Nicola's baby who is due in September. My sister and I were very lucky to have had him as our dad for 16 years. Rest in peace Paul - we'll be thinking of you lots.





Here's one of our favourite pics of Paul, taken at Lake Vyrnwy in 2007 with Sophia. Grandpa loved his grandchildren and was really looking forward to the next two.



Speaking of the new bean - Tabitha Rose was born on May 4th (her due date!!) after a rather speedy and intense labour. She was the spitting image of Ellie when she was born - so much so that given two photos of them, I couldn't actually tell them apart! She was 7lbs 5oz, much smaller than her big sister, but is very gorgeous and is settling into the family nicely. She is feeding very well and our only niggle is the fact that during late at night she gets a bit colicky, which is a bit wearing on our nerves but hopefully it is just a phase that will pass soon. She kept us up until 3am this morning!


Here's Tabs, having just been born. We don't have too many photos of her yet, as it's been a bit manic around here, what with Ellie too!





That's it for the kids - I shall try to do a house update very soon. There's been a lot of change around here in the last few months so I think it deserves a post all of its own!

First Christmas

Well, it's certainly been a hectic last few weeks!

Christmas was lots of fun, Jono and I hosted this year for my family. Christmas dinner was a big success and Ellie enjoyed having everyone around. She got lots of pressies, mainly clothes or books, but her favourites were her percussion set and her Tinky-Winky!


To the right is our staged "Ellie at Christmas" photo. It's really cute and she did manage to keep the hat on for more than 4 seconds, just enough time to take the photo!

















Here's Ellie and Daddy, in their matching dressing gowns. Ellie did spoil the moment rather, by picking her nose, but I love this photo anyway!








We managed to get down to Wiltshire between xmas and new year to see Jono's family and it's good that we did because Jono's Nanny got to see Ellie again. Unfortunately, last weekend, Nanny died from pneumonia, which had come on quite suddenly. It was a very sad start to the new year but we all got to see her one last time and we have nice memories.

Mark, Katie and Alice came up for New Year and we all had a nice quiet celebration - just the one firework! Jaime Oliver lent a hand for our NYE dinner, and very delicious it was too!

In other news, I started back at work on Monday - 2.5 days a week. My sister will be having Ellie all day on Mondays and half a day on Thursday, and then Ellie will go to nursery all day on Wednesdays. Today was Ellie's first day at nursery and she was as good as gold. So much so that the proprietor and baby room leader both said she was the best baby they'd ever had there. Not a tear or a winge all day apparently! I'm sure it won't last - she's probably just overwhelmed with all the new things to look at! It was good that Ellie felt happy at nursery, but all the same, it would have been nice for her to have missed us just a little bit!!

I can't believe that Ellie is going to be 1 this Saturday! It doesn't seem like a year has passed at all. It just goes to show how precious these first few years actually are because they pass in a blink.

December Update

Well, as usual, we've been terribly busy and haven't managed to get on here and do any updates recently!

First of all, how's Ellie doing? Well, she's doing grand as it happens. She's on the move in a major way, to the point where no plant or paper product is safe anymore (she adores eating magazines and paper!). She isn't quite walking yet but she won't be long I don't think. She's just started cruising around the furniture and crawls after Figaro, much to his disgust!

We have recently had to switch back to two part nappies (nappy with a waterproof wrap over the top) as Ellie seems to have such an enormous bladder that her pocket nappies were having to be changed every hour or two. These new ones are so much more absorbent and fluffy!

Food-wise, Ellie will eat pretty much anything we give her. She has a particular penchant for chile con carne (obviously her father's daughter!), beef stew/steak pie and cheese sandwiches. She isn't terribly keen on sweet stuff, except for her yogurts and fruit, which I'm perfectly happy about. She did, however, take a liking to my bacon flavoured Wheat Crunchies the other day!

Here's a pic or two of Ellie recently:












Ellie looking very cheeky (above) and with all her cousins (right): Isabel, Sophia and Charlie



We had our 20 week scan today, for Bean 2, and everything was fine. He/she was quite a bit smaller than Ellie was at the same stage but I suppose that's to be expected, as I haven't been well since the start of this pregnancy and still haven't put any weight on. Hopefully I'll start to put some on soon!



Here are the two pics we got today. They're not very good really, and the one we got of Bean's face looks more like a skeleton than a baby!

It's been a while...

Well, here we are for a major update. It has been a long time since I last did one and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge.

Ellie has of course been growing up fast. Her latest exploit, today in fact, was to stand up on her own, using the coffee table as support, and then to start clapping her hands, hence balancing on her own. She’s so much happier to be able to get around a bit more now that she can crawl and sit and roll. The last few weeks have been a bit frustrating for us all with Ellie’s whining and moaning because she couldn’t get anywhere but wanted to explore. Her swimming classes have been getting better with more and more adventure and underwater action occurring. I’ll try and upload some videos that I took on my phone of the instructor chucking her in to the pool.

The house has come along quite a bit over the summer. There are still some gaping holes (quite literally) in the infrastructure but we are making progress with getting them sorted. Highlights include the christening of the shed that didn’t have the best start in life due to high winds when being built. I got a call from our ‘neighbour to be’ whilst on the M5 to say that the shed was trying to attack his tractor.

To cut a long story short I managed to get her back into shape and am now the proud owner of a solar powered lighting shed, 4m x 3m.

The loft is getting some insulation soon too. I went for a deal from B&Q, £200 all in regardless of size of house. We already six insulation rolls in the loft, left over from building the house and stud walls, but seeing as the main insulation job is being done for a fixed price they were better off with the other neighbour than in our loft so we sold them for £50.

We’ve steadily been crossing jobs off the list on the fridge but there are plenty more to do still. Sam’s latest was to sand down and oil the wooden worktop. My latest was to add the last of the door stops and make a wooden threshold between the kitchen and the dining room.

We commissioned our driveway having decided we’ll have enough money in a month or so. I had a largeish sale at work and should get enough commission to pay for the work. Again, our neighbour will doing the work which involves chopping down some hedge and removing stumps, levelling and making a nice rounded driveway area, creating two land drains and gulleys, making a soakaway, destroying the shed, moving a load of top soil and finally adding 48 tonnes of MOT to the driveway to make it nice and smooth. We can’t wait for this to be done as getting from the parked cars to the house is a major drama right now. We currently have to negotiate rubble, breeze blocks, bricks and mud. Not good with a pregnant wife and a young child!!

Work for me has been hard recently but a flurry of activity has seen a few hundred grands worth of sales and the same expected before Christmas. The credit crunch is biting but life goes on for some industries so I’ll focus on those and hope to ride out the tougher times. Here’s hoping I hit target and can hold my head high at work.

Well, there’s plenty more to say but it can’t all be said at once. Perhaps I’ll try and update more regularly and cover some other subjects. That said, this is a Cantlop Grove and Ellie blog and I’ve said quite a bit on those subjects.

Scan Pics

Breaking News!

Ellie has a little brother or sister on the way!

We had our 12 week scan today and everything seemed to be fine. There was only one baby (phew!!) and it appeared to have two arms and two legs as well as a head, so that's ok too. It was the world's fastest scan though, Jono and I felt a bit cheated really - Ellie's 12 week scan we were in there for about 45 mins, rather than the 5 mins maximum today.

I'll put the scan photos up once Jono's managed to work out how to make the PC upstairs share with my laptop -it doesn't want to play with mine anymore :-(

Official due date is 4th May, so I'm expecting something more along the lines of 10th - 13th May, as my family are always late with their babies!

Another belated update!!

Well once again I've not had much time to update here - I've also not been able to physically access our blog for some strange IT related reason (I think our ISP is blocking access but I can't prove it!).

Anyway, what have we been up to?

Well Ellie is still showing absolutely no signs whatsoever of wanting to either crawl or walk - which is just fine with me! The longer I can still leave her in the same place knowing she can't get into mischief, the better!

She's had quite a few interrupted nights of late, I think a combination of teeth and getting stuck is the problem (she spins around and gets wedged!). Hopefully this will be resolved soon. There's not really a lot we can do to resolve it ourselves.

House-wise we're coming along. Jono was doing a grand job of building the new shed which is to house the contents of our previous shed and garage. Some friends came and helped with building the concrete slab that we needed and Jono and Tommy began the actual shed construction.
Things were shaping up nicely until the day the wind picked up and hurled the whole thing into the oil tank! Poor shed, it looked very sorry for itself! It didn't look as though it would be salvageable but Jono got to work on it and it's looking much perkier now.

Here are some before, after, and further after photos:








Last weekend Jono managed to get the wardrobe up in Ellie's bedroom (some shelves and a rail running the width of the alcove). Soon I'll get round to making a box pelmet for the alcove and then we'll be able to get the curtains up across it. Her room will start to really take shape properly then.

Next on the list is to get the house draught proof and insulated. I think we're going to end up getting the loft insulation done by someone - it'll be much cheaper in the long run. Jono discovered we have rather a lot of mice in the attic - I'm not sure what we're going to do about them! We also need to get the guttering sorted - there's only half of it up at the moment!

The window people are coming tomorrow to hopefully start on the long list of window problems, the main ones being that none of the windows are draught proof, and a couple aren't water tight either!

I can't get access from my laptop to the computer upstairs and so a lot of the photos from the past few months will have to wait for a while. In the meantime, here are some from Ellie's christening...

The animals were made by several of us the night before the christening. As it was the first time for most of us, I think we did pretty well! The theme was Noah's Ark, just in case you hadn't guessed!!

Animal Credits:

Mr & Mrs Elephant - Katie
Mr & Mrs Zebra - Ben
Mr & Mrs Croc - Helen
Mr & Mrs Tiger - Meg
Mr & Mrs Tortoise - Ken
Mr & Mrs Lion - Me!


Once I've got access to upstairs again I'll post some pics of our holiday to Cornwall...