Puff goes the Dragon....

My morning pills - bet you are jealous!!! I was filling up my old lady pill case and thought I'd snap a pic....take 3 others besides these...Gummy grin.

Daddy got my exercauser together with limited curse words and mild frustration! But I love it.

Smiling gal.

Mommy and Greta.

Greetings from the looney ward...well, I'm not really in there, thought about it, really..really..really thought about it, but I don't like hospital food, so I figure I'll stick it out at home. It has been a tiring week to say the least, one of puffiness, grumpiness, sickness, hospital and Dr visits and a lot of Sh*t ( of the real and figuratively speaking variety). Greta stinks lately...I almost lost my cookies this morning (really, I had a cookie for breakfast and I almost gagged it out).

Greta has been smiling tons lately (maybe because she is pooping so much), but the last few days she has been a real charmer, she has a funny looking grin, all gums of course, but she seems to tilt her head and wrinkle her nose a bit when she smiles. She looks so big in the pictures, she is definitely getting bigger, but if she isn't sitting beside something or someone in pictures she looks bigger than what she is. SIGH (that is me really sighing as I type I'm starting to hear her through the monitor, it's 10:21pm, she should be sleeping for the night, WHY is she stirring!!!) Off to check, this may take awhile to write tonight's blog!!!

Wow, 10:23pm and I'm back already - have I blogged before about how much I love Sleep Machines and soothers!! Well I do. Her sleep sheep went off, it's set for 45 minutes, started the ocean again and gave her the soother and she spit it right back out and off to sleep...well, maybe!

Back to the week though! Oh yes, Greta smiling...I'll add some pics to show the latest grin, she did quite gummy grins today. Nana has been on the Island teaching all week so she had nightly visits with Greta and nice for an extra set of hands to hold Greta and feed her as she is enjoying being entertained more and more. I tried to entertain her by letting her watch me do my Turbo Jam video - I was kind of wishing she knew how to do CPR, about 8 minutes in I thought I was going to die - lets just say I'm out of shape and haven't done the video in 14 months...I had to take a break (had a cookie and a glass of water) but kept on going and finished...should do it again, but my damn legs have been killing me - I mean, my calves were that sore I could barely walk to check on the baby that night. So, that may have been entertaining, but she seems to get "bored" easy. Hard to believe a 3.5 month old can be bored, but believe me, she lets us know, the attention span is about 15 minutes, so we have brought out a few new books, new Baby Einstein videos and her Time for Tea Exercauser. Now she is a tad small for the exercauser, but I stuff a pillow in the front of the seat and presto, she can dangle, soon she'll be able to reach more of the items but for now, she seems to enjoy being upright and looking at the items, it's quite the toy, Daddy thought the same thing when he saw the 100 parts and attempted to put it together - he claims the instructions were poorly written, if he looked at the picture like most men, it would have been a simpler job to understand, but I'll give him a break on this one, it's together and she didn't fall out (and I have a lot more things for Xmas to put together so better not tick him off). I tried to refrain from shopping, and I did pretty good - I seem to grocery shop a lot, and I mean a lot...we have enough food in this house to survive months, maybe a year, so I do think I should try to bake what is in the cupboards and make dinners with what is here...that will be my goal for next week. I did do my weekly visit to the Children's Exchange today, for those on the Island with kids - go check it out. I stop in once a week, it's a new and gently used clothing store for kids, with Greta still wearing little sizes, I find the items in excellent condition and better yet sometimes the tags are still on, I find the best brand name items. Today's finds, 2 pairs of Gap Pants, a Laura Ashley Sweater, 2 Carters items, a beautiful Janie and Jack knit cardigan and matching pants, a Ralph Lauren dress (that was marked down to a $1) and I think a few other tops. All for $21...And NO she didn't need any of it...but, it was all cute and she'll wear it, I bought a variety of sizes. And brand new GAP pants for $4...it's like I'm shopping in the USA. I glanced at the little boy stuff too, adorable items and tons of Carters and Old Navy and Gap items. That was my big outing today, and I had Greta with me so we didn't get to many other spots.

Friday was a good day / bad day...Good for me / Bad for Darren!!! I had called my liver / crohns specialist on Wed to tell him I was puffing up like a balloon and was going crazy with the medications, it resulted in a bit of worry for him when I said my face and legs were quite bad, so I got in for a Friday appt. My liver blood work showed significant improvement, so one month of the poison they call medicine really did work, I hated the side effects and the water it has put on my face and body, but my latest numbers (which at one time were almost 700) went from 479 to 176...that is really good, I still need to get to 5-20, but at least it's going in the right direction. The best news from the appt, they are going to start weaning me off the high dose of steroids, so currently I'm taking 6 of one pill a day, for a full week starting Friday I reduce that to 5, then next Friday to 4, then I have another visit and more blood work to see where I am. Over time, they will get me on the lowest dose possible to stabilize the liver damage and ensure the numbers are not going up...not sure if that makes sense, but essentially, they may be able to get me down to 2 steroids and have it stabilize. I didn't come out totally free, I may have lost one pill - but I gained 2 more, it will be the replacement. But are you ready for the side effects and precautions. Well, first, it can cause cancer (but not to sound cynical, everything you read about causes cancer), and considering I have my blood done every 3 weeks, I think they will watch pretty close...but my favorite instructions - I HAVE TO AVOID SICK PEOPLE. Ironically, I am sick with a cold and sore throat...but I can't get "sick", or get infections, nor can I be around people who just had the flu shot or vaccines (now, Greta goes in 2 weeks for her 4 month needles, I'll have to see what this is all about) but I think it's more because the flu shots contain the live virus or because people can get symptoms within 48 hours. Needless to say, I'm not allowed to get the shot! So, I'll be living in a bubble, people who wish to visit will have to get the medical okay by moi to come...no colds, sniffles, no sick kids, no sore throat, cough, infection, if you pass that, I will lysol you at the door, give you alcohol hand sanitizer and you can come visit - sounds like fun don't you think...ha! No, I won't be that severe, but will take it seriously at the same time...I just can't afford to have any set backs and since they are suppressing my immune system I just won't be able to fight it off and I REALLY, REALLY WANT TO FEEL HEALTHY for once! If you see me with a mask, don't be offended!! I'm still going out in public, to restaurants, I'll just be extremely careful. And don't let this be an excuse not to visit, we still haven't seen a lot of friends, so if you are REALLY sick, definitely wait til your better, but just let me know, would still love to see people, can't shut myself off from the world.

Now, I did say I wouldn't blog about Darren's issues (to him) .... as much as I want to (boy oh boy do I want to only because I think it would be a great laugh for people and I laugh about it thinking about what to write)...but lets just say even though it was a given already, Greta will 100% be an only child and Darren has been thankful for Frozen peas....and I was such a nice wife, I even bought the frozen peas and carrots! (Okay, not really nice, they were cheaper than the bag of peas, I was thinking of saving 40 cents...ha). I think he is milking the pain card a little bit...he can suck it up...9 months of being prego, c-section, 2 biopsies, crohns and liver disease...he doesn't know what pain is...if all I had to do was sit on a bag of frozen peas and pop a tylenol, I'd be in heaven! If things couldn't get worse for him, he goes to lie down in the basement this morning at 6am and comes upstairs furious - the furnace that we had a plumber in for 3 hours last Saturday to fix was leaking and flooded the basement including 5 feet or so of the finished room...seems the plumber FORGOT to shut off a lever, so it's been slowly leaking in to a bucket we had in the room, but it overflowed finally and kept on flowing...Plumber was back to clean the mess up, we are just hoping there is not tons of damage and we have to rip up the floor...time will tell...It never fails!

Now another day to enjoy before the work week starts, I think I'll check out the Dunes sale and buy myself a new piece of pottery, bake some cookies for the week, and start making my Xmas list for USA shopping - fun times I tell you...Mom is back for another full week of teaching on the Island, so it will be a busy week.

Stay healthy everyone - would be nice to have visitors sometime during flu and cold season!!!

Toodles!