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.