All the Things I Thought I Knew

There used to be constants. There were touchstones in my life. There were things I knew. There used to be things I knew. Some were concrete and some have always been more ephemeral. I thought I knew how to make dinner. I don't anymore. I thought I knew what it meant to be a good parent. I now, don't even have any clue how I would begin to make that judgment about myself, much less about anyone else. I thought everyone should sleep in their own bed. I don't anymore (think that, or, quite frankly, do it). I thought my kids would be the lucky ones. That is the lie we tell ourselves so that we, the parents, can go on living. My kids will be fine. They won't get hurt. They won't get sick.

Momma, you a pirate and I a shoulder bird.

Until, they do. 

Tonight, almost four months post dx, we had our first major "dinner is yucky and I can't eat it or I might die" moment. I'm honestly surprised it took this long. Pre-T1D, I would have taken a deep breath and launched into, "I'm sorry you are disappointed with your choices for dinner tonight, but if you are hungry I would suggest that you take some bites and see if there is anything on the plate that you might want to eat. I will not force you to eat anything, but there will be no other food available until breakfast tomorrow." This was a thing I thought I knew. She could eat the dinner that was served, or she could go to bed a little hungry.

But tonight, my brain was racing and my heart was pounding. I knew her finger prick reading was in the low range and the continuous glucose monitor (more on that later) was trending down, and she had already had several lows today. You see, P is honeymooning. That is the term that the endocrinologists use to describe what happens to the newly-diagnosed when their pancreases, or more specifically, their few remaining islet cells kick back on for a bit, once the synthetic insulin is introduced and the stress on the system decreases. It doesn't mean that she is going to get better. It just means that we have to stay really flexible with our treatment protocol, because we never know when or why tiny P's tiny pancreas is going to try to "help" and kick out a bunch of extra insulin and possibly send her plummeting to seizure/commaville. Long story, short: she needed to eat something, preferably a slow carb, preferably soon. I thought about yogurt, an easy sell. I thought about peanut butter, a sure favorite. I considered the juice boxes tucked away in the wine cabinet. (Yes, we have a cabinet FULL of wine. Don't judge.) 

And then, I took a deep breath and said, "I'm sorry you are disappointed with your choices for dinner tonight, but if you are hungry I would suggest that you take some bites and see if there is anything on the plate that you might want to eat. I will not force you to eat anything, but there will be no other food available until breakfast tomorrow."  I did this while doing another finger prick to confirm her sugars were not dangerously low and while putting a half ounce of peanuts on her plate, but I said it. I like to think that I said it calmly and with the strength and surety that P needed to understand that this was a limit, that she was safe because mom and dad had it under control.

She wailed and sobbed and I held her and repeated, "I hear that you are not happy with what we made for dinner tonight. We can try again tomorrow, but tonight, this is dinner and if you are hungry, I suggest you try some bites," all while anxiously checking her number on the CGM. It felt important, this pre-T1D parenting approach, in a post T1D world. I was running contingencies in head the entire time and was just about to call it quits and settle on a yogurt after bedtime stories, hoping it would be a long enough window that she didn't associate it with dinner, when she said, "Maybe avocado isn't yucky anymore."

I let her sit on my lap, while I fed her dinner, something I would never have done before, and she ate. She ate the whole plate, while we laughed and chatted. 130 even, cruising into bedtime (This is real good, kind of like our blood-sugar-night-time sweet spot). So, maybe I still know some things, and maybe, some of the things I'm learning are even more important. 

Q

You guys, Q is awesome. There is some third-baby-magic stuff happening over here. He eats when he is hungry. He sleeps when he is tired. He laughs so hard he gives himself the hiccups, and then his hiccups make him laugh, which makes me laugh and pretty soon the two of us are laughing so hard that we look like crazy people. His pancreas works, for now (more on that later). He is always happy to see me. His needs are concrete and his problems are solvable. I swear, he understands me in a way I have never been understood before. He is my buddy, my buddy who just wants to nap and cuddle. It is so much good, an island of good in a rough sea of big, hard things, a respite that I so desperately need. 

His birth was fast and furious and before T1D, I would have had a lot to say about it. I might have more to say later, but in the weeks that followed, the play-by-play of November 19th has grown fuzzy and inconsequential. I do remember that one minute I was waddling down the hallway being admitted and the next minute (no, but really, like the next minute), he was here, ushered into this world by an indomitable midwife named Felicia, who at the moment of truth, locked eyes with me, told me to close my mouth and bear down. He weighed over 9lbs and other than some initial issues with low blood sugar (more on that later) was the picture of health. In the past three and half months he has grown and bloomed into the most reasonable human I have ever had the pleasure to meet. I am so glad that he is here. 

The Tale of the Small House

I often have this dream, where we live exactly where we live, but suddenly, after years of living here, I find a door or an archway or an opening into a new space. Sometimes it is an extra room and sometimes it is a garden. At first, it is a relief. I start to imagine what this new space will mean for us. Inevitably, I find the extra room is attached to a busy bank lobby separated only by curtains, or the garden is overrun with terrible, wild beasts. Even in my dreams, more space isn't really the answer. 

Love grows in a small house.

We live in a small house. We live in a small house in a large city with big housing problem. I can't tell you our square-footage, because I don't know it, but it is small. It's not Tiny House small, but you get the idea. 

The forest

We have two small bedrooms and one impossibly small bathroom, and yet, somehow, all five beating hearts manage to squeeze their way into it, en masse, at least once a day. Ah, the joys of family togetherness. 

O cookin' on the the O'Keefe 

There are advantages. I love my antique O'Keefe & Merritt stove more that I hate not having a dishwasher. While I hate our impossible closet situation, I love that my kitchen door opens up to some outside space with trees and room to play. They call it "the forest" and while our more rural friends would be right to laugh at them, it warms my heart, when on a cloudy afternoon, they insist on flashlights before entering its leafy depths. I love the vintage details and the craftsmanship of old construction and the way the hardwood floors creak in only predictable places. I love having a parking spot right outside my kitchen door and having a garage in which I can hide Christmas decorations, old paperbacks and my shame. I love it here: the neighborhood, my neighbors, Jim's 2.5 mile commute. Living here means he is home before 6:00pm almost every night. I especially love that. 

Living within earshot of my children has shaped the way I parent. We never had a baby monitor. There was no need. We are on top of each other almost all the time. We chuckle when O says she is afraid to be alone at night, with only one wall to separate us at all times. 

It takes organization. It takes discipline. It takes patience and compassion, and maybe I'm just rationalizing, but I really believe that love grows in a small house, or at least, ours has. 

Fierce

O:  I am going to scrub and scrub my skin until it is so beautiful, like a princess.

K: Why?

O: Because princesses have beautiful skin, because they are not real, not like the dinosaurs, who are real and have scaly skin with feathers and bumps. 

I am not raising princesses.  I am not raising tom boys. I am not raising girls.  I am raising two people, who happen to be female.  

Don't call them bossy. They are assertive and have excellent leadership qualities.  Don't call them dramatic. They have big feelings and are learning how to express them.  Don't help them on the playground or in the store.  What may look like laziness on my part is a studied choice. I am hanging back, purposely, working very hard to show them how to help themselves.

Don't make assumptions about who they will play with, how they will play, or what they will play with.  They don't. They just play.  Don't compliment them on their pretty dresses or tell them that they are cute.  Trust me, they hear that often enough.  

Ask them what their favorite books are, or how flowers grow, or to tell you a story.  Ask them what they are thinking about. They will tell you, or rather, O will tell you on P's behalf.  

I am raising two people, who happen to be female.  They are fierce.  They will have to be.  

Our New Veeventure

O: I know! We'll put on our puddle splashing boots and go on a veeventure!

There are a handful of markers that help you track the passing of time when your kids are little: how quickly they grow out of their shoes, where their head falls when they lean against you (O, hip bone and P, crotch), and those magical mispronunciations.  O has been losing about a special word a day. As her diction becomes clearer and her vocabulary expands, I have embarked on a mission to halt the passing of time.  We have embraced some of her early pronunciations into our framily lexicon. A living creature is an aminal.  The stuff you put on your lips to make them shiny is glip glops.  You go to the dentist when you have a gabitiy.  On really special days, read everyday, we go on veeventures.  

This blog is really just that, an attempt to slow down the passing of time by documenting it and a fresh new veeventure.  To that end, I got a shiny new toy.  You can't defeat the passage of time with poor image quality after all.  If anybody out there in the ether can show me how to work it, I'd be forever in your debt.  

Oooh! Shiny...