Abigail's 9th Birthday!

Today is Abigail's 9th birthday - my big girl is growing up so fast! :-) Here are some photos from today.

Abigail had requested a cake with a Hawaiian theme. No idea why - maybe she's missing summer? So made some flowers out of royal icing and the rest is buttercream - and this is the result, which Abigail was very pleased with!

My first time making coloured layers of cake - Abigail didn't know about it until I cut her slice of cake! ;-) She *was* excited! lol

Cake!

Opening presents!

And more presents

Elijah was very pleased with a "vintage" set of Bob the Builder Duplo which I found for him! Well, not truly vintage, but no longer being made.

Pleased with her gifts

Presents

Again thanks to ebay ;-) the bigger boys got some equally "vintage" Flex K'nex sets, which they've been busy with all day!

Funny face from Elijah! :-P

Birthday girl sitting amongst presents and balloons!

Happy with her cake! :-)

Afternoon cake with friends!

Miriam, Abigail, and Abigail's best friend Rebekah! :-)

"Quiet" time doing needlework together and chatting non-stop after a busy day of presents and birthday food.

So cosy by the fire, he's yawning! lol Photo from yesterday, at 17 days old.

Love this precious guy SO much! :-)

The camera light went funny here - we *weren't* really in a dark cave! ;-)

Already 12 days old!

I thought it was time I updated this with a few photos of Fergus, since the only ones I posted last time were from the day he was born! :-) It's hard to believe he's already 12 days old - nearly 2 weeks! The days just pass so quickly. He got weighed by the health visitor today and is now 10lbs 7oz - that's only 1oz less than being a whole pound heavier than he was at birth! So it's quite clear he's thriving and putting on the weight!

Photo from today - bit of a funny/cute face here! :-)

With Deborah today - she adores him! Never mind that she cried after my 20 week scan when she found out she *wasn't* getting a baby sister - she loves him SO much!

My big wee guy at 3 days old

4 days old - looking up to big brother Elijah!

Elijah is still very much in love with is brother! He's not the *least* bit jealous at all! In fact, rather the opposite - he thinks I should *always* be looking after the baby - like should hold him all the time! :-) Even when Fergus is happily sleeping in his pram, Elijah will say "Your baby needs a cuddle" or "Your baby needs a feed" or "You should look after your baby"! :-) I think he thinks the baby is very much a part of me and should always be with me. It's quite sweet how he thinks about him.

Elijah drawing pictures and colouring.

6 days old - "hanging out" with mummy when the others were asleep in the evening! Some evenings he seems to want to feed a fair bit before I go to bed, but I think it's just stocking up for the night. He just sleeps at night and doesn't keep me up at all! :-D I can't complain!

8 days old - with Abigail

I got my camera out to take a photo of these two - biggest & smallest boy! :-) But of course, all the others wanted a photo of them holding Fergus too.

Elijah and Fergus - love his wee mouth in this one!

Clement and Fergus

Deborah and Fergus

We've had lots of cold & rainy days lately, so here they were doing an autumn craft last week to keep them occupied in the afternoon. Older ones busy while smallest 2 boys were napping.

And a puppet show at the end, with their scarecrows they made!

Deborah with her puppet! :-)

We started back at lessons on Monday this week - they got an extra week of school last week after baby was born. But I'm feeling great and we were all ready to get back into a normal routine. My blood pressure hasn't yet returned to normal (and was still a bit high early this week) but I'm feeling fine. Hopefully it will be back down soon. I know it took about 12 days to come down after Elijah was born, and it had only been up for less than 2 weeks. So, 8 weeks on now from when it went up, who knows how long it will take to sort itself out - but hopefully soon! But otherwise, I'm thankful for a good recovery and a very happy, calm, and chilled out baby boy! It feels good to return to a bit of normality and very good to have a break from the past 9 months of nausea and vomtting all through his pregnancy! One of the most wonderful things is being able to drink water again - it made me feel sooo sick to have more than a sip of water here and there. So it's great to be able to drink a whole glass of it now! And being able to enjoy vegetables again and get back to the "Trim Healthy Mama" way of eating I was following before! I felt healthy & energetic following that plan of eating, and since getting back to it when Fergus was 5 days old, I'm already feeling the benefits again - it's great!

Introducing Fergus Ian

Just a very quick post here to share a few photos. Baby Fergus Ian has arrived safely at 5:29am this morning (25th October) and weighed 9lbs 8oz. Thankfully everything went well and we are already home this evening!

Fergus and mummy

Meeting their baby brother for the first time this afternoon. They are all totally in love with him. Elijah just *couldn't* stop smiling at home - he's SO excited!

And here he is all cosy, leaving the hospital to go home! :-)

Deborah's 4th Birthday, etc.

It's been a little while since I updated here, so figured it was time for a blog post! And for once, this one has rather less photos than usual - guess my camera has been a bit neglected lately!

Yesterday was Deborah's birthday - hard to believe she's already 4 years old! She was hoping the baby might arrive on her birthday, but that didn't happen! ;-)  I made her a cake on Saturday, as I knew I would be out on Monday for monitoring at the hospital. At least making the cake a couple of days early meant she wouldn't miss out on cake for her birthday! But it was rather thrown together in a hurry and looked messy. At least children don't notice the mistakes as much as I do!

I think she looks pleased with it! :-)

Smiling at her daddy singing Happy Birthday to her! :-D

And then on Monday morning - presents!

She had requested a baby doll, and I was very pleased when I discovered half price Cabbage Patch dolls this past summer, so bought in advance for her birthday! ;-) I loved my Cabbage Patch dolls as a child, so it was exciting to get one for Deborah - and Abigail got one too! ;-)

Elijah loves Lego - and he *loves* cars and trucks, so Duplo cars to mix & match was *just* the thing for him! He impressed me today when he was "reading his instructions" and picking out all the correct pieces to make the car he wanted! :-)

More presents

Pleased with her doll!

Busy with his Duplo

Clement putting his Lego together

And some Lego for Benjamin too, of course! Yes, they ALL love Lego!

A big case of Crayola markers in every possible colour made Deborah very happy indeed! She told me the other day that she's going to be an artist when she's a lady! ;-) She is *always* drawing pictures!

Right now we're enjoying a couple of weeks of October "school holidays", but in recent weeks we were learning about Christopher Colombus in history. It was the perfect opportunity to make some model ships! :-)

And some simple ships for the younger ones

Reading books together

Elijah wishes his cousins didn't live so far away! :-( I've printed out lots of photos and put them in magnetic frames on the fridge so the children can see their far away family! And the other night when I was doing dishes, Elijah told me "I've got my cousins on the couch with me!" This is what I found - I thought it was sooooo sweet! :-)

This was last week at the park in Inverness, after our homeschool group. The sun came out and it was very warm, after some chilly days recently. It's quite cold again right now, but this was a lovely day. The photo quality is rather poor, as I used my mobile phone to capture the moment of 4 of them in a swing together! :-)

They wanted me to see their tongues! I told them if they let me take a nice one of them (the previous one) then I'd get a silly one! LOL :-)

So, hopefully my next blog post will be news of the arrival of #6! :-) It can't be long now. My original due date was yesterday, though according to the dating scan at 12 weeks, I'm due on Monday the 20th. But either way, it will be soon. My blood pressure hasn't been behaving the past 3+ weeks now. I've always had low blood pressure all my life, but in the final weeks of my pregnancy with Elijah it started getting a bit higher than normal, and then went high enough during labour that I had to transfer to hospital by ambulance when in labour with him! :-p That wasn't fun, so I've decided this time to have a *planned* hospital birth. I wasn't sure if the blood pressure would be a problem again, so kept an open mind about the place of birth. But once the BP went up a few weeks ago, I figured that is reason enough to start out in hospital this time. Also, I've had quite a few spells of feeling rather unwell when I get the blood pressure spikes, so I wouldn't want to be 40 miles from hospital when things aren't quite right. So far there are no signs of pre-eclampsia, which is good! :-) So it seems that it's just "pregnancy induced hypertension", but they're keeping a close eye on me to make sure it doesn't get worse or turn into pre-eclampsia. This means *lots* of frequent blood tests and monitoring, etc. Thankfully I've been able to go to a small "partial" hospital twice for the monitoring, which is only 15 miles away and a lot more convenient. But yesterday I had to go all the way to Inverness instead, which meant I was out for 7 hours of the day! That was quite exhausting, but at least I was able to get there & back by bus, so the kids could stay home with Peter. It would have been worse to drag everyone out! :-) And I took along some crochet to keep me busy, so it wasn't all bad. But I do hope baby comes before too many more similar outings are needed!