An update :: Elliott

Well, third grade is almost in the books.  It's been a good year, for a good boy.  I mean, the first, oh, seven years of your life were pretty challenging but I have to say that when you turned eight, and since January when you turned NINE, you have become a delightful young man.  We are getting along pretty well these days and it probably has a lot to do with how responsible you are, and how much more I can leave you alone and let you manage on your own.

Independence has always been your thing.  It suits you, my boy!

I guess no post about your current status in life would be complete without the story of the Fit Bit Charge.  It has defined months of your life and taught you some important lessons.

At Christmas, you got a fit bit.  It delighted you to no end, but as soon as you got back to school after winter break, a lot of your friends had fit bits, and fancier ones at that.  As with most things, you talk to your Grandma Judy before your mom and dad, but we knew that there was a fit bit talk coming.  You wanted a new one.  A fancier one.  One that tells you the time and exactly how many thousands of steps you take in a day (you average 100,000 plus steps a week, by the way, that's a little over 14,000 steps a day.) and your heart rate.

Finally, you decided to talk to me about it after school one day because, your buddy Yoshi having something you didn't was eating you alive.  You made sure to point out that Yoshi's dad bought it for him, just because, and were implying that I do the same.  Much to your disappointment, that was not the case.  Instead, I talked to you about goals and planning and saving your money.  We figured out that if you do all your jobs each week, you earn $5 and how long it would take you at $5 a week to earn the money for the fit bit of your dreams.

That was not good enough for you.  It wasn't FAST enough.  And even though you wanted mom and dad to buy it for you, you buckled down pretty fast to go on a money earning rampage.  For a little over three months, you worked your butt off for your dad, for me, for Grandma and even doing some jobs at Great Grandpa Huber's house.  You volunteered for jobs you'd normally run out of the room for.  You did anything your dad asked you to if there was an extra dollar as a reward.  Throughout it all, your attitude was pretty good and you really impressed me with your determination.

You faltered once, when you were so close to your goal, thinking that you'd give up on what you really wanted in order to get something else, faster.  But, we talked you off that ledge and pushed through the last couple weeks of money earning.

When that dumb fit bit came in the mail from Amazon, and I presented the box to you across the kitchen table on a Sunday night, I've maybe never seen you so excited.  You were beaming and glowing; giddy and jumpy.

You are a good boy, with a lot going on in your little nine year old life and you are handling it like a champ.  It's so much fun to watch you grow up and get better at making good decisions every single day.

An update :: Quinner

Lately, this boy lives in a land that dissappeared 65 million years ago.  To say he is in a dinosaur "phase" is a gross understatement.  Take yesterday morning, for example (Side note:  it wasn't really yesterday, it was last week.  It's taken me a while to finish this post.)  After we took the boys to school we watched his BBC documentary kids show about dinosaurs.  When that was finished, we "read" dinosaur books in silence.  He doesn't need me to read him the names because, he's a dinosaur and he knows all the names.  After that, I convinced him to get dressed, in his new glow in the dark Indominous Rex dinosaur t-shirt from target.  Then, as we do a lot of mornings, we watched dinosaur videos on YouTube before it was time to go to school.

Then, there is all the coloring, of dinosaurs.  Painting, of dinosaurs.  Reading of dinosaur books, and the fact that on most days, he only speaks Raptor to me and asks to be called "Blue" (his favorite dino from Jurassic World) instead of Quinn.

This kid, he's a great boy.  He's a little strange, talks like a 10 year old, and is a pretty content kid.  He loves his Uncle Willie, calls his brothers, "The boys" or "The Brothers", loves to talk about zombies and animals, and wookies, in addition to dinosaurs.  Yesterday, Willie took the boys in his car on the Huber family cemetery trek for Momerial Day and Quinn came home so excited that he got to go on a road trip with Uncle Willie.

Last week, he finished preschool.  The Mini-3 program that he participated in from January - May was so good for him.  He was painfully shy before school, and still had moments of being ridiculously shy and nervous when I dropped him off on most days, but I was so proud of him that he did it.  And, more importantly, that he loved school.

When he finished last week, I asked him what we were going to do now that school was out for the summer.  He replied, "I guess I should take swimming lessons."  I guess he's right.  I mean, if he can tackle school on his own for 4.5 hours a week, he can surely sit on the edge of a swimming pool and kick and blow bubbles, right?

This kid and I have some long days every once in a while, like today, where we lay on the floor in the office taking selfies and wondering what to do.  But, for the most part, we fill our days with activities and conversations that I wouldn't trade for anything and I feel pretty lucky that I get to have him as my side kick.  He likes to pull weeds, tells me when it's a beautiful day, and willingly washes his hands.  What more could I ask for.

Happy Happy Birthday Wyatt Dear...

Today, my boy, you are seven years old.  I can remember the day you were born, and it was great. Our first exchange this morning, on your birthday, was also great.

I opened the door to my bedroom after I got out of the shower and you were standing there, smiling.  I said, "good morning, Wyatt."  You said, "hi mom."  I smiled and said, "Happy Birthday!"  You let out a little sigh, grinned ear to ear and as you dove in for a gigantic hug said, "Thank you!"

You are a handsome, smart, funny and talented boy.  You are always the first kid awake in our house, would like to be the last one to go to sleep and if I'd let you, you'd prefer to sleep on the couch every night.  You are happiest at school, playing baseball, and building worlds in mine craft.  You have grown so much in the last year and are truly an amazing little kid.

Your smile and laugh are infectious.  You love knock-knock jokes, and have become an excellent reader.  Your teachers love you, you sit at a table of ALL GIRLS at school, and get chased by those same girls at recess.  I have no idea, well really I don't want to think about how handsome you will be in a few years, but I think that those girls at school seem to know something I am not ready to come to grips with yet.  Man alive, you are a good looking kid.

You love sugar and raspberries; ice cream and hot fudge.  Food, at least throughout most of your childhood I'm afraid, will always be your nemesis...but that's what missions to foreign lands are for.

Your asthma is getting better and as you get older, your lungs get stronger.  You are a champion at the inhaler and haven't been sick for a long time.  Your threshold for pain is remarkable and even when you have two ear infections in the same ear, as you did a few months ago, you took it like a champ.  Now, if only your dad and I could convince you to stop the "broken arm scream" whenever you think your hurt, and stop you from kicking Elliott in the nuts whenever you get mad at him.

I asked you a few of your favorite things this afternoon.  Here were your replies.
Favorite Movie: Harry and the Henderson's
Favorite song: Fitz and the Tantrums, Hand Clap
Favorite TV show: Phinneus and Ferb
Favorite Food: Pizza
Favorite drink: (sneaking mom's) Diet Coke
Favorite Star Wars Episode: The Force Awakens

I love you forever and always.  You are my little chickadee and though you are forever stuck in the middle, your star will always shine brightly.

A Dapper Trio

Over the weekend we were shopping at the Salt and Honey Market, mostly to check on my inventory because I was a vendor at the show.  While there, Wyatt decided that he wanted a bow tie, as part of his birthday presents.  We obliged.

On Sunday morning, he started to get dressed and then Quinn decided to jump on the bow tie bandwagon and, thanks to the last couple years of dressy Christmas presents from Grandma Judy, we were able to find a bow tie for Elliott, too.  I must say that these boys of mine, especially when the big boys have fresh haircuts, end up being a pretty dapper trio.

And as we all came down stairs ready for church, I realized that we were all dressed the same - navy blues, so it warranted a front porch selfie before we left the house.

Pump it up!

In March, I had an appointment with the nurse practitioner at my endochrinology office.  I have been meeting with Amy for 4 years now and I love her to the end of the earth.  She is calm, listens, and has helped me be such a better diabetic, as strange as that sounds.  I mean first, she changed my diagnosis from a type II to a type I which altered my treatment plan dramatically all those years ago.  She and the nurses on staff got me through my pregnancy with Quinn healthy and safe and I don't know what I would do with out her.  In fact, she's a little bit older and if she were ever to retire, I just don't know what I would do.

Anyway, the last few months, being a diabetic has been pretty challenging.  My blood sugars have been out of whack, one of the insulin's I was using, Lantus, seemed to stop working and, when you are supposed to wake up with your blood sugars between 90-120 and you are in the 200's, there is a problem.

After months of thinking about it, and just not feeling well, I was ready when my March appointment came, to talk to Amy about a pump.

First, I wore a sensor for a 5 day study to see what exactly my blood sugar was doing every day.  The sensor recorded a glucose level every 5 minutes for 5 days, turned that data into charts and the short version is, I needed to be on a pump.  My body was doing something called "insulin pooling" which means that when I was taking large doses, of Lantus in particular, it was basically just hanging out in my body, my body not being able to convert the insulin into the right molecules to work.  So, even though I was shooting up 30 units of this long lasting insulin twice a day, I was maybe getting the benefit of half of those units.

Not the best thing for someone whose body cannot create it's own insulin.

I got my insulin pump, whom I've named Dieter, on April 8th.  The learning curve to getting all my insulin doses set up correctly has been a roller coaster.  It's been hard.  The first 10 days, I just wasn't getting enough insulin and I was pretty miserable.  But now, as I enter the third full week, things are going well and I'm pretty "Pumped" about the whole thing.

Last week, things got even cooler when I added a sensor to the whole set-up.  The sensor takes continuous glucose data and sends it to my pump, giving me a ball park number of where my blood sugar levels are approximately.  If I get too low, like I did at 4 am this morning, then the pump vibrates and chimes until I wake up and take care of things.  That is a lifesaver.  It means that I wake up when my number is 67 because the pump woke me up, instead of waking up on my own with my blood sugar in the 30's.

Lifesaver.

I change the sensor every 6 days.  I change the infusion site for my pump every two and a half days.  This, in exchange for 4-6 needle pokes into my arms and gut every single day - for the last 10 years.  Now, the needles for both insertion devices are pretty big - and a little intimidating at first, but I've gotten used to it and it's all good.

This July (2016) I will have been a diagnosed Diabetic for 10 years.  Ten years is a long time and if I sit down and think about the fact that I have to deal with this the rest of my life, and that it has the potential to do super rotten things to my body (eye sight, nerve damage, etc.) then it's pretty depressing and frustrating.  But, this pump may make the next 10 years a little bit easier to manage.  It doesn't fix everything, but it is, right now, making a huge difference.