good news!

Just stopping in for a minute to share two good pieces of good news!

One - we have health coverage! We were all approved, and it starts April 1.

Two - Joan has an MRI apointment! It's soon, too - April 23 at 7 a.m. Unfortunately, the neurologist is taking paternity leave from April 22 to May 21, so we don't have an appointment to review his findings until May 22, but it's better than nothing, right? I asked if there were other neurologists, but she said he's assigned to us, and has reviewed her file from Hamilton, and is actually very excited she belongs to him. Not sure why - he probably sees several of them. But it's still all good news to me!

What Joan does when we're not looking...

Joan had snuck off somewhere this morning, so I set out to find her. Turns out, she had scooted to her room for a little light reading.

progress!

I've finally heard from the physio dept for Joan! We got a huge "welcome to the children's hospital" package, with a letter, maps, list of services, and all sorts of stuff. I almost cried when I saw it, I was so happy! It said we'll be getting a call in the next week or two to discuss Joan and what we're hoping to get out of therapy, and then they'll put together her team and make up a schedule for us. I hate that we've had to start all the way from scratch with everything. But it's nice to see some movement, at last! Hopefully, now that we've been accepted in, it won't take long for the appointments to actually start.

This hospital really does sound amazing. They even have a childcare space for siblings, where I can drop John while I take Joan to her appointments! That's one less thing to think about. It's a gigantic hospital - floors and floors, department after department. The physio clinic is connected to the neuroscience dept. It's amazing just looking at the map, to see everything they have stuffed in there. Hamilton had a children's hospital too, obviously, but it was a department here, a doctor there, all scattered around. This is one huge hospital, devoted to nothing but kids.

Unfortunately, we still don't have coverage for Alberta Health and Wellness, and they haven't even gotten to our application package yet, so I don't know if they're going to accept my citizenship documents. But they'll be getting to us soon - they open them chronologically, based on when they arrived, so they should be getting to ours within a week or so, and if there's no problems, it will be processed the same day, according to the guy on the phone. Not that I'm excited to start paying $88 a month in health premiums. But not everyone accepts the OHIP cards, so the sooner we get into Alberta's healthcare, the better off we'll be. Besides, the conservatives promised to phase out the premiums. In fact every party did. But now that they have a huge majority, they can do whatever the heck they want. The other day, they announced a "sweeping tranformation of healthcare", whatever that means. They gave no details. Doesn't sound too good to me. Mike thinks it might mean massive privatization. The worst case scenario he could think of is charging big user fees for visits, in lieu of the premium, but I'm not sure that's even legal.

random kid pics

Joan, getting into a tangled mess. Now that she's more mobile, she gets into all sorts of fun trouble. We've even had to put up gates, when we discovered her perched at the top of the basement stairs, peering down.

John, fixing the freezer. It's been sitting unused in our living room since we moved in. It wouldn't fit down the spiral staircase leading to the basement. Mike had taken the lid off, to see if that would help, but it was no good. But it's hard to take advantage of meat sales without a big freezer, so we decided to fire it up, and just leave it in the corner of the living room. It matches the walls, so it's not too bad. Anyway, Dad brought his cool tool belt in, and showed John how to use the screwdriver, and off he went! He did most of it by himself! John was so excited! He talked about it for days! Mike said this is a good advertisement for the superior design of the Robertson screw - so easy to handle, even a 3-year-old can do it.

Meet Ballie - a ball of dough, awaiting transformation into a tortilla. Apart from his true passion of home improvements, John also loves to cook, and was helping me roll tortillas for burritos a few days ago. I formed the dough into 12 little balls, and as their "turns" came up, John would mould little faces on them. They'd each cheer that it was their turn - then scream as I squished them flat.

Ah. To be one again. I left Joan playing with the cat as I went to the washroom, and I returned to this.

Hope you enjoyed the photos! Nothing more to say - I have to get cleaning. I think we have a plumber coming tomorrow, to tear out a wall. We have a leaky pipe behind the shower, so each time we shower, water burbles up from UNDER the tub, and has started lifting and cracking our brand new tile floor. I'm just going to say, it's so nice to have it NOT be our problem for once. At least the bill's not our problem. I still have a bunch of guys coming in to tear out a section of wall. It will be very, very exciting for John, though. The management company had sent out a plumber earlier this week to scope out the job, and John was buzzing. He followed this poor guy around like a puppy. Every 30 seconds, I heard "Jordan? What are you doing?" "Jordan? What are you doing now?" The guy was a good sport about it, though. He seemed to enjoy the attention. had told John before he arrived that there was a man coming to looka t the shower, so when he answered the door, John said "I'm John. Are you the man?" Jordan laughed, and said "Well, I hope I'm the man, but for now, and just "a" man." I wish i had a video of John's reaction to this guy's pipe wrench. he went out to his van to get it, then walked in with this ginormous thing in his hand. "Mom! Mom! Look at that wrench!" squealed John, following Jordan through the house. "It's. It's huge!"

Anyway, I'd better go.

An appointment - at last!

Yay! We're finally in the cardiology clinic! The doctor's office phoned today with Joan's long-awaited ECG appointment. That's an ultrasound of her heart, to see if the murmer is nothing, or requires surgery or what's going on in there.

So that's the good news. The bad news? It's not until June 12! Ugh! Three months away. But at least it's a firm date, right?

Now we're just waiting on the MRI appointment. I've phoned the neurology dept so often, she seems to have stopped returning my calls. And we're still waiting on the physio clinic, too. I haven't even gotten a call from admissions yet. But having the ECG booked makes me feel much, much better. Pretty sad that we're in the fastest moving hospital in the city, and it's still taking this long. I can really see why people are turning to private clinics.

ah - me time!

Sorry for just one photo - this is all Blogger will let me post tonight. But it's still cute!

A rare evening moment to me. It's only 10 p.m., but everyone is asleep, including Mike. He had a safety meeting this morning at 7 a.m., which was like 6 a.m. yesterday's time. And he had to get up early and account for driving time to get there, so wound up getting up at what would have felt like 4:30 a.m., after working late the night before. I got up with him, and felt bad for the guy. But not bad enough to slug through the day like he did - I went back to bed, so I'm feeling fine!

I'm here to post a little more. First some answers for Gram, because she asked some good questions. They use ground up tires for playgrounds because they're soft, and don't compact. If you fall on them, they really cushion the blow. I guess it's also a way of using up old useless tires. Apparently, they're trying to replace all the rock-based playgrounds in Calgary with this rubber stuff. I hated it at first, but I've learned to like it. It's fun to walk on - very squishy.

Second - YES! John has in fact finally stopped jumping on the couch! It took a big bash-up to drive the point home, but it did what months of nagging was unable to accomplish.

He's doing much better, by the way. He ate taco salad, which is nacho chips with cheese, meat and veggies, without complaint, and without asking for it to be broken into pieces. He even let me brush his front teeth tonight, which is a big turnaround. Most of the bruising is gone - just a bit of redness remains, and his lips are still sore. Part of that is that they're chapped, from breathing out of his mouth this past week, but he doesn't like the feeling of lip ointments of any kind, so I can't really help him. So I think he'll be OK. Most of the swelling is gone. He looks much better today than even those pictures, which are only a couple of days old. He was a lot more cheerful today, too. He's been such a grizzly bear this past week, but I think that swelling being almost gone has really helped him feel a lot better. No black teeth, so far, either! One was a little loose at first, but it doesn't seem to wiggle at all anymore, so I'm thinking it's lived on to be banged another day.



Joan had an exciting milestone today - she pivoted to the right! Probably doesn't mean a whole lot to many of you, but trust me, this is big, big, big! She's really progressing. She's been pulling up like a pro for weeks now, but now, she can let go with her hands and still stay propped up with her hip. She's even venturing from furniture piece to furniture piece that way. It's pretty exciting. If I hold her hands, she'll even walk along, one foot in front of another. At first, she was dragging her right foot, but now, she actually picks it up and steps with it. She's still very awkward, but she's really driven, so she's progressing well, in my amateur opinion. I don't think it will result in walking until she gets into therapy, though. She's still turning that right foot out funny, and can't really bear much wight on it. I sure wish she had that brace. She looks like she could use a cane or something. Hopefully, they'll get it sorted out before she has a permenant limp or anything like that. Things sure move slow here! All the requisitions are out, but I STILL don't have a single appointment date. It's extremely frustrating. Her language skills are chugging along, too. We have an activity book from Cheerios, with big pictures of - shockingly - Cheerios all over the cover. Joan pointed to one, and said "eat!" She can follow verbal commands now. I can ask her to give whatever's in her hand to Dad, and she will. She knows when I say something is hot, not to touch it. She's known, and listened to, "no" for a while now. She's even shaking her head "no" to verbal questions now, which is kind of cool. She's started pointing to things in books, and saying what sounds like "that", and then waits for us to say what it is before moving on to the next object, like she's trying to soak it all in.

On the Mike front, he's been doing a lot of thinking about his future, now that he may actually be able to finish school. He bounced the idea one day of teaching in a northern area. As in, like, Nunuvut (which John can't pronounce, so he calls it "none of us"). We had teachers in high school who did that, and had nothing but good things to say about it. Mike's found a lot of resources online, including a blog by a guy who's been up there for eight years. It actually sounds kind of neat, in a "what are we thinking?" kind of a way. I've never eaten muskox before, but I'm sure it's close enough to beef to pretend. And I'm sure we could learn enough Inukituk to get by. They have airports and Canada Post and the internet, and some places even have nurses and RCMP officers. How bad can it be? Everything is heavily subsidized to keep the cost of living moderately in check - except food prices, which are infamous. The school board up there has a web page to help new teachers brace for the shock - a carton of milk ranged from $4-8. A 5-pound bag of flour is $14. It's a little crazy! Some of them have fly-in grocery services from Montreal - you pay Montreal prices, plus 20 per cent, plus the cost of postage. Apparently, the locals order non-parishables annually, and they're shipped by barge in "summer", which keeps the prices down. I can't imagine ordering a year's worth of toilet paper in one go, but that's supposedly how it's done there. It all sounds pretty cool and exciting, and the pay makes it worthwhile, not even including a hefty northern allowance. It's a decision that's still years away, obviously. But it's been lots of fun looking into it. He keeps returning to one community called Grise Fiord, in Nunuvut. Look it up on mapquest if you feel like a shock. But that's actually where this blogging teacher is, and life there sounds pretty civilized. Cold, though. And really dark for a few months on end. He's been posting multiple sun pictures the last few days, because it's finally starting to rise again. But all in all, pretty civilized. They have running water and everything. They even have an indoor hockey arena, of all things!


Well, better go. Joan has woken up again. I blame that pesky tooth. I'll be back soon with more pictures!

a day at the park

I have too many pictures, but not enough time to process and post them all, so I'm going to post them in bits and pieces. These were taken yesterday, on a trip to the park - this is the little park that convinced Mike this apartment was right for us, because it's practically in our backyard. We go almost every day. The first is Joan, on her favourite ride, the swing. As soon as we turn the corner and come into view of the park, she starts to giggle, because she knows she'll get to swing.

John, striking a pose for the camera

The park's main attraction - loose dirt stuff for digging, and running one's fingers through. It's actually ground-up old tires. My house is constanty filled with tiny bits of rubber.

My little construction crew

Some quiet time with Dad before bed last night.

More pictures coming in the next few days. I've tried to be more diligent about keeping the camera charged and ready, and it's paid off. Now I just need to log some time in "the dungeon" to get them posted.

Things here have been alright. We finally checked out Alberta's equivalent of the Early Year's Centre. They aren't nearly as good, or as plentiful. But they do exist. John has dubbed it "The Fun Place." As in, all day, every day, he whines "can we pleeeeeeeease go to The Fun Place today? Pleeeeease?"

Unfortunately for John, they aren't open very often, or for very long. We have two, two-hour windows in the week for open play time, which is kind of sad. But they have a few other things. They have free swimming lessons on Mondays, and they have an open gym time on Friday afternoons, where they bring out the tricycles and soccer stuff, and let the kids run wild, followed by a snack and a random literacy activity. We went to the pre-schooler program last week, and both kids LOVED it! John got to play with trucks to his heart's content, and Joan spent a couple of hours with me, filling containers with blocks and dumping. She even got to sit in an excersaucer, which is like a baby amusement park, and she REALLY loved that. The blocks and other things were better for her, though, because she was using both sides to play. I haven't seen such a big smile on her face for that long, like, ever. Lots of fun! John had fun, too, but he found the other kids a bit frustrating. A lot of them were younger - the pamphlet says it's for 4-5 year-olds, but we were told we could come, because he was close, but there were lots of really young kids there, like 2-year-olds. The language barrier was an issue. It's an inner-city centre, hosted by the YWCA, so it was a lot more multicultural than I expected. Very few of the kids spoke any english. One spoke only french. Several only spoke Chinese. One other spoke english, but you'd never know it, because he didn't speak at all. Some of the others were too young to tell what language they could do. I didn't realize this until near the end, because the teachers still spoke to the kids in english, they just didn't respond to anything. It was like a class of mutes, except for John, who was trying his darnedest to strike up some meaningful conversation. At the end, they gave them a little snack - they sat in a circle, eating crackers and peaches. John asked everyone in turn, "do you like peaches?" When he got no response, he'd move on to the next person. The teacher was good, though, and gave him a very full answer of "Normally, I don't like peaches, but these ones are very good, aren't they?" He nodded yes, and he seemed happy with that.

On the way home, he commented on it. "We didn't talk at the Fun Place," he said. "I know," I told him. "Most of those kids can't speak english." "But I can speak it!" he said. We might try to find a different one, not so close to the core, so he has other kids to converse with. But most of them are so far away, way, way up in the north end.

We were going to back this week, but John's had quite a bad accident. While I was doing dishes one morning, he was jumping on the couch, even though he knows he's not supposed to, and he fell, very hard. Hard enough that it knocked in one of his front teeth a little, and turned the insides of his lips black. He's still swollen now, six days later. We think the tooth will be okay, but he's still asking for his food to be broken into little pieces, so it's hard to tell. He lets Mike look at it, but not me. But Mike says it's looking better every day. He's still in a lot of pain, but it seems to be mostly his lip that's the cause. He fell while holding a pen, which dug a big gouge through his bottom lip, and seemed to go inside his mouth to cause a lot of the damage to his upper lip. You can kind of see it in some of the photos up there - you can see the swelling in the left side of his face still. He actually refused to leave the house for a few days after. He spent a lot of time on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, whimpering. But he also refused to take any Tylenol, because it's "baby medicine". But he's asking to go places now, like the park and the Fun Place, so I'm sure he's feeling better. From what little he lets me see, I think he'll be okay, but the decision to go to a dentist or not is being left up to Mike, because he's the only one John trusts to lift up that sore, puffy lip. (Probably, because Mike keeps telling John that I want to pull his tooth out. That might have a bit to do with it.)

Speaking of baby teeth, Joan has a new one, with another on the way. That brings her up to nine - almost 10. This latest one is giving her a lot of grief. She clutches her cheek and screams now and then. She's drooling like crazy and is in constant search of soft flesh to bite - usually mine! Hopefully, it will pop through soon.

Anyway, better go. I have more to say, but have run out of time, and buggy Blogger has already erased half of this post, so I'm not going to stick around. But I'll be back!