The Worst People Ever

Everyone bears a cross, some weight of the world that they have to deal with, issues that they would rather pass to others or get rid of completely.  Often times, in our interactions with others, we don't see these crosses, these burdens that they suffer and struggle with.   People have a tendency to put their best face forward so others don't see their struggles.  They mask their pain in public and deal with the torment in the comfort of their homes.   In our everyday lives, how many times have we judged others because we think they are scatterbrained, flighty, "not with it", or maybe we think they are depressed, self-centered, or shy.  There are often times hidden struggles that influence the way people portray themselves in public.  Not everything is always as it seems.  In my work as a contractor, I sometimes spend a good amount of time around people in their homes, seeing that other side, being a silent witness to the struggles that they deal with.  I sometimes make silent assumptions about peoples motives, thinking one thing even though I know it may not be true.  I don't know the specific assumption that I made, but there is a lot more behind my current customer's actions and life than I could have ever imagined.  And this is how I discovered the worst people ever.  It wasn't her specifically telling me her struggles.  Instead, I overheard phone conversations that she has had while I am working there.  I don't eavesdrop.  I just happen to be working near her room when she is on the phone.  There is no where left for me to work in her house and while my intention is not to listen to her conversation, sometimes it can't be helped. 

So what is this cross that my customer is bearing?  From what I gather, my customer, divorced and living alone, has a daughter who lives in a group home and attends a school that teaches life skills.  I am guessing that her daughter is dealing with some type of mental health issue, perhaps autism or something similar.  I have never seen her daughter, but have heard her talk about her on the phone and have seen pictures of her when she was younger.   Sometime over the past year, her daughter has suffered abuse at the hands of her caregivers, the one's who care for her at the home, not the school.  She suffered both physical and mental abuse, including strangling and beating.  I don't know what type of psychological abuse she suffered, but I can imagine its not good.  There could be more, but I have not heard it.  Arrests have been made, lawsuits have been filed, and the process is still on going. There are debates about putting video cameras to help watch her daughter and the other kids at the house.  It all sounds like a giant nightmare being waged over the phone by a parent who wasn't able to be present to protect her daughter.  I would be enraged if this happened to one of my children and despite what this customer of mine is going through, she is able to maintain a relative calm demeanor on the phone.  If I hadn't over heard her talking about this issue, I would have had no inclination that anything was wrong with her daughter.  She manages to put on this smile every day, appear to be happy, and go about her life.  Yet, knowing what she must be dealing with inside is heartbreaking.  Having children of my own, there is a deep gut wrenching feeling that occurs whenever something happens to one of them.  The desire to protect and assist, to heal and to care for our children, is inherent in parenthood.  When the ability to do that is taken away through a mental health issue where external help outside the family is needed, it digs out the very fiber of what it means to be a parent.

Who are these people who prey upon those less fortunate, who feel that they can exert their power over them to whatever degree they see fit?  It is something that I can not comprehend and probably will never be able to.  We occasionally hear about similar cases on the news, but often times the abuse has to be more aggravated, more despicable, more horrendous for it to make the news.  How many other cases like this float beneath the radar because it either only happened once or is deemed not news worthy enough?  The cases that involve the mentally challenged either with autism, Down syndrome, or some other mental health issue are even harder to identify as often times the victims don't know how to speak up for themselves or are unable to do so.  The people who commit these heinous crimes, in my mind, are on par with the Bashar al Assad's, the Kim Jong Un's, and anyone else who is in a position of power and exerts that power over those less fortunate either for their own personal satisfaction or some other twisted reason.   The cross that my customer is bearing right now is not an easy one to bear as a parent.   It makes me feel fortunate that I don't have to deal with what she is dealing with.  It is also a reminder that everyone is dealing with something, either small or large, in their personal lives.  We may not know what it is people are dealing with it, but it never hurts to throw an extra dose of kindness into our interactions with others.  A simple smile, a kind word, or a gentle touch is sometimes all that people need to be lifted up a bit out of their problems.  So smile today, or maybe even ask someone, seriously, how they are doing.  

No, It's Not Being Over Protective

I was at a birthday party for a friend's wife this past Friday.  It was a small gathering of adults at their house, most of them with kids in tow.  These friends of ours have a son who is in our son's kindergarten class.  These two kindergarteners are quickly becoming good friends and being that we live right around the corner from them, it is working out quite nicely.  There is a big difference, however, in how we choose to raise our children (both them and us have daughters about the same age as well).  They, along with many of our other friends, have chosen to introduce technology to their kids including TV, video games, iPads, and iPhones.  Nothing wrong with that on my end.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't judge anyone for the way they choose to raise their children.   Another difference in the way we raise our children is when we introduce organized sports to our children.  Their son has been playing baseball for a couple of years now whereas ours just plays with a plastic bat and ball in our backyard.  I have nothing against sports either, but at least for our son, he can wait out one more year before getting involved in a sports team.   We at our house believe in letting our son be a kid, without worry about commitment at this point, and just having the time to play outside doing what he wants.  For those that don't understand why we raise our children the way we are, it is interesting to see the questions that we get.  Our friend's wife, who the birthday party was for, at one point was talking to me about our sons.  We were talking about how they were becoming good friends and bantering back and forth.  At one point, she verified that we don't do video games or TV at our house.  I affirmed that.  Then she asked if I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep him sheltered from all of it.  

I could see where she was coming from with the question, but it was an angle I hadn't thought about.  From an outside perspective, it can seem like we our sheltering our kids and being over protective of them.  The only thing I feel we are protecting them against is perhaps growing up too quickly at such a young age.  I have nothing against TV and video games.  I actually loved playing video games for a long time, and I enjoyed watching TV when we had one up in our house.  Yet, the content that comes through video games and the TV is not what I want our son exposed to on a regular basis.  I want him to be an actual child, with childhood concerns about when he has to come inside for dinner and whether or not he can go play in the rain.  I don't him plastered to a TV discussing video game strategy with is friends while the sun is shining outside.  I tried explaining all this in much fewer words by simply saying, "I know I can't keep him away from that stuff forever, and that is not my intention.  I know he will play video games and watch TV, just not in our house right now."  She suggested at that point that maybe her son could be the one to introduce video games and all that "stuff" to our son.  I agreed.  If our son wants to go to his friends house and play video games instead of playing outside, then so be it, however, it just won't be an everyday thing and it will not change how we operate at our house.  I just found it funny how she suggested that her son can be the one to introduce this stuff.  It's like its some taboo way of living that we embrace, the dark side of keeping technology from our kids.  I actually think it will be benefit our kids more later on as they can develop their creativity and personality without over handed influence of our culture that sometimes tends to get a little heavy through video games and TV.  It is all an experiment of sorts, every parents slightly different way of raising their kids that will only bear fruit as time passes.  

Over protective?  OK, in regards to technology, perhaps.  Yet, if the parents who would say that we are overprotective in general saw the opportunities we gave our kids to explore, learn, and fail, they might think otherwise.  On the flip side of "protecting" them from technology, we allow our kids the freedom in our house to explore, to help cook, to get what they need when they need it.  We are attempting to raise independent little humans.  Our son, at 5, while not an expert with a steak knife, can use one when he wishes, as long as he is careful.  We are also showing our daughter how to use one so that in another year or so, she can get her own steak knife and cut her own food for meals.  Similarly, they are allowed to climb on stools to get what they need, allowed to climb ladders outside, to vacuum around the house, to hold the small jackhammer I own, to help cut the grass, to dig in the dirt, to attempt to pick up every worm and "save" it, to climb rocks and trees, to roam the woods behind our house, to go fishing with sticks in our lawn.  We allow them a very generous amount of free reign in our house, provided that they do things safely.  That is our one requirement.  If they aren't being safe, we show them how to be safe and let them go again and learn.  They will fall, they will cut themselves, they will learn the hard way sometimes.  Our job is to keep them as safe as possible while giving them the opportunity to learn.  I wonder how many of the parents who would say we are protective with exposure to technology allow their children the freedom that we allow ours.  It would interesting to see.  But for now, we carry on our lifestyle, they carry on theirs, and as they intersect, we shall see how things progress.  

Diabetes, The Flip Side

When most people think about diabetes, they think of Type 2 diabetes, where the individual through healthy eating, can both prevent the onset of and reverse the effects of the diabetes.  With Type 2, it is essential for most people to limit the amount of carbohydrates they are ingesting, watch their sugar intake, and strive not to over eat on a regular basis.  Type 2 is most times associated with people who are overweight and are usually older.  This happens when they go through life eating whatever they want and then as they get older, their bodies can't process all the food they ingest as efficiently as it once could.  Their indulgence when they were younger has caused their body to limit the amount of insulin it produces and if it gets extreme enough, forces them to supplement their own naturally produced insulin with the synthetic type that all diabetics receive.  Type 2 diabetes is growing increasingly common and when most people think about diabetes, they think of Type 2.  And while Type 2 and Type 1 diabetes are related in the sense that they deal with a person's ability to produce insulin, the similarities quickly dissolve once you start to look more closely at the two.  When we tell most people that our son has diabetes, they instinctively think of Type 2 and limiting carbs, watching your weight and the amount of food you ingest and have a hard time understanding Type 1 in the sense of eating and what a body needs.  

So with Type 1, carbohydrates are a necessity.  There is a limit on how much someone with Type 1 can have as if they have too much, their blood sugar does spike.  However, unlike Type 2 where carbohydrates are limited extensively, at least for us with our son, it is extremely hard to get him to eat enough carbohydrates.  For some people with Type 1 who don't eat healthy, there is a greater balancing act with eating enough vs. too much.  For us, however, we struggle to get our son to eat enough carbohydrates throughout the day.  He loves proteins like cheeses and meats and for us to get our son to eat enough "healthy" carbohydrates, we really need to struggle.  We need to supplement what he eats with fruits and breads, and even then, it is sometimes not enough.  Sure, we could give him animal and graham crackers non stop, but that's not how we eat and we don't want to just pump him full of carbohydrates that don't also carry some other benefit.  We instead seek to have our son easy the healthier carbs that can be found in fruits and juices.  That is where the struggle comes in.  While he loves fruit, he needs to eat a lot more fruit to make up the amount of carbs his body needs versus the quicker carbs of crackers and breads.  And on top of that, he is only five, so the room that he does have for food is limited by his size.  So we count the carbs in everything we eat and do math every day to make sure he is eating enough and of the right kind of food.  I think it is more of an adjustment for us at this point than it is for him.  We have always eaten healthy in our family so for him, the adjustments seem to be easier than it is for us when we are preparing meals.  Needless to say, we will most likely not be going out to eat anytime soon as the headache that would ensue over calculating the carbs in a meal prepared by a restaraunt would not be worth it.  So next time you hear of someone with Type 1 diabetes, you will know of the different struggles they go through versus someone with Type 2 diabetes.  I know this has been riveting information for a Saturday morning read, but if you have made it this far, your almost done and can get on with your day.  Happy Saturday!

Daughter on a Mission

Sometimes my wife and I look at each other after seeing our daughter zip through the room on one of her "missions" and agree that if she had been the first one born, she might have been an only child.  While our children may share the same parents and have certain things in common such as a love of building with blocks, reading books, doing puzzles, and playing outside; there are some big differences in their personalities.  Our son tends to be a little more laid back whereas our daughter is a high energy, on the run type of little girl.  Almost everywhere she goes, she has to go there running.  Even if it is just to the other side of the room to get a toy, she has to run there, get the toy, and run back.  Sometimes it even means running to get a stool so she can turn on a light and then running back with the stool in tow, bouncing on the floor behind her.  While both of our children are becoming independent little children, our daughter seems to kick it up a notch higher than her brother ever did.  They both will do everything in their power to complete a task by themselves, but her perseverance is a touch higher than her brothers and her determination more resolute.  This is all well and good at this age and to be honest, it will serve her very well as she grows older, but accompanying this determination and perseverance is a high degree of stubbornness.  In her efforts to do things on her own, she also must ensure that things are done her way and her way only.  If she doesn't like her parents' criticism of the way she is doing things, even if it means she could hurt herself in the process, she resorts to two options; ignoring her parents as if we didnt' exist or crumpling to the floor, curling in the fetal position, and burying her head in her hands.  It's as if she is trying to make everything around her go away and if she stays that way long enough, she feels it just might work.

Unfortunately, I can relate to that stubbornness.  As a child, I had a tendency to want to do things my way.  Hell, who am I kidding, I still have a tendency to do things my way and in our daughter, I can see myself.  I am still a stubborn man, drawing heavily on Polish and Ukrainian roots to feed that stubbornness, and will need to seriously alter how I approach our daughter as she gets older and approaches her teenage years.  Most of the time, I love the fact that our daughter is stubborn and head strong.  I can foresee many benefits in the years to come as it pertains to her life and her dealing with it.  She won't get pushed around by others or forced to do things she doesn't want to.  I feel that peer pressure will have less effect on her than it would if she wasn't as stubborn.  I also think that once she figures out what she wants to do, she will go and get it done.  However, along with every yin comes a yang, and I can also foresee potential issues she might run in to.  One issue is school.  Seeing as she likes to do things her way, she is going to need to get the right teachers as she progresses through school, teacher's who can work with her and accept her brazen stubbornness and outgoing personality.  She will need teachers who don't mind being peppered incessantly with questions about each and every little thing.  She will also need to learn how to let others be themselves and not always  try to get them to do her bidding.  Yet, she is only 3 and many things can change between now and her teenage years.  I know one of the things that will have to change is the way I deal with her.  Because she is so similar to me, we have a tendency to throw down and have a battle of the wills from time to time.  I will need to learn a whole lot more patience as she grows older.  Despite her stubbornness, I love everything about her and wouldn't change her a bit, I just need to work on myself a bit so that I don't throw her out of the house when she is 15.

With our daughter, her mouth usually doesn't stop working.  If she has no one to talk to, she is perfectly content having a conversation with herself.  A little while ago, I was watching both kids at home while my wife was out doing something.  (Another thing about our daughter is she loves to clean, this is important for the following story).  I had our daughter go into the bathroom to wash her hands.  About 10 minutes later, the water was still running and she wasn't out yet.  So I crept over to the bathroom and just barely peeked my head around the door to see what she was doing.  Lo and behold, she was standing on the little stairs that I made so both her and her brother could reach the bathroom sink and she was scrubbing the countertop around the sink with a sponge.  While doing this, she was having a conversation with herself about what she was doing.  It was all quiet and just loud enough so she could hear her own voice, but it went something like this, "Have to scrub the counter, oh, missed a spot over here, its nice and wet, need more water on the sponge, ooo, the water is so cold, so cold, chilly, ok, scrub a little more, still missed a spot over here, cleaning, looking good."  At that point, she looked over and saw me watching her and a goofy grin swept over her face.  She just doesn't stop talking and I absolutely love it, most of the time.  The only times I don't are when I man trying to read her a book and every other word out my mouth brings a question out of hers.  I even ask her to let me finish at least the page and I will answer all the questions she has.  This lasts for about one sentence before she voices another question.  Patience, patience, patience is key.  Luckily I have some time to work on that.  

Bed Time Stressor

Our son's blood sugar is tested multiple times throughout the day now to see how he is doing and so we can coordinate with the doctors and adjust his insulin as necessary.  His numbers are not quite stable yet and the balancing act of adjusting his insulin doses appropriately continues.   As a result of constantly adjusting his doses, sometimes his blood sugar dips a little low and we have to compensate by getting some carbs into our son.  (The carbs are what his body needs for the insulin, crazy).  During the day if he goes a little low, there is always someone around to look for the signs and remedy the situation with a juice box or small snack.  At night, however, the stress begins.  For about the past week, his blood sugar numbers before I head off to bed have been low.  For my wife and I, this gets to be a little concerning as we don't know if it will dip even lower over night.  Those nights when it has dipped low, I have had to wake our son up to give him some juice to bump his numbers up.  Trying to wake him up a few hours after he has gone to bed is next to impossible.  It usually takes almost 5 minutes every time till I can get him coherent enough to drink a cup of juice.  I feel bad that I have to wake him up like that, but its better than the potential alternative.  I think that the worst part is not knowing what his body is going to do.  Will the fast acting insulin wear off in time so his numbers go up?  Will the long lasting insulin kick in too much?  Should we wake up in the middle of the night to make sure he is ok?  Most of the time, I will just stay up later to make sure his numbers are up and not wake up in the middle of the night to check again.  Those days are mostly over.  Now, it just takes my anticipated bed time and pushes it back 30-45 minutes.  Just another adjustment we need to make.  Once his insulin doses are regulated, however, this too shall pass.  At this point, our son is dealing with it extremely well and it seems as if most of the stress now falls on us as parents.  But isn't that how parenting is, constant worry about children and their well being?  This just adds an extra layer of worry on top of everything else.  Still, wouldn't trade it for anything.  

Our Old School Life

Before I get into today's post, I heard from a few people that the video links weren't working.  If they didn't work for you, my apologies.  I'm not a computer guy, but I will see if can figure out how to get them to work in the future.  Moving on.  As my wife was pregnant with our son, we did a lot of reading about raising children, technology, and how the two correlate.  At the end of all our reading, both opinion and fact based, we decided that it would be in our children's best interest if we did not allow the use of technology till they were older.  This includes TV, iPhones, iPads, and computers.  This isn't to say that they don't know what these things are, but their use by our children in our house is practically non-existent.  I say practically only because we do show them pictures on our phones for a few minutes here and there and our son has watched a few movies at his grandparents house. Outside of these few instances, its as if they don't exist.  They are not used as babysitters or devices of distraction, and for our son in kindergarten, he only uses an iPad in his school.  The main purpose of our keeping technology out of children's lives until they are older (trust me, I know they will have to use computers and phones at some point) was to foster creativity, encourage them to figure out how to entertain themselves, and teach them how to be bored and work through their boredom.  We also want them to experience the world through their own eyes, not through a filter of a phone or computer.  We want them to learn how to talk to others, have a conversation, watch the world go by while driving, and to notice the little things that too often get missed when we are glued to a screen.  To be honest, at first I had trepidation.  None of our friends have gone to the extent that we have with limiting technology in their children's lives.  Some limit use of devices, but I can't think of one that has kept the devices out of their children's hands till they were older.  I am not judging them here.  They made their decisions about how to live and raise their children and I will not be the one to judge.  I am here merely to talk about how this has benefited our family.  To do that, I offer up the example of yesterday, a beautiful spring Sunday.  

From the time we got home from running errand after church yesterday morning, about 1030, till dinner time around 6, there was very little time spent indoors.  My wife and I had our plans to work in the yard, clear space to put our greenhouse in a more permanent location and build some new garden beds outside our vegetable garden.  But there was nothing planned for our children.  They had free reign to do as they wished.  They were all over the place.  They would go from helping me dig dirt and move it with the tractor, to playing on their play set and in their sandbox, to roaming through the woods, pretending to cook on our stone grill, to carrying their sun umbrellas around.  They would announce the presence of our resident red tail hawk as it would fly overhead, would scramble to move every worm they found in the process of digging to our vegetable garden, would ponder the shape of clouds drifting past and what they looked like, and would collect acorns and pine branches for the stew they were making.  They did these and plenty of other things throughout the day.  There was no desire on their part to be inside at all.  After dinner, our son wanted to go back outside to play some more, but seeing the look on both his and his daughter's face, the look of content exhaustion, we suggested they build with legos or read instead.  So they did.  They started with legos for a while, and when our son discovered that I had brought "The Cat in the Hat" downstairs, he got excited.  We suggested that he read it to his sister and they both thought it was a fantastic idea.  (Our son, at 5 and almost through kindergarten, has become quite the proficient reader and true book worm when not playing outside or with his toys). So the two of them curled up in a chair in our living room and he proceeded to read to his sister.  I must say, listening from the kitchen, he is even getting the inflection down quite well.  About a quarter after 7, we came in from the kitchen and our daughter almost immediately asked, "mom, can you take me to bed, I'm tired".  And with that, we started getting them up to bed and situated for the night.  That was their day without technology.  Playing outside in the dirt, sand, and sun and reading in the evening.  I wouldn't trade that for anything.  

I couldn't imagine now having allowed our children the ability to entertain themselves with electronic devices such as iPhones or iPads.  They are developing a creativity that is amazing and becoming quite adept at thinking outside the box.  Our son even made it into a quite selective art show that is put on by the orange school system.  The art teachers choose about 80-90 works of art from grades K-6 and have a annual art show.  As a frame of reference, his kindergarten (a unique setup where the kindergarteners are in their own building) has 8 classrooms of 17 children in each one.  On top of that, there are 3 elementary schools in our town with grades 1-6.  The works of are were chosen from all 4 schools.  It was pretty amazing as only a small group of kindergarteners art was chosen.  But not even counting that, the lack of technology has given our children the ability to become close friends and figure out how to entertain themselves.  They don't "need" a device to occupy their time.  If they want to read, they read, if they want to build, they build, if they want to work on art, they do that.  Sure they have their little squabbles, but for the most part, they are becoming good friends and quite capable of playing with each other.  I know technology will make its way into their hands.  In this interconnected world, it will be of the utmost importance in their lives.  However, at their young age, we feel it has no place.  The more they can learn now to live without it, the more we hope they can carry that with them as they move forward in their lives and recognize that they don't "need" to fill their lives with technology later on.  If we can instill in them a desire to stop and smell the flowers, to notice the small things in nature, then perhaps they will be better adjusted as they make their way through adolescence and into adulthood.  So far, I feel like we are on the right track.  Time will tell.  

Adventures of Super Dog

Through the chaos of life, sometimes we need some entertainment.  Here I present to you another two videos of our nutcase "super dog" Aspen.  If only I had his limitless energy and and lifestyle of eating, chasing things, and sleeping.  Enjoy!

Appreciating the Simple Things

If you are reading this blog, there is a very good chance you have a computer or some device that allows you to access the internet.  I know, statement of the obvious there, but follow along if you will.   There is also a pretty good chance that you live a decent life; you can put food on the table, have electricity, and probably even running water.  I could be wrong with some of these, but my point is that most of the people reading this don't have to worry in excess about the basic necessities that we look for when living our lives.  Many of these things we don't even think about and instead some of us might even complain that we don't have more.  Especially in the U.S., there is a constant drive to have or get more.  One car is not enough for a family, we need at least two or more to be "comfortable".  That 42" flat screen TV doesn't quite look right on that enormous wall in a person's house, so they go out and buy a 52".  The point is, often times we gloss over the essentials in our lives without taking the time to appreciate them.  We don't understand what it is like to live without knowing if the electricity will be working when we get out of bed or if water will come out of the faucet when we go to wash our face.  For us, it is a luxury to have constant, un-interrupted electricity and clean water coming out of the tap (unless you live in Flint, MI).  Yet, for a good portion of the world population, these simple things are a luxury.  

A little over a month ago now, we bought a new refrigerator to replace two old ones that we had that were sucking electricity like water down a drain.  When they delivered and installed it, I was the one who made it home to open the house and clear stuff out of their way.  As with anyone who comes to work at our house, I ended up talking to the delivery guys as I had nothing better to do.  Plus, I like finding out about people, hearing their stories, and getting a different perspective on life.  We talked about our kids and the joys they bring.  At one point, the gentleman putting the doors on our fridge asked about the rain barrels we have set up to collect rain water around our house.  His question was if we use that water for drinking?  Having a well with a plentiful amount of water on demand, I said, "no, we use those to water our vegetable garden."  I thought the question odd at first, but he elaborated without a probing question from me.  It turns out that where he is from in Jamaica, they use those to collect water for drinking and everyday use as they don't know when the water will be running or not and don't know whether it will be clean enough to drink.  He also mentioned as an addendum that the same goes for electricity down there.  It is intermittent and no guarantee.  This made me pause and search for a response that would be appropriate.  I think I actually stumbled over my words.  It was just one of those things that I never thought about and just took for granted.  I think I said that I couldn't imagine what it would be like not knowing if electricity or water would be running.  The conversation moved on from there and it turns out he has been here for 12 years, his anniversary with his wife was that day and he was excited to be finishing early so he could get home to her.  While the fundamentals of how we grew up were radically different, the daily emotions and interactions with people are universal.  We all have loved ones we care about and yearn to get home to and we all want the best for our families.  

That conversation made me look at things a little bit differently.  If I hadn't taken the time to sit down on a stool and engage the delivery guys in conversation, I would not have heard their perspective on life or what their struggles were.  I would not have seen what it is I take for granted every day.  It was a humbling experience and one that I will likely not forget.  Even a month later, it still resonates with me that for him, living without a guarantee of running water or electricity was just life.  It was what he was used to until he moved to the United States.  There was no basis for comparison until he moved here.  For him, I am sure that not a day goes by where he doesn't think about what a luxury it is now to have running water and constant electricity.  For many of us, it is a given that it will be there unless some freak accident like a storm happens to knock it out.  At least for myself, I will try not to take for granted the little things and instead try to appreciate them more.  Also, I will engage anyone in conversation so that I can gain a better perspective on life.  We may all live with different struggles, but at our core, we are all human and deal with the same daily, human struggles.  

Apple : Tree

(I started writing this on Tuesday, but that day our daughter woke up super early and yesterday, it was my son's turn, so two days in the making, I finally finish). I'm going to take a step away from talking about diabetes today.  It will be a recurring theme as it has become part of our life now, but there is plenty else to talk about in my life that doesn't relate to diabetes.  I'm sure most parents can relate to what I will talk about today, the similarity of children to their parents, not only in looks, but also in mannerisms, emotional reactions, and demeanor.  I find that the current age of my children happens to capture this quite clearly as they are, at 3&5, learning who they are and continuing the development of their own unique personality.  Yet, despite my son and daughter developing their own unique personalities, there are still a lot of similarities to my wife and I that make us chuckle and sometimes cringe when we see them exhibit them.  Our son, in many ways, takes after his mother while our daughter takes after me.  This isn't a comment on their looks at all as depending on which parent our kids are around, people think they look like that parent.  Rather, it is their emotional state and quirky persona that at times mimics that of my wife and I.  My wife and I like to point out these little similarities when they pop up to each other with a simple phrase, "apple, tree".  At least that is the one I use for my wife and son, when it comes to our daughter and myself, we switch it a bit and say, "pear, tree".  Usually we utter these little phrases when our kids are acting out a bit in a way that seems all to familiar or that has undertones of a either my wife or I when we are frustrated or angry.

I find that these similarities, while humorous when they are occurring, can also act as a kind of mirror for my wife and I as parents.  This mirror, at least for myself, is an opportunity to reflect for a minute or two on myself and how I act and carry myself.  As I am sure all parents know, children pick up on everything that their parents say and do and will mimic and repeat them as they are developing their own unique personality.  So when I see something in our children that I am all too familiar with as it emanated from my to begin with and was then picked up by our children, I try to take a second and see if it is something that is beneficial or detrimental.  Often times, I find it to be either beneficial or somewhere in the neutral territory in between.  Both of our children's innate stubbornness is something that regardless of how hard my wife and I try, will never be altered.  My wife and I are both stubborn by nature and changing that in our children would be impossible.  Plus, I don't think stubbornness is necessarily a bad thing, it is more of how we use and exhibit that stubbornness in everyday life.  The back end is something that we can work with them on.  The mirror of our children is an invaluable "tool" if we use it correctly.  It is an early chance to alter how we as parents do things  in order to establish a solid framework for our children later on.  The emotional breakdowns, if we are attune to it, can be made easier based on how we react to them and the experiences we have dealing with them.  Our own emotional breakdowns can serve as tools for us to teach our children how to better deal with circumstances that are beyond their control.  The same goes for angry outbursts that they have as children because something doesn't go their way.  I know with our daughter, there is much I can relate to with her angry outbursts as I used to have them as well (and might on a very rare occasion have now).  It is all about using our experience to help our children through their own experiences.

The apple really never does fall too far from the tree, at least in our family.  Parenting is an experience that is both enlightening and frightening at the same time.  We get to see miniatures of ourselves, the good, the bad, and on a rare occasion, the ugly.  All in all, at least in our household, most of it is good.  Every day we make the effort to spend time with our children in the afternoon so that they have us as guides to navigate them through this thing we call life.  Money is not nearly important to us as time with our children.  We can't be good parents if we don't spend the time with our children to learn who they are and how we can help them.  And by spending the time with them, we can use them as mirrors of ourselves, see how we need to change our own behavior in relation to them, and move forward hopefully in a more positive and meaningful way.  

The Blood Sugar Lows

Well, two weeks in to our new way of life with diabetes and our son, and the lows have begun to rear their ugly heads.  Now that the hardened shell of glucose is being broken down around his cells, our son is starting to get into a more normal, safe range with his blood sugar levels.  With that comes the very real potential of going too low.  It has happened a few times since Friday and it is a new type of reaction in our son that we need to be cognizant of.  If his blood sugar dips below 70, he starts to get shaky, tired, and withdrawn.  He can go from running around, perfectly fine, to curled up on a chair, sucking his thumb and not talking.  So far, we have caught it in time and after some juice and or crackers, his blood sugar jumps back up and he is back to normal.  All this means is that we have to be more aware of our son and how he is acting, especially now that we are just starting to figure out the levels of insulin that will maintain him throughout the day and night.  They will be altered periodically going forward, but at this point it's trying to figure out the magic numbers that will keep his blood sugar between 70 and 180.  The only time it worries us a bit is if he has a low as he is going to bed.  Then we need to check him a few extra times to make sure that he isn't getting too low.  Definitely a new life we are living, but all in all, everyone is adjusting very well, including his sister who wants to be there every time her older brother checks his blood sugar.  And on the flip side, our son will actually wait for his sister and explain the whole process as he checks his own blood sugar.  That in and of itself amazes me.  The fact that our son, at 5, and within two weeks of being diagnosed with diabetes has taken it upon himself to check his own blood sugar and report his numbers to my wife and I.  I am not just talking about pricking his own finger either, he has been putting the test strip into the meter, pricking his own finger, pinching it to get a little blood out, and then getting that little drop of blood right where it needs to be on the meter.  I love that we have brought him up to be self sufficient so far.  

All of this, plus watching our son change over the past few weeks makes my wife and I wonder exactly how long our son has been dealing with the effects of a pancreas that is slowly shutting down its production of insulin.  Type 1 diabetes has been in his body since he was born.  Whatever genetic fluke he received, has been with him his entire life.   This means that his pancreas could have been slowly shutting down for months if not years.  How long has our son been experiencing the effects of a blood sugar low and not known what it was?  We don't know.  We could try and pick different instances where we thought it might have begun, but up until a few weeks ago, the process was so slow that it was impossible to notice it.  Then one day, things went haywire and his pancreas shut down insulin production.  It's crazy to me how these things happen sometimes.  Yet, just a little bump on the roller coaster of life.  Despite the fact that we have a different way to live now, in a way I am glad that our son's diabetes reared its ugly head.  The changes in our son have been incredibly positive and I wouldn't trade it now for anything (expect perfect health for our son, but he is damn close).  He has become more talkative like his sister, more cooperative, more courteous, and as long as he isn't experiencing lows, a new found energy.  He is in general more cognizant of his own surroundings and the feelings of others (unless he is fulfilling his elder brother responsibility of harassing his sister).  This is our new son and despite the struggles this will present along the way, I wouldn't change it now.  We are all moving forward, one day at a time, and its not so bad overall.  

A Quick Little Diversion

Saturday morning, scattered sleep, drinking coffee, enjoy quick little diversion.