We had our 19 week ultrasound yesterday. The good news is that both babies are healthy and good sizes and have all their bits in the right places. The other bit of news is that it seems Mitchy is going to have two little brothers!
It is a great relief to us that they are both healthy and growing well, certainly an answer to prayer.
On Monday we went up to Copacabana for Lilly's 3rd Birthday party.
Baby Will and I had a little photoshoot
Cheeky boy!
On the weekend Meeks' mum got married to her long time partner Michael (Mitchy's Nana and Poppy). It was a lovely evening and Mitch was very well behaved even though he stayed up to almost 11pm. By the end he was a bit exhausted and hyperactive. dangerous combination.
Meeks did the wedding cake and it was beautiful.
Today we got together with Mike and Mandy and my Mum and Dad for some more Christmas fun. Lilly and Mitch played together
Then we opened presents
Will played in the wrapping paper
And then had a cuddle with Ganny
Christmas Day really is about the kids and seeing Mitch was the only kid there here is a few pictures from Mitch's day.
First some soccer (he's definitely a left footer) in the shed that Poppy is building, "on the concrete" as Mitch refers to it. He loves it up there, I wonder if he's feel the same when it has walls and a roof.
Then some climbing with Poppy
Playing with presents. Cars and dinosaurs are his favourites
Of course the rest of us were there too.
Poppy and Nana
Everyone
Who's a cheeky boy?
Last Saturday night was Krissy and Glen's Engagement Party. Meeks made and decorated the cake. Stunning!
There was lots of fantastic food
Lots of friends and family
All there for Krissy and Glen
Some gratuitous mood shots ...
Well, that is another Christmas Day finished.
We woke up this morning and Mitch opened his presents with great gusto. He was very into it this year, ripping apart his wrapping and shouting out what he had got. I have never seen so many cars and trucks and helicopters and diggers and forklifts and ... Mitch calls them his "vehicles". He got a bunch of other things as well, but anything with with wheels or claws (dinosaurs) were the stars.
After that it was off to church with Krissy and Glen and the back to Nana and Poppy's house for lunch with Meeks' side of the family (photos to come).
Tomorrow we do it all again with my family. Whoo hoo more food!
A lot has been happening in our little world of late. Mitch has pretty much potty trained himself. About a week ago he said he wanted to start wearing undies. After a few little accidents he finally did his first wee on the potty and it was like a switch had gone off in his head. He hasn't been perfect since then and he still has a few issues with poos in the potty, but he's very good at telling mummy and daddy when he needs to wee and running to the potty, even if he isn't so good at pulling his pants down. Hopefully he'll graduate to a toilet seat so we don't have to take the potty everywhere with us! Also this week Mitch has decided that he doesn't want to sit in the high chair any more, so he is sitting in a grown up chair, boosted up by a thick towel. He also had his first sleep over at the Blair's house on the night of the engagement party. Finally, he gave his dummy to Santa in exchange for presents, so all in all it has been a big week of growing up for our little boy.
In other news we had an obstetrician's appointment on Tuesday and all is well. There are still two babies and and two heart beats. We have our official 19/20 week scan next week and we should find out if they are boys or girls or a boy and a girl. We are very excited. The doctor thought he could see a willy on one of the babies but he wasn't really sure, he doesn't have the best ultrasound machine in his offices.
Last Saturday was Krissy and Glen's Engagement party. Meeks made an amazing cake and heaps of amazing food. I'll put pictures from that in a separate blog entry. Next weekend is Michael and Lorraine's wedding so it is very busy week!
Anyway, Merry Christmas to all! Love Dave, Meeks, Mitch and plus 2
This morning Mitch and I were planning on going out to Fagan Park to enjoy the sunshine and I knew Phil and Shazzy were having a family day with their boys and were planning on having Santa photos later in the day, so I invited them out to take some family shots. The family shots went okay, but it was a bit bright so there was a lot of squinting going on unfortunately. Oh well, you live you learn. We managed to get a few nice ones.
I got some super shots of Mitch playing with Joshie and Owie too.
Mitch and Joshie played slippery dips
Mitch and Joshie had some water fun - those are Joshie hands pulling the button to make the water come out. He was not meant to be getting dirty because they were going to get their Santa photo after the visit to the park
After Mitch had gotten nice and wet, he decided to roll in the sand
Finally there is this absolute gem of Joshie, Owie and Mitchy
So all in all a very fun morning at the park.
Hello all. We have been sitting on part of this news for a while, but part of it is new. Firstly Meeks is pregnant! She is 12 and a bit weeks pregnant and is doing pretty well. She has had a few weeks of nausea and periods of extreme tiredness, but has largely been well. The pregnancy came as a bit of a surprise for us and was not planned - we did want to have another baby, but wasn't expecting it quite so soon. In fact the day before we found out Meeks was pregnant we had spent a couple of hours counting months and days and working out when was the best time to get pregnant given the busy times we have ahead with Meeks' sister's wedding in London in April and the planned holiday to Europe etc. Little did we know Meeks was already pregnant! Despite our best efforts to be in control of our lives, sometimes God reminds us that he is the one who is truly in control. Here are a couple of ultrasound pictures from yesterday's ultrasound:
Now if you click through on that image you might notice it is a bit bigger than the normal pictures I include on the blog. That is because this is a bit of a test of how observant you are. Go on click on the image above and have a close look at it then come back and continue reading.
Now aside from the normally difficult to understand ultrasound images there is some important text on there. Go and have another look.
That's right we are having twins! This was a huge surprise to us when we found out at the 12 week ultrasound yesterday morning. They are non-identical, are in two separate sacs and have two separate placentas. The ultrasound operator thought one might be a couple of days older than the other one. We don't quite know how that works. It's weird we had this funny feeling it was twins right from the start, but when we saw Meeks' obstetrician 2 weeks ago he had a brief look with the ultrasound and only saw one baby, so we had put the thought out of our minds. But as soon as the ultrasound operator put the probe onto Meeks' stomach yesterday, even we could see that there were two babies. The ultrasound operator said, "So you're having twins" and we said, "What?", she said, "You're having twins, didn't you know?". It was just amazing, we were speechless, I couldn't stop laughing, somewhat delirious, Meeks was crying. We had always debated whether we wanted 2 or 3 kids and had decided that if this next one was another good baby like Mitch we'd think about a third. Again, God has taken that decision out of our hands! We spent then next few hours coming to terms with it and every once in a while something would pop into our head that would make us realise how much our life is going to change.
Firstly it means that Meeks can't fly to Krissy's wedding in the UK in March/April which we are extremely sad and disappointed about. We are so sorry Krissy and Glen we were really looking forward to it even when Meeks was going to be very pregnant. We will just have to make the time in December when you are out here even more special.
It also means that we are going to go from having just us and Mitch, to being a family of five in a three bedroom house. We had started preparing the nursery based on one baby (which is why we had been moving Mitchy into a big bed etc) so we will have to rethink things a bit. The two babies can share a cot for a while, but we'll eventually need another cot.
We'll also have to sell the Mountain Buggy pram and get a double with a skateboard attachment for Mitch.
Our car lease finishes in March so we will have to think about getting a bigger car. We were going to get the new Mazda 6, but we will probably need something bigger to fit two car seats and booster seat for Mitch plus room for a double pram. Meeks' only requirement for the car is that she doesn't want it to have sliding doors.
I was going to take a few weeks off when the baby was born, but that will probably increase to 6 weeks or so. IBM allows me to take up to 4 weeks unpaid leave each year so I will take advantage of that. The double baby bonus should cover the shortfall in my salary.
The nappies! Oh the nappies, so many nappies to change!
Anyway, yesterday was a big day for us and the next 6 months are going to be pretty intense (not to mention the years after that). Please pray for Meeks' health and the health of the babies (they are going really well so far, they are healthy and similarly sized and positioned well). Also pray for Mitch as he adjusts to the idea of having not just one little brother or sister, but two. Yesterday he was a bit confused that Mummy had two babies inside her instead of just one, but today he seems a bit more okay with it.
Anyway, that is our big news!
Mitchy moved into a proper big boy bed today and he loves it. Here is his new bed
It has a trundle bed underneath for when friend's sleep over. Mitchy was very excited about his new big boy bed.
Then it was time for some practice sleeping.
I have to apologise for the lack of updates on the blog recently. It has been a nightmare month at work. I have worked the last three weekends and I'm pretty sick of it, but it looks like it will slow down a bit now, which is great. Next weekend Meeks and I are going to get a bit of pampering at Gillian Adams (don't worry they don't have nude woman walking around in real life) which we booked ages ago, but the timing is perfect.
At about midday Friday (yesterday) I started a very long "day" of work. It is the implementation of the work I have been doing since about August last year. I wont get to go home again until Sunday morning. I'm staying at a hotel in the city so basically I'm either in the office or in the hotel sleeping. The only time I'm not at work or sleeping is during the afternoon and evening on Saturday when Meeks and Mitch are coming to visit.
It is 4am Saturday and we have successfully completed tonight's implementation and now it is just a series of monitoring activities until 9am. Then it's back to the hotel for some sleep. I'm back in the office at 1am Sunday morning until 9 or 10am and then I can head home.
Please pray for the success of the projects I'm working on, for me personally because I was tired before this weekend started after a manic week of 10-12 hour days last week and also for Meeks and Mitch. Mitch doesn't understand why Daddy isn't there and Meeks has to take care of him all weekend without any help from me. I miss them both!
Add to that I have to work again next weekend, although hopefully next week will be better than last week (providing everything goes well this weekend). I need a holiday!
Status update: 5:20am Sunday. It looks like the implementation has been a successful. There were a few niggles tonight, but nothing to induce panic. I managed to get some sleep between about 8pm and 1am, but I'm still sooooo tired. I should be able to go at about 6. Probably back to the hotel, breakfast and check out and then go home for a sleep.
Quite often the slippery dip in the park next door causes a substantial build up in static electricity. If you climb up and then touch the metal frame of the play equipment you get a little electric shock. Or if Mitchy slides down and you grab him before he touches the ground, you get a shock. Or you just get cool things like this happening!
