Sweets and Treats that the Easter Bunny delivers.. :D

Happy Easter everyone! (Especially to my Type 1 families -out there).  I know that the Easter Bunny delivers candy and treats that can sometimes get a little confusing when it comes to carb. counts and insulin delivery.  The Bunny also delivers some small toys (bubbles, chalk, jump ropes) and gift cards-for the older kids (which can get a bit costly ;).  So, for the most part, in this household...  the candy gets delivered for Easter Morning and if we are lucky...  the Easter Bunny leaves the back of the packaging in a cabinet (which has the nutritional facts listed... including the carb counts!)  If the bunny forgets to leave the packaging- which is easy to do when filling the baskets late at night, (tired and not thinking clearly), we just wing it...  after all, it is a holiday and we all deserve a little celebrating.  Any chocolate the size of a hershey kiss we count as 3 to 4 carbs.  1 normal sized jelly bean, we count as 2 carbs...  the jumbo sized are about 5 carbs. A medium sized chocolate bunny we "guestimate" between 35 and 40 carbs.  A great resource can be the Calorie King carb. count booklet, which I used to carry around, religiously, in my purse along with my wallet and car keys! Hope some of this helps you parents out there who are working hard to make Easter as "Normal" for your Type 1 kiddo's as it is for every child who celebrates the day!  Happy Easter!  P.S..  Jelly Beans are a great way to treat a low!! <3

Trail of Test Strips... :)

I have just finished picking up the house from the morning fury of getting the kids out the door to school and I realized that in every room there is a test strip on the floor.  Now, parents of diabetics, you are going to totally relate to me when I say that we are like Hansel and Grettel in this household with leaving our trail of test strips everywhere we go.  I cannot possibly understand how they get EVERYWHERE!!!  I have joked in the past with my friends that anyone will be able to find us no matter where we are by following the trail of test strips.... They end up outside, in the back yard, the front lawn, the car.....  pretty much anywhere that you can imagine...  I found one floating in the pool last summer....  No one was testing in the pool....  hmmm.  The other morning a test strip was found while making my bed, beneath my pillow.  Must have stuck to me from the the midnight or 3 a.m blood sugar checks....  It is a silly thing, but I guess the trail of test strips is a pretty good indicator that the kids are doing their blood sugar testing and maybe I should take comfort in that instead of getting so frustrated with the vacuum cleaner, which for some reason will not suck any of them up!!!  Oh well I will be going around the house into each room and picking up the strips by hand this morning.  I may need a cup of coffee before I begin that task :) Enjoy your day!

Happy March Everyone :D

Wow...  It is March 1st already!  I feel like I lost the entire month of February.  It has been pretty much a blur since my back surgery, almost 4 weeks ago. Recovery is going (ever so slowly).  Type 1 doesn't care about mom's surgery though!  It feels at times like it has a mind set of its own..  You know what I mean, right?? Like..  the lets kick you when your down mind set..  Not always, but sometimes..  Well, regardless, last night Kalee was feeling a little low before bedtime and her blood sugar was reading 89 so I gave her a juice box since she was going to bed and had finished her indoor soccer practice about an hour prior.  I had a feeling her blood sugar would plummet after all of the running.  Well, twenty minutes later she came to tell me that her blood sugar was 250...  What?? Impossible...  I said, lets do a re-check.  Sure enough Kalee's blood sugar was reading 257.  Oh well, sometimes we just cannot explain these things.  So I gave her a correction bolus and she was off to bed.  I was too, but....  you parents of Type 1 diabetics know about much sound sleep we get each night ;)  I tested Kalee about an hour later and she was now 301. Hmmm...  What's going on here?  I bolused her again and headed to bed.  The entire night was hour re-checks with high blood sugars and correction bolus's.  On any normal given night I would have done two corrections and if Kalee's blood sugar was not dropping, would have changed her site and moved on....  However, recovering from this surgery has "fried" my brain a bit and I was feeling so exhausted that I was sure one of the correction bolus's would have kicked in.  To no avail by 6 a.m Kalee was awake and getting ready for school, still sitting in the 200 range.  I asked her to let me take a look at her site for a quick check. To my dismay there was a patch of pooled blood and insulin sitting just below the insertion site of her omnipod.  TMI...  YUCK! Oh no...  "I'm a fail..."  Was the first thought that entered my mind... If I had done my normal protocol with a site change last night we would have all slept more sound.  Kalee changed the site and moved on with her day as if nothing happened at all.. Thank God for the resilience of teenagers :)  I moved on, as well, there really isn't a choice in the matter and instead of beating myself up over it, which I have done many times throughout this journey of parenting,  I chose, for today anyway, to accept that these things will happen from time to time and maybe "I am not such a fail."  None of you parents  out there dealing with health issues, whether it be you or your children are a fail.  We are all trying to do the best we can and as difficult as it is... We must accept that some things are out of our control.  Forgiving ourselves is a struggle but it is necessary to survive Type 1 parenting!!!  Happy March Everyone..  and please... Think Spring!!!  <3