Blindsided

When I started this blog over a year ago, I thought the title of "Our Simple Life" was pretty accurate.  Life was wonderful yet very basic.  Avery and I would wake up every morning, send Daddy off to work, do some laundry, run some errands, play outside.  Basically whatever we felt like doing, we were able.  I don't plan on changing the name of this blog, but life as we know it has defnitely changed for the rest of our lives.

A week ago Wednesday, the day of my last blog entries, I ended up taking Avery to see the doctor.  We had noticed over the past week or so, her water intake had increased dramatically and she had a lot more wet diapers.  We initially attributed this to the warmer weather and playing a little harder outside.  After several days of wondering if this was actually the reason, I decided to go ahead and call the doctor to see if it was cause for concern.  Dr. Thomas thought her intake sounded like a bit much, so we went down to do some bloodwork.  His original concern was that she might be anemic, but we ended up finding out much more.  The results came in and it turns out our 21 month old has Type 1 Diabetes.  We had to take her to Wichita immediately for care in the Pediatric ICU to work on getting her blood glucose levels down and Chris and I were to start having diabetes educators come in to give us a crash course on raising a child with diabetes.  We ended up staying at Wesley until Saturday morning,

Our initial reaction was about as bad as one could imagine; how could it be possible that our beautiful, perfect little girl who had never done a thing to deserve it could end up being diagnosed with a lifelong disease?  Chris and I would take her place in a heartbeat if we could.  I know I haven't always taken the best care of myself, making poor decisions about my health and lifestyle, yet I'm not the one who has to get her finger pricked 10-12 times a day, with 4 different shots of insulin daily.  We are the ones who are old enough to understand what all this means, but she is the one who must figure out that Mommy and Daddy are doing their best to take care of her and would never intentionally hurt her.  She has been so brave this entire time.  At the hospital, she would walk up and down the hall saying hi to anyone and everyone.  Since we've been home, she has only cried a couple of times after getting her shots, and actually wants to help with checking her blood sugar.  It's so much for her to handle, yet she does it with such grace and ease.

The road so far has been a little rocky; we have already switched doctors once because we weren't too thrilled with the one we initially started with.  We are still working on dosing and ratios and figuring out what foods are working better than others, but we understand it's all a learning process.  The past couple of days seem to have gone a little better; nights are still scary because her glucose level continues to drop in the middle of the night. We have been in contact with on-call nurses and the doctor's office, so hopefully between these resources, it's only a matter of time before everything begins to click.

In the meantime, Avery continues to amaze us all with how utterly invincible she is.  We always knew she was a strong, independent little thing, but Chris and I were definitely not prepared for her to have to demonstrate these traits at such a young age.  We have a lot to learn from her.  We are continuing to take each day one day at a time and we know Avery will continue to teach us all about the personal strength she has that we are striving for.

Mother's Day Weekend

It's been another great, yet busy weekend.  It was my second Mother's Day with Avery here and it was extra special knowing that Baby Brother will be here in just a matter of 10 -12 weeks or so.  We had Chris's family over on Saturday for dinner.  Chris smoked ribs and chicken and I don't know if it's just because it had been awhile since I've had ribs, but oh my goodness.  They were the best things I've eaten in months.  Avery had lots of fun playing with Charlie, sometimes wanting to be a little too helpful.  Anytime he would get upset and then become content with his pacifier, Avery would pull the pacifier out and insist he have a drink of water instead.  Needless to say, it's difficult to get on her too hard when she only wants to help, but we just need to work on explaining other's needs a little better.

Sunday was a great, relaxing day.  Chris unfortunately was on call this past weekend, so he had to get up and go to work, but when he came home we were able to have some much needed family time.  We also worked outside a bit, and that evening, Mom came over for Mother's Day dinner.  After we ate, we made a big change in Avery's room.  We went from her crib to this:

Unbelievably, Avery slept through the night and didn't even try to crawl out when getting put to bed or when she woke up in the morning.  All good things must come to an end though.  On Monday night, Avery woke up several times, not because of her new bed, but because she either has a cold coming or allergies acting up.  Either way, she had a stuffy nose as soon as she would lie down, so Mommy and Daddy were both up quite a bit trying to make her comfortable.  Last night she was up only once, so hopefully the nights will continue to get better.

And lastly, once again, I am one more week along in the pregnancy.  Today marks week 26, which if we deliver at 36 weeks, which is a huge possibility (we will have him no later than 37 weeks), we've only got about 10 weeks to go.  Because of Avery's latest development of moving to a toddler bed, we now know that we will be buying another crib for baby brother.  Avery's crib is a convertible crib, so no reason to make her change beds again.  Hopefully this three day weekend approaching will give us the ambition to start working in his room a little more.  As of now, he has a bookshelf and a bassinet, which won't even stay in there because it will be in our room with us.  Here's my latest belly pic from last weekend:

Last Call for Mother Goose

Today was the last day at the library for Mother Goose time.  At least for four weeks.  Avery enjoyed her time there very much, not really giving Mommy too much grief.  Avery's been very well-behaved there the last several weeks, or at least it would appear she has been.  There has been a huge increase in the number of other kids there, and a lot of them seem to just run wild, so Avery singing and dancing along with the songs makes me so proud.  Our only continued struggle is a very mild one; Avery loves shaker, scarf and read your own book time, but after the time is up, she runs around trying to take everyone else's out of their hands.  Not to be a bully, but because she wants to help Miss Liz pick up.  I've begun trying to avoid this whole situation by getting a good grip on her when I know the song is about to end.  She squirms pretty good, but at least the other children are getting to put their own things away.  I took a couple of pics this morning before we headed out.

Thank you McPherson Public Library for keeping us entertained on Wednesday mornings.  Now we just have to find a way to fill the time until Mother Goose starts up again in mid-June.  And the best part is, there will be two grandmas off work from school this summer who will get to have their turn of being the adult to accompany her!