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...

Wow, it's been a while!

I can't believe we've not updated this blog for over 2 months! Well, I can actually due to the fact that we've only just had our internet connected at the new house. The less said about that, the better...

I think, for now, I'll just give a bullet point summary of the last couple of months, or else I'll be here all day!

• First of all, we've moved in - hurrah! We moved in at the end of July and although it's not finished, it's nice to be in the new house at last
• We sold our old house - hurrah again! Sold beginning of August, so that wasn't too bad.
  
• Ellie had her Christening here at the new house, on a nice sunny day, which was unexpected as we'd had awful weather the week before, and it was pretty awful just after too. The pig roast went down well and lots of us had fun the evening before making the animals for Ellie's cake!
• My sister had her baby, a little boy called Charlie. None of us are quite sure what to do with a boy - we've had nothing but girls in our families! He's a little cutie though, and Isabel and Sophia love him to bits
• We had our first family holiday last week - camping for a week in Cornwall with Stu, Lorraine and Lily. It was a reasonable success in that Ellie enjoyed it, and she slept really well. The weather was pretty diabolical though and so Jono and I didn't sleep that well as we were terrified of the tent blowing away in the night! Ellie's eczema on her cheeks pretty much disappeared whilst we were away too, but came back with a vengeance when we got home, so I think she might be allergic to Figaro. I am too so it isn't too much of a surprise!

Right, I think that might be about it for major news. Next post I'll put a load of piccies up...

Ellie's Milestones

Ellie has had a bit of a funny couple of weeks. We've been trying to get as much done at the house as possible so we've dropped her off at my mum's quite a few week nights and weekend days. This has meant we can get quite a bit done up there and pick her up on the way home. Hopefully she doesn't miss us too much - it's not for too much longer!
Last Saturday Ellie tried solids for the first time - some nice organic baby rice. She quite enjoyed it and she must have been ready for it for some time. The last month she had been waking up at around 5am, having slept through previously. Since she's been started weaning, she hasn't woken during the night at all!
During the past week she has tried lots of nice new flavours including;

• blueberry and banana (yummy but makes for interesting nappies!!)
• pear and pineapple (a definite hit!)
• parsnip, apple and pea
• butternut squash (another great hit - it's nice and easy to cook and freeze but it's a bugger to get out of clothes afterwards!)
• baby rice with banana (makes a nice breakfast)

Today Ellie had breakfast, lunch and tea, and still had quite a bit of milk too! She's turning into a right fat pie!

We also had some nice news early this morning - Ellie now has a new cousin, Charlie, who was born after an incredibly fast labour on my sister's part. He is so small and lovely! It's hard to believe that Ellie was ever that small...actually she never was, Charlie was 3oz lighter than Ellie!

Now for some photos!





"What do you mean I have something around my mouth?"










"More, Mummy, more!!"











Ellie finding her first ever meal highly amusing!








Ellie in her favourite new toy - her jumperoo!
She has spent the last couple of days continuously blowing raspberries - after having forgotten she could do them for ages! Trouble is, she's soaking by the end of the day!

Lots of news!

Well, after the disappointing weekend we had back in June where our buyers pulled out of the sale, the weekend after we had another offer and this time it is all going smoothly! Hurrah! Of course it isn't over until we've signed the contracts, but still...
The house is coming along fairly nicely. Jono and I have finished tiling the kitchen floor and are now working our way into the porch. Our friend Neil is doing the woodwork (fitting the internal doors, skirting and architrave), which a whole bunch of us spent last weekend staining in preparation. Upstairs is now completely painted (except for the cutting in, which I'll hopefully get done next weekend) and the kitchen is also completely painted. Jono and I had a landmark day on Saturday - we built and fitted the utility cabinet and worktop! It made such a difference to actually have somewhere to put things on, instead of the floor!
The outside of the house (gable end and front left) is being rendered and the front room has had its first coat of undercoat too. Now the only room that hasn't had any paint at all yet is the dining room. We can't paint in there yet because the kitchen is still all in boxes in there and also we have a bit of a water ingress problem above the french doors. Hopefully Tony will get that fixed this week.
Things that we need to get done very soon are; the ground dug for a concrete slab out the back (for Jono's new huge spangly shed) and the soakaway dug, and the driveway scraped and levelled. Oh, and the kitchen units need building of course! And the bathroom wall tiles, and the floor tiles grouted...and the carpets fitted...and the phone connected! We need to be moved in 2 weeks!!
Here's where I should be putting in lots of photos to show our progress but we have been so busy we've had no time to take any! We do have one from Saturday night though, taken on Jono's mobile. We didn't choose a spotty unit for the utility - it's the plastic cover!

Disappointment

Well, after the wonderful weekend last week - where we accepted an offer on the house - we had a bit of a miserable one this weekend as our buyers pulled out because they were £11K short on what they could borrow. It seems to me that perhaps they should have worked out how much they could borrow before they went making offers on any houses...So, very disappointing to say the least. Now it looks like we'll definitely have to rent this place out until the market picks up again. We'll leave it up for sale for another couple of weeks just on the offchance that someone will buy it quickly but then we'll have to get it rented.

The good news though is that Ellie's christening has been arranged for August 3rd, at the very teeny tiny church just down the road from the new house. It's on the private Pitchford Estate but the church is open to the public and it just so happens that the once a month service there falls on the date that we wanted to get Ellie christened, so that was good.

Things are coming along at the new house - the outside is in the early stages of being rendered, we are almost finished tiling the kitchen floor - having already done the utility and downstairs cloakroom. The cloakroom suite has all been fitted, the boiler is in and working, we also now have the luxury of running water - hot and cold! The first coat of colour has been done in our room and we are thinking, as the paint goes on so thickly, that it might actually only need one coat, which will save us some time as our room is enormous!

Our main priority during the next week is to do the final tiles in the kitchen, and grout what we've done. After this is done, we will paint the visible parts of the kitchen walls and only then can we start to build the kitchen cabinets and get them fitted. I can't wait to see the kitchen in place, it'll really start to feel like a home then!

We've got all the skirting and architrave arriving on Monday and so we'll need to get that all stained and fitted. Until that's been done, we can't fit our doors or carpets!!

As far as young Ellie goes, she's having a bit of a strange time of it of late. She is now very able to turn herself over onto her tummy from her back and does so very frequently. The problem with this is that she doesn't like being on her tummy but doesn't seem to be able to help herself rolling onto it! Once she is able to roll herself back this won't be an issue but it's certainly a pain until she does!

Ellie's two bottom front incisors are now peeking through so she is doing lots of gnawing and dribbling. She has a new favourite trick too - if one of us taps our finger on her mouth, she starts making a noise so that she sounds like a little kid pretending to be a Red Indian!

Right, I think that's the longest post I've written so I'll stop for now. We don't have any photos handy at the moment to post so it's a text only post I'm afraid!!

Some house news

Well, today was a momentous day, Sam and I visited the house this evening to see that the final plastering had been completed in the living room. That's it, no more splatters up the walls, no more 'turds' of plaster lying around, no more damp sweaty rooms where the plaster hasn't dried, and no more bloody mess (inside at least). They have done a fantastic job and i'm very glad that they managed to do the whole job, after we were abandoned by our other plasterer.

Speaking of which, the reason we visited the house was because we were on our way to Ludlow to hand deliver the invoice to our other plasterer who now owes us back. When we got to Ludlow we bumped into a random stranger who asked if we were lost (we were doing a U-turn). I told him who I was after and he immediately asked me "does he owe you money?" How co-incidental, seems this isn't the first time the guy has pulled a trick like he did with us, oh well, four weeks and i can send a small claims court order to the nice man!

Mullins the plumbers have been doing an outstanding job. So far, in a week they have...

Plumbed the oil tank in
Installed the kitchen pipes
Installed an outside tap
Connected the blue water pipe from outside
Installed the upstairs bathroom bath, shower, basin and toilet
Installed the cloakroom toilet
Installed the boiler
Installed the utility room waste

And a whole host of other small little jobs. They are clean, conscientious, tidy, practical, polite and worth every penny so far! They also have some amazing tools!

I have been up there quite a bit recently to get work done to allow the trades to get their jobs done. I managed to paint a few walls with colour before the radiators were put on but a few bare plaster walls remain with nice shiny radiators affixed. The bathroom was completely painted before anything was fitted which is a bonus for us later and the cloakroom and utility were given their final coats of paint prior to anything being fitted. Unfortunately there are quite a few marks on the walls now, especially in the cramped cloakroom where a load pf plumbing was installed, but i'd rather touch a few small marks up than try and paint around a load of stuff.

Sam and I were up there the other night to get some tiles laid in order for the boiler to be installed on tiles. We we're pretty green when it came to floor tiles but with a bitumen paint layer followed by a latex screed layer we had a good base to go on. Sam applied a bond layer to the screed and we set about mixing the powdered quick set tile adhesive. It goes off quite quickly and we flapped around a bit just laying the first tile but we soon got back in to the swing of things and before long had a few down. We were also misled by a dodgy tile that seems to be a bit thinner than the others, or its neighbour is a bit thick, one or the other. This caused a minor panic but we soon realised that with a bit of grout they'll all be fine.

I went back the next night to get the rest of the cloakroom and utility done which was a tough job as i had to cut large notches out of two of the tiles where they went round a wall. All in all we are quite pleased with the tiles so far and we should make some good progress with the kitchen floor this weekend. We might even get to build some of the cabinets soon so that the plumbers can install the sinks and dishwasher, woo hoo!

On the outside more ground works have occurred. Our neighbours John and Jean who own the barn, and in fact who we bought then house from, have done quite a lot to their barn and the boundary with our house. They will be building a nice wall and fence along our driveway at a cost of £4,000 to them (phew). John also used his digger again to move a load of our hard standing material onto the track down to the fence so that number two has decent access for all the 16 tonne loads of stone that he is currently having delivered.

So, all in all a great deal has been done, at quite a pace. I even managed to dig two small trenches the other day and plant some Kimber bred french climbing and runner bean seeds. After all, we wouldn't want to be living there during bean season with none growing would we?

Onto some photos then...

Belated Ellie Update

It's been a little while but we've all been so busy!

Here are Ellie's main achievements lately:

• Two top molars have come through
• Lots of hooting and general shouting
• Lots of supported standing (looking very smug with herself)
• Loads of sleeping through the night without a single interruption (she went 6.30pm to 8.30am the other day, with a "dream feed" to see her through)
• Last lots of vaccinations until she's 1 (hurrah!)
• Turning through 90 degrees in her cot most mornings (and doing some sleeping on her side)
  

I took Ellie back to the doctors last week as she still had a chesty cough. Previous docs had said it was just a cold but this doctor confirmed that it wasn't - it was bronchiolitis which is viral but they are able to treat it with antibiotics. Ellie is now sounding a lot better without her chest rattle but she did have a bad week of it with her poor tummy. The antibiotics didn't do her tummy much good at all - gave her the runs, which then resulted in terrible nappy rash. She stayed quite chipper throughout though.

All better now and she's a very happy little baby indeed. It's so lovely going in to her room in the morning and knowing you'll be greeted by a huge gummy grin, it really makes your heart swell with love!

We've borrowed Nicola's baby gym as Ellie was getting a bit bored with her old one and she lies on this one quite happily, having a jolly good shout and giggle at the toys on there.

Now for some photos...






Here's one of me, Ellie and the Gro on Jono's birthday last weekend. Considering how scared he used to be of children and babies before, Figaro has taken Ellie in his (3-legged) stride.











Here's Daddy and Ellie having a cuddle









Here's Ellie with Mamgu just before we left her in charge babysitting - look at that hair (that's Ellie's hair, not my mum's crazy barnet!)








And finally...the contender for "cutest baby photo in the world"...

What a beautiful little girl we created!