We struggle to believe that we are in August already. We have failed in our endeavour to keep the blog up-to-date. Responding to emails has been a challenge lately too… so if you are waiting on a reply to an email from us, I promise it will come soon. Things here have been a little hectic. Allan finished work at the end of June for a two week break which turned out not to be such a break as Fionn ended up in hospital. He gave us quite a fright as he was very sick and a few times we thought we were going to lose him. We’ve never felt so helpless. Noah had been quite sick with a cold, he had a cough, runny nose, fever and he was vomiting. One day his temperature was so high and he wasn’t drinking that we almost ended up at emergency with him but we managed to get him to drink and got his temperature down. Anyway, he gave the cold to Fionn but Fionn only got the cough and runny nose to begin with and so we weren’t really worried about him. Then one night he started to struggle to breathe and by 11pm he was really unsettled so we called a health direct line (like NHS 24) and they said to take him straight to emergency. It turned out he had bronchiolitis (the bronchioles in his lungs were inflamed and causing him to struggle to breath, it’s a virus, so they can’t give antibiotics, they can only manage it while it runs its course) When we got to emergency he just deteriorated. His pulse was up over 200 beats a minute, his temperature dropped to 34 degrees and he was hooked up to all sorts of machines. At one point they had tubes down his throat trying to clear him out. Then his heart rate dropped from over 200 to under 30. It was so scary and we couldn’t do anything. The hospital we took him to which is the closest one to us didn’t have a full time paediatric doctor so we were to be transferred to another hospital and then when he deteriorated it turned into an emergency transfer with the paramedic sitting with the paddles to restart his heart if needed. They weren’t needed, thank God. But when we got to the next hospital they were then talking about transferring him by helicopter to a Sydney hospital as they thought he had a collapsed lung. An x-ray showed he didn’t thankfully. They kept us in emergency at this hospital for a few hours to monitor him as they were unsure whether to send him to the special baby unit or the normal ward but by 9am that morning he had picked up a bit and we were just sent to the normal ward with the doctor saying he could get worse, that the next 24 hours were critical. However, he didn’t get any worse and during the course of the day he began to get better.  We just couldn’t believe how sick he got so quickly but he recovered quite quickly too. It was the Friday night we took him into emergency. On the Saturday he was still very sick. He just lay on his cot, not doing anything, not even crying. It was really hard to pick him up as he was hooked up to a monitor and to oxygen and had a drip in. By Sunday morning he had picked up and just kept getting better and we were able to take him home on Monday afternoon. You now wouldn’t know that Fionn had been sick. He continues to grow and thrive. Only this past weekend he discovered his hands. He is always smiling and giggling. He is such a happy and content little boy who loves being around Noah!

Noah continues to do well. He is growing up so quickly. His vocabulary continues to grow at a scary rate and we have to be careful what we say around him because he so quickly picks it up and repeats it. He is quite the little entertainer and loves to make people laugh. He is just our little star.

Allan has been back at work now for about 5 weeks and has struggled with the concept of teaching in July. After all, that is normally the summer holidays in Scotland. Granny and Grampa arrive from Scotland in a little over 4 weeks which we are all excited about. Although we do feel a little let down by them since they will not bring any Square Sausage with them!!

Until next time (we won’t say when that will be) enjoy the photos below (will post some videos soon)….

Allan, Anna, Noah & Fionn

Some pics of our boys over the last few weeks as well as Fionn smiling.

As I am sure most of you will know by now, Fionnlagh Jude Dougan was born at 8.11am on Tuesday 1st June 2010 weighing 8lbs 5oz. Some pictures of our boys over the last few weeks are below…. enjoy.

Only 92 days…

Only 92 days since my last blog. I could give a few excuses but I won’t. To those of you that have tried to keep me honest and have encouraged me to blog via email, Facebook or even Twitter I apologies for ignoring your requests. Anyway only 92 days since my last blog here is the next installment.

Lots have happened in the last 92 days. Considering that 92 days ago was Noah’s birthday… a lot certainly has happened. I have finished (and survived) my first term at work, we’ve had a few family get-togethers, the weather has slowly began to cool down, we have moved into our own home, I have been to Melbourne for a weekend at the Formula One, the baby inside Anna has continued to grow and as we speak Noah is sleeping for the first night in his new bed!

I have been on holidays now for almost a week and am glad to have finished my first term at work successfully. I am beginning to get to grips with the NSW Curriculum (although we are about to change to a National Curriculum – so it’ll be all change again – just when I thought I’d seen the back of A Curriculum for Excellence), the Australian accent and sense of humour. I think they are beginning to get to grips with my accent and sense of humour. Although there is one boy in my Year 11 (S5) class who feels the need to continually butt in after every sentence (either from me or someone else in the class) with, “what he’s saying is….” I am slowly trying to break that habit in him!

At the end of March we moved into our new home. With the help of family, friends and work colleagues the move was quick and easy. We are very lucky to be living in a lovely little private community with 50 or so house. We have a communal swimming pool, tennis court and club house. It is a very safe little street and Noah loves to be out in the sun playing. We also have a couple of families from school living in the street as well as a couple of families from church which is great since we’ve had enough of meeting new people for the moment.

The house is great… perfect size and location for us. The only problem is the back garden… not the most ideal layout. It has chilli bushes everywhere. So if you happen to be in the area and would like some chillis then drop in and pick them up. We’ll live with it for the timebeing!

Four days after we moved into the house, I abandoned Noah and a slightly pregnant Anna to travel to Melbourne for the weekend. In my defence it had been booked since Christmas (and there was no way I was passing up the chance to go to the F1 in Melbourne). The noise and speed was immense and we’re already planning our next few trips… Melbourne 2011 and maybe Singapore 2011???

Anna has done a fantastic job of unpacking our ‘stuff’. It is very strange to see our stuff from Scotland sitting in a house on the other side of the world but nice nonetheless. Most of our stuff arrived undamaged. That which was damaged was insignificant for the most part and the insurance company seem to be happy to pay out on that stuff which is great.

So I’ll finish now with some pics from the last 92 days and an assurance that it will definitely not be 92 days until the next post. Given that it is only 49 days, 1176 hours, 70,560 minutes, 4,233,600 seconds until baby two is due, I’m sure I’ll blog again soon…..

Here are some videos from Noah’s Birthday…

Below are pics of Noah on his birthday. I will upload videos later.

So we finally got to meet the latest addition to our family today. Anna had her 20 week scan and we got some pics of the baby. We toyed with the idea of finding out whether it is a boy or a girl but decided against it.

Tomorrow is Noah’s 2nd Birthday. So we’ll blog with pics then.

Sending warmth from this overwhelming heat!

Hello again from a very wet and colder (18 degrees) Australia. As promised here is some videos from Christmas Day of Noah opening his presents from Santa.

Merry Christmas to everyone! As I write this it is 11.45pm here in Sydney and I know that most people back in the UK will just be getting the turkey out of the oven. I hope that you all have a great meal and day!

We started the day at a very respectable 7am. Noah was so excited that “Santy” had been and got excited about opening the presents. We spent the day at Claire (Anna’s sister) and Mat’s house along with everyone else in Anna’s family. A total of 16 mouths to feed (18 if you include the 2 unborn children).

I am uploading videos onto YouTube overnight and will post on the blog tomorrow. In the meantime photos are below for you to enjoy.

Well we’ve been in Australia for a week now and we’ve had a few emails asking how we’re getting on so thought it might be best to put a blog up to update everyone on how things are going.

Before I do that, I’ll complete the Singapore story. I last blogged on Thursday of last week which left us with Friday and Saturday before we left. On Friday we decided to take a taxi to Sentosa Island and visit Underwater World which Noah absolutely loved. It was just big enough for him to see around without getting bored. He did have an encounter with a Stingray at the side of a pool as he looked in… the Stingray decided to splash him! Noah just laughed. As we left Underwater World the rain started… this was one tropical downpour. We hailed a taxi to get us back to the taxi and in the time it took me to fold the pram down and put it in the boot of the taxi I was soaked to the skin! We spent the afternoon back at the hotel relaxing and decided to go in hunt of some night markets in the evening. It would appear that the receptionist at the hotel gave us some poor advice and we ended up at a pretty awful market… smells, sights, sounds were horrible. Didn’t last long before we headed back to the hotel and out to dinner to our new favourite Singaporean restaurant (see our last blog for more about this). I had Beef Hor Fun and Anna had Beef Mee (a bit like Beef Hor Fun but with different noodles).

Since our flight on Saturday wasn’t until late in the evening we had some time to do some last minute sight seeing in Singapore. We decided to make use of the boarding passes that we had from the London to Singapore leg of our flight and get a discount on the SIA hop on bus which we all enjoyed. We then left the hotel about 3pm heading for the airport. Got checked in (only 0.5kg over our allowance… all that stressing wasn’t worth it) and then headed through to departures to grab some dinner and have a wander around before our flight.

We boarded the Singapore Airlines A380 a little late after the runway had to be cleared to allow Air Force One with President Obama onboard to land. The A380 experience was nothing special. The aircraft itself was quieter and a little smoother but the experience itself was pretty average. Service was not as good as that which we had received on the B777 a few days earlier. It was nice to fly on the A380 but I won’t go out of my way to get on one again… in fact I’d rather fly a 777, I think.

We landed in Sydney on time at about 7.30am on Sunday 15th Nov., and were greeted by all of Anna’s family. A bit of a strange and surreal experience this time since this was not just a holiday!

Anyway we’ve spent the last week organising various pieces of paper, getting our NSW Driver’s License, opening a bank account, sorting out Medicare and arranging ante-natal care for Anna. We’ve also spent lots of time in the pool trying to hide from the heat! I had a bit of an informal job interview on Friday which could turn out to be something… we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll keep you up to date on that one…

Today we had the annual family Christmas Dinner with Anna’s family. (First one Anna has been to in 7 years). It was lots of fun except the weather has been incredibly hot today. Ridiculously so. After lunch/dinner when we left the hotel the thermometer in the car said….

It says 46 degrees!!!!!!!!!!

Noah doesn’t seem to be phased by the heat and has his first proper swimming lesson tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes. I’ll try and post some pictures of that.

Anyway time to crank up the A/C and head to bed!

Love,
A, A & N (+ Bump)

There are so many things that I could have called this post such as:

Whoever said McDonalds was the same the world over was lying
I had a pretty good steak on Singapore Airlines
Singapore Slings cost how much at Raffles?
Ew yuck was that really Chicken
Yes there is a theme here! And I’ll stop…

I chose to keep it simple and straightforward as Singapore…

We left Glasgow on Tuesday morning (won’t talk too much about the emotions of leaving or getting to the airport, number of tissues used etc. etc. But Gillian said on her Facebook Status that she could have filled a bucket…. I reckon that the bucket must have been pretty big by the time we arrived in Singapore…. If it wasn’t Anna with tears on the plane it was me… anyway enough about that).

We left Glasgow on BA1487 bound for London. We could only check-in 3 of our 4 suitcases at Glasgow all the way through to Singapore. The forth we had to collect at London and check-in again with Singapore Airlines (unless we were prepared to pay £42 per kilo for that forth bag with BA… I think not). Uneventful flight from Glasgow to London (excluding tears, of course), collected said 4th bag at LHR and transferred (easily I might add) from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3. Checked in 4th bag with Singapore Airlines and didn’t mention that we had already checked in 3 bags at Glasgow… that was a bit of a mistake!

Cleared Security at LHR T3 which was a nightmare bought some dinner and boarded the Big Bird for Singapore. Just before the doors closed the dispatcher came on looking for me… I was in trouble! I hadn’t told the check-in agent at Heathrow that we’d checked in 3 other bags in Glasgow for this flight… we had more than our allowed luggage. A quick show of an email confirming double luggage allowance for me (since I was emigrating) and all was fine again.

12 hours 30 minutes passed remarkably fast on SQ319, service was fantastic, food was great… we had beef for dinner and it was a huge chunk of cow… it was great! Service was fantastic and Noah was the best behaved child on-board… he did amazingly well! No need for my stress before hand then, mum?

Arrived in Singapore, cleared customs, collected luggage, into a cab and at the hotel within 55 minutes of landing in Singapore… that was fast!

Got to our room, unpacked a little, quick change (since it was 32 degrees in Singapore and we had dressed for the 5 degrees weather in Glasgow 19 hours or so before!) and then it was off out for dinner. Found a nice little restaurant close to the hotel. Noah had a Ham Omlette, Anna some Chicken and Prawn Fried Rice and I pushed the boat out (after checking that the boat had no nuts) and had Beef Hor Fun. Don’t ask me what it was, it had lots of ginger and tasted nice though!

Back to the hotel for a little night swimming with Noah.. he loved the pool, eventually!

Today, we headed to Orchard Road and browsed some shops, headed back to the hotel where Anna and Noah slept through the most spectacular storm. I was sitting by the pool as this storm came in. The temperature went from 34 degrees to 26 degrees as a result of this storm. We then went to Raffles for a Singapore Sling which didn’t impress me much. But the price impressed me even less… almost 35 Singaporean Dollars (£15) for a Singapore Sling and a Soda Water!! Then we headed for dinner which, to be honest I’d rather not talk about. Anna had risotto which was fine, Noah had a Pizza with Pineapple which he loved (thanks Uncle ‘Arc for introducing him to it… now I can’t eat his leftovers!) and I had something which claimed to be Chicken. It wasn’t.

I decided to grab some McDonalds on the way back to the hotel (if all else fails, right?) This wasn’t our first visit to McDs today, Anna and I had breakfast there (Noah ate his good old Cranberry Wheats which we packed for him). The first disappointment this morning was that they don’t do Bacon and Egg McMuffins in Singaporean McDonalds the second disappointment is that the ‘sausages’ were ‘chicken sausages’ which tasted more like stuffing from the Christmas Dinner than sausages. Mix that with cheese and a muffin… not a good combination for breakfast. Couple that with me asking for 2 sausage and egg McMuffins, one without egg and getting two without egg. Oh well! Communication here isn’t my strong point… I ordered a Big Mac Meal tonight at McDonalds and got a super-dooper, 4 burgers in the bun, Ultra Big Mac Meal (by some other name). Oh well!

Enough typing… I came on to post photos not to type. Photos below. Enjoy

Time to go from this hot 27 degree balcony (its 11.36pm) into a lovely air-conditioned hotel room.

Love,
Allan, Anna & Noah

The Scottish weather has been very warm of late which has meant that we have managed to get out and enjoy the sunshine. Noah has experiences his first water fight and although was a bit unsure, he quickly got the hang of the game… soaking daddy….

and some videos…

We’re off on holiday this week to the Borders… will blog for there with some pics, hopefully.

Allan, Anna & Noah

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Asked yet another person! What were they talking about? Noah, of course! It was obvious, well to me at least, that it was time for Noah’s first haircut. Anna wasn’t so sure! She loves or should that be loved the curls but it was time for them to go…

So on the hottest day in a very long time we all headed to the Barbers to see how Noah would cope with his first proper haircut (Anna cut his fringe a few weeks ago). We arrived to find a queue… didn’t seem promising. How would Noah cope with waiting for a while first. Evenutally it was our turn and Noah got to sit on the chair…

Unfortunately it didn’t start so well…

However he did settle down and enjoy it. Mummy even got to keep some of those baby curls…

Almost Finished…

The finished product….

Our little baby is now a little boy!

Allan, Anna & Noah

As promised here are some videos of Noah:

Noah is very proud in this video of his new found ability… walking!

Noah and that now famous Hat that Pops gave him! He loves this hat and is so proud of himself when he walks around the house with it on!

Noah enjoying Chocolate with Gramps on Easter Sunday! His facial expressions are great!

This is a long video but Noah displays an array of tricks in it. It is worth watching to the end!

Hope you enjoyed the videos.

Allan

Having failed to upload pics of Noah onto Facebook for sometime now, it is time to give you some updates on Noah…

Photos:

Can I touch the fire yet?

Noah loves to touch the fireplace. He has no concept that he shouldn’t touch it. I was washing dishes a few weeks ago when Anna was out and realised that he was dangerously quiet. I went through to find that he had taken all the coal from the fire and piled it neatly on the rug! What a clever boy!

Mummy, I'm nice and clean...

Noah loves to load things into the washing machine… toys… cutlery… himself…

Right, Daddy, Your turn

…Daddy!!!!

Aren't I cute?

I love my hat!

Noah’s favourite hat. There is a movie of him with it which I will post later…

I’ll post some videos shortly.

Allan