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...

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!