MWNews 29

I remembered what Maeghan was doing the other day that was so funny. It turns out, it wasn't that funny. We were in the hospital, visiting Juanita, and Maeghan was sitting in the other chair beside me. She told us she was going to take a nap, and then she started making snoring sounds. Juanita asked her what she was doing and she said she was being Daddy. Like I said, it wasn't that funny. She must think Daddy snores and we all know it is Mommy that snores.

Juanita is out of the hospital for a few days. She has to go back Thursday. She had to drive me home after my angiogram, although, they told her she was not going to be able to do it. She has been having trouble keeping her food down. It might be the medicine they give her or it might be something else, but if she cannot keep it down, then her blood sugar goes really low and she has a hypo. Which is short for 'we don't know what it is but hypo sounded good'. Its a medical term in places where they don't really have doctors who know what they are doing.

Anyway, she had to drive me home because they said I couldn't drive. I told them I can drive, I just can't serve, but apparently they had never seen that movie, so they didn't laugh, as I know you are doing right now. Actually, they said it was because of the chance I might open the gaping hole they apparently put in you to so you don't think about the fact that they are sticking wires in your heart. They tell you they are going in through the artery or something in the leg, I say leg because there are kids up late at night who might read this and I don't want them tramatized by using foul language. As you all know, they are suppossedly putting this tube in you and running wires and stuff up to your heart so they can inject things that should not be there straight into your heart. I keep saying heart because I want to emphasize that they are putting things in your HEART! Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, but it does seem a bit like running water through the engine in your car just to see if anything leaks. Little thought is given to the fact that the water might be causing a problem all by itself, the same as this dye might be causing a problem all by itself. I did find it heartening that they asked, just before I went in, if I had ever had any reaction to the dye. It was good of them to get that little detail out of the way just before they filled my HEART! with it.

I have had three of these before, so I knew what to expect. It wasn't really worrisome until they walked me, yes I said walked me as I had to walk down several hallways and through several doors before we got to the operating room. I am not sure what was wrong with the bed I had been in which had wheels on it but I did manage to keep the blanket that was on the bed. I guess they felt I had gotten attached to it while I had been lying there waiting for them to put things in my HEART!

I was saying it wasn't worrisome until, when we got to the operating room, they told us to go back because they were rebooting the machine. I am no computer expert, oh wait, I am a computer expert so I guess them telling me we were using some type of equipement that needed to be rebooted before it would work wasn't something I should worry about because generally, you reboot computers because they are having a problem and I am sure they would not be using a machine that was having problems when they were putting things in my HEART!

About 15 minutes later, they called us in again. When we got there, I was allowed to actually lay on the operating table. I am not sure why, but the table was very skinny at the head of it so my arms had nothing to rest on. I didn't think this was so wrong as most of the times before, they had me hold something about my head to keep my arms out of the way. I am guessing that is what they did it for, as I never really asked. But, I noticed on this bed, there wasn't anything above my head to hold onto. They then asked if I wanted the armrests attached to the bed. I said yes and they did it but it seems to me if you are going to design a bed that is skinny at the top so your arms are not allowed to rest on it and then you are going to attach armrests to it to allow your arms to rest, then why not just make the bed big enough in the first place. It would seem like that would save a little time and be more productive. Maybe the bed is actually used for something else and they just borrowed it to do my operation. While I appreciate whomever they got the bed from, I don't think it was a surprise I was there so why didn't they have the regular bed there in the first place. I should have had a clue when they told me to be there by 07:30 but not before 07:30 and when I got there at 07:29, all the doors were closed and locked and all the lights were off. People who are that precise are probably not worried about things like using the right operating table. They have a schedule to keep.

While I was lying there, one of the nurses told me it takes longer to prep me than it takes to do the actual procedure. I said, yes, someone had told me the exact same thing everytime I had had this procedure. They also told me they were going to give me a mild seditive. They had always asked me before if I wanted a seditive and I had always declined, but these people did not give me a choice. When they injected whatever it was, I immediately started seeing the room spinning. It didn't last long but I mentioned it to them and they said that was normal. So as I am lying there, with the room spinning, they move the monitors over so I can see them. They have always done that and I have watched the procedure each time, except the first when I was wearing my glasses and they made me take them off. Each time after that, I have remembered to wear my contacts so I could see what is going on. As I am watching the monitors, I see that they all suddenly go blank. The doctor is standing over me, he has already given me a local anethesia in my thigh (wink wink) and all of the sudden, they all look up at the window and shake their heads. I am hoping it is not because they can no longer get a reading on me and that is the reason the monitors are not picking up anything but the longer this goes on, the more suspicious I get. Finally, I hear the doctor say to whomever is on the other side of the window that if they do not get the computers back up this time, they will have to cancel the operation. I am just relieved that it is a computer problem and not a lack of readings problem.

At this point, I have no idea what went on. On each of the previous occasions, I have been able to watch and remember everything that happened. This time, I cannot remember a thing. I remember telling a nurse that whatever the doctor was doing, it was hurting and I remember the nurse asking if I was feeling nauseous or something and then I remember them telling me not to move and being lifted and put onto a regular bed, but as far as the operation and the normal things I have felt and seen in the past, I don't remember any of it. Afterwards, when I realized I could not remember anything, I asked the nurse if I had fallen asleep. She checked my chart and said no, but I had had a high dose of this seditive and everything would probably be a little hazy to me. I still cannot remember any of it nor how long it took or if the computers ever got back online or anything. I am sure they did the procedure, although the hole they put in my thigh seems to be in a slightly different place than it has been in the past but I am sure that is because I have gotten older and things have moved around. The doctor had asked me beforehand, when he gives you the 'there is some risk involved' speech, like I hadn't realized that when they told me they were going to put things in my HEART! Anyway, the doctor asked me if I was sure I had had this procedure before as he could find no scar tissue. I told him yes, but at that point, he did not have my records yet and they were going to wait so they could be sure. I find it a little strange they had not reviewed my records before they decided to do the procedure but I am sure he just didn't want to be confused by the past and would do his own discovery, on my HEART!

At some point, the doctor came in and told me what they had found. There were a lot of things I just assumed he knew I already knew and there was nothing really new to report. He told me I would have to discuss it with my own doctor and they were faxing the reports over to him that day. I told him that I had an appointment in three weeks to see my doctor and he said I might want to move that up if I could. I didn't want to sound like I had not been understanding him before so I said yes I would but I am beginning to worry that he had told me something important and I should have asked more questions. Anyway, he seemed happy, so he left and I didn't see him again.

The rest is pretty normal. Except, as you know or have probably experienced, when they finish this procedure, they usually have some big strong nurse dig their fingers into your leg in an attempt to stop the blood from flowing. They have always done that to me in the past but this time, they strapped a machine to me and dialed up the pressure on my leg. I had to stay that way for over an hour but it seemed to do the job and I have had no problems. I did hear them talking about some old guy next to me, by the way, it always seems there are old guys next to me whenever I have one of these procedures. Now I am not one to jump to conclusions but either I am one of these old guys, or there is something that goes on when they do this procedure that makes you appear to be an old guy. I don't know which it is but I have never felt 39 was all that old, so it must have something to do with the procedure. Anyway, I heard them talking about this guy and how he had developed a hematoma. They said they would have to have someone apply pressure to his leg (wink wink) instead of using the machine to do it. They said it was faster that way and it would shorten the time he had to stay in bed. I had not been given that option, but I was not unhappy with using the machine. They eventually dialed the pressure down to zero, and then took it off. But, they had me press on the wound for an hour or so after that to make sure if it started bleeding, I would feel the blood oozing out. I was not allowed to lift my head, so I couldn't actually see if blood was oozing but they were sure I would feel it if it did. It didn't and I was allowed to go home four or five hours later.

That is where I started this and that is why Juanita is home for a few days. I guess I don't have a lot more to say. Maeghan kept everyone entertained while I was waiting. She sang songs and danced for everyone. Juanita was able to drive but if I had it to do again, she would not have. Her legs blew up to huge proportions that night and I was tempted to drive her back to the hospital. I had to decide if it was better to risk opening my leg wound or getting her back to the doctors. I decided they would probably not do anything for her except tell her to go lie down and she could do that at home, so we just went to bed. Nothing happened, but from now on, she will be staying in the hospital. Maybe taking day trips on the weekends but going back each night just to make sure.

They are telling us the baby is only three weeks away as they are going to do the ceserian at 37 weeks. They have not given us an exact date, but they should soon.

For those who are wondering, it turns out that Joanne is Juanita's cousin, so we can stop trying to figure that one out. We do have other news on Juanita's mother but I will save that for next time. She might have broken her foot but she has not been to the doctor yet, so we will wait until she does before discussing it.

Maeghan is definitely in a size 2 now. We went to the shops today and while we were there, we saw some tshirts on sale for Maeghan. They did not have a lot of size one's left, so we got her a size one and a size two. The size one is too short for her, it shows her belly and the size two fits just perfect. So, from now on, we will be buying her size two, which I think means we have clothes for her for Christmas that she may not fit into, but then again, I am not sure we bought her any clothes for Christmas.

I will be siging off now. It is about 10:30 at night and I am well past my bedtime. I had started this earlier but Maeghan wanted to go to bed and I had been making popcorn and a big glass of water to eat while I typed and when she noticed, she had to help me eat the popcorn and drink half my water. So, by the time I got back to this, it was after 9:30. Maeghan is now asleep and Juanita is sitting here next to me playing games but if I go to bed, she will too. We have to get up early tomorrow as we found out, while we were at the shops, that there is this jeweler that is having their once a year madness sale tomorrow morning. You have to get there by 08:00 and get a ticket to get in so you can have an opportunity to buy their out of date stock. It is really a great sale and we have always wanted to go to it, but we never seem to find out about it until it is too late. Now we know when and where it is, so we will try to make it on time or earlier. They have things like bracelets for $1 and rings to $5 and all sorts of other things but most of them are one of a kind and if you are not there as one of the first people, then they all get bought in the first five minutes. I think they run it like a lottery. You get there at 08:00 and get your ticket. The store does not open until 09:30 and then they draw numbers to see who gets to go in and shop. They only give out a limited number of numbers, so if you are not there right when they start giving them out, you will probably miss out. So, we are going to try to get there in the morning.

So I am going to bed. Talk to everyone again real soon. I will let you know what the doctor says as soon as I get to talk to him. By the way, this is a picture of Anna, Maeghan and Shayla. I'll let you figure out who is who.

Ok, the spell checker is not working again, so I will send this as is. Maybe, someday, they will get a decent one for this but until then, I just refuse to use it. 

MWNews 28

Juanita is still in the hospital. She had to stay this weekend, not only because she was not getting better but she has to drive me home Tuesday, so she will just take her weekend on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I go in for the angiogram this Tuesday. I am told I cannot drive for two days afterwards. I am also not allowed to go to work for a week after that. They never told me that before but then again, everytime I have had one before, I was already in the hospital and had to stay anyway. This is an outpatient procedure and does not require me to stay. Since Juanita is in the same hospital, she will wait until I am released and then drive me home. I am not sure she can or should be driving but we will see how it goes.

Yesterday, Juanita was sick. We are not sure if it was because of the medication or something else. She could not keep her food down and they kept feeding her dinner hoping she could. I think they just had some extra food and were forcing her to eat it. They tried to do that to me the other day. One of the girls in Juanita's room was going home so she said she didn't want her lunch. They offered it to me and said they would only have to throw it away when they got back. I declined but I wonder if they do that all the time. They are insistent that no one gets a meal that does not have one ordered but they give them away if they have extra. I know the other day when Juanita checked into the hospital, she did not have a meal ordered and they could not find anything for her to eat. She had to eat the food I had brought. It just seems like they are not allowed to have any extra food in the place and all the food they do have has to be allocated to someone so no one else can have it.

Maeghan said something really funny yesterday and neither Juanita nor I can remember what it was. I said at the time that I should write it down so I would remember and we both remember me saying that but cannot remember what it was she said. That happens all the time when Maeghan says something. I guess all kids say funny things but this one seemed extra special and I wish I could remember what it was. Maybe when we go back today, I will remember.

I have taught her to say some things about the rain. We were leaving the hospital the other day and it had been raining. She said there was water all over the street. I asked her where it came from and she said she didn't know. I asked her if Jarvis had done it and she said yes. Now, whenever the street is wet, she says Jarvis did it. She also says the cars are wet and Jarvis did that too. This picture I have on this message is showing the size difference between Maeghan and Anna. Maeghan is still really small. We don't notice it as much as we live with her everyday but she is still little. She has gotten a little bigger lately and most of her clothes do not fit. At least, she cannot wear anything smaller than a size one anymore. Even those are getting a little tight on her but it mainly because she has gotten bigger in the belly. She is a little taller but she is getting bigger around and her arms and legs are filling out. Not that she is not perfectly formed, it is just that her arms and legs have always been really skinny. Now she is getting a little muscle on them and her clothes are tight. Her waist is filling out too so her pants don't fall down all the time anymore. Plus, she is wearing underpants, so that is helping to keep them up.

A couple of days ago, she told me mommy is at the doctors with William. She said mommy has gone to get William, her little brother, so she can be a big sister. She said mommy wasn't feeling well because William was in her belly. She has done ok with mommy not being here. This morning, she was kind of sad when she told me mommy was at the doctors because she wasn't feeling well. She kind of laid down and sucked her thumb. She does that when she is sad or upset about something. Or if she thinks you are upset with her. Yes, she still sucks her thumb, especailly when she is sleeping, but not as much anymore. Of course, she has a dummy now. She doesn't really use it as a dummy, she just likes to play with it. She was always stealing Leslie's or Shayla's, so sissy, Angela, bought her one. She likes to carry it around all the time, or when she remembers it. She has chewed it up so it no longer is dummy shaped, but since she doesn't put it in her mouth the right way most of the time anyway, it doesn't really matter.

Speaking of Angela, we haven't heard anything from her since she left. I think Michael might have talked to her but I am not sure. She hasn't called mer mother nor indicated when she might be coming back, so I guess when she decides to do so, we will have to be ready for it. I think she might be thinking that she is not coming back, but she does have all her stuff here and bills and rent to pay, so she will either have to wait until those run out or just stop paying them, shich means they will take her stuff. I would guess she would be coming back, but you never know.

We aso haven't heard from Natalie in a few days. That probably means she has run out of credit on her phone but it has been several days, so we might have to start trying to find her also. In case you don't have it over there, here you can pay as you go on your cell phone. You pre-pay on your phone and you can use it as long as there is credit on it. I think Natalie gets paid on Mondays, so she will recharge it then and if we don't hear from her by Monday night, then we will need to try to ahold of her.

One of Juanita's cousins or relatives or friends called last night. I am not sure how they are related or if they are. Her name is Joanne. She took us to the airport last time we were in Tasmania and let Juanita borrow her car while she was there. She is a lot of fun and we enjoy visiting her when we are there. I have to say that because I think she reads this blog (just kidding Joanne). Anyway, she called last night to ask if we had had the baby. I told her no, it was not due for a couple of weeks. She said she had gotten a message that someone had had a baby girl but the message did not say who it was, so she was calling all the pregnant people she knew to ask them if they had had the baby yet. I didn't find out if she found the one with the baby.

I am taking Juanita's phone book up to her so she can call all her friends. So far, Juanita has not had any visitors except me. Of course, we don't know a lot of people here in Sydney and most of them live quite a ways from Gosford, so you wouldn't expect many visitors. The people at Maeghan's playgroup said they were going to visit but they never did and there were a couple of other people who said they would go see her but so far, no one has. I think if she has all her phone numbers, she can call them and talk to everyone that way. I only spend about four hours there each day and it is not very exciting being in the hospital with not a lot of things for Maeghan to do, so we have to leave when Maeghan starts to get tired. Its too far to make more than one trip a day. I think it might be worse on the weekends as all the people in her room went home and there is no one to talk to except the nurses.

Juanita said they might book her cesarian for three weeks from now. That is about two weeks early for the baby but I think that might be ok. It is actually a little over three weeks and I think it should actually be four weeks which would put it around Nov. 18. The baby is due Dec. 6, so that is a little more than two weeks early. I'd like to talk to the doctors before they do that as I am not sure it will be ok to do it that early. Juanita says it is not a problem but I want to be sure since we actually have a choice. I'll remind Juanita that if she puts it off another week, she can have the baby on her birthday. She might go for that.

I was going to sign off now and end this but I went back and re-read it and found out there was something missing. I haven't talked about food yet. I don't know how that could have happened. So, as a special treat, I will give you my world famous recipe that apparently I am the only one who has ever eaten. I think most people would like it but they are turned off by one or more of the ingredients and I never get to make it for them. I got the idea from a Frugal Gourmet show where some fireman said he liked to cook fried olives. They didn't give a recipe on that show, so I made up my own. It is fairly quick but it is not non-fattening and should only be eaten on occasion. Of course, it is so good, that I eat a whole package of spagetti with it but that is just me and you can cut down on it. There are endless variations on the theme. The one I like best is adding clams to it (canned will do) a the last minute, but it works well with chicken or even no meat at all.

The recipe is simple. While you start you water boiling for your spagetti, you amke the sauce.

Start with 1/4 cup olive oil. (These measurements vary depending on how much sauce you like and how much spagetti you are cooking.)
Add about two tablespoons real butter
Chop about three cloves of garlic, more if you like garlic
Slice about a cup of green olives, with the pimentos in them
Heat the oil and butter
Add the garlic and cook for about a minute on high heat
Add the sliced olives
Cook on high until the water begins to boil for the spagetti. You might have to turn it down if it takes a while for the water to boil. You do not want to burn the olives or the garlic but a little crunch in them is ok. (Garlic is best when it just begins to turn brown. It is crunchy and sweet and takes like garlic.)
Once the water boils, add the spagetti
Turn the heat down low and add two tablespoons of horseradish to the sauce.
Stir the sauce often to keep from burning or sticking or just turn the sauce off, it is ready at this point but need to be kept warm
When the spagetti is ready, drain it and put it in a big bowl
Pour the sauce over it and stir it in
Add at least 1/2 cup of fresh grated parmesan cheese to the spagetti and sauce
Fresh grind pepper over the top and mix. (The more pepper and the more cheese you use, the better.)
Mix it all togther and serve immediately. It is ok when it cools but it is better hot and fresh.

That's it. This is all there is to the basic recipe. I have added cooked chicken to it, cooked when frying the olives. I have added a can of clams at the end, in the sauce before I put it over the spagetti to get the clams heated. I have added finely chopped onion and shrimp and even a little cream to this but the basic recipe is good no matter what you add. Just remember, you can use pre-packaged grated cheese and pre-ground pepper but the taste is not the same. I always use fresh or I just don't make it.

Ok, there is your food fix. Maeghan has gotten upset because I have been ignoring her while I typed this. She wanted me to take her to bed. I thnk because she just wanted attention and she knows we play when we go to bed each night and when we wake up in the morning. We have already had our play this morning but she was in by herself watching TV and I think she just wants someone to play with now.

We will go take a shower and then get ready to visit mommy. It means I have not done anything again today, like clean the house or do some work, but maybe tonight. I doubt it but I at least have to clean the house before Tuesday when Juanita comes home.

We will talk to you again soon. The spell checker on this thing is not working at all, so please ignore the spelling errors you have already come across and forgive them in the future.

MWNews 27

Hey, I'm back. Don't really have anything to say, just a couple of comments. Juanita is getting worse, or the pain is getting worse. They have upped her medication so we will have to see how that goes. I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time there today as they had also cranked up the knock-out gas they put in the air at hospitals. I fell asleep almost as soon as we got there and woke up with a terrible headache. Maeghan was acting up also, wanting to run around and play, and Juanita couldn't watch her because of the pain so I decided to take her home. We only stayed about two and a half hours. Tomorrow, I have to get up really early for a 05:00 meeting, so maybe we can get an early start and get to the hospital earlier.

I took Maeghan to playgroup this morning. I have never been as I am usually at work for it and Juanita takes her. It is one of the things Maeghan really likes to do. I wasn't told that it was parents and child playgroup and not just Maeghan playgroup. I had to sit on the floor and sing songs and play silly games with all the other kids and mothers. I was the only male there. Maeghan knew all the songs and all the little dances, although she was always wanting to do the jumping dance.

It would have been fun but I had to keep getting on the floor and then standing up and I did not know any of the songs or any of the dances, so I just kind of stood there and watched Maeghan. Like I said, she knew them all. That is where she gets the twinkle twinkle song and the spider song. And she does the jumping dance and the spin around dance and the twisting dance. There are a lot of dances and songs to do and she knows them all.

By the way, this going wee wee thing is getting out of hand. That is what Maeghan says when she wants to go potty. She says she has to do wee wee. Since I have been sitting here writing this, she has had to go three times. I don't know if that is a problem or not but shee seems to do something each time. I suspect it is because she always wants to sing a song or play a game when we are in there.

One of the games she now plays is hiding her feet in her pants leg and saying where did that feety go. Then she pulls her pant leg up and says there it is and tells me to go boop. She gets this from when I am dressing her and I do that when putting her pants on. I look in her pants leg and say where is that feety and then when I pull it out, I hit myself in the nose with her foot and say boop. She thinks this is hilarious and now does it all the time.

She also said something funny this morning when we were getting ready. She likes to stick her finger in my beard and play with it. I was pretending to bite her finger when she was doing this this morning and she told me don't be a dragon, be the daddy. So I guess the daddy is suppossed to let her tickle my beard. I don't know where she knows what a dragon is.

For dinner tonight, we are finally having spagetti. Cheap, sauce from a jar kind, but spagetti none the less. With no meat in it and nothing added to the sauce. I am tired and could not be bothered with making sauce. Maeghan has eaten hers and now she wants watermelon. I'll have to go and cut her some.

I don't really have anything else. The only reason for this post was I was testing how to blog a picture and then write the blog. Apparently, I can do it straight from Picasa, so it will be easier to keep track of what pictures I have used and which I haven't. This picture is kind of old, from when we lived in Glossodia. It is all the grandkids and Maeghan sitting on our bed. Not a very good picture of Maeghan but it is a nice picture.

I'll talk to you again soon. 

MWNews 26

Ok, it has been a week or so and no post from me again. I have had longer spells between each one but I don't really want to go back and find out when so maybe I can just type this and pretend it happens every day.

Juanita is back in the hospital. This time with sciatic nerve pain or something like that. I have no idea what the real name of the condition is but someone said sciatic nerve pain and that was easy for me to remember. It wasn't a doctor who said it so I can only say it is a rumor of the name of the condition and not an actual medical opinion.

The sad part of the whole thing is that she will probably have to remain in the hospital for the duration, which if we are counting at home, is about six weeks. By the way, I will have to jump up and down every once and a while to stir dinner so if I lose my train of thought, pretend I am getting old and forgetful. And yes, there will be more about dinner later in this post.

Back to Juanita, she is scheduled to have the baby on Dec. 5 but they say they will move that up. To when, I have no idea, so once again, we can make no plans for when the baby is coming. Not that it is anything that is not normal as I guess you usually don't know when the baby is going to be born but with the cesarean, we can actually pick a date that is close and have it settled. In this case, we have no idea. It depends on something but the doctors are not telling us what at this point. It seems to be all a big mystery.

Juanita's condition is not unknown as it has a name and there are apparently a lot of women that get it. Normally, there is some drug they can take that reduces the inflammation so the pain is actually bearable and she wouldn't have to stay in hospital. But, the drug messes with the glucose levels in the blood and with her having the diabetes, she cannot take the normal drug to take care of the pain problem. She is just stuck taking pain killers and even then, nothing major because it might effect the baby and we don't want that. So she is stuck taking paracetamol (Panodol) and another drug I forget the name of but is a mild sedative.

I have to go eat now, so I will forget everything I was going to say and start all over when I get back. Normally, I would continue typing while I eat but my favorite show is on and I have to watch it. It is As Time Goes By, a British program if you ever get a chance to see it.

Ok, I have 20 minutes before my next show is on, Scrubs, then its West Wing, so I have to be quick.

Juanita is allowed to come on home on weekends, maybe. She came home this past weekend but when she went back, she was in so much pain, we had to take her up in a wheelchair. I am not sure they are going to let her leave again. There was a lot of confusion at the hospital today. All the nurses seemed to thing she was going home. We said the doctors had said nothing to us about it. They insisted that she was going home as soon as they got her prescription from the pharmacy. Juanita said she was still in pain and the doctors had told her she would be staying until she has the baby. They finally had to go find the doctor and have him or her tell them that no, she was not supposed to be going home.

Ok, apparently, I didn't know what time it was as my show is now on. I have to go watch it but I will be back as soon as it is over and before West Wing starts.

I am back again but I probably won't finish before West Wing starts. I had to take Maeghan to bed. She likes for me to sleep with her until she falls asleep, so I can't just put her in bed and leave her alone.

Now, if I can remember what I was talking about, I can get back to it. I know it was Juanita being in the hospital but I don't remember what I have said and what I haven't. I guess, at this point, we just have to wait and see. She will be in the hospital for a very long time. I hope she can stand it. I think she can but we will see after a couple of weeks or so. I know it will not be fun without her here at home and Maeghan will eventually want her to come home and play. She already asks when are we going to see mommy at the doctors and she will sometimes ask for her at home but so far, she doesn't have a problem when we leave the hospital and have to leave mommy there. The hospital is still a fun place for her, even though she has to try to keep quiet as we are usually visiting during the time when all the new mothers are not supposed to have visitors.

I have tried to go up there in the mornings, but so far, I can never make it before 11. I am working from home for the duration and I have to get some work done before I come up there and by the time I get Maeghan bathed and fed and dressed, it is after 10 and it takes 30 minutes to get there. I then have to fix Maeghan and I lunch to take with us, so we don't have to buy the awful hospital food, so it is usually around 11 or later when we arrive. The 'rest period' is from 12 to 3 and we are not supposed to be in the ward during that time. It depends on which nurses are there as some of them will let us stay if we are quiet and some of then keep coming up and reminding us that visiting hours are over.

We try to go for a walk during that time, after Juanita has her lunch around 12:30. Lately, Juanita is having a lot of trouble going for the walk and we do not stay gone for very long. We might have to cut it out altogether. The problem with that is, usually, I start to fall asleep when we are sitting there. Hospitals always seem to make me sleepy. I have no idea why. It is the same with airplanes. As soon as it is time to take off or land, I seem to want to fall asleep. I think they pump something into the air and that makes everyone sleepy or less alert so that no one panics when the plane is taking off or landing. Kind of like trying to drug everyone into being calm. I think the hospitals do the same thing. They pump something into the air to keep everyone drowsy and keep the patients in bed and it has the same effect on me when I am there.

I will try to keep everyone informed of how Juanita is doing. They want to give her something for blood clots but they said they cannot give it to her when she is having a cesarean as it does not allow the blood to clot after the operation. Some nurses are insisting that she have it but so far we have convinced the doctors she does not want it. That is another reason we have to go for the walks as this helps her circulation. They would have to stop the drug several days before the operation anyway and we and the doctors think that if for some reason she goes into labor or they have to take the baby early, then they will not have had time to take her off the drug before hand. So we keep insisting that they do not give it to her. We will have to see if they will stick to that or not.

I guess that is enough about Juanita for now. I will get back to her if I remember anything else. For now, we have to talk about dinner because I promised. I told Juanita that we were going to live on bologna sandwiches and spaghetti. They don't really have bologna over here, they have basically the same thing but they call it devon. Of course, you can get chicken devon and ham devon and just plain devon devon. It is all the same mystery meat but they add different flavors to it to make you think it is something else. I can't taste the difference between any of it anyway but we usually get the chicken/ham flavored. I say chicken/ham because it is not chicken or ham flavored, it is chicken/ham flavored. Tastes like bologna to me. By the way, do you know how I am remembering to spell bologna. I sing a song every time I write it. I sing the old Oscar Mayer song to myself and it spells out bologna in the song. You know the one. It goes

My bologna has a first name
It's O-s-c-a-r
My bologna has a second name
It's M-a-y-e-r
I love to eat it every day
And if you ask me why I'll say
Cause Oscar Mayer has a way with
b-o-l-o-g-n-a

Now you will be singing that song for the rest of the day. They really love it when I do it over here. It is one of their favorite songs.

Well, West Wing is starting so I will finish later.

It is now the next day. I have completely forgotten what I was talking about so I will just make some stuff up from now on and try to finish this sometime today.

I think I was talking about dinner but now that it is breakfast time, I don't really remember what we had for dinner. It was so long ago that I ate, I am beginning to feel weak. I think what I was telling you was that we were going to have bologna and spaghetti everyday until Juanita returns. So far, we have had neither. I was going to make spaghetti last night but I waited too long and didn't have time to make a proper spaghetti. Plus, I didn't have any lunch so when I got home, I fixed a couple of sandwiches to tide me over until dinner was ready. But the sandwiches filled me up and I wasn't hungry, so I didn't want to make my favorite food, spaghetti, when I wasn't hungry, so I made this sort of mince, vegetable stuff and served it over rice. I figured I could have it for lunch tomorrow and I wouldn't have to eat a lot for dinner.

That plan didn't really work out as by the time it was ready and I was watching television, I was hungry again and we ate it all. Except Maeghan. She decided she didn't like it but as she had had lots of food all day long, sausages, rolls, chips, candy, and noodles, she probably wasn't hungry anyway. I asked her what she wanted for dinner and she said watermelon. But she didn't just say watermelon, she says it with a gleam in her eye and rubs her hands together and says it kind of slow whisper. She says 'watermelon', while rubbing her hands together. And I say 'watermelon, you want watermelon for dinner?' and she says 'yes, its in the fridge, and Michael can have some too'.

So I got her a piece of watermelon. She really loves it. Not that she would always taste it and she still is wary of the first bite and will only lick it until she determines she likes it. She then ate the whole piece of watermelon I had cut for her and myself so I didn't get but a couple of bites. Once, she got a seed in hers and from that point, she had to check each bite I gave her for seeds to make sure there weren't any more and daddy wasn't trying to slip her something yuckky. She does that with everything. At first she licks it to see if she likes it and then she will check every bite to make sure there isn't anything in her dinner that she doesn't like the looks of. Like corn. Last time, or at least I think it was last time, I told you she has started eating corn. But she won't eat it if it is mixed with anything else. Only if it is corn on the cob or corn all by itself will she eat it. She is that way with a lot of things. She won't eat sausages if it is mixed with anything else and she won't eat noodles if they have anything besides noodles in them. I don't know where she gets it from but she likes to make sure you are not trying to slip anything in on her when she is eating.

I had some other stuff I was going to write about last nights dinner, but I cannot remember what it was. It was funny though so you can go ahead and laugh and pretend I said something funny.

In other news, Angela and the kids have all gone to Brisbane. They say it is only for two weeks, but they did not buy return tickets and we have no real idea when they will be returning. The kids haven't seen their father in about a year and he has never seen the baby, Shayla, so the visit may extend until after Christmas but Angela insists she will be back soon. It leaves me with no options to watch Maeghan, so I am working from home until after Christmas. I tell everyone I don't get a lot done when I work from home, too many distractions, but I work longer hours as I work before and after the kids go to bed. Actually, I don't get any work done and I only work for about an hour or two each day when I am at home. Someday, someone is going to notice that and I will get in trouble but I usually make up for it by working all night and day on a project just before it needs to be completed and no one ever catches on that I was not working on it all the time.

For example, right now, I should be building a system I will need in about three weeks and making sure it is ready and working. But instead, I am writing on this other computer and ignoring my work computer. I have a meeting in about and hour and I will probably be asked how things are going and I will say fine, even though I haven't really started. I did just get an email telling me the meeting will be postponed for an hour, which would piss me off if I was going to work as I have to get up at 3:30 in the morning to make it to the office in time for this meeting each week and if I had known it was going to be postponed, I could have slept another hour. But, since I am just dialing in to this meeting and I don't have to be there, it isn't really a problem as I can get up minutes before the meeting and still attend.

Next week, I go for my angiogram. Juanita and I still have not figured out how we are going to do this. As you know, I have to lie still for several hours after the operation and I cannot drive for two days afterwards. Juanita is already in the hospital, so there is no one to watch Maeghan while I am in the recovery room and there is no one to drive me home afterwards. Juanita says she will drive me home but I don't think she is allowed to drive either and I would have to drive her back anyway, so that plan doesn't really work. I am thinking I will have to take the train and a bus home but that means I have to take a train and bus to the hospital and the procedure is at 07:30 and I am not sure there are buses that early. I am sure there are but they probably only run once an hour near my house, so I will have to catch a bus at about 04:30 to get to the train to get to the hospital by 07:30. Then I have to take it all back again to get home. I am sure we will work something out but it does present a problem.

Juanita seems to thing they will put a new stint in while they are doing the angiogram but I am pretty sure that will not be the case. And besides, if they do that, then I will have to stay in the hospital and then we will not have anyone at all to watch Maeghan. She will have to stay in the hospital with us. It just all seems really complicated right now. We will figure something out.

William had another scan last week. They said everything was normal and there were no problems on there. Other than maybe being big, they says Juanita's problems will have no effect on the baby. He might be big because with her high blood sugar, which is under control at this point, the baby will might be overweight because of all the sugar but for now, he is normal and progressing just fine.

I had some stuff about Maeghan, things she has said and done, but I can't really remember them right now. Maybe I will take a break from writing and try to think of a few before I go.

Well, I didn't really think of anything. I have written enough in this blog anyway, so I suppose it can wait until next time. I will try to get back to it this weekend but I never seem to get to things when I should lately, so maybe not. I guess you will not know until it happens, and then it will be too late to do anything about it.

Talk to you soon. By the way, the spell checker in this thing is horrible. It doesn't have a lot of words in it and it doesn't let you see the context of what you have written, so I usually skip the spell checker part. I might type it into Word from now on and then post it from there. It says I can do that but I have not tried it yet.

And, since I cannot easily go back and see what pictures I have posted, I might start to have duplicates soon. The last picture, I didn't really want but it would not let me change it so it got posted. Maybe there is an easy way to keep track but I have not found it yet.

Bye again
By the way again, you might notice that there are a lot of pictures of Maeghan standing near or against this white wall between our kitchen and the computer. That is because, whenever Maeghan sees the camera, she says take my picture and stands against the wall. She won't leave until you take her picture, so there are a lot of her just standing there. You also have to to it a certain way. You have to say 'Say cheese' and then say 'click' so she knows you have taken the picture. She has a little pair of play binoculars she thinks is a camera. She is always looking through them at you, the wrong way I might add, and telling you to say cheese and then she says click so she has taken a picture of you. She also knows that you can look at the pictures as soon as you take them, so when you take a picture of her standing against the wall, she comes over and says let me see and you have to show her the picture.
Once again, bye. This picture was when she was learning to walk and she is walking around the mall with her walking toy.

MWNews 25

I am going to try to follow everything Maeghan says or does tonight. She appears to be in rare form and I thought I might give you a blow by blow as she struts around the house. I'll be cooking, eating and cleaning up after dinner at the same time, but as far as you can tell, it will be one long typing.

To start off, she was playing something and then said one of her favorite things. She says this when the game she is playing with herself doesn't go right. She says 'Ohhhh Man', then huffs in frustration and says she will have to do it again. This is all said out loud to herself but we can hear it all the same. She was doing that tonight and both Juanita and I repeated after her 'Ohhh Man'. She didn't like that. If you say something or repeat something she says after she says it, she will tell you, 'No, I say that' so that you are not allowed to say it anymore. I just keep repeating it after her and she gets upset with Daddy and comes and waves her finger at me and says, 'No, I say that'. Sometimes, if she is being generous, she will give you something else to say, like telling you 'You say No', or 'You say what is that', or whatever is appropriate for the situation and you are expected to say your line after she says hers.

Its kind of complicated and you really have to be here to have her tell you what you are supposed to do, but we all think it is really funny and just laugh at her.

She has finished doing whatever it was she was doing. I was in the kitchen and she walked around the corner and when she saw me, she covered her eyes and said she is not doing that anymore and walked on by me. I have no idea what she was referring to but apparently I wasn't supposed to see her doing it, that is why she covered her own eyes, so I couldn't see her.

She just came into the kitchen and chased her balloon thru. She apparently missed it a couple of times as I heard her say 'Oh no' a couple of times. She came back in with some big lego type blocks and said 'Happy blocky' but I am not really sure that's what she said as when I repeated it to her, she said 'No, Happy clocky' or 'Happy docky' or something like that. I never figured out what she was really saying.

She is now hunched over behind me walking kind of hunched over. I turned around and laughed at her and she stood up and said 'what's so funny'. I laughed more and she said 'why are you laughing'. I didn't answer her except to ask her what are you doing and she told me she was singing.

She is now going to the toilley (toilet). She is potty trained now but she doesn't like using her own toilet, she likes to sit on the big one. She can't get up on it by herself, so someone has to take her in and sit her on it and then take her off when she is finished. Michael took her in this time. Whenever I take her, we have to sing a song while we are in the bathroom. Usually Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Either that, or she says let's do Spider. That is the Incy Wincy Spider song. She likes to alternate between the two most of the time.

She is upset now because she wanted to go outside but it is getting dark. It is also getting cold and it is really windy here today, and yesterday. She was scared of the wind last night and I had to sit with her while she watched TV and ate her dinner. I always let her eat in the living room but she wants to eat at her table in the rumpus room most of the time and since we are usually in the other room, she sits at her table and watches TV until she is finished eating. Michael is usually in there with her, but last night, Michael was at his sisters, so I had to sit in there while the wind was blowing.

I have to go cook corn on the cob now or it won't be ready in time for the chicken.

Ok, I am back. I burned myself getting the chicken out of the oven. Its ready, but the corn isn't. The chicken needed to cool off anyway and I like my corn barely cooked, so it works out well.

Maeghan is playing in her playhouse. She is banging on it and saying its too noisy. She says mommy is working and the noise it too loud, but she keeps banging on it. Mommy is actually sitting in the living room playing games on her laptop. She sees me working on my laptop and knows I am working so she thinks mommy is doing the same thing. It works out well because she knows not to disturb me when I am working and now she is leaving mommy alone so she can work too.

Since you so interested in what we are having for dinner, we are having chicken legs, baked, baked cauliflower in cheese sauce, and corn on the cob. Of course, I make my own cheese sauce, not because I prefer doing it that way but because you cannot get canned cheese soup or velvetta or anything like what we would normally use to make cheese sauce. Of couch, you are wondering how we make queso dip if we do not have canned cheese soup or velvetta. That really isn't a problem over here because even if I could find those ingredients, we don't have Rotel. Yes, it is truly a barren land I live in. I didn't think it was possible to cook without Rotel, and come to think of it, it isn't possible, but we have to eat something

Oh, in case you haven't realized it, Juanita is out of the hospital. She got out on Friday. They think they have settled on a dosage for her insulin injections. She does it four times a day. Once at each meal with ten units and then an overnight injection of 32 units. I have no idea what a unit is but she just dials it into the needle contraption she has and injects it into her stomach. We still have no idea if this is something permanent or just during the pregnancy but we won't find that out until after she has the baby. For now, she is doing ok, but sometimes around injection time, she starts to get the shakes and has what they call a Hypo. It is short for something but I don't know what. It happened today while I was waiting for them to make her subway sandwich at the mall. It took about 15 minutes as they kept having a problem where all the servers would take turns burning each other with the hot plate. I don't know if they have it over there or not, but over here, Subway now serves toasted sandwiches. To me, that seemed like a natural thing to do and they should have been doing it all along but it is relatively new here and everyone wants there sandwich that way, even if it done not make sense to do so.

I had to run away for a second and put the last layer of cheese on top of the cauliflower. Dinner should be ready any minute now. Maeghan is standing beside me taking her dolly's dresses apart. We bought her new little dolly at the cheap shop over here. I think they have dollar shops over there. It is the same thing here and normally we let her buy something if she has money. She had two dollars today and she picked out this new little doll which has a lot of little dresses with it. She had them on little hangers hung from the desk drawer handle. I don't think you are supposed to take them off the hangers but she has now done so and will probably want me to put them back on.

Well, it is dinner time now. I will return as soon as we finish eating.

The cauliflower has to sit a minute to let the sauce thicken. Maeghan already has hers. She loves corn on the cob, by the way. Last night, she even wanted corn off the cob. We had sausages and gravy, with corn and potatoes. She ate the corn for the first time and that was all she wanted. Normally, she loves sausages and will eat them all the time, but once she tasted the corn, she didn't want anything else. I had to cook some more corn so she could have some as my original serving to her was totally inadequate. She ate a normal size serving and even had some multi-grain bread to go with it. She normally won't eat regular white bread but for some reason she likes multi-grain and wholemeal (wheat) bread. There are these rolls we get from an expensive bakery, I say expensive bakery as it is a bakery that is in all the malls and most of their bread and other things are over priced, because if you go to other regular bakers, you can get the same thing for a lot less. Ask momma as she bought these things called flat rolls at the bakery near where we lived. They cost about three dollars a dozen at this place. At the bakery in the mall, they cost 90 cents each. A big jump in price.

Anyway, we buy these rolls called cape-seed rolls at the expensive bakery. You can get them other places but they are not as good and are not really the same. Other bakers take their normal whole meal rolls and roll them in seeds to make them into cape seed rolls. At Baker's Delight, they somehow get the seeds cooked into the rolls and this makes them much better.

I bring all this up to say that Maeghan just loves these rolls. She can eat a whole one by herself, and they are not small rolls. She had one today after lunch, at which she ate four chicken nuggets and some chippies (french fries). She has been eating a lot lately. Not a lot at each meal, but she is eating all the time. Mostly junk food like lollies, and potato chips and biscuits (cookies). We have to start watching her now and giving her things that are healthy instead of letting her eat anything and everything she wants like before when she was hardly eating anything. Maybe she will be branching out to more kinds of food. She always asks what we are eating but where she used to say yuck and not eat it, she now sometime will try it before she says yuck and gives it back to you.

Did I mention that we are eating now. I have typed the last few paragraphs with chicken grease on my fingers. The cheese sauce never thickened. I think it is because we are using low-fat milk in it. We have to use low-fat now as that is what they told Juanita to eat instead of normal milk. I don't drink milk and avoid it most of the time but this stuff looks like colored water. It is really thin and I don't think you are supposed to cook with it. And, I think when I add butter to it to make my sauce, that probably defeats the purpose of having low-fat milk. But I refuse to use margarine instead so maybe using this stuff will derive some benefit but I do have to draw the line somewhere.

I will probably have to go now, which means I will only type about two more pages. Maeghan has asked for another piece of corn. I anticipated this and did not take mine, so she is eating it now. It means I will have to have a sandwich or something as I apparently did not make enough corn or cauliflower and I only had four little chicken legs for myself. Michael has already asked for more but there isn't any. He will have to add something else to this meal also. I should have known the cauliflower was not enough as all of us like cauliflower but I cooked half a head and normally that is plenty. I did cook 15 chicken legs thinking this would be enough to have as snacks during the week but they are really small, so I think they are all gone now.

Maeghan ate her two pieces of corn and most of her two pieces of chicken. She wants her bracelet now. These are candy bracelets and she can see them sitting on the counter. She wanted one earlier but we said not until after dinner. Most of the time, she forgets or is full by then. Tonight, as soon as she finished her dinner, she asked if she can have her bracelet now. So she is wearing it and eating a lolly off of it every few minutes.

As you can tell, we are through eating dinner now. Michael is in watching the TV and Juanita is still playing her game on her computer. Maeghan is taking all her toys out and playing with them and I am sitting her typing on this computer. I can type these pages from any computer and post them but I am doing this one from my home PC. I have my work laptop sitting beside me but it is not turned on, something I have learned to do since almost everytime I have it turned on lately, someone, somewhere, wants to ask me a question.

Last night, I was just going to bed and someone sent me an irate message from the US saying that something I had told them I had fixed earlier in the week was not working. It was something they had been complaining about for some time and I had kept putting them off and asking for more information from them before I put in the change. This week, I decided I would fix their problem even though they had still not supplied me with the correct information. Yesterday, they said it was not working and I would have to fix it. By the way, this guy is in Fort Worth and is a real pain in the ass. We make fun of him all the time as he sends out these weekly status reports that are a minute by minute report of what he did during the week. Things like 'took a break for 15 minutes and smoked a cigarette' or 'answered three emails today that took 17 minutes to complete'. It is really funny stuff sometimes but as you can tell, he is a real stickler for the absolute details of what you are doing.

Anyway, he sent me a note, saying my stuff wasn't working. I spent an hour trying to convince him that he was on the wrong system and if he would look at the right system, he would see that it was not time for the new stuff to run and it was not a problem. He ended up calling about 5 other people and getting them to confirm that what I was saying was true and then I had to wait another hour until the real time this stuff was supposed to run to show that it was actually working.

Now that I have typed all that, I have no idea why I am telling everyone this. I think it started out as a reason I don't have my work computer turned on, but I have no idea why anyone would care about that.

Maeghan has just come up and said would you please take me to bed. I have realized that most of this has had nothing to do with what it started out to be, which was a chronicle of what Maeghan was saying and doing. She is currently helping Michael put the dishes in the dishwasher. She came in and asked mommy where her plate was and then I heard her telling Michael that it was in the rubbish. I am sure that meant it was in the kitchen and had already been cleaned, but she might have meant anything.

Since she is ready for bed, I will have to go. It is kind of early for her to go, again, which means we will have to lay in bed and play for a while. If she is not really tired when we go to bed, I usually have to tell her I am going to get a drink or something and I will be right back so she will fall asleep while I am gone. Sometimes, this doesn't work and she calls out to me asking where I am. I do know that it is rare for me to actually leave while she is asleep. If I don't make an excuse and leave before she falls asleep, I tend to fall asleep myself and then I have no idea what she does after that. I assume she goes to sleep but I get the feeling that sometimes, she continues to play while I am asleep. Things appear to move around and she is in different places when I finally do wake up and leave her bedroom.

Since I have continued to type after Maeghan has wanted to go to bed, she has now started riding around on her little bike. It is not really a bike, but all the other kids have bikes and she wants one so we told her she has her little car and she can ride it around like it was a bike. She has accepted this and now calls her car her bike. She has gotten really good at it. She can get going really fast and then pull her legs up and roll until she runs into something, usually one of the other kids or one of us. She thinks it is great fun. Apparently, she spent the whole day a few weeks ago tormenting Jarvis by riding around the house and sliding into him and saying ' sorry' then running around the house again until he was in a good position to run into once more. This was a lot of fun for her but Jarvis got tired of it and went to sit on the couch and stay out of the way.

I really have to go now. I have some more cute stories to tell and some other in depth information about what we eat and don't eat here, but it will have to wait for another time. It's been fun and I will get back to the comments as soon as I can.

Ok, I am back. I was proof reading this and Maeghan is sitting in Juanita's lap helping her play her game. She keeps telling Juanita, 'Oh No' and says 'its gone now'. I don't know what they are playing, some Tetris variant I am sure, but Maeghan seems to know what is supposed to happen and lets Juanita know when it doesn't.

I am really going now. Talk to you soon.

MWNews 24

I haven't written in a few days. I have been meaning to but everytime I start to do it, something comes up. I have a lot to say, mostly about things Maeghan has said or done, but I am sure I will forget most of them as I always seem to do that. I end up rambling on and on about nothing and never getting to the actual things I wanted to say. I always mean to write as soon as she does something or something happens to someone but it never works out that way.

Another thing I have noticed is that I don't do the funny things anymore. I don't know why, and then again, maybe they weren't so funny anyway. But the little side stories and inside jokes seem to be lacking. Maybe it is because my humor tends to be reactive instead of original. I react to what other people say and do and don't really start the ball rolling on my own.

[There was a hugh section of this post I deleted here. I went on and on about somethings that were not really appropriate for this topic. Maybe I will put them back in someday, but for now, just assume you never read this.]

So, enough of that. Back to Maeghan and William, although, so far, William seems to be falling behind in the funny things to say. According to Juanita, he is fairly active and moves around a lot, but I just don't notice him talking much. Maybe he does it while I am at work.

I'll start off with the bad news or maybe not bad, just depressing. Juanita has the diabetes (I really should look up how to spell that), the pregnancy kind. It apparently is fairly common with IVF and older women babies. They put her on a diet to try to control it. She has to do a blood sugar test test four times a day. After only three days, the readings were not getting any better, so we called the doctor. She put her on insulin. So, now she has to give herself a shot three times a day.

That does not appear to have worked either. After two days of that, and upping her dose per shot, her blood sugar was going up. So now, she is in the hospital. She still has about seven or eight weeks to go for the baby, but they say they will have to keep her until they get the dosage right and the measurements start to go down. Some of the nurses and doctors do not see her as a problem as the measurements are not that high, but she still has to stay until they are all normal, the readings not the doctors. We have no idea at this point how long that will be. She has been there for two days now and she will be there at least two more, to show that her readings have stabilized, which they have not. Her mother, who has had diabetes for 40 years, said they should have done that to begin with instead of letting her go home and increase the dosage herself. I don't know what would have been or is best. All I know is she is in the hospital, she is pregnant, and it is getting close to term.

I am sure everything will be alright and I have not mentioned anything to her or anyone else, but right now, it is a little tough. I only mention it now because of something Meaghan said. We were leaving the hospital today, after visiting Juanita, and as we were driving away, I told Maeghan to wave to mommy. She held her had up and said bye mommy and started waving. she waved and said bye mommy until we couldn't see her anymore and then Maeghan said something that made me pull over and cry. She said, in a real small whisper so that I could barely hear her, knowing that mommy could not see or hear her anymore, she whispered bye mommy, I love you. Even now, I have to stop typing for a while. I thought maybe telling others about it would help but so far, it hasn't. It was just such a tiny little voice saying it but it really upset me. I guess I will have to come back to this later. It will not change for you but I have other happier, funnier things to tell you and I want to get them out before I forget them all.

So lets talk about the good things. We were driving along in the car the other day. Maeghan sits in a car seat behind me when I am driving. I am sure she was prompted or coached into saying this but no one has admitted it yet. I think it was her sister that put her up to it but while we are driving along, she said 'Daddy'. I said 'What Maeghan', like we always do. She said, 'you're hair is falling out'. Now I know for a fact that this is not true, so she must have been told by someone to say that. The problem is, she has said it several times after that, mostly because Juanita starts laughing hysterically when she says it, but I know it is just because someone taught her to say it. Anyway, I haven't said anything to her about it. I just give Juanita a dirty look, which makes her laugh even more.

Maeghan has also learned to trick Michael. Michael does not usually go with us when we go shopping and stuff. He decided to go the other day for some reason. So, we put Maeghan in the back of the van so Michael and Angela could ride in the middle. She likes to sit back there with the kids anyway. She was in the back and had ber bottle of water with her. She usually puts it in the cup holder beside her when she is not drinking it. Suddenly, she started saying 'its falling, it falling'. Michael turned around to see what she was talking about. she had put her water on the edge of the holder instead of putting it in it and it was going to fall off. Michael reached for it and Maeghan reached out and snatched it away and said 'I got it'. Several minutes later, we hear her saying 'its falling, its falling', again. Michael turned around and she snatched it again and 'oh, I got it'. She did this one more time and we were all laughing hysterically.

Finally, she started saying it over and over again and andding 'Michael, its falling' to her cries. Michael wouldn't turn around. After several minutes of this, we told Michael to see what she was doing. She hadn't even put it up there this time, she was just trying to get Michael to turn around so we would laugh at him again.

She is such a funny baby and she thought of this trick all on her own. We told Michael that she is going to teach William all the same tricks so they can both torture him.

Maeghan has started saying she is going to school today so she can play with her friends. I think she gets this from Anna, but whenever we go out and drive by the school, she says she has to get out and go to school to play with her friends. We tell her she has to wait awhile but I don't know how that is going to work out. She is still so tiny and so much smaller that kids her own age. Hopefully, it won't be a problem and she will adjust to being with bigger kids all the time. At least she won't be behind mentally as she is always surprising people with how smart she is and the things she does. I am sure it is because they don't expect it from someone so small but then again, there is that overwhelming cute thing she has going for her.

One of the kids has apparently taught her to say Nya-nya-nya, you can't catch me. She holds her arms at out to her sides and says this while she wiggles her hips at you so you will chase her. If there is ever a time when I hear an accent from her, it is when she says this. I know it is not really an accent as she lives in Australia, but when she is doing this little chant and dance, I am reminded of other little kids who do that over here and she sounds just like them. I am sure she would say it the same way if she was anywhere else, but to me, it says Aussie.

Another cute story from Maeghan. The first night Juanita was in the hospital, we had gone there pretty late. It was past Maeghan's bedtime but of course, she had no interest in going to sleep. We put her in the pram to lay down, but she would sit up everytime something would happen or someone would come in the room. She was sitting up, holding on the bar that straps her in and looking at us. We were telling her to lay back down and go to sleep. She put this really, really, cute little smile on her face and just moved her eyes to look back and forth at each of us. It is normally me who starts laughing at her when she does something cute or naughty but this time it was Juanita. She just looked so funny sitting there with this silly grin on her face and just moving her eyes from one of us to the other. We both we laughing at her and of course, this is exactly what she wanted as it meant she did not have to go to sleep. She played us so well, she was up for at least another 45 minutes to an hour after that.

We have all had the flu again over here. With me, it keeps coming and going but it has stayed for two weeks with Juanita. Everyone else has had it. I went to work the other day and found out almost everyone there had had it also. It is a really bad flu as it makes you feel totally exhausted and miserable. You have to be careful with flu's over here as there are a lot of Asian flu's that get started and they are always afraid they will come over to Australia. Australia has some pretty strict quarantine rules and they check everyone and everything that comes into the country, but I remember last year, they were stopping anyone who had a cough and taking a medical history from them before they could enter the country. Especially, if they had visited or were coming from an Asian country. A guy I worked with does some work over in Malaysia several times a year, and he had to delay coming back for a week so they could check that he did not have any symptoms of bird flu or SARS or anything else like that.

Everyone else is fine. They say they are going to move Williams birthday up, so we have no idea when it will take place at this point. Apparently, there is no real danger to him because of this diabetes other than he will be a big baby and will have to have special feedings when he is born since he is used to the over abundance of sugar in Juanita's blood. They say it is not a problem, but something we have to keep an eye on. Maybe Juanita will get to come home soon but all her friends tell her about a friend of a friend they know who had to stay several months in the hospital before the baby was born. None of it verified by anything, but they keep telling her those stories so she gets worried.

Her mother tells her not to worry about it as her readings are really low, not like her mothers, and there is really nothing to worry about. It is more about getting her on the right diet and getting the right dose of insulin that they are worried about now.

Speaking of diets, I don't understand at all the diet they want her to be on. It is basically a low GI diet but that type of thing has never made any sense to me. I mean, you are supposed to eat things that are low GI, but the things that are low GI are not diet food. I know it is two different things, dieting to lose weight and dieting to control diabetes, but if you look at low GI charts, some of the most low GI things are things like pizza and pasta and there are no green vegetables on it as these apparently are totally outside the diet. They want her to eat at least one thing from this list of the 'best' low GI foods at each meal, but the things on there are things like cornflakes and porridge for breakfast but it doesn't say not to put milk or sugar on them and these things are not low GI, so what are you supposed to eat. If they mean eat cereal with nothing on it, then why don't they say that. But they say it is ok to put milk and sugar on the cereal.

And she is allowed to eat potato chips and crackers but not potatoes. I just don't get it. As far as I can tell, eating a low GI diet is just like eating anything you want. Maybe cut out some sugar but other than that, as long as you have one of the 'best' foods at each meal, it doesn't matter what else you eat.

They also gave us conflicting reports on the diet coke Juanita drinks. She hasn't been drinking as much of it lately, she mostly drinks water now, but when we asked about it, the dietician said it was no problem, but the doctor said she had to make up for the lost fluids that diet coke causes by drinking twice as much water as diet coke, plus her normal consumption of water each day. Juanita drinks about 3 liters of water each day. They told her she should be drinking 5 to six liters. That is almost two gallons of water. We thought and everyone else thought she was doing really good with the 3 liters but this one doctor seemed to want to criticize everything she did or was doing. I am sure that doen't help anyone but there are a lot of doctors over here who do that.

Juat so you know, I accidentally published this blog when I hit the wrong key, so if it looks funny or seems to end and the restart, that is probably the reason.

I guess I should be going now. As usual, I have forgotten most of what I was going to say. I have to clean up the house as Juanita has only been gone for two days and somehow, we are already out of forks. I am not sure how that is possible. I do know that Angela stole most of our forks a while back, along with most of our knives, so we always run out faster than we can keep them washed. Since I stole, or rather, never returned a lot of our forks in the first place, I guess I can't complain. I didn't really steal them, I used to take one to my car and eat my lunch at the park. I would then forget to take it back in when I came back, so I ended up with a collection of about eight forks in my car, which I eventually took out at home when I cleaned my car. Since they match the pattern on our original forks, I can't really tell the difference between ours and works, so we just keep them until I take them back someday. Of course, since Angela has now stolen them from us, I can't take them back anyway which means they are ours.

Well, Maeghan is awake now. It is 8:30 in the morning, she really slept late. She is sitting her on my lap while I type. I have to clean the kitchen and get dressed and then go see Sissy (Angela). We haven't seen her in a couple of days and I am not even sure if she knows her mother is in the hospital. She is normally here everyday, but since we have not been here, she might have just come and gone and never knew where we were. I'll have to go find out what is going on. It probably means I will have to take all the kids to the hospital, but they will enjoy it and Juanita will like seeing them, for a little while at least. Up until the time they get noisy, which will be about four minutes after they get there.

If I remember anymore, I will write again. Love to everyone.