Vacation and The Princess Updates and Pictures

(Day 30 of NaBloPoMo)

I am finally taking some time to update you all on our trip! Enjoy!

• I first want to say THANKS for reading along this month as I posted every.single.day this month. It was easier in the beginning of the month, but, these last few days have been killer to get my post in!

• The Princess did great on the 2 flights to IN. She did not sleep much, just a little on the first flight. She was in a great mood the rest of the time!

• The Princess DID NOT sleep well while we were gone, AT ALL. She had psychotic melt downs where we could not get her to calm down long enough to listen to us. It was HORRIBLE. But, we survived.

• We enjoyed spending time with all of our family there. We went to attend my cousin's daughter's first birthday party. Little Miss L. was adorable for her party AND we got to be there for my cousin's marriage proposal from her boyfriend of almost 3 years. This made Little Miss L.'s 1st Bday that much more special.

• We got to meet up with Hallie and The Princess from The Princess and The Pump (she posted about it here). This was an AWESOME part of our trip! She picked up The Princess and myself to go to lunch. We went to Red Robin, let the Princesses play at the park, and we did a little window shopping. Then we headed back to my Aunt's house to hang out for a bit. You can read more about the visit on Hallie's blog, and see my pics from our time together, below.

• The Princess did great on our first flight on the trip home. She actually slept the whole 2 hours. THEN the second leg of the trip...UGH!...The plane was nice and had video monitors for every seat. I thought GREAT we can watch a movie and the flight time will go faster! NOT! I bought ($6) Toy Story 3 and then found out that our headset connection DID NOT WORK! So, The Princess watched with no sound for a while. Then she SCREAMED for about the last 45 minutes of the flight! It was horrible!

If you remember a few weeks ago The Princess was sick. She had an ear infection about 3 weeks ago. We followed up the next week and they thought it looked like the ears were clearing up fine. I MEANT to take her in again before our trip to double check, but figured they were looking better and she was ok. Boy was I wrong! I ended up taking her to the doc yesterday after she has had too many rough nights of sleep and has been cranky. EAR INFECTION in both ears, AGAIN! One ear looked so bad the doc said it was RED and bulging out! Lots of fluid.

Since The Princess seems to be getting LOTS of ear infections, we are being sent to see an ENT about tubes. I scheduled the appointment for next week. We put her on antibiotics AGAIN. She is becoming resistant to them since she does not have a lot of options due to her penicillin and cephalosporin allergies.

So, we will see the ENT on Wednesday and the GI doctor about my celiac suspicions on Thursday. I will update after both appointments.

And, THANK YOU all again for sticking out the first NaBloPoMo I have done! I am not sure I can do it again, though I am thinking of trying for November. We will see!

Enjoy the picture collages below from our trip!

The flight to IN.

 

Random.

Little Miss L. on her 1st Birthday.

Random.

Meet up with Hallie and The Princess.

A Diabetes MeMe for Kids with Diabetes...

(Day 29 of NaBloPoMo)

Well, Heidi from D-Tales has started a Kids With Diabetes MeMe and has tagged me/The Superhero, so here is what The Superhero had to say…

What is your name?

(states name)

How old are you?

4. (holding 3 fingers out, since he is actually 3, where he got 4 from I have NO idea)

When were you diagnosed with diabetes?

The Superhero: No. I don’t know. How old?

Me: You were one.

The Superhero: One. Why?

Do you remember what happened when you were diagnosed or how you felt?

No. No.

Do finger pokes or shots [or site insertions/infusion set changes] hurt?

No. They only hurt sometimes. They hurt sometimes. Just sometimes.


What is a high number?
I don’t know.


What is a low number?
I don’t know.

What does low blood sugar feel like?

Shaky. I was a little shaky.

What’s your favorite way to treat a low?

Cookies.

How do you feel when your blood sugar level is high?

I don’t know.

What’s the best thing about having diabetes?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

After some coaxing, he says he likes his Diabesee friends.

What’s the worst thing about having diabetes?

I don’t know.

Do you worry much about diabetes?

Yeah. I don’t know why.

If one of your friends were diagnosed with diabetes, what would you say to that friend?

I don’t know.

What’s your favorite food?

I don’t know. I don’t KNOW! Cookies!

What’s your favorite snack?

Cookies.

What’s your favorite low-carb food?

Cheese.

Do you know what a blog is?

No.

Do you know that I blog about diabetes?

No response.

Do you care?

No response.

Why do you think I blog about diabetes?

No response.

What’s your biggest wish?

I don’t know.

Who’s your best friend?

Karen.

Me: Who’s Karen?

The Superhero: I don’t know.

Me. Ok? (LOL!)

What do you like about him/her/them?

Cuz. (does not make sense at all)

What’s your favorite thing to do?

Sports. I like to play Wii Sports.

Do you have a hero?

No.

No heroes at all?

No.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Uh, 5. I want to be 5.

Who’s your favorite person in the whole wide world?

My Diabesee friends. Cuz I like to play Wii sports on the Wii.

Are you afraid of anything?

No. No, I not afraid of the dark. I was. I not afraid of anything!

Fill in the blank. The Superhero is___________. There is no right or wrong answer.

The Superhero is 5. (huh?)

The Superhero was in a VERY "I don't know" mood.

And now Reyna, tag, you're it! Let's see Joe's answers! :)

Quick Trip Update

(Day 28 of NaBloPoMo)

***SIGH***

We are home. The full update will come after I get some sleep. We made it home late Monday afternoon and The Princess did well for 1 flight, and well, not so much on the other flight this round.

I will blog more later. I can't wait to find out what you have all been up to while I was away. I really missed the friends in my computer!

I am happy to report that meeting Hallie from The Princess and The Pump was just as amazing as I knew it would be. Our meeting deserves its own post which will be coming this week as well.

I have LOTS of pictures from our trip that I can't wait to share with you too!

For now, I am going to get ready for BED and am looking forward to getting some sleep. I have a LONG day out of the office Tuesday for work. Then I can get back to our "normal" routine, whatever that is!

Hugs and Love to you ALL!

Bloggy, Blog, Blogging and a side note...

(Day 27 of NaBloPoMo)


*SIGH*

I love blogging.

I have decided that blogging is my THERAPY.

And all of YOU are my therapists.

And the perk is, you don't cost me anything! No insurance to fight with, no co-pays to afford, no doctors judging me.

I can blog about ANYTHING that comes to mind and you ALL read/comment/suggest/support/etc. (which I appreciate a TON)

And I always feel better after blogging.

Even this post, sharing my bloggy love, makes me feel good.

_________________________________________________________________

And on a side note, my mom, The Princess and I are flying home TODAY.

We leave IN around 12:30pm and arrive back in AZ around 4:00pm. We have a short stop in Minneapolis this time and will be traveling for a total of 6 hours again, so WISH US LUCK!

So, all comments left between last Thursday and today will be approved later this afternoon/evening or tomorrow.

Hope you all had a GREAT 5 days without me! I can't wait to catch up on blogs and see what you have all been up to!

The Princess & The Pump, a GIVEAWAY

(Day 26 of NaBloPoMo)

Yep, that's right, ANOTHER GIVEAWAY!

Go check out the giveaway over at The Princess & The Pump! You have until Thursday @ midnight to enter this AWESOME giveaway!

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AND if you want to see who won LAST WEEK'S GIVEAWAY, go on over to Our Diabetic Life by clicking the blog button below.

Hope everyone is having a GREAT weekend!

September Blogger Basal (Thanks, Heidi!)

(Day 25 of NaBloPoMo)

You might remember Wendy over at Candy Hearts starting a monthly tradition, The Blogger Basal. She posted the first edition on the last Friday of August, you can check that post out HERE.

Blogger Basal is a monthly round up of posts compiled into one big summary.

For this month's edition, we were asked to send a blog post link to Heidi over at D-Tales.

She has posted this month's edition on her blog.

Click the button below to see how she summarized the Diabetes Blog happenings for the month of September...

AND for next month's edition, please follow the rules below and submit your link to Hallie from The Princess & The Pump @ theprincessandthepump@gmail.com no later than Friday October 22nd. She will post the October edition on Friday October 29th.

Rules for URL submissions:
1) Must be (mostly) family friendly. Rants are welcome. Porn is not. Get it?

2) URLs are due on the 3rd Friday of the month. PERIOD.
Please submit your URL on time for inclusion in the current month's edition.

3) Only one URL per author per month please.

Siblings, UGH...

(Day 24 of NaBloPoMo)

What is it about siblings that make their relationship completely different from other person to person relationships?

I mean, seriously, do they have to fight about/over EVERYTHING?

I always thought having the kids close together would be GREAT. They would be able to play together and have fun.

Which they do.

Sometimes.

But I swear it seems more often than not lately that they are FIGHTING like CRAZY. Not just bickering, or "That's mine" kind of fights. The Superhero and The Princess fight so hard that someone always ends up crying and getting hurt in some way or another.

And example from last week that ended ok, after I intervened. It might have gotten ugly if not.

We have 2 pillows for the living room that the kids LOVE. They like to lay on them ALL the time on the couch.

The problem comes when one of them is laying down and then gets up. Then the sibling comes over and lays down on the SAME pillow. Then child #1 comes back in and FREAKS out because he/she wants THAT pillow.

The other pillow, which is the SAME, is NOT good enough at that moment. So, then they FIGHT over ONE pillow while the other pillow sits there useless.

COME ON, it is the SAME pillow! Why do we have to fight over this? Ugh!

On this particular day, I intervened and convinced them to SHARE the ONE pillow they both wanted. It worked .This time.




And they were pretty cute, THIS time.

We're leaving, on a jetplane...

(Day 23 of NaBloPoMo)

That's right! My mom, The Princess, and I are OUTTA HERE!

We are leaving HOT AZ around 6 AM and arrive in IN around 3pm, with a short stop in Detroit on the way. (there is a time difference, so we are only, ha ha, only, traveling for 6 hours!)

The Princess has traveled by plane once before, so I am hoping she will do great this time too!
She is older this time though, and has NO binkie, and is no longer nursing. So I am hoping we can distract her with movies and toys.

Wish me luck and I will update next week! We get back on Monday. I have posts scheduled for each day while I am gone and will approve comments when we get back.

Love to you all while I am gone!

Rice Krispy Treat...CAKE?

(Day 22 of NaBloPoMo)

Yep, that is what Rod requests every year for his birthday. He is a 10 year old boy living in a 35 year old man's body.

So, here is how I make the cake...

Step 1:Make rice krispy treats as directed. I usually microwave them.



Step 2: Poor rice krispy treat mix into 2 8 inch/9 inch pans. Use wax paper, or foil sprayed with cooking spray (so it won't stick) and flatten out the "cakes".



Step 3: After cooling, layer the two "cakes" with frosting in between, so they won't slide around.



Step 4: Frost & Decorate.


Don't ask how many carbs are in this, I have NO clue! Luckily for me, The Superhero did NOT eat a whole lot of it, and was running around like crazy. So if I was off on the guess, it did not matter this time.

Step 5: ENJOY!

Never a dull moment around here

(Day 21 of NaBloPoMo)


Today (Monday) was the day The Superhero was scheduled to go on his VERY FIRST field trip EVER. They were just going to the public library, which he has also never been too (yep, I am a slacker).

I planned on dropping him off at school at 8:15am, then going back home to pick up The Princesses diaper bag, GF snacks, etc. I needed to check in with work stuff too, and was going to do this at that time. I also needed my camera!

The note sent home last week (which was when we first found out about this trip, nice to give me some notice!), said the bus was leaving the school at 9:45 and would be returning at 11.

This should have allowed me plenty of time to run back home and take care of a few things and get The Princesses things so I could take her to my mom's house.

So, while dropping The Superhero off at school I wanted to confirm the time the buses would be arriving so I could make sure I was back in time.

Teacher #1 (who I am NOT a fan of, see this post and this post to see why), told me the bus would be there at 8:45! Not 9:45. She did not realize SHE made a mistake on our flyer until THE DAY of the trip! The other parents who were attending and I were NOT happy.

So, not only did I have to get someone to cover me for work due to a field trip I found out about last week, but I had two options of what to do for The Princess at this point...

1) RUSH home and get The Princesses diaper bag with her GF snacks.

2) RUSH to the store (closer than home) and purchase diapers and GF snacks.

I chose the latter. It was faster to just buy a pack of diapers and the store I went to had plenty of GF foods, though I know they were more expensive at this particular store, it did not matter in that moment.

I dropped The Princess off at my mom's and was on my way to the school.

I found The Superhero and his class making a potty stop before getting on the bus. The Superhero was hanging out with a cutie patootie little girl.

We then got on the bus and the same adorable little girl sat next to The Superhero on the bus too! I sat in the seat in front of them. I was talking to The Superhero asking if she was his girlfriend and he said yes. I asked what her name was and he said "I don't know." She spoke up and said her name. (I will not post it for privacy purposes, we will call her "E.") The two of them together was ridiculously adorable!

We were almost to the library and drove over a bump, then I hear the SCREAMING from The Superhero. He was bleeding! Apparently he decided he wanted to look out the window at the SAME time the driver drove over a curb. The Superhero ended up bumping his nose on the window and got a small cut under his nose.

Any time we have trauma with The Superhero his BG CRASHES, FAST.

I checked Dexie on the way out of the bus, 90 and an arrow straight down. Finger check while we are walking, 91.

Hmmm, not horrible.

I boosted him up with a pack of Smarties and let him sit with the other kids. I went and sat in the back with the other parents.

Then a few minutes later I see him looking around, he could not see me, and was searching for me.

He looked sad and NOT GOOD.

I went around the corner and called him over. Dexie showed 51 ARROW STRAIGHT DOWN! Ugh!

Finger check, 62! Good thing I gave him the Smarties, who knows how low he would have been.

I let him have a juice, then he wanted Skittles, I gave him 5. Then I gave him a granola bar and bolused part of what he had. (I was nervous and did not want to crash him again).

He did NOT want to participate during the rest of story time and was just overall not happy. We left and headed to the bus. We stopped to get a group photo of his class. It took A LOT of convincing to get him to look toward the cameras, but he eventually did.

Then we got on the bus and The Superhero sat next to another little girl (for a minute), before he came to sit with me. He said he was tired and kept putting his head down. Never mind that it was close to 100 degrees and we were on a non-air conditioned school bus, he had been low and was still recovering too. He was miserable.

But, luckily, he recovered enough to enjoy his snack with the class and the final circle time before leaving at the end of the day.

If you ask him what he thought of his field trip, he will tell you he did not like it. He did not have fun. Diabetes ruined his first field trip ever. But, he did enjoy the first part of the bus ride and he enjoyed his snack and circle time after. I just really wanted his first field trip experience to be a good one.

Here are the pictures, with captions, that I took from my phone. Thank goodness for technology! (though I think it is pretty sad that the only way I could figure out how to get the darn pictures off of my phone was to send them to Facebook and then download them from there. Then I deleted them from FB so everyone could see them here for the first time. LOL)

(Waiting with E. outside the bathroom before getting on the bus)

(School shirts on, no more "green" shirt for The Superhero)

(The Superhero sitting with E. on the bus)

(Sitting with class before story time)



(BG after he was searching for me in the crowd)

(no longer listening to me, being grumpy, in true "recovering from a low" fashion)



(Group picture, Teacher #2 on the left, and Teacher #1 on the right)



(Sitting with T., another cutie, before coming to sit with me for the ride back)



(TIRED, SWEATY Superhero)



(Back in green, eating a snack, sitting by cute little E.)

Dreams, The before and the after

(Day 20 of NaBloPoMo)

After a bizarre, and scary dream I had a few nights ago, I started thinking about the dreams I was having before Diabetes entered our lives and now after the disease has taken over.

Before Diabetes my dreams consisted of my kids, work, FALLING, being CHASED, etc...You know, the usual sorts of dreams.

BUT now that we have Diabetes in our lives I find myself dreaming of Diabetes. As if living it with The Superhero day in and day out, my subconscious is now forcing me to dream about it too.

Sometimes it is good stuff, like those rare occasions when things go PERFECTLY.

Then there are those OTHER dreams, when things go WRONG.

The one I had the other night made me wake up with my heart racing and I am SO thankful was not real! In my dream I somehow bolused The Superhero 12.9 units of insulin!

12.9 units without carbs to match would KILL him.

AND his ration is 1:65, so I remember in my dream doing the math he would have needed 838.5 grams carbohydrates.

Now, if this were to happen in real life (hopefully will NEVER happen), we would just go to the ER and get a good ol' IV of sugary fluids.

But in my dream, I was frantically running around like a crazy person trying to find enough carbs to shove into his mouth.

Super, scary dream! And why 12.9 units. Such an odd amount. Weird


Anyway, what do YOU dream about?

A very Meri GIVEAWAY...

Forget Oprah, she's got nothing on Meri!

Check out this AWESOME giveaway over at Our Diabetic Life.

If you have never been there, PLEASE read through some of her posts. She is one of the many bloggers I enjoy reading regularly. She is the mom to 4 boys, THREE of which have Diabetes.

She is AMAZING.

AND they have a Diabetic alert dog, who is just plain awesome too!

Love you, Meri, and I LOVE your giveaway!

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And if you want to check out who won last week's giveaway over at D-Tales, go on over HERE and check it out!

Mommy, My Tummy Hurts

Something the Parent of a Child with Diabetes NEVER likes to hear.

BUT, in our house, when The Superhero says this, he USUALLY just needs to go potty. You see, he can hold his bladder like no other and wait until that very last second before he heads in to release a gallon of pee. No joking. (ok, I don't measure it, but you get the picture)

Well, his epiphany of needing to potty USUALLY happens the second we sit down for breakfast in the morning. And today, like every other day, he sat down to eat, said his tummy hurt, then he JUMPED up and ran to the potty.

He came back and started eating. Then he kept saying his tummy hurt. I told him if he did not eat, we were NOT going to church.

You see, I already pre-bolused part of his breakfast, as I always try to do, especially when we are eating FRENCH TOAST. So now, he has 1/2 unit on board (1:30 ratio). This is A LOT of insulin for The Superhero.

He proceeds to eat anyway, because otherwise he knows we are NOT going to church.

Then I hear him coughing, as I am weighing out his grapes that he whined for, I look over and see him THROWING UP.

WHAT?!

Ok, did he just choke on his food, or was his tummy REALLY upset, this time???

He had chugged 1/2 his milk before throwing up, and had a few pieces of the aforementioned french toast.

And now it was all sitting in his lap and on the table. Yuck! And Oh CRAP!

Clean him up. Check BG, 168. Check ketones, 0.1.

Tell The Superhero that we are NOT going to be able to go to church today because he just got sick from breakfast. Now I have to watch him more closely until that IOB is out of his system. (did a -50% temp basal to combat the IOB as well)

And sadly watch as the TEARS well up in The Superhero's eyes because we are not going to church AGAIN today. We have not been in WEEKS because someone has been sick every weekend.

All he wanted was to go see his friends.

And even more than that, he REALLY wanted to go see his Daddy. (he works at the church on the weekends, second job).

Seeing the tears in my sad little Superhero's eyes this morning, makes me cry too.

I hate Diabetes.

I hate that Diabetes is holding him back from seeing his friends and going to church.

And now, keeping him away from his Daddy today.

Blog post updates, 2nd edition

(Day 19 of NaBloPoMo)

Last week I posted my first Blog Post Updates with updates from some of my posts after the comments YOU all left.


I decided I really liked updating you all this way, so I will post an update post each week/2 weeks. (plus it gives me a post for that darn NaBloPoMo craziness...see below)


Here are the updates for this week...


1) Supporting Diabetes Research

I appreciate ALL of the comments I got on this subject. I have decided that there is no way we can walk this year. I am overwhelmed with life right now and would want to put my all into fund raising and putting a team together. I think I will start to think about next year and will plan to walk then. I still have a little bit of a hard time saying we are walking for a cure, when I feel like we should be saying "The walk for a possible cure, AND for better treatment, education, and support in the meantime."

I do see the benefits of JDRF and how they support families and research for Diabetes. I agree with what was said regarding quality of life for our children up until that cure is found, and this is something that is very important to me too.

Again, thank YOU ALL for the feedback on this one. It helped me see a little more into why supporting JDRF would be a good thing.



2) Lean On Me

Thank you all for the comments on this one. This song has been with me since last week and gets to me every time I hear it.

I know there are lots of songs that make each of us connect the song to our D lives, but this one that Meri posted in January, is my all time favorite. (Thanks, Meri)



3) Back to School

It was SO nice sending the kids back to school last Monday. I did get more work done without them home Monday-Wednesday, THEN The Superhero started NOT feeling well again. He had a low fever on Wednesday afternoon and was complaining that his forehead was hurting. We took him back to the doctor (and The Princess to get her ears re-checked). Both kids' ears were looking better, still a few days of antibiotics to go. The doc thought maybe The Superhero was feeling and upset tummy due to the antibiotics. She was not too concerned over the small fever and headache.

We ended up keeping both kids home on Thursday from school to give The Superhero time to feel better. And The Princess stayed home too, to prevent her from catching anything else.

Hopefully the kids will be 100% this week and The Superhero can go to school EVERY day. The Princess will be staying home with me this week to make sure she does not catch anything before we leave on Thursday for Indiana.

The Princess is still getting breathing treatments 2x per day since she just can't shake this cough completely without it. Once she has her treatment each morning, she seems fine. Then before bed she starts coughing again. So I can tell that she still needs them, for now. (see the cute picture below of her doing her own treatment, while I was cooking dinner)



4) To Bang or Not to Bang (controversial subject)

Thank you to all who posted comments on this controversial subject. (and for putting up with my sense of humor, LOL)

I think for NOW we are going to try to go "No Bang". I figure I can always cut them later if we change our minds. So, for now, The Princess is in the awkward in between stage while they grow out which makes doing something to her hair loads of fun! (sense the sarcasm!)



5) GF Experiment

We started going GF with The Princess on Wednesday afternoon after she got out of daycare. So far, I might be seeing slight changes in her. I don't want to get my hopes up, BUT she has started napping a little longer each day. She seems happier and is smiling more. She even slept until 1am before coming to my bed last night, instead of the usual 10:30pm. We are planning on keeping this up for a while to see how she does.

I did schedule an appointment with a specialist for October 7th. If they think we need to put her back on Gluten for a short time to do some testing then, we will do so at that time. I am anxious to meet with the doc and see what she thinks. As always, I will update on my blog.



6) Memories in a straw

Thank you all for the comments on this post. It definitely brought up all sorts of emotions.

I still can't get over how ironic it is what could have killed him that week could save his life today.



7) The Diabetic Duo and The Princess

I know it must have meant the world for this mom to get out kid/Diabetes free. And The Superhero keeps asking for C. to come back. So, I am sure we will have him over again sometime.


8) NaBloPoMo

THANK YOU all again for sticking with me! 19 days down, 11 more to go! I am starting to run out of things to post about. Hopefully I will make it! Oh, and I will be out of town for 5 of the next 11 days! Hopefully I will get all my posts written and scheduled before I leave.



And I leave you with the picture I mentioned above. The picture of The Princess giving herself a breathing treatment. (notice, bangs are pulled back)

MAIL EXCHANGE

I am LOVING this idea!!!

Cindy over at Eaten Alive had this great idea to do a mail exchange for the kids!

ALL the kids -- D Kiddos and Non-D Siblings included!

Basically you just need to e-mail Cindy the names and ages of your children.

She's going to match everyone up with another child around the same age.

Then you put a little package in the mail to your child's buddy...

and enjoy the moment your kiddo realizes they got mail!

Here's a little more info. from Cindy's blog....

My email address is cindyroerig@hotmail.com. I'm going to try to match each child up with another child who is about the same age. Non-d kids are welcome too! Here are the rules:

1. A small gift (stickers, socks, book, whatever) worth no more than $5.
2. Sent no later than October 1st.
3. Include a picture of your child
4. When your child receives their mail, follow it up by emailing a picture to the sender

Sound easy enough? I'm including the photo email in the rules because I think it'd be great for our kids to see who they sent their gift to. Even better if the gift is featured in the photo, right? Once I get all the emails, I'll pair children up and email each of you the email address of the person you'll be exchanging with. This way, you won't have to over-share your mailing address and we can keep a lot of it private. You can ask a few questions to get an idea of what each child might like.

I'm so excited to do this! I hope you'll all join in and feel free to invite others over to join too! I'm going to make Tuesday, September 21st, at 10:00 p.m., the deadline for signing up!

Get those e-mails to Cindy ASAP!

The Diabtic Duo, and The Princess

(Day 18 of NaBloPoMo)

The one thing that changed the most when The Superhero was diagnosed with Diabetes was the ability to leave him with just anyone. We no longer could ask ANY family member or friend to keep him. We needed someone who understood how to take care of him and his Diabetes.

Fortunately for us, The Superhero and The Princess have THE BEST NaNa and Pompa EVER. We have also met a few T1 Families who are willing to keep the kids, and one who has done so already. (Thanks Kris!)

We do have a family friend who has offered to watch the kids, and she and her husband will be trained at some point so we can leave the kids there too.


BUT, there are MANY families who have NO ONE. I received an email several weeks ago from a mom in our local support group asking for someone to watch her 6 year old T1 boy on a Friday night so she could go to a concert. I did not respond at first because they do not live in our area directly and I thought someone closer might work better.

Then when there was another plea for help from her, since no one had responded to the first email. I decided this was something we could do, as long as she was willing to bring him to us so our kids could go to bed as normal. (she needed someone from 4pm-2am, roughly)

Well, a few weeks ago we met C. and his mom the day before her concert. The kids hit it off great and I knew it would be ok. C.'s mom dropped him off the next afternoon and left him in our care for the night. We had agreed it would be easiest to just leave him overnight and pick him up in the morning.

So, for one night, we had a flash back to our days of shots and many finger pokes. No CGM and No pump was interesting, but worked out fine. We checked him several times that night and only had to treat a minor low to bump him up a bit.

And the kids LOVED C. The Princess would not leave the boys along for one second. The Superhero talked about C. for days and wants him to spend the night again.

I am thankful we were able to give C's mom a much needed night off. I am sure we will be doing it again sometime.

Here is a picture of what we are calling "The Diabetic Due & The Princess" (playing Wii)

The memories that come with that tiny little straw

(Day 17 of NaBloPoMo)


As I prepared dinner tonight I decided to let The Princess have a "treat" to drink.

A juicy juice 4 oz box to be exact.

You know, the ones used to treat lows for The Superhero and MANY other Diabetic children. I needed to mix in the probiotics that the pediatrician's office recommended.

And as I was squeezing the juice into the cup for The Princess (she is not allowed to have the box, I don't want THAT mess), I had major flashbacks.

Flashbacks to the week leading up to The Superhero's diagnosis.

Flashbacks of THE DAY he was diagnosed.

You see, that week, he was not interested in drinking from a cup. Not a sippy cup. Nope.

The only way I could get him to drink was through a straw. And not just any straw, it had to be that tiny little straw that is attached to those Juicy Juice 4 oz boxes.

But, he was staying hydrated. Or so we thought. He would suck down those sugary juice boxes one after another. ALL. WEEK. LONG. Who knew that the very thing that we thought was helping him stay hydrated, was surely making him more and more sick.

On that final day, D day, I remember very clearly standing in our kitchen squeezing his juice into a cup. Much like I did for The Princess tonight, to disguise his anti-nausea medicine so he would drink them through the straw.

Only this time I was holding him. I could not squeeze the juice box and measure the medicine one handed, so I attempted to stand The Superhero on the ground.

Only, he could NOT stand.

He started to fall down, and I had to catch him.

He was SO weak, he could not even stand up. He was barely staying awake. And all I needed to do was get him to drink his meds mixed with juice through that tiny little straw. I thought I was going to make him feel better.

It was only a few hours later that we found out how close we were to losing him.

And it is kind of ironic now to think that the very thing that made him feel worse that fateful week could actually save his life today.

GF Experiment

(Day 16 of NaBloPoMo)


You may remember me posting about The Princess and her allergy testing back in February of this year. She was tested for celiac as well. Everything came back negative.

But, my Mommy Intuition has still been telling me that something is just not right with this little girl.

She cries A LOT.

She DOES NOT sleep well, EVER.

She wakes up crying EVERY.SINGLE.NIGHT.

She comes to my bed and sleeps with me. But she is not really sleeping. She tosses and turns and cries ALL. NIGHT. LONG.

We have pretty much cut out all dairy. She is on Prevacid for acid reflux. The only other thing I have thought could possibly be a problem is GLUTEN.

We had her tested.

She was negative.

BUT, some of you may have read that Sugar was also tested and was negative, 4 TIMES. Then she was positive. Celiac diagnosis confirmed. YEARS after Wendy KNEW she had it.

I need relief NOW. Not in YEARS. So, we are trying a GF diet for The Princess for at least the next week to see how she does. I went out today and bought lots of Gluten Free things to keep her fed for at least a week.


















As much as I don't want this for her, I will do ANYTHING to make her feel better. She is miserable. And so are we. We all need a good night's sleep. Well, as good as it can get with Diabetes in the house too.

I will update next week after we do our experiment.

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