Ellie the mermaid!

On Sunday we had our first Waterbabies lesson at the hospital hydrotherapy pool. It was really lovely. The water was as warm as a bath, and it was nice and intimate - only 5 babies at a time. Ellie's boyfriend, Thomas, was part of our class too.

Ellie really loved being in the water - she was really relaxed and didn't cry once, not even after the periodic dunkings. I think it helped that since she was born we've been splashing water in her face so that doing her hair doesn't become an issue when she's older! We did lots of word association exercises which are designed primarily to get the babies to hold their breath before they go under water. We won't be doing any actual underwater swimming for quite a few lessons yet. so, all in all, a successful first swimming session. I'm looking forward to the next one, but not the getting dressed bit afterwards! Ellie really screamed her lungs out for that! She really does have an aversion to sleeves!




Here she is being all nice and relaxed whilst I float her along...

...and here she is after a dunking - as you can see, she's mostly concerned with getting her fist back into her mouth!

Can't wait to move in

Here is a quick photo showing the new house without it's old front porch. With a pebbledash top render (over the old render) and a bit of tidying up it'll look quite good I think.

Teeth

Teeth eh? What a pain, quite literally. Ellie has had her hand stuck in her mouth pretty much continuously for the last week or two now. She's got about 4 teeth coming through now and they are causing her quite a bit of pain at times. It is only fitting that the photo I post for week 15 is one with her hand in or somewhere near her mouth and this one was taken just before bathtime ce soir.We had a pretty good Saturday, up early at 5 ish with intermittent grizzling and for the first time we had her in bed with us, in between the two of us for an extra hour and a half. Feeding hasn't gone particularly well today but it hasn't been too bad a day.

I mowed all the grass and hopefully if the weather is nice tomorrow we can take some replacement external photos of the house for the estate agent. There are quite a few nice flowers out now and the place looks quite good. I don't think it will do much good and we'll end up having to rent this place out but you never know?

Righto, dinner time!

A week 14 photo

Well, I'm here at the home computer sorting out some photos so here is a week 14 photo of our little girl. She's had a funny weekend, lots of everything, smiles, grizzling, kicking, hand in mouth, cooing at her toys and generally making sure we are aware of her every living second, which we are!!


The photo shows her sleeping with what might become one of her security things, a lovely little elephant blanket that a colleague of mine from France, Jean-Noel Lagier, got for her on a recent trip over from France. Cheers Jean-No.

Progress

Well, there were lots of us up at the house today. Myself, Smee, Ellie, Diane, Nicola, Shaun, Sophia and Isabel. I'm sure it would have been more productive to have left the kids at home but they did have fun hopping through the stud walls and generaly getting too close to the gaping hole in the side of the house where a 'naily and gnarly' fate awaits in the pile of debris.

We stripped 80% of the wallpaper off the walls to allow the plasterer to get on with plastering, not decorating! Speaking of which the plasterer has started to put the boards up and the downstairs toilet, utility, kitchen and porch area and mostly done. We now finally have some new rooms, hoorah! They all still need plastering of course but once the boards are up (including insulation) we will really see a big difference.

Hopefully this week there will be a delivery from TP (blocks, lintels, plaster, bead and a few other bits and pieces), the damp proof plasterer will start, our plasterer will really get going and the two doorways that we don't want will be bricked up. Add to that the bricks that need to be put around the window apertures and we have a busy, productive and costly week!

Yesterday I went to Ikea at around 10pm to take advantage of their '21st birthday in the UK ' offer which was a 21% discount on everything, including the kitchen we wanted.

If you look below you will see a post describing our glee at finding the Ikea kitchen at a very reasonable price a month or so ago. I was ultra delighted to discover the 21% offer a few weeks ago on the internet in a money saving forum and waited until yesterday to cash in. All in all we spent about £2500 on a £3200 kitchen that we already thought was excellent value! It was a bit of a nightmare at Ikea, I have never seen so many cars in the car park, especially at 10pm. But, an hour and a half later I was all done and I even managed to get soem stuff for Nicola too.

Right, that's all for now, more photos to be added next week I hope.

Congrats to the Waltons who just announced the arrival of Evie Grace.

Ellie stuff

Our little girl is growing so fast - she's now well into her 3-6 month clothes, I can't quite believe it. We got given some 3-6 months clothes when she was born and I remember thinking she'd never fit into them! Here she is in her lovely knitted suit from Auntie Angela...


We had our NCT reunion a week or so ago and finally managed to get a picture of all 6 babies together - in date order too! Here they all are...Thomas, the youngest, is on the left, then Ellie, Stirling, Sophie, Georgie and Lucy. There is 10 weeks between Thomas and Lucy. Thomas and Ellie are holding hands, it's so cute!!


Ellie and I have a pretty hectic time of it at the moment. Mondays we have Baby Bookworms, Tuesdays my sister often visits, Weds is Mini Music (when we make it!) and Ellie's weigh in (with a visit to Mamgu afterwards), Thursdays we have either BURPS or Bumps and Babes (where we meet up with our usual gang). Fridays are pretty much our only free day! I am only going to take Ellie to be weighed once a month from now on, so that'll help I think.

I've just bought Ellie some scrumptious new pocket nappies - a particular type of reuseable nappy where you "stuff" the pocket full of booster pads, and it's ready to go - the outer part is plastic backed so that you don't need a wrap over the top. Once you've pre-stuffed the nappies after washing, they are as ready to go as a disposable. One of them is covered in a really soft and cuddly fabric. I'll have to get a photo of her in it, it's adorable!

The windows

Well, the windows and doors are in - all of them! Some great, some not so great but ultimately, they are all going to be good and we're very happy. The install so far has been a bit of a hit and miss affair, not quite like any ordinary installation due to the slightly decrepit and bent nature of the house! The patio doors are cool, the front stable door is even better and the new dining room window makes it a very light room now. The problems that we have suffered revolve around the brickwork in the back of the house not being perfectly level due to the movement the whole house has suffered from. The bedroom 3 window is half a bubble out on the spirit level yet it is the kitchen window that looks out of horizontal! This is also due to the fact there was no lintel above the kitchen window and a lot of the brickwork sank and sagged. To end it all we are currently having it all patched back up and the builder may try and use some skinny bricks to try and blend it all back in. Ultimately I think it is going to look weird regardless of the remedies we try, but that is the nature of the beast I suppose?