Do the BiG Blue Test, on World Diabetes Day

Please help. It couldn't be any easier.

sweet Sawyer

"Oops. Sorry, Mommy."

"That's okay. It just fell."

"I love you, Mommy."

The drowsy 3am musings of a five-year-old...

"Mom, I need you!"

"Back when I was a baby and I used to watch Elmo's World? And they would sing, 'La, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, Elmo's World?'"

"Yes?"

"That's what I was singing, too, but in my head it was, "La, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, Olivia's World."

Last day as a four-year-old...

 

 

 

See also here and here.

Letter today from Diabetes TrialNet:

"The result of Sawyer's screening test was negative. This means that no diabetes related autoantibodies are present at this time."

This will not be his last screening.

But I am so grateful for the results of this one.

Friend Who Prefers to Remain Anonymous: "We should all go get in the hot tub. You want to?"

Paige: "I know it would be fun once we were there, but I don't feel like going through the hassle of getting there."

FWPRA: "Yeah. That's kind of how I feel about sex. And ribs."

I'm looking at almond butter when they round the corner and head down the aisle. Two cute college-age girls, laughing and talking. They stop near me and from the way they begin picking items up and reading and discussing the nutrition information, I guess that they are working on some kind of project. My ears perk up when they start talking about gluten.

"This gluten-free stuff has so many carbs," says one.

"It doesn't matter; I don't have to count carbs," says the other.

"Oh my god, can you imagine if you had to eat this gluten-free stuff and had, like diabetes or something and had to count carbs all the time? God, that would suck so bad."

They both laugh. Not cruelly, but just in that way that you do sometimes when you are young and imagining something that would indeed suck so bad, something that you, thankfully, don't currently have to worry about.

I feel like all the air has been sucked out of me.

I've reached that point in life where I don't as often look at college-age people and remember myself at that age. Instead, I imagine my children at that age. I look at those beautiful, carefree girls and think of Olivia. I wonder how things will be for her as she gets older and is that pre-teen, teenager, college student for whom things "suck so bad."

Will she be depressed? Will she be strong? Will she have friends who support her or will her peers give her a hard time? Will she be healthy and do her best to make the "right" choices? Will she rebel and not care for herself as she should?

I suppose that the best guess is "yes, all that and more."

18 months

Big boy. So loving. So full of life.

 

He calls Marc "Papa" and Olivia "Thith." He calls out "Mama" hundreds of times a day. "Hot," "ball" and "dog" are also on heavy rotation.

 

He's independent and can entertain himself for long periods of time with kitchen utensils, but when he decides he wants to be carried, there is no putting him down. He retreats to the laundry room to have his tantrums. He is extremely strong-willed.

 

He's curious and affectionate and charming. He looks for Olivia when she's at school and gives her hugs when she comes home. He loves his people and lets us know.

 

Happy year-and-a-half, Sawyer. I don't know how we managed before you came along...

My Boys

 

 

 

have you seen this?

if not, you should.

Blowing the dust off this blog, I realize that my last entry was the first day of this month. Seeing as how this is the last day of this month, posting today sort of makes this November the anti-NaBloPoMo for me this year.

(Also? I've been away from the blog so long that I had to Google how to put in that hyperlink.)

I am a bit on the fence with letting the blog continue to languish, re-dedicating myself to its upkeep, or just letting it die. Lately, I start a post and then get distracted. Or something that I would have put on the blog in the past, I just put on Facebook instead. Or I start a post and then realize that what I am writing about references something that has happened that has not yet been written about and I think that I need to back up and write about that before I can continue my present post and then...delete.

I might not have even put this up tonight if I hadn't earlier mentioned to someone (*waves and blows kiss*) that I was going to do it.

 

Somebody wasn't so sure how he felt about his Halloween costume...

 

Wait, now he's got it...

 

He hated it.

(But he looked so freakin' cute.)

Ready for Fall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I got up to check Olivia in the night, I could see the outline of him on the dining room floor. Like an arrow, pointed out the door. I listened for a minute to his panting, gripped with both grief and relief. He's not comfortable and the vet said he will never be comfortable again. I said that I wanted to bring him home for the night and would bring him back the next day. "I'll stay with him, if that's okay."

He rested easily through the day, but couldn't really move around and had to be helped to the porch when we took him out into our yard one last time. Forgetting, I called him out of the car at the vet's and he tried to comply, but fell on the parking lot. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

They took him away to put a catheter in his vein and brought him back with a shaved place on his front paw. I remembered him as a puppy with a spot just like that after the vet pumped his stomach the one and only time that he ate things he shouldn't have.

They laid him on the table with a blanket underneath. I knew that it was in case he used the bathroom, but I appreciated that it looked more comfortable than sterile. As soon as they started the meds, he laid his head between his paws and that was it. Very quick, very peaceful. He was gone.

What can you say about a dog? He was loyal, he was sweet. Most dogs I have known were, but this one was special. He was my good and true companion.

Tucker Moose Grits

 

Never enough hours...

This week...

- Sawyer started walking. He took two steps, then three a few days later. This morning he was practically running all over the living room.

- Olivia (finally) decided to poop on the potty. Bribery might have been involved. Bribery referred to by Olivia as "ice cream for poop." As in, "Can we go get ice cream for poop now?"

After a couple of days of this, she told me, "I don't need anymore ice cream. I'm used to the potty now."

- I weaned Sawyer. I didn't necessarily want to, but he continued to be a biting, fidgety nurser. He was also up too many times during the night wanting to latch on and then fall back asleep. I was miserable. He's done pretty well with the weaning, only occasionally patting or laying his his head on my chest and pulling at my shirt. He's easily distracted though. And he's sleeping much better.

Last year we tried pre-school. She wasn't ready.

This year? This year she's ready!

And so, off we went this morning. She had her backpack and her kit. She had her gluten-free snacks and lunch with all the carb counts written out.

Her teachers had all their instructions and diagrams.

And me? I had all my free-floating anxiety. No, I was fine. Mostly because she was so excited.

 

And it went well. Better than that. It went great. And she's already looking forward to going back on Thursday. She played dress-up and made friends. She ate her snack and talked about books in circle time. She loves her teacher. She had fun. And not one tear was shed. My big girl.

 

I'm going to need a minute to get into character.

"Okay, Mommy. Let's pretend that we're pirates and it's Valentine's Day and we're having a yard sale."

My friend, Francene, just opened a new Etsy shop. Check her out...

How does it happen?

From this...

 

to this in one short year...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy birthday, baby boy. We love you.

Mama's boy

And yes, that is how he "crawls."

Sonia Sotomayor , President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, has Type 1 diabetes.

I've been running around all day and busy at my mom's, so I just found out tonight when Marc told me. I got chills.

As usual, Amy at Diabetes Mine has a great post up about using this as a "teachable moment." Already there's a lot of press, a lot of questions, a lot of misconceptions to be cleared up.

I'm really excited to tell Olivia tomorrow. The whole Supreme Court thing won't mean much to her at this point, but I think that my excitement will rub off.

Sawyer Meets the Sandbox

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dinner Guests - A Cautionary Tale

1. Show up late to New Friend's house for first "Let's get the husbands and family together" dinner. Bring well-behaved pre-schooler, adorable baby and yummy dessert.

2. Get kids settled in and husbands introduced. Smile and relax as wine and conversation flow.

3. "Ooh" and "ahh" over yummy-looking dinner coming out of oven. Look forward to consuming said dinner with more of said wine and conversation.

4. Turn on stove in preparation for gluten-free noodles for child's dinner. Barely register when New Friend asks whether cooling-on-stovetop casserole should be boiling.

5. Laugh and joke with New Friends right up to the point where explosive pop sends glass and chicken all over stove. Hear Husband exclaim, "You turned on the wrong eye." Die a little inside.

6. Scramble with New Friend and husbands in attempt to salvage what is left of dinner. Marvel that everyone seems open to possibility of eating the top off the casserole.

7. Snort with semi-hysterical laughter as you fan smoke towards open windows, realizing that you have ruined dinner but your New Friends don't seem to be holding it against you.

7. Yell "FIRE!"

8. Check on children. Think about silencing fire alarm. Stare stupidly at flame.

9. Take giant step back as New Friend pulls out a fire extinguisher.

10. Jump and shy like scared horse as fire extinguisher explodes into action, covering flame, dinner, stove, and everything nearby in yellow dust.

11. Wish that one could go back a few minutes in time, back to when a ruined dinner seemed like the ultimate in humiliation.

12. Recognize that feeling in stomach as a deep and abiding need for a tall, frosty adult beverage.

13. Fall in love a little when New Friends seem to think that the evening has been, if nothing else, fun.

Since going off gluten a little more than four months ago, Olivia has grown over an inch and gained almost five and a half pounds. Four months. Five pounds. So, while she was never symptomatic, the celiac was obviously interfering with her ability to properly utilize what she was eating. Either that or she just had one hell of a growth spurt.

Her A1c is 7.2, which is respectable for someone her age and is lower than the day she went on the pump, but is higher than it had been in the last year or so of multiple daily injections. Disappointing. But she was sick a lot this winter and we did struggle with getting everything dialed in when she first went on the pump. Still.

In other news...Four? Four beats the hell out of Three. No contest. I am already loving Four. This was a hard winter for us and I am going to lay a lot of that at Three's door. Three was massive day-long tantrums. Three was exceedingly unreasonable. Four dislikes warms baths and is into screaming and fit-pitching, but Four can talk about Four's feelings. Four and I have been having fun.

Sawyer is not yet crawling, but did say his first word on Mother's Day...bye-bye. Sawyer is going to be my "get into everything" baby. He's the Ninja. You don't know how he got under that table or what that thing is that's in his mouth, but he did it with a quickness. My already light blog posting is sure to fall off to nothing when he starts crawling and walking.

Olivia at four

 

 

happy birthday, baby girl...

her last day as a three-year-old...