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Amy's Brain is 47% Female, 53% Male
Amy's brain is a healthy mix of male and female
You are both sensitive and savvy.
Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed.
But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve.

What Gender Is Your Brain?





Feel free to email me your comments, suggestions, and/or random thoughts.





 

October 2009
 

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Happy Halloween!! We had a Halloween + Baby Shower to celebrate the day and we had a wonderful time.  As you can see, we were Mickey and Minnie for the day.  However, we were not your typical Disney characters.  I was a knocked up Minnie and Mr. BAW was a Dead Beat Mickey.  It was our twisted version of the wholesome Mickey and Minnie.  Toby of course was pluto.  I made him a green collar but he didn't want to wear his black ears and black tail.  I also forgot to get a good picture of him!  But here he is, looking all cute and pooped after the party.  Mr. BAW threw his Mickey ears onto Toby.

I will post pictures of our party soon.  Right now, we're all extremely tired from the party.  But since it was a Halloween Party/Bbay Shower, we had some notable guests with many babies of their own, Octo-Mom and John Gosling.  Looks like those two couldn't get enough of baby showers! :-)

Happy Sweet Halloween!




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It's been several days since I started on my glucose monitoring regiment and new diet plan.  I met with a nutritionist and an RN to learn how to prick myself and record my glucose reading 4 times per day, once in the morning and once an hour after each meal.  I have to use this pen-like spring mechanism (shown in the middle of my glucose kit) to prick my finger tip to draw a bead of blood which gets soaked by a little paper strip that you attach to the monitor.  The monitor will then record your glucose level.  Although the lanet needle is extremely small, I still don't look forward to pricking myself.  :-(

Aside from recording my glucose level I also have to record everything I eat each day.  This includes meals and snacks.  But so far, I have learned a lot about how my body reacts to different foods.  I've been told by many people that white rice is very bad for glucose.  But I never really believed it. Well one day, Mr. BAW and I went to a Vietnamese restaurant and I ordered a bowl of beef soup rice noodle bowl.  It was a small bowl so I figured it was going to be fine.  Well, an hour later I recorded my highest glucose level in days!!!  I am now a believer that white rice is very bad for people with diabetes!  No wonder so many Chinese people have diabetes!  Just a night before I had about a cup of Spanish rice at a Mexican restaurant for dinner and my glucose level was normal.  So from now on, I'll stick to wheat bread and brown rice when I crave carbs. 


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Sadly, I found out on Sunday that I am part of the 5% group of women who develops gestational diabetes in my third trimester of pregnancy.  Due to my family history, I was tested for gestational diabetes early in my pregnancy, at around 18 weeks.  At that time, I failed my 1-hour glucose screening but passed the dreaded 3-hour glucose tolerance test.  This time, at 28 weeks, I failed both the 1-hour and 3-hour glucose test.  So in total, I got poked 10 times.  For my next pregnancy, I will forgo doing the 1-hour test and just go right for the 3-hour test to spare unnecessary blood draw!  

Unfortunately for me, the blood draw doesn't stop with the glucose test.  Now, I'm sure I have to perform self-test at least 4 times a day to check on my blood sugar level after each meal.  :-(  I absolutely hate needles, so this is pretty close to my version of hell.  I can't even imagine having to inject myself with insulin.  But hopefully I can control my blood glucose level with diet and exercise.  

I have not seen a doctor since the results of my failed test.  But I'm already getting a head start on trying to eat healthy.  I've been reading online about what to eat and when to eat.  So sweets of any kind is pretty much out for me for the next three months.  That's going to be challenge for two reasons.  The first reason is that the holidays are coming up.  First up is Halloween, the candy holiday!  Followed by Thanksgiving, Mr. BAW loves to bake yummy pies over Thanksgiving.  Then it's of course Christmas and the thought of not having hot chocolate over Christmas makes me very sad.  The second reasond why it's going to be so hard to give up sweets is because since becoming pregnant, I've been craving nothing but sweets.  I blame the baby for this since prior to becoming pregnant, I've never really craved sweets.  

Though I've not met with my doctor yet, I've already started my new diet routine.  I packed myself veggie snacks for work consisting of broccoli, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, and grapes.  Thankfully, I do like veggies, cooked or raw.  Maybe after my doctor's visit I can actually eat more sweet food than I think, but for now, the thought of insulin injection is enough to make me not eat any sweets.  As I find out more about gestational diabetes, I'll be sure to blog about it.  My initial research of it seems to show that each women is different and each person's body will respond to different foods differently.  So what's no-no for one woman may be safe to eat for another.  They also recommend eating smaller meals but eat often.  Hopefully I'll get to have some little sweets to celebrate the holidays, but we'll see what the doctor says. 


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Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!!  What is the Mid-Autumn Festival you ask?  It is a Chinese holiday dedicated to honoring the Moon.  It started in the Shang Dynasty and supposedly the full moon in mid-autumn is the largest full moon of the year.  The Mid-Autumn Festival typically corresponds to be around October in the Gregorian Calendar.  This year, it happens to be on October 2nd.

What do people do at the Mid-Autumn Festival?  Well, they light lanterns, gather with family and friends for a feast, and view the giant full moon over a wonderful piece of mooncake and tea.  Some day I would love to visit China during the Mid-Autumn Festival because the whole country is decorated with lanterns and it would be an amazing cultural experience to share with Mr. BAW and our kids.

For me, food is a great way to celebrate a holiday.  So naturally, I had to have a mooncake to honor the Mid-Autumn Festival. This is a typical mooncake my mom gave me.  They do come in round or square shapes.  They also come in savory or sweet flavors, the more popular flavor being sweet.  The savory ones are typically meat-filled.  The most popular sweet stuffing is the lotus seed paste, the one I am showing here.  Typically, there's also a whole egg yoke baked into the center of the cake.  The egg represents the full Moon.  It also acts to temper the sweetness of the lotus seed paste.  

These little cakes are no larger than my palm but they are extremely dense and sweet.  Therefore, typically, we would cut up the cake into quarters and a person will just eat one quarter of the cake.  I also think that it's great to enjoy with a hot cup of Chinese tea.  

You'll also notice that there are some Chinese characters printed on the top of the mooncake.  There's actually a historical event that started the mooncake tradition and characters.  You can read about it by following my mooncake link above.  But these days, they just advertise the name of the store or it tells you the flavor of the stuffing.


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Happy October!  I can't believe it's fall already and stores are already getting ready for the 1st of many year-end holidays, starting with Halloween.  As for Toby, he should be shedding less once the weather starts to cool off.  Unfortunately, in LA, the weather doesn't cool off until the end of November!  

So in the mean time, I continue to brush him, daily if I can manage.  But for years, I used to spend hours pulling fur off of his brush after I groomed him.  I would end up with a ball of fur after each brushing and it would take forever to pull all that fur off of the brush.  There's gotta be a better way, I thought to myself!  Sure enough, someone else had thought of a solution.  I found the Snap-N-Clean brush at Petsmart.  This is a clever little invention that has a little plastic plate that you can snap out and pull all of the fur off the brush in one quick swipe!!  I LOVE this invention!  Now, Toby's brush is always clean and ready for the next brushing.  I highly recommend this brush if you have a dog that sheds like crazy.  You can also buy this brush at Amazon, they also come in a small size for smaller dogs.  :-)  








































































 

 

 






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