Poor Isaiah!

I'd better just start with the important news. Poor Isaiah took ill last week and was spewing up everything that went down all day on Wednesday. Finally at tea time on Wednesday, Mommy took him to hospital and they kept us in overnight for observation - Daddy took Alex up to be with us too. Then on Thursday, Mommy and the boys got flown down to Aberdeen in the air ambulance. And on Friday, they diagnosed him with pyloric stenosis and he had a little operation to fix it. We got home again on Monday and he's doing well. Everyone at the Children's Hospital were amazing and both boys were on their best behaviour.

Here's Michaela with Alex.

And with Isaiah (before he was ill)

One night Daddy took Isaiah up to see Michaela's bedroom and Michaela let Isaiah into her bed!

Last Wednesday was the Toddlers Halloween party - here's Michaela with her best pal Cerys.

And on Halloween, Daddy took Michaela to the party at the Hall. She took her pumpkin with her and it won a prize for most artistic. Daddy is very proud of it.

Michaela is such a good big sister and she loves giving her brothers lots of kisses and cuddles. Here she is with Alex. Part of Isaiah's treatment is for him to have thickener before each breastfeed so that he can keep it down, so here's Granny Pat giving him his thickener. He takes it no bother, so we're hopeful he'll take some formula soon - Mommy's still feeding both boys and would like a break occasionally!
And here's Alex giving Mommy loads of smiles. He's really alert now, so it's such fun when you get lots of smiles and chats from him.
The health visitor came yesterday and weighed the boys. Since Isaiah's been ill, he lost some weight, but is starting to put it on. Even so, he's now 8lb 4oz and Alex is 9lb 4oz! They're still being really good boys, but are beginning to be a bit more demanding now that they're more alert. Mommy does struggle a bit with looking after all three kids, but help is always at hand, thank goodness! And we're lucky that Michaela is a really good little girl who is willing to help out if she can.

Already a month gone by

As I'm sure you will all understand, updating the blog is not a priority at the moment. But, here are some kind of recent pictures. This one is Michaela taking the boys for their first walk.
And our first attempt at a family picture - Mommy's holding Alex and Daddy has Isaiah.
During the first few weeks home, we had loads of visitors. We think Michaela's favourite was when her cousin Iris came over. They had such a great time playing, as you can see on Michaela's face!
Michaela's been a great big sister to the boys. She's usually quite gentle with them and is really good at giving kisses and cuddles. She especially likes it when they kiss her back. Here she is with Isaiah on the left and Alex on the right.
Here are the boys in their pram - Alex in blue, Isaiah in white. Amazingly, they will sometimes lay in the pram awake and not grumping! We had no such luck with Michaela as a baby.

And a cute pic of the boys sleeping. They don't really sleep together like this very often. But if they do, it's usually Alex (left) who somehow manages to lean in towards Isaiah (right).
We've made plans for most days for Michaela so her life isn't taken up with the boys too much. Just over a week ago, this was her on a trip to the beach with Daddy, Owen and his parents. Michaela was chuffed to be able to play in the muddy puddles!
And this is her rain suit for such days - how cute!
We've certainly got our hands full with three kids, but luckily the boys are pretty good most of the time and Michaela is a fantastic little girl!

We've had many bad nights, but fingers crossed, we're by the worst as we seem to have settled into a routine. Since the last blog, we have made it back into the same room and the last three nights have been really good, with only having to feed every four hours and not much grumping in between. Here's hoping it'll last because Mommy and Daddy are knackered!

And we're all home - at last!

We came home from Aberdeen on Monday and Michaela looked like a giant!!!! Mommy missed her like mad while away, so was extremely happy to see her not so little girl again. And even though Daddy had only been away since Wednesday, he was so glad to see her again too. Michaela was very excited to meet her little brothers and couldn't even wait for us to get in the house - she helped get them out of the car. Here she is holding Isaiah.
And her holding a much calmer Alex.
Michaela thought it was only right that her baby got to go in the pram with our babies!
And here they are snuggled up together (Isaiah on the left, Alex on the right). Daddy was a bit distressed that we had to dress Isaiah in pink, but we'd run out of newborn clothes, so only had pink left until Mommy got the laundry done and the clothes sorted out.
And here's big sister with the boys (Alex left, Isaiah right).
Getting home was such a good feeling, especially so Mommy could sleep in her comfy bed again! Michaela has been fantastic with the boys - always wanting to give cuddles and kisses and hold them on her lap. Unfortunately for her (fortunately for Mommy and Daddy), the boys are really sleepy babies. We sometimes don't know what to do with ourselves, but we're not complaining!

The first night home was awful - at one point, all three kids were up! But, it's been getting better each night since we've been home. We've fallen into a bit of a system, where Daddy takes one to the spare bedroom and they sleep, while Mommy stays with one and they sleep. Then we swap during the night depending on when each one has been fed. This seems to give us all more sleep than being in the same room, but it's another bad habit we'll have to break eventually. At the moment, we just don't care as long as there's some sleeping going on!

Happy birth day!

Mommy went to Aberdeen on the 25th of August to await the arrival of the twins. Turns out Mommy was providing such an excellent place to stay, the twins didn't want to come out. Eventually Mommy asked the doctors to induce her and the date they picked was September 11th (our wedding anniversary)! So here's a pic of Mommy on the morning of the 11th, getting ready to be induced.
And on the morning of the 12th at 5:17am, Isaiah John Christie was born weighing 6 pounds and 1 1/2 ounces.
Quickly followed by Alexander Steven Christie (known as Alex - pronounced the Shetland way which sounds like Alec) at 5:34am, weighing 6 pounds and 3 3/4 ounces.
Our first family picture still in the labour room (excluding Michaela of course). Daddy is holding Isaiah and Mommy has Alex.
And this is two days later - a proud Daddy with his two boys - Alex in the yellow hat and Isaiah in the blue.

Mainly Mommy news

Lots of the family was home for Shelby and Dave's hamefaerin' (for non-Shetlanders, that's a wedding ceremony/dance a little while after the actual wedding). Michaela loved having everyone home, especially her second cousins, Ella, Hope and Samantha. Unfortunately, Mommy wasn't thinking too much about taking photos, so don't have many of them together. Here she is on the way to the hamefaerin' in her pretty summer dress and sandals.
And this is Mommy and Michaela at the ceremony, which was outside Auntie Jean and Uncle Hop's house.
Mommy's been trying to pack in as much swimming as possible before going to Aberdeen because Michaela's so good at it, we don't want her to regress. Here she is pretending she's the lifeguard.
And Mommy and Michaela in the baby pool. Usually we go with Michaela's best pal Cerys, but they were on holiday, so it was just us.
Michaela's been ill since Saturday with some kind of virus. It's made her have a fever, a weepy eye, go off food (very strange for our little girl), and need lots of naps. Mommy needs naps just now too, so here we are having a snooze! Check out the size of Mommy's bump!
And the rest of the news. Well, Mommy had to go to Aberdeen on Tuesday for her 34 week check with the twin clinic. The babies are growing really well - one was measuring exact dates and the other was measuring bigger. The bigger baby (who is called left twin) was practicing breathing during the scan too, so that was amazing to see! So after the scan, the doctor asked if I wanted to go back home and I said well, I'm booked on the 3:30 flight! So, he said I could come back home until August 25th. How exciting, but also how worrying. We're just hoping now that he wasn't wrong and I'll hold on to these babies for that long - no twinges or anything, so no reason to think otherwise.

They nearly didn't let me on the flight though and I think if I'd said it was twins, they definitely wouldn't have let me on the flight. Luckily, I was already on the plane and had a bag checked in and they were running late, otherwise, they might have kicked me off!

When I go back to Aberdeen on the 25th, it's for admission onto the labour ward. I think what they do is give me a check and if everything's fine, check me out of the ward and into the island accommodation in the hospital. But when I phoned Aberdeen to check what time I had to admit myself onto the ward, they asked was that for a C-section the next day! My how I freaked out and said no, no, no. And then they said that was fine, that's just usually the case when someone has a date booked in advance, but now they know.

So, the next week and a half will be spent resting as much as I can so that I don't encourage these babies to come early, although that's easier said than done with Michaela running around!

Lots from July to catch up on

I didn't realise what a busy July we've had, so I thought I'd better get updated with that first. Here's Michaela on the phone to Mommy. She loves speaking on the phone, but sometimes she goes all shy - usually she's best speaking to Daddy or Granny Toots (had to change that from Granny Up-Bye because I think it's a name Mommy's Mommy is stuck with!).
Michaela still likes to have a bottle before bed. We let her because she doesn't drink milk at any other time, although eventually we'll have to at least get it into a cup! Here's Granny Toots giving Michaela her bottle.
Michaela's like most little girls and is quite obsessed with shoes, especially Mommy's shoes!

Auntie Ivanna sent back some wellies and gardening gloves, etc for Michaela. She loves to wear it all, even on beautiful days. And she loves wearing her sunglasses. Here she is in our front garden before going down to the Ayre of Ireland with Daddy (see pics below).
Throwing stones into the water. Apparently she was scared to get too close to the water.
And our future Bigton Rowing Club rower!
With Daddy's boat he made for her at the beach.
Picking flowers.

Running across the bridge over the burn.
Then we had the annual Toddlers trip to Trondra farm. This year was so much better because the ground was drier and Michaela was old enough to be involved in everything and just loved it!


Phew! Think that's most of July covered now. Next blog will update on the start of August and all of Mommy's twin news!

Quick update

It was Eli and Zac's fifth birthday a couple of weeks ago and they had a birthday party at Auntie Joyce's. Megan and Eve were there, so Michaela was very delighted. She thought she could play like the big kids and luckily for her, they were all really good with her. Here she is with Eve, Ronan and Megan.
Auntie Carol's birthday present from Australia arrived and Mommy mentioned to Michaela that we could maybe wait for Daddy to get home to open it. Well, she got her tool (a pronged fork from her play kitchen) and managed to open the parcel herself, even opening the card from it's envelope!
Michaela has finally learned to go down the slide at the play park by herself. But she has to go down on her belly. Mommy spent ages trying to get a good photo of her actually going down the slide and this is the best I could get. She goes down very fast!
And finally, another belly shot. This is Mommy at 30 weeks. Sometimes I get fooled into thinking I'm not that big, but then I see myself from the side! People comment that it looks like I've got a football or basketball stuffed up my top. I suppose that's better than all the weight going everywhere....
Potty training is going quite well. Usually the accidents we have are to do with pooping, but I'm sure we'll get there eventually. Michaela is just loving getting to play outside and is really good about listening to instructions. When we go to the clothes line, we don't have to worry about her leaving the garden and running onto the road. And she's still good at getting off the road if a car's coming - something she learned when we were in California.

Other than that, not much going on. We're just starting to prepare for the twins coming. Mommy goes to Aberdeen in just over two weeks, so it's all starting to sink in now!