MWNews 19

I haven't written anything in a few days, so I thought I had better do so. Not that I have a lot to say, although I keep thinking Maeghan has done something cute and I need to be telling someone about it, but Maeghan is always doing something cute so it is hard to find the really special ones.

I was talking about her dancing last time and how much she loves going. I don't think I have told you that we are not allowed in the room when she is at class. We have to wait outside but we can stand and look through the windows to watch. Maeghan has figured out that we are watching through the windows. She discovered me watching her one day and started waving and saying Hi daddy. She would then tell the teacher that her daddy is at the window. It is probably very distracting for the teacher but since the kids are not really following her anyway, it is not more distracting than when the other kids run around the room and ignore her.

I did tell you she is going to be in the dancing program. I don't think there will be anyone there to watch besides us but they are going to do it on Dec. 17. The teacher's mother is making all the costumes and she will be making Maeghan one. We don't know what it will be but she says it is usually animals or butterflies or something. There are only three girls in the class and most days, there are only two. I don't know if they will all be participating or not as we were given the choice and at first, we said no because Juanita was having the baby around that time and we didn't think she would be up to it. But, I convinced her that Maeghan would want to be in it so as of now, she will be.

They are taking class photos on Dec. 3. I will post them when we get them. Maeghan just interrupted me asking me about a picture she found on the table. It is the picture I posted last time. I put it in a frame for Juanita's birthday last year. I says 'I Love My Mommy' on the frame and has balloons on it.

Maeghan wants me to take her to bed now. She has started telling us she wants to go to bed at night and asks me to take her. She actually knows that if Daddy takes her, she gets to play in bed for a little while and if Mommy takes her to bed, she has to go to sleep. So, she always comes up to me and says 'will you take me to bed now' before Mommy decides it is bedtime.

Before I go, I do have some other news about William. We had another ultrasound today. The baby is a little bigger than normal, but not too much bigger. Everything is alright and looks just fine. We have some 3D pictures of him. He has his arm on top of his head and he has puffy cheeks like Maeghan had. Of course, I am sure they could just be making all that up but the pictures are pretty clear so I guess it is true.

I know I did a lot of complaining about petrol prices earlier. I shouldn't have. They are expected to go to $1.30 a litre next week and possibly $1.50 by the end of the year. That translates to about $7 a gallon over there. That is definitely out of our price range. I am not sure what that will mean if it goes that high. I know I will be working at home a lot more than I do now but it is just way too expensive to drive anymore. We are thinking of selling one of the cars just so we are not tempted to drive anywhere we don't have to.

Juanita's parents and sister are coming over for Christmas. At least, we are hoping they are. If they raise ticket prices, then they may not be able to. I am going to try to buy the tickets now to lock in the price, but I am sure everyone else is going to do the same, so I don't know if any will be available. Of course, I have no idea when they would be going back. They normally stay for several months but with the ticket prices as they are, they may not get back for a long time.

I am taking three weeks off when William is born. Most people over here take six to eight weeks off. I will actually be taking about six weeks as my time off goes into the Christmas shutdown time for the company and if I am not deemed essential, I will be forced to take two weeks off for Christmas. If I do, then I will take my three weeks, go back for three days and then take two more weeks. And those three days, I plan on working from home, so it will be like having six weeks off. I have never been off for that long before, except when I didn't have a job when I first got here. It will be good to get to play with Maeghan everyday and William will be here although he will probably be sleeping all the time. Sleeping or crying or eating so he won't be much fun to play with, but I am sure Maeghan will love it.

She likes it when Daddy gets her out of bed in the mornings. She always calls out to Daddy when she wants something at night. She used to just cry but since I am the only one who hears her, she now just calls out to Daddy and I wake up and go see what she wants. Normally, she has lost her bottle or it is empty and she wants another one. Sometimes, she wants to sleep with Mommy but I have started making her sleep in her own bed now. She doesn't really mind sleeping in her own bed, as long as you lay down with her for a few minutes until she falls asleep. She hasn't slept in Mommy's bed in a few months now.

Well, she is sitting in my lap now asking me to take her to bed. I guess I have to go. I will talk to you again later.

MWNews 18

Maeghan loves doing ballet. She talks about it all week and is always reminding you she is going dancing. Its not real ballet but she gets to wear tights and dance around so she thinks it is ballet. The teacher is trying to teach them ballet steps by having them bow and bend their knees out and things like that but the kids just do whatever they can and don't really try to do what the teacher is doing.

When they are told to hold their feet together and bend at the knees, with their kness pointing out in different directions, Maeghan just bobs up and down. That is more than the other kids do as they just stand there and do nothing but Maeghan at least tries it.

She loves to follow the teacher around and stands right next to her while she is showing the class everything. She watches the teacher and then watches the other kids to see what they are doing. If they are not doing what the teacher is saying, then she just follows the teacher.

This last week, she was all excited about going to dance because I was working at home and would get to go with her. It is just a couple of houses away from us and we walk there. You have to walk up a pretty steep driveway but she insists she can do it by herself and she does. she has gotten where she can walk almost anywhere without falling down. She still cannot run but she thinks she can. She says she is running but she is really just walking fast. It is no where near what the other kids can do, so they are always running away from her and she cannot catch them. She still thinks it is fun but she never catches them and she gets frustrated sometimes.

She now wants be to play chases all the time, because she can run away from me and I almost never catch her. She will come up to me several times a day and say you can't catch me and run away. I walk along behind her and tell her I am going to catch her. She doesn't like it when I actually catch her but she will run away for hours if I don't eventually catch her and pick her up. She then immediately says to put her down and do it again, so we play catches again.

She also likes to come up to me and say, 'Do you want to play?' She says it so cute that I cannot refuse her although most of the time I am busy doing something else. She will sit on the floor and make me sit with her and throw the balls back and forth. She has gotten bored with this lately and will only through the ball a couple of times. She then climbs over me and climbs up on my chest so she can use me as a slide. She slides down and then climbs back up so she can slide again.

She also likes me to bounce her on my knee, but only if her feet are touching the ground. I am not sure if you can imagine that but it is very painful as I have to sit on the ground and bounce my knee up and down. I can't do it for very long as it hurts my knee but she wants to do it for hours.

We went an got some of her toys off layby (lay-away) for Christmas. She didn't notice them when we were carrying them around in the trolley (shopping cart) and when we put them in the car. But, when Juanita was putting them away in the closet, she saw some of them on the top shelf. She opened her mouth and pointed at them. Then she said 'Those are mine'. We tried to convince her they were Williams but she was having none of that and said she wanted to look at them. We didn't let her but now whenever she walks by that closet, she looks up at the shelf to see if they are still there.

We still have the majority of her toys to get off of layby, and all the other kids presents also. They have what is called a no deposit layby over here during July where you can pick out all the things you want for Christmas and they give you until Christmas to pay for them. It makes shopping easier, so you don't have to go looking for things during the busy season but I am not so sure it is better. Since everyone knows they can go do this and all the stores do it within a couple of weeks of each other, you get really, really big crowds at that time.

We got there at 07:30 when they had it at Kmart. They opened at 07:00 and by the time we got there, they store was completely full. After we had found everything we were going to buy, which was not easy with the huge crowds, we went to wait in line. The line was about half way around the store. We waited for 2 and a half hours to put our stuff on layby. While we were waiting, the line got even longer and Angela had to wait 3 and a half hours as she didn't get in line when we did. And, it was a good thing we got there that early as a few of the things we bought, they ran out of and once they run out of something, you do not get a raincheck. They have to wait until they can order some more and then you have to pay full price as oppossed to the sale price they have during this event.

We went to another store the same day and got some more stuff but this time, we didn't have to wait in line as it was near closing time and everything was pretty much gone. We walked right up and did not have to wait at all.

Target had their sale a week later and we went to look even though we did not need anything else. We went about noon and they had the same problems that the other stores had. Long lines and they were running out of everything. The Target we went to is being expanded and they had opened a whole new wing with nothing but toys in it. We couldn't even get in there to look and didn't want to waste our time trying but it was a huge area, full of people and full of toys.

Our shopping center, the big one not the closest one, just opened a new level. They have been working on it for about a year and just opened it a month or so ago. It was one story and at that has over 250 stores in it. Now they have opened a second floor over half of it and it now has around 300 stores. We weren't going to go but we were passing by there and remembered they were having their grand opening that day, so we stopped by around 6:00 in the evening.

They were suppossed to be staying open until 9:00 that night but I think they staying open even later. We were there for about two hours. They have a lot of new stores that were having a lot of new sales. We went to the food market and got some stuff but didn't buy anything from all the other sales. Except they had half price nails at the nail salon, so Juanita and Angela went and had their nails done. It was only $20, which is a bargain I am told, but what I was not told was that they have to go back every two weeks and have them refilled or something. That is also $20, so I am not sure it was such a bargain.

I have been looking for one of those cheese graters that put the cheese in and turn the handle to grate the cheese. There are about foour new houseware stores in the mall and everyone said they were on order and did not have them in yet. It seems a lot of the stores were opening without being fully ready to open. The fish market opened for that one night, and had some really good deals, but then closed and did not open again for another three weeks. The Tandy store was not ready to open on time and did not open until a couple of weeks later and the Borders book store has still not opened.

All in all, it is a good deal and we still have not gotten tired of going there. We will soon, but for now, we go there instead of going to the local mall, which, by the way, is also expanding. Not getting any bigger but opening more shops in the middle of the walkways. Nothing we want to shop at but it makes it harder to walk around in there. One good thing is they have started having more and better sales to compete with the big mall.

Well, I am waiting for Juanita and Maeghan to come pick me up from work. They were suppossed to be here at 2:00 but it is 2:20 and they are still not here. They went to visit Juanita's friends again. Maeghan had to miss play group but she likes playing with Lecky (Alexis) so she didn't mind it much.

I guess I will sign off and go out and wait for her. I will talk to you later. You have seen all the pictures I have here at work but this is one of my favorites, so I will add it. It is taken when we were in Tasmania and waiting at the doctors office for Juanita's mother. I am not suppossed to tell this but the reason Juanita and Maeghan are smiling so much is because Maeghan has just given Juanita a kiss and she stuck her tongue in Juanita's mouth. Maeghan used to do that all the time and she still tries to do it every once and a while. Another big thing she tries is to lick you when she thinks you are not looking. She thinks it is hilarious but we don't know where she got it from.

MWNews 17

Well, it has finally happened. I always wondered at what point gas prices would get so high that we would cut back on driving. It has reached that level. Gas prices, or Petrol as we call it over here, have reached $1.25 a litre. That's $5 a gallon to you. It was a big jump in the past week that put it up there and it does not appear to be going down. You see, over here, they have different prices for petrol each day. Normally, but not always, prices go up on Wednesday of each week. That is when they are highest. Then, everyday after that, they go down a little each day, until you reach the next Wednesday, and then they go up by 10 cents a litre or more.

This past Tuesday, prices were around $1.10 to $1.12. Sometime, I am not sure when, the price went to $1.26 and is still at $1.25 on Friday. I guess that means it is here to stay. Tasmania has had the high prices for a while now but this is the first time it has gone over and stayed over $1.20 here. I don't know what the price has gone to in Tasmania.

As this was my first weekend off in about two months, we were going to go for a drive somewhere. Maybe go south of Sydney or north to Taree along the coast. But now, that is a $100 dollar trip just to drive there and back and then you have to eat and drink and everything else we usually do. It is just too expensive for a casual thing. Now, we will have to plan these trips for when we have more definite plans than just going for a drive. Maybe something we want to visit or see. It is just too much to do it on a whim anymore.

At this price, it is going to cost me $20 in petrol to drive to work and back, if not more than that. I only drive in 3 days a week but that is still $60 a week just to get to work. It is almost cheaper to ride the train, if they ever finish the station that is going to be right by my work. The problem with the train is that it is a two hour trip, one way. Maybe I could get am express train and cut it back to an hour or so but the express trains don't run at 04:30 when I would need to be catching it to get to work by 06:00, so train train travel is probably out.

Anyway, I suppose it might go back down sometime. I have no idea when but it might. Maeghan is asleep now. It is 4:30 in the morning. I have to shower and get ready for work. Talk to you later.

This is a picture of the ocean to help us remain calm. It is from the rocks on one side of Avoca Beach. We tried to rent a house in Avoca Beach but both times, the owner decided to sell instead of renting. There are too many flies there anyway, but it is very beautiful. Of course, now, we won't be able to go there as it is not on the way to anything and we can't waste the petrol to get there even if it is only a half hour away.

MWNews 16

I forgot I had William news. We went to the doctor the other day for a checkup. They said everything is fine but they want us to go for another scan since we are always worried about it. I think she goes next Thursday.

They have given us a date for when they will do the cesarian. It will be between Nov 22 and Nov 29. Juanita wants it to be on her birthday. They said that was a good possibility as they do most of the cesarians on Friday and her birthday is on a Friday. We will have to wait and see. The baby is not actually due until Dec 6, so they might decide to wait a few days at the last minute.

Another big thing is I got to feel William kicking. I have never felt the baby kicking before. Not with Rachael or Maeghan. I thought people who said they felt it were just wishful thinking. But, the other day, I felt it, although I think the baby is too small to feel but I felt something that Juanita said was the baby kicking.

Ok, I have to go now. I still haven't cleaned the grill and I am getting ready to go to bed. Its 8:30 and way past my bedtime.

Talk to you soon.
This is Maeghan looking for the possums.

MWNews 15

Maeghan is asleep now. She goes to bed at 7:30. It seems kind of early to me but she doesn't have a nap everyday, so she is tired by then and goes straight to sleep.

Today, all the kids were over when I got home from work. It was rather noisy. Maeghan was the loudest. She decided that since Daddy was home, it was time to sing and dance all around the house. I have no idea what she was singing but she was singing loud.

Leslie follows me around all the time when I get home and he is here. I don't know why. He follows me into the bedroom when I change clothes and hangs around in the kitchen when I am making dinner. It might be because I give him treats all the time. Actually, I give Maeghan treats, but since he is hanging around, he gets on too. When all the kids are here, I have to give all of them one. Tonight it was jelly beans. Leslie put his in his mouth and swalled it immediately. He kept crying for more but I told him he had already had one. Maeghan can only eat one or two before she gets tired of them. She seems to be that way with all sweets. She always wants one but she will only eat one or two. Sometimes, she can eat a whole box by herself but not often.

She was watching me cook tonight. Actually, she had come in running away from Leslie and had me pick her up. Since I had stuff in the pan on the stove, she was asking what it was. I was cooking cabbage, onions and bacon to go with our pork chops. We had brocolli also. She said she likes bacon so I gave her a piece. She ate five or six pieces while I was holding her. She then said she didn't want anymore and went into the other room. Of course, when it came time to eat dinner, she wouldn't eat the bacon. She ate a couple of piecies of pork chop but decided she didn't want her dinner. About an hour later, she asked for bickies (that's cookies to non-english speaking people). I gave her a bickie and she went into the other room to watch TV. A few minutes after that, she called out to me saying 'more bickies'. I gave her another one but she made the mistake of going into the living room where her mother was. Mommy told her she shouldn't have any bickies since she did not eat her dinner. She then came into me and asked where her dinner was. I told her it was on the counter and asked if she wanted it. She said no, Mommy wanted it.

I have to go clean the George Forman grill now. Apparently, I am the only one who can do it. I do tell everyone not to clean my pans because they ruin them but sometimes, they get tired of them sitting around on the stove and clean them for me. I bought myself a new set of pans for Christmas and have told everyone they are not to wash them ever and they are never to go into the dish washer. I know that means I will have to clean them every night but the dish washer ruins the pans and I don't want them scratched, so will have to do it myself.

Juanita says it doesn't count if I buy presents for myself, but they were on sale and I needed some good pans. I have a lot of other ones and she seems to think I will get rid of them when I get the new ones. I hate to tell her I need all the pans as the old ones are just getting seasoned right and I know how to cook with them. I do have about 10 fry pans so maybe I can get rid of a couple. I doubt it but she can always hope.

Anyway, she has reminded me again that I have to clean the George Forman, so I will be going now before she brings it over to the computer and sets it on the keyboard.

An old picture of Maeghan when she was first learning to stand up.

MWNews 14

Maeghan has started dancing with her dolls. She is practicing for her show. She is going to be in a show for her ballet class in December. As long as Juanita is not having the baby at the same time, she is going to be in the show they do at the end of the class. The teacher is making all the kids costumes and they are practicing the dance they are going to do. So far, Maeghan is the only one who can do it as the other kids just run around in the class. She can only do what the teacher is telling them to do, I don't think she could put it all together and do it on her own.

She dances each part at home. They spin around, and jump up and down, and then wave their arms and she was doing it with her doll last night. There are a lot of other things the teacher wants them to do, but she doesn't practice those. They are suppossed to sit on the floor and bend over and then pretend they are waking up and come to a standing position. Maeghan can't do that, she lays on the floor and then has to turn around and stand up but that is more than the other kids do.

Last week, she was the only one who could do the curtsy the teacher wants them to do at the end. She can do that at home if you ask her to. She has to cross her legs and then bow and raise her arms. She can do it without holding on to anything although, in the class, they do it when holding on to the back of a chair.

Last night, we had sausages for dinner. She ate some of hers and then came in to me where I was working on the computer. She told me she did not want any more sausages and I asked her what she wanted. She said she didn't know and said she would have to ask mommy. She told me to hold her fork and then went to ask mommy what she wanted for dinner. She never came back after that but later, she saw me eating sausages in hot curry sauce and she said she wanted some. She then ate some of my sausage with the hot curry sauce and liked it. So I am doing a good job on getting her to eat hot stuff.

I have been working for about 24 hours straight now. I am back at the office and am still on the phone to America. I have had three upgrades in the past two days. I don't have to do a lot but I have to be available whenever they need me. At home, I had two phones going, bith on speaker phone. Here at the office, I can't have the speaker phone on, so I have to hold it to my ear all the time. Doing that for eight hours gets tiring. Hopefully, I will take a few days off this week or next. I think this might be the last upgrade until November but I am sure they will come up with another one before then.

My boss is back from England today, so I have to do a turnover to him sometime. Otherwise, I would have continued to work from home. I was in charge while he was gone and there is a lot of stuff I need to tell him. Maybe, I will get to go home early but I am sure he won't be available until later, so I will have to stay late.

In the meantime, I need more coffee, so I will talk again later.

This picture is from our trip to Tasmania last year. Maeghan has just picked up a handful of little leaves and thrown them in the air. She is laughing in the picture although it looks like she is crying.

MWNews 13

I went to the doctor this past week. I guess this isn't really about Maeghan or William, but then again, they can't write. I actually went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago but this week, I went to the cardiologist. Its a new one who has an office near us.

As you probably know, or maybe not, I have had trouble getting a cardiologist. It seems if you do not have private insurance, then they do not want to see you. They generally send you to some clinic somewhere and then promptly forget you exist. That appears to be what has happened to me as all my records were sent to the downtown Sydney hospital and no one has heard from then since.

This new cardiologist blamed me for that as he seemed to think it was my responsibility to keep up with these things. I have records for everything except my last visit to the hospital. All those records are the ones that seem to have disappeared. They are now chasing them down but they do not hold out much hope of ever finding them again.

Anyway, I went to the cardiologist. He said I wasn't too bad for a normal person but for someone with heart disease, I need to be taking better care of myself. My blood pressure was only a little high, 140/90 but it is normally fine so that is not a problem. My cholesterol is 4.4, which has no meaning to me but that is apparently marginally high, it is less than Juanita's, but he said I should have a cholesterol of 0. He quadrupled my cholesterol medication but he said I was on a insignificant dose anyway so I should be on higher one. He also wanted to know why I wasn't being prescribed aspirin but I told him I buy it over the counter so you don't need a prescription. Over here, they seem to think aspirin is a drug and not something everyone should be taking.

They have also put me on some experimental drug that the GP gave me from his stock of sample drugs. The cardiologist proscribed it to me but neither one told me what it was for. They also put me on something called ikorol or something like that. I could walk into the other room and find out exactly what it is but I can't be bothered. This drug is sort of a new thing in that it is supposed to replace anginine tablets or sprays or however method you would get the nitro stuff. They wanted me to go back on the nitro patch but I told them I got terrible headaches when I had that so they put me on this one. It gives me a little headache, but it doesn't last very long. I have to take it twice a day though, so I have a headache twice a day.

He sent a request to the hospital to have me have another angiogram. It should me in the next month but that is really hopeful since the hospitals around here are backed up for years with people waiting on different procedures. By the way, I think I told you that the two hospitals closest to us are related the worst and the fifth worst hospitals in the state. Its always a good thing to know you are in such good hands. I am supposed to go into the fifth worst hospital as he said they have the new drug avoiding stints so if they have to put another one in, they can use those. I am not sure what a drug avoiding stint is, but it is apparently better for you as it does not form a buildup over time like the stint I already have in me does.

After the angiogram, they will decide what to do next. If I need another stint, they will try to do that in the next four or five years, as soon as they have an opening. Actually, he said they would do it the next couple of months but again, you never know with the hospitals. They might decide to not put one in anyway as they seem to think they can treat it with drugs and diet. Of course, I didn't tell him I was on the Adkins diet as heart doctors see that as a bad thing, but I think since my cholesterol was not very high, the Adkins diet doesn't have that much affect on it anyway. I plan on getting off of it as soon as I lose about 50 pounds, which should take about 6 to 8 months if I stick to it. I haven't checked my weight lately but I think I have lost some weight. I was at 129 kilos the last time I weighed, which was just before I started. That's about 289 pounds. So if I can get down below 250, then I will go to the no food diet or whatever the doctor is recommending.

Guess I have talked about myself enough in Maeghan's log. She would have said more but she is busy eating a sausage roll, another one of those Aussie taste treats. We went to the park today, with the other kids. Somehow, we had to keep all of them for the weekend so Angela could clean her house. She didn't clean it and we kept the kids for no apparent reason but we had fun at the park and then at the Entrance. The Entrance is a town that is on an opening between the ocean and a big lake. So, you have the ocean on one side and this big shallow lake on the other side of the town and a bridge over the water where they connect. It is a popular place and we go there a lot during the summer. They pelican feeding time there everyday at 3:30. I have only seen it once but the kids and everyone else have seen it a couple of times. There is this big concrete area that leads down to the water. It is kind of a little amphitheater area where you can sit and watch all these hundreds of pelicans come up on shore and be fed a lot of fish by the parks department. It is sort of entertaining but mostly a little frightening as pelicans are very large birds and when you get that many of them together, they can get ugly very quickly. The handlers seem to do ok, so there are not too many problems, but I would hate to have all those birds get frightened at once and decide to take off at the same time. That would be really scary.

But today, we didn't stay for the pelicans. We went to one park, the lighthouse park but we didn't go see the lighthouse, and had fun on the swings and slides and then had lunch at the little cafe that is there. We then went into the Entrance and let the kids play on the gym sets they have there. We also let them ride the little train that runs around the area. That is the first time we let them do that. It is not really a train but a tractor made to look like a train and the conductor sings songs and tells jokes to the kids while it runs along the sidewalk. Of course, whenever we go to the Entrance, Maeghan knows she gets to ride the horses. They have a really old merry-go-round there, it has been there since 1930 but was moved there from France sometime in the 1800's, and it only costs $1.50 to ride. So every time we go, Maeghan says she is going to ride the horsey and we end up letting her ride the merry-go-round before we leave.

That was our big day today. If I had remembered, I would have brought some sausages and we would have had a barbecue but I didn't think of it until after we were on our way. The kids enjoyed their chips (french-fries) anyway, so they had fun. Tomorrow, I have to work all day, again. Maybe it will stop soon, but I doubt it.

We will talk to you later.

By the way, this picture is not on the Entrance merry-go-round, it is from the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

MWNews 12

We got a bunch of catalogues in the mail today. The flyers from grocery stores and things. For some reason, we don't normally get them. I thnk it is because where we live, we are not on the map yet, so no one is assigned to deliver them to us.

Anyway, we got one from Pizza Hut with coupons in it. I told Juanita that we had pizza coupons. She said throw them away, we don't need them.

I was then looking at the rest of the catalogues and Maeghan wanted to sit in my lap and look at them with me. She likes pointing at things and saying 'what is that?'. We were looking at the catalogues and we came to another one that was pizza coupons. I said to Juanita that we have more pizza coupons. Maeghan grabbed it out of my hand and threw it on the floor and said 'You don't need to look at that!'.

By the way, Maeghan has started taking driving lessons. She wants to be the first one with a driving license.

MWNews 11

By the way, you can click on the pictures and it will bring up a larger picture, in case you have not already found that out. I will attempt to post a picture with each post from now on. Maybe not relavent to the post, but its a good place to see them. I am also creating a place to put the pictures on the web so you can see them and maybe print them. I am not sure how that works yet but when I figure it out, I will post where to find the pictures.
This is Maeghan and Leslie. Leslie is only ninteen months. Meaghan is 2 1/2 years old. She is still really small, although she has been getting longer in the legs lately and her ballet costume doesn't fit anymore. So, she is getting bigger.

MWNews 10

Maeghan was up and watching TV this morning. Juanita asked her if she wanted toast for breakfast. She said she wanted noodles. She always wants noodles. Juanita said noodles were for lunch. Maeghan thought about it and then said she wanted lunch instead of breakfast.
Today is the day she goes to ballet. She told us yesterday she was going to ballet. Juanita told her that it was today and she came over to me and said we can't go today, it is tomorrow.
Have I mentioned the cute before.

MWNews 9

Sissy (Angela) gave Maeghan some change. Maeghan has now sat in the kitchen floor and put one coin in each of the corners of the tiles. We have no idea why, but she did it all by herself and while no one was looking. And just to test posting pictures to this thing, I have taken one and am going to try to put it in here.

MWNews 8

Haven't had a chance to add to the list lately. I have been busy at work and busy setting up my new computer so I haven't gotten around to it.

Maeghan is still being cute. She just can't help it, I suppose.

I think we have resolved the 'spin around' mystery. This is where she sings spin around, spin around over and over again while spinning in a circle. She has been going to ballet classes once a week. It is for little kids like her. In this class, the teacher tells the kids to hold out their arms and spin around. The teacher keeps repeating this to the kids as most of them have no idea what to do and just run around the room ignoring the teacher.

Not Maeghan. She listens to everything the teacher says and does exactly what she shows her to do. She is not very graceful at it but when the teacher says spin around, she holds out her arms and spins around. And when the teacher says hands up, she puts her hands up and then she says clap hands and Maeghan claps hands. I only saw one class and there were only two other kids in it, but Maeghan would follow along with the teacher while the other two would just run around the room and scream. You could tell it was annoying Meaghan but she kept trying to follow what the teacher was saying.

This is also where she got the 'now stop' and 'now go' thing. The teacher says this when they are dancing around the room. Maeghan really likes the classes. She had to miss it one week because she was sick but everyday after that, she would say she is going dancing today and we would have to tell her she had to wait. She is always saying she is going dancing now and gets really upset when we tell her she has to wait.

She also goes to playgroup at the same place. Since it is in the same building and same room, she thinks this is dancing, also, except there is no teacher in this one and she and the other kids just play with each other. I haven't made it to one of those yet, but I assume they don't have any structured activities. She just likes to play with the other kids. She tells Mommy she is going to play now when they get there and runs off and plays. There were a couple of times when she stayed with Mommy, but we think that is just because she wasn't feeling well.

She has been sick a lot lately. She has been getting this tummy bug that everyone else is getting. She has had it three times so far, but each time, it doesn't seem to last as long. She will be sick for a couple of days and then be ok for a week and then get sick again. Of course now, she will tell you she is sick and she needs her bucket. She gets this because the first time, she was being sick about every 15 minutes all night long. We ran out of towels and clothes for her and were having her lean over a bucket when she felt sick. Now, that is the first thing she says when she is not feeling well. She says, 'I feel sick. I need my bucket' even if she isn't really ready to be sick. She does, however, usually have a fever when she says she is sick so we listen to her and give her medicine.

She has also started asking what everything is. She is constantly asking what is that and pointing at something, even if she asked the same question five minutes earlier. We tell her what things are but after 15 or 20 minutes of this, it gets harder to answer her every time.

Last night, she was singing and dancing in the play room all by herself. I was in the kitchen making dinner and she was in the rumpus room playing her piano keyboard. This is the one she got for Christmas last year. The one I have sent pictures of her sitting behind it. It plays several different songs depending on what keys you press. She would walk over to it and press buttons until it played a song she liked. She would then step back and bounce up and down and spin around and sing whatever song she could think of. Most of the songs were just different lines from different songs but she was really enjoying herself. I called out to Mommy to come look but she heard that and wouldn't do it anymore.

She then started hiding in her playhouse thing. It has two tent like ends and a tunnel inbetween. She would sit in one end and call out to me that I couldn't find her. I would then pretend to look for her in different places and she would laugh and say I'm not over there. As soon as I would find her, she would laugh and say let's do it again and then she would hide in the same place and say you can't find me again. So we would have to repeat the same process over and over again. I got Juanita to do it once and she loved this even more. From that point, when one of us would find her, she would call out to the other one and say it's Daddy's turn or it's Mommy's turn and hide again.

There is some other stuff I was going to write but I will do it tomorrow. I have to get ready to go home from work now. I have been working six and seven days a week for a while and I haven't had a lot of time. Hopefully, it will slow down in the next couple of weeks but probably not.

Talk to you later.