Promise

Sorry I will post soon. Over the holidays.

Over 3 months

Things have been a bit crazy and so I have not been able to blog as much as I had planned too. So what has been happening. I'll let the pictures tell the stories.


Anna Jane loves to be on her feet and because she is very small she can take her own weight. I can already tell she is going to be advanced, just like her big sister. She babbles away almost constantly and watches everything that is going on. She is constantly trying to sit up on her own. She loves to smile and usually sleeps well at night.

She loves her big sister and watches her all the time. She is constantly trying to catch her eye with smiles.

When ever Abby sees one of Anna Jane's passies lying around she usually grabs it up and uses it. I think it is because she sees Anna Jane with one all the time so she thinks she should have one too.



We got out the Bumbo seat for Anna Jane to use as she is almost at that stage, most of the time it is hijacked by Abby. I can't believe that she can still fit in it.

Abby is going through a reading phase right now and spends most of every day with her books and magazines. Her must read books are Dogger, Dora's Potty Book, Big Sister Dora and her Dora explorer Little Library.

As much as Anna Jane LOVES Abby, Abby also LOVES her. She can't wait until she is old enough to play with and she is always so excited when they get to do things together.


On a sad note Pappy and Uncle Daniel moved back to Yuma at the start of October. I know that the girls will miss seeing Pappy and Uncle Daniel. We hope that we will see them as much as possible.

Abby is absolutely in love with Dora the Explorer at the moment. She wants to watch her all the time and loves anything with Dora on it. She can spot Dora at 50 paces! So we got her her own backpack! It is so cute and she takes her books and a few toys with her when we go out.



Abby's hair is finally growing long enough to do things with. We tried bunches and they looked adorable. She has the most beautiful hair with soft ringlets, I hope that doesn't change.

We went to visit JA, Kristen, Brennan and Jonathan for a day. Aunt Kristen had bought the kids a special treat. Gingerbread butterflies.

We had a momentous event - Anna Jane's first laugh! She was a bit camera shy but I got a bit of it on the camera.

Short clip

This is a short clip of one of the games the cousins played on their overnight stay. It was called round the neighbourhood and involved them running round our downstairs with mobile phones. This was towards the end of the game, they had been running faster, at least as fast as Jonathan could go!

Some Photos

They are not in any order, I'm just glad to get the time to post them!

Story Time. Aunt Kristen with 3 of the 4 kids.
I love the intensity of Abby and Brennan's face in this picture it is just a shame you can't see Jonathan.

We got Abby a kids garden set so she could help mama make a flower bed.
Looking for wiggly woos (worms - its a song)

Anna Jane enjoying her playmat.

Great Grandad Renwick who is 89 years old!

Playing in Great Grandad's garden. I wanted a picture of this as I have fond memories of playing in this garden.

Visiting Great Grannie Wilson. 4 Generations of women.
Anna Jane's first swing

Sweet picture with Uncle Chad and Aunt Sarah, who are expecting their own wee bundle next spring.
Hope you enjoyed these, hopefully more soon.

2 Months - Life goes on

Excuse the lack of posting but we have been having a really trying time dealing with Anna Janes reflux, I'll get to that in a minute. Firstly Anna Jane is 2 months old! where did that time go? I guess when you are dealing with a screaming baby and little sleep, time accelerates. Her development already amazes us. We are finally being rewarded with smiles and other expressions and she is a lot more verbal than Abigail was at the same age. She is enjoying periods of wakefulness on the playmat where she is already bating at her swinging toys. She is not too keen on being in seated positions (Bouncer chair, car seat, propped on pillows) but she does like lying out in her bed. She has always done a reasonable job at night, usually waking to feed just once, getting her back to sleep can be difficult sometimes. However, before we could get to that point we had a struggle. She has been continuing on the Carobel and for a while we also began giving her infant Gaviscon, this seemed to help for a time but then the unsettled screaming began again and the vomiting was as bad as ever. We finally started pushing for something else to try and after a very difficult week and a terrible weekend we started this past week with Adult Gaviscon. So far it seems to be helping but it is early days, She is still vomiting but it does not seem to cause her as much pain as before. We have had a really good week with her and in fact had 3 nights where she slept from between 10:30/11:30 until 8:30 am! She has just had her first round of vaccinations and will get more in about a months time.

Abigail is doing well considering we seem to be entering the terrible twos as well as coping with a baby sister and tiredness. She has not been sleeping as well lately and will lying awake for a few hours at night before falling asleep. She has done this before but not for such a prolonged period. At first I was putting it down to her schedule being disrupted (she is very much a creature of habit), then I thought is could be due to her back molars beginning to push through, then I wondered if it was from not getting out as much as we had been in previous weeks. Now I am wondering if it is due to her nap in the afternoon being too long but it is hard to wake her when you are finally enjoying a few minutes peace and are too tired to get up. We are having some real obedience issues with her at the moment. However, she can be so funny. She loves to dance around to her music with her duster in hand. She has some fantastic turns of phrase - We wash our clothes with "soap, beweach and snofner", when she is pretending to talk on a phone because there is no voice on the other side she says "he's not talking today". We have been working on manors, we have always insisted on please, thank you, excuse me but now we are expanding to may I have ...... please. She is doing well but we get "I may have ......... please". She is so sweet with Anna Jane always putting her passie/soother/dummy in if she cries. and she is always interested in her if she is awake. Some very exciting news is that Abby has done 2 pee pee's and one small poop in the potty over the last few days. We have not officially started potty training yet but are laying some of the ground work. She has a Dora potty book and we bought a trainer seat that goes on top of the toilet seat. Basically she knows what the potty is for and if she asks to use it we put her on it. I am not sure when we will actually start we will see, we have enough to deal with at the moment.

Abby has something to say - eeeeeeeeeeeee tgf cvzxfrxffxfxfrdddddddddddddddggíójjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffr>ssfgx\agwtwsxtdcr5555xd\sawwv dssd dergfeegd3cgfc vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvxf3<br>

Other news - we had David's cousin Sarah and her husband Chad from Oregon with us for the first week in August. We had the best visit with them and enjoyed every minute. Abby loved her Uncle Chad and they were a great help to us in dealing with Anna Jane during one of her worst weeks. Sarah did all of the cooking and everything was delicious including the baking that was to die for. I don't think they will ever know how much we loved having them with us or how much we appreciate all they did for us. They were a great encouragement to us during a difficult time and we want to say a huge public "THANK YOU!" to them.

We had a terrific visit with John Anthony, Kristen and their boys on Thursday/Friday. Brennan and Abby had a great time playing together. They seemed to form a wee book club and pretended to read books together and it looked like they were discussing them. They played cars and ran laps around our house while pretending to talk on mobile phones. Not to mention the fun of bouncing on our big bed! We grown ups got time talk on Thursday night when the kids were in bed. We got to talking and before we knew it 4am had rolled around! We were tired the next day but we were so glad we had the time together. I have photos and video of the events but I will post some of them later (there is a reason for this - to be disclosed later).

One of the items that I had wanted to post on but never got the time was that we have switched to washable/reusable nappies/diapers for the girls. I had a woman who came to the house and was able to talk me through the nappy choices that are out there and show me some of the products. We bought a brand called lollipop and are not finding them any worse than disposables.
We have had a few leaks, in Abby's case it was because we forgot to change her more often than with the disposables and with Anna Jane we are not sure why it is happening yet. We hope it will save us from the huge financial drain that disposables are. We actually only got them for Anna Jane but Abby was so excited about them that she started wearing them too. Here are the girls sporting their new nappies....




That is about all I can think of, it is so difficult to remember when you don't get the chance to update regularly.

I was going to upload and post more pictures and video along with this but I have not had time and as it has taken me 3 days to get this far I will just post it as is. Pictures later.

Crazy times

Okay there are so many things I keep meaning to post on but things have been going from bad to worse in our house, I'll explain all that later.

We can't believe that our tiny wee baby is getting bigger already ready. She is just over a month old and we are amazed at how heavy she feels. When she was last weighed almost 2 weeks ago she was up to 7lbs 9oz, we hope to have her weighed on Friday when the Health Visitor (HV) comes back out. She spends a little time most days looking around and has extremely developed neck muscles, holding her head up reasonably steady so she can see what is going on. She seems very inquisitive. However, now for the trouble - since she was born she has always spat up milk very frequently. It was thought that it was probably because she was taking to much milk from the breast or taking it too fast. From the start of last week she was getting progressively more unsettled. On Wednesday and Thursday she basically never slept all day and would scream for hours (that terrible high pitched scream that you know means they are sore somewhere, we put it down to colic. The HV came out on Friday and after hearing what was going on diagnosed reflux, which means that the muscles at the op of her stomach are not constricting tight enough and her milk and stomach acid keep coming up her throat. As anyone who has vomited in their life knows, that burns! Which means that she has been in pain for weeks, worsening as the inflammation in her throat has gotten more severe. That was the hardest part for me, knowing that she has been in pain and worse yet knowing there was nothing I could or did do. She ordered a prescription for something called Carobel (a thickening agent) which was to be added to her milk and given before her feeds. Our HV said that it might help and we might see improvement immediately or it might take up to 48 hours depending how severe the inflammation is. We started her on the Carobel that evening. It is very difficult since I am having to express milk everytime I feed her so that we have some to mix it up with. It also means that instead of taking 20 minutes to feed AJ it takes almost a hour. We have persevered and on Sunday evening we began to notice improvement. She is still unsettled at times and is still being sick but it is not as bad when it does happen.

Abby is doing pretty well considering that her world has just been turned upside down. She seems extremely tired despite sleeping 12 hours a night and taking a 2 hour nap. We think that she is having disturbed sleep (due to crying baby) and we are not getting out and about like we used to so she is probably getting lethargic from inactivity. She is really sweet with her sister and today tried to share a ball with her. She seems excited to have join in what she is doing.

More news another time. Here are some pictures.

Quick photo shoot

We decided to take some family shots and here is what we got. Not professional or arty but some nice ones.

I wish I could remember what she was saying to me. I feel this is a glimpse into teenage years!



Sweet pic with the proud grandparents

Sisters, sisters, never were there such devoted sisters!




First bath at home.

Abby's 2nd Birthday

I know it is late but as those of you with new baby's know it is hard to get the time. So I will post Abby's birthday as if it had just happened, ignoring the fact that is was a week or so ago.

Our Abby turned two! We can't believe it has been 2 years since we welcomed Abigail Faith into the world. She is the reason we began our blog and the very first post was to share her birth story. It is amazing to see how much she has changed and grown over the last 2 years.

Here she was just a few hours old..

Our beautiful girl on her first birthday last year

Our grown up 2 year old

We didn't really get to celebrate her first birthday so we wanted to do something small but special for her second birthday. We decided to have an early afternoon party and invited Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and a few friends. There were 11 Adults (Grannie, Grandad, Pappy, Uncle JA, Aunt Kristen, Russell, Rachael, Grandpa Michael, Grandma Maureen and of course Mama and Dada) and 6 children (Brennan, Johnathan, Lewis, Libby, Abby and Anna Jane). We had the best weather that we could have hoped for, it was sunny and warm with not much wind. I suppose we should start at the beginning of the day. We went in together to get her up and wish her a happy birthday, she was very excited. We had blown up several balloons for her birthday and when she came down stairs she ran into the livngroom to see her happy birthday balloons. After playing with them for a few minutes she had breakfast and got into her party dress. Since we planned on having the kids play in the garden we had her unveil some of her birthday presents (they were outside toys) before everyone arrived.











Once she had welcomed her guests we got her changed into play clothes filled her brand new sand/water table and let all the kids out into the garden. They all had a blast playing with the water table, see saw, trampoline, and ride on toy. It was such a nice day that they had their birthday lunch as a birthday picnic lunch. Of course there was birthday cake to follow and though the party was supposed to end at 1pm it was between 2 and 3 pm when most people left. After Abby's nap she opened a few more presents to end the day.



Abby and Lewis at the water table


Brennan and Jonathan on the ride on motorbike


Jonathan at the water table


Big boy fun (Brennan, Lewis and Russell)


Cousins enjoying the water

A bracelet from Pappy




Gift from Uncle JA, Kristen, Brennan and Jonathan. She plays with it all the time and loves it.

It was a great day, everyone seemed to enjoy it and it went as well as toddlers parties can go. Anna Jane was very well behaved and just ate and slept allowing her sister to be the center of attention on her big day.

We hope all our future parties go so well.