Life...

... flies by too fast. Four weeks of term have passed by, Joel is enjoying his new nursery school and Emily is adjusting to life in Year One. We have had a busy time trying to adjust as a family of five. At times life is just one big mess, yesterday as I took the washing out of the machine, a tissue had been put in, ( in MY pocket), I said in despair, " I want a new life!" it was the tissue that broke the mummy's back! It is currently tricky to do things that were once simple, like go to the park. It is hard to push two children on the swings whilst trying to feed a 3 month old. It is hard to make tea whilst playing trains, making Hama beads and protecting a 3 month old on a play gym from raining beads or bashing trains! It is exhausting getting three children out of the car to do the school run, on a rainy Wednesday morning, with two carrying umbrellas, a blanket draped over a car seat and a mummy with a hood!

Emily has started ballet at a local ballet school so that trek across town is so much smaller, she enjoys dancing with her classmates. She is enjoying learning to read and is looking forward to swimming lessons starting up again on Friday. She currently has a conker collection of 16 and it grows daily.

On the up side, it is fab to go to Dunham Massey and have hot chocolate and cupcakes from our flask ( we are saving to repair our front door!) whilst struggling to fit on a picnic rug as there are so many of us! It is great that our breakfast table is now a squash with Seth in his clip on chair. It is fun to play family football with Jamie and Seth in goal. It is reassuring to hear Emily and Joel singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle' in the back of the car trying to comfort their hungry brother on the way back from school.

Jamie is well, school is busy with open evenings and twilights and other joys that I am not missing! His work load is pretty heavy and it isn't helped by rushing home to help with tea and bedtime. Work starts again at 7.15 pm when we pray for quiet from upstairs.

Seth is well, his lip and wound improves daily. We massage it 4 times a day despite his shouting! He is a noisy chap who had to sit at the back of church today as he was interacting too much with Diego's sermon.
Well, I think that is enough insight into our lives, we are well, happy and adjusting. Not long till half term and a rest from the school run.

Time Flies

Well, it has been a while so a quick catch up is probably needed.

Emily has had her first school report. It was great, she is doing well and seems to have embraced learning. She is not so good at following other children's rules or listening to their opinions. I wonder where that comes from? She has been a social butterfly with lots of parties and play dates, it can be tricky balancing family life with her calendar.
She has had her fifth birthday, she got a new bike, hopefully the stabilisers will go over the summer.
Note, her friend's horror as Emily was ;spitting' out the candles!
Joel is great. He is attempting to be toilet trained with some success but not amazing! He found it hard to understand why Seth was getting presents for arriving in the world and Emily was getting them for her birthday, but what about him? Life has hard lessons! We have been to the open evening for his Nursery school, it will be weird to see him in uniform! He has his next cardiology appointment on August 4th. He meets his new cardiologist as our other has moved to another hospital. We hope he cooperates as he like 'Dr Bani'. Joel enjoying a game at Emily's party!
Seth is four weeks old and doing well, or better than he was. He has been in hospital with a urine infection but is picking up. He is on antibiotics until they do some tests to rule out any problems with his digestion system. He doesn't like it as it tastes of aniseed, but he has no choice. We met his plastic surgeon on Thursday; he was very reassuring that his cleft is on the minor side and should repair well. His surgery is scheduled for September 14th, his 3 month birthday, so we have only 2 more months of his 'special lip'. He is sleeping well at night, on the whole, only 2 feeds, but he can be grizzly in the evenings. We are using infacol which seems to settle him and reduce the times of crying.
Jamie is well, he is on the countdown.... only 5 more school days to go. Emily is on the count down only 10 more days to go!

I am on the count down... only 11 more moths to go before back to work!

On another note it is 9.30pm and Jamie has Emily at the out of hours dr as she has been complaining of a sore ear! Hope they will be home soon with an Emily who is not in pain.

He's here

Seth Norman David McCulloch arrived 1 hour and 3 minutes late on Tuesday 14th June. He is doing well, his cleft is not as severe as they had predicted from the scans and antenatal appointments. His palate appears intact; we have our consultant and surgeon's appointment on July 14th when we will have more information. He is feeding well and growing well. We are well supported by Jenny our Cleft team nurse. She visits every few days and asks as well as answers questions.

Emily and Joel adore him and don't like leaving him to go to school, or our childminder. They are kind and positive to him and we seem to be settling into some sort of rhythm as a family of five.Jamie goes back to work on Tuesday, we will see how that goes as I do the school run on my own with Joel, Emily and Seth in tow! I may be in my pyjamas, but as long as Emily is dressed we will be ok!

Emily had sports day this week; her team came second and her house won. Her daddy also came 3rd in the parents egg and spoon race.... it was nice to be able to go as a family.

Joel is well, he is still as obsessed with football as ever. He had 36 footballs and balls prior to Seth arriving. He now has 38! The more the merrier as he lines them up in the garden in front of his football net!

It was my birthday yesterday. I really got spoilt. I love my new yummy mummy bag, thanks to my parents and parents in law. I also got a wonderful necklace, from Jamie, with the children's names stamped on individual tags! I love it! We are well, life is good, Seth is great, Joel is fab and Emily is perfect! Long may it last.

Phew!

This week we had high level, specialist cardio scan on baby. We knew that there was a 25% chance that this one would be like Joel or more complicated but when it is a statistic is feels far away. When it involves the little one so longed for, so wriggly in my stomach.. well it feels different.
We have had good care throughout this pregnancy with tests etc and this week was no different. Our 20 week anomaly scan took an hour... a very long hour! But all seems well apart from the fact that the baby was too shy to show his/her face so we are back for facial scans on Thursday.
Back to the cardio scan... we had to wait for ages as the families before us were complicated like us! But.......... after much looking, measuring, photographing, hmming and haaaaaing... baby does not have any holes similar to Joel. There may be small holes like any other baby but they will get sorted like any other baby at birth. What a relief! We are thankful and grateful.

Other news:

Joel is no longer in a cot, but a big boy bed complete with a gate on his door to keep him in.
Emily is now learning to swim on her back complete with arms... something I wish I was confident with.
It is only 2 weeks until half term!

Returning to a comfy pair of slippers

It has been a while, probably too long since I have updated my poor blog so here goes, a whistle stop tour of the past couple of months. I must say that I have been laid lower than usual as we are excitedly waiting the arrival of a new McCulloch baby, due to enter the world mid June. This pregnancy thankfully, has been like no other. Sickness, at night, lethargy never known to me and bugs and germs caught galore. That tailored with the start of term, Emily starting school, Jamie embedding himself in his new role at work and Joel starting with our new childminder, it has been a hard couple of months. That said, we have survived and are moving on.

Emily got her first school photo taken and was kind enough to share the experience with Joel. (note the flash, as it is a photo of a photo!)

It has been lovely to have the proper Winter season this year. We thankfully were prepared with sledges this year and have had fun down on the back lawn of NTC with the sledge. Mummy didn't have a go because, a, it was too cold, b, it was too cold and c, I had to keep baby safe!

We got the Christmas tree up and it stayed up, with a little help of daily moving decorations by Joel. The top half stayed the same, it was just the bottom that looked like a higgegly piggily house!

Emily was a star in her Christmas Nativity at school. She was quite proud of her mummy sewing the tinsel on the bottom of a t-shirt. Little does she know about the skill level required to create such a master piece. She received a headteachers award for her performance skills at the end of term. We are still unsure if this was related to the nativity play, her drama in the playground when she falls over or her interaction in class! Either way she was proud of a yellow piece of card with her head teacher's and her name on it!

Our church had our walking around the streets Nativity again this year. Emily was princess fairy angel and Joel was cold and stubborn shepherd! I believe Jamie may have been Caspar, but the details have escaped me... he did like the bling on his head dress!

Joel and her continue to fight one minute and love each other the next. It can be quite exhausting, but on the whole there is a lot of laughing going on as Joel is quite the character. At the moment he is refusing to sleep in his big boy bed instead opting for the baby bed or cot! Something I find mighty frustrating!

Santa visited Belfast and brought snow, family and presents. It has been fun trying to find places for everything, you know where the drums have gone?! The conservatory!

Well I am sure that I have missed lots of details and stories, we are ok, I am off work with some sort of Influenza virus. Jamie had to come and pick me up from class yesterday morning after a near fainting episode. I feel a little better today, it has been nice to sit upright for 30 mins, but I am ready to lie down again!

Hopefully more to follow I won't leave it so long next time and it is good to know that the slippers still fit!

We have been busy, Emily got her first swimming badge! A big achievement for her. Also our neighbour is so cool. We came home the other day to this box of goodies grown on her allotment. How great is that?

All is well with us, we are just about hanging on to the holidays in 2 weeks. Joel is at the hospital on Wednesday for vaccinations for the Winter, Emily and I are going to Disney on Ice on Friday with some friends and Jamie and I are going to see Romeo and Juliet with the English National Ballet on Sat. Lots to look forward to.

It has been a while... and it will take a while to read this one!

It is 2 weeks until the end of our summer break and we have nearly finished the DIY. The conservatory is done, we just need to save for two pieces of furniture. We all love it, it is a great place to play, read and look out into the garden. It is even a good place to do school work!

The loft has had its fourth and final coat of paint and all it needs is some blinds on the windows so that when we need to sleep in it (in two weeks) the sun won't blind us!

The weather has been pretty unpredictable so we have had fun in our 'lounge cinema' complete with beds, popcorn and blankets. We have also popped out to visit Stan at Manchester Museum and have been to feed the ducks at Woodford Park Garden Centre. Sun would be nice so that we could enjoy our own garden a bit more.

We have been on holiday with friends on the Isle of Wight. Our god daughter is 11 and about to start high school, it was fun spending a week with her and her family. It is bizarre that the tiny little baby we were holding all those years ago is now holding our toddler's hand and playing with him in the sea! The sun shone for most of the time, we played on the beach, picniced a lot and had a fun time. We stopped at Longleat and had a great time at the Safari Park. Our kids love animals so it was a fab thing to do. Emily was beside herself at the thought of meeting Sportacus and Stephanie as well as holding a millipede! Joel enjoyed the train ride and the safari boats looking for sea lions and hippos!

Joel has had his second birthday. He got a scooter and a football net as well as fire trucks, rockets, animals and books. He even got a personally addressed and signed copy of Cave Baby - the new Julia Donaldson book! I am so excited for him - thank you Auntie Nic and Uncle David! We went to Monkey Forest with the McCulloch tribe and had a fun time with the 140 Barbarary Macques (not sure how to spell them... monkeys will do,).

It is hard to work out where the last 2 years have gone, Joel has been an amazing addition to our clan, he brings so much joy and laughter to our house and has a real love for all things four legged. I am sad to see the baby time go but he will keep us busy in the toddler years as he is as strong willed as his sister and Mummy! ( He also has a great thowing action like his Daddy, but sadly it is not just balls that he likes to throw!)

Well 2 weeks left, we are off to Greenbelt - a Christian arts and music festival. It is the first time we have camped since our America Trip in 2003 and the first time with 2 children. It is only for 2 nights..... I will let you know how it went. It is also results day for Jamie on Tuesday. He will find out how the students did in their exams and how his department has performed this year. Emily, Joel and I are going to our church kids club - the theme is super heroes. I don't plan to dress up in a cat suit! My parents arrive for a dessert afternoon with friends and family to celebrate Joel and Jamie's birthdays. A little late for JoJo but lots of people are away in August!

Then, before we know it, the 5 weeks that I have longed for since Christmas are done and I am meeting my new class of 32 Year 6 children on Wednesday 8th Sept after 2 days of Inservice training. Before that, I need to successfully convince a very adament 4 year old that she needs to wear black shoes to school and not pink ones. I have tried all summer and failed but this week I am biting the bullet! Wish me luck!