Fearing the jiggle

Fitness update!  The past couple of months, I've been adding strength-training in to my workout regimine.  I'm doing upper-body once a week and lower-body once a week.  I still haven't noticed much change in my weight, but I've dropped down another size!  That feels incredible!  In fact, I bought myself a new pair of crops at Old Navy one day.  I planned on wearing them out to lunch with my mom and sister while my mom was visiting.  Unfortunately, clothes shopping with children means I don't try things on and the darn things were way too big!  Best reason ever for returning a purchase!  On the days that I do strength-training, I finish up with a 20-30 minute high-intensity cardio session.  I've been doing the sprint-training for those workouts as I've found something incredible about those training sessions....they're harder than hell to do, but I feel them in my abdominal muscles for the next day or two after doing them!  Even if I'm not losing weight, my stomach is definitely flattening out!  On the days I don't do strength/cardio, I've been doing lower-intensity cardio.  I'm trying to keep more of my time in the fat-burning zone to see if that helps.  We'll see how it goes.  It's hard to stay in that lower-intensity range though!  I wanna go all-out!  I'm also trying to add in more out-of-the-gym exercise.  I've started doing some very simple, very short, yoga sessions in the morning when I wake up and at night just before going to bed.  Nothing too strenuous, but the night-time sessions do seem to help.  It feels fantastic to stretch my muscles out before falling into bed!  Now if I could just find a way too sleep through the night!

On to my reason for posting tonight...I have a fear that I've been letting hold me back.  I know, hard to believe, right?  I've laid so much of myself open here for all of you to see without fearing the repercussions.  But here's the thing....I want to start adding running into my daily exercise.  I've been wanting to for quite a while.  I want to be fit enough to run 5ks without dying of exhaustion.  But, I fear running!  I'm not a natural runner.  I've never been good at it.  I'm not so worried about that....practice makes perfect, right?  But here's my fear....I fear the jiggle.  I know that my body is going to jiggle as I run and I'm afraid of people seeing me jiggle as I run!  I did muster up the courage to attempt running on a treadmill the other day.  I made it 0.75 miles before I slid off the back of the treadmill!  It might have had something to do with a low blood sugar though.  Maybe I could have made it farther.  I'm not a fan of the treadmill.  I'd rather run around the track or outdoors, but then there's nothing to tell me how far I made it or how fast I was running.  Either way, I'm going to have to find a way around this.  I'm totally committed to running this virtual 5K that Reyna and her sister Tara are setting up and I'm not making any excuses to get out of it!  So....fear is going to have to be overcome!  If anyone has any suggestions on how to do that, I'm more than open to them!

Oh, one last thing before I head to bed....Blogger is boycotting my comments, for some reason.  I keep trying to comment on blogs and it keeps rerouting me to the sign-in page.  No matter how many times I sign in, it won't let me comment.  Not sure what bug crawled up their not-so-sunny places, but until it gets fixed....know that I'm reading and cheering all of you on and sending out lots of virtual hugs and love!  Wishing everyone lots of restful sleep and some doses of bg-nirvana!

A forgotten memory

I had a completely forgotten memory come rushing back to me the other night and I've been meaning to share it with all of you.  As I crept into Lily's room to do a midnight bg check, I happened to notice that her breathing was off...it was rapid and shallow.  I knew just by seeing her chest rise and fall in that pattern that something was off.  And that's when the memory popped back up....

When I was 17, I applied to be a counselor-in-training at Camp Needlepoint (MN and WI camp for diabetic children).  It just so happens that the timing of that coincided with the timing of my mother's decision to have my younger sister go visit her biological father for a week or so (complicated story there).  So, she drove us both down to the cities and dropped us off at the apartment that my younger sister's father and his new wife shared.  These people were essentially strangers to me, but they agreed to have me spend the night and drop me off at the camp the next morning.  Luckily, we were dropped off at the apartment later in the evening and the camp opened first thing in the morning!  But that still left the night to get through.  And that's where the connection is....in the middle of the night, after I had fallen asleep, the wife come into the room, shook my shoulder, and told me she'd noticed my breathing pattern change and thought my blood sugar must be low.  I don't know how she figured that out or why it would have occurred to her, but I was grateful.  Creeped out by the idea that she was listening to me breathe, but still, grateful.  I was a whole lot shyer and quieter back then and I can't imagine that I would have been comfortable raiding their kitchen if I'd woken up on my own.  She brought me a glass of juice and a few crackers and cheese and then let me go back to sleep once I'd finished it all.

I've never seen this mentioned anywhere else and who knows if anyone would have thought to mention it.  Breathing patterns are such a small detail that we rarely think about, aren't they?  And obviously, when your children are running around, exerting themselves, and taking life on, it won't do you any good to pay attention to their breathing pattern.  But, in those moments when you're tip-toeing to your child's bed, preparing to steal a drop of blood and watching the 5-second countdown, if you take a moment to notice their breathing, it just might clue you in to what kind of a number will pop up on that screen.  The little clues that the body shows us are so amazing sometimes!

It only takes a moment....

I've been noticing something lately....human beings seem to be completely unaware of their own power.  I'm not talking about power as in strength or energy or any other mundane explanation.  I'm talking about the power to change the course of a person's day, the power we have in regards to each other, to relating to other people, to influencing someone's day, for better or for worse.  It's so easy and it only takes a moment and we're so unaware of what we're doing.  We interact with people all day long.  And sometimes, those interactions are so brief, but they have incredible power to influence the tone of our days.  An example...it only took a few seconds of time to shoot a dirty look at the mom with the screaming children in the grocery store.  But I bet it made her feel bad for much longer than just those few seconds.  It only takes a few seconds to flip the bird to some jerk who cuts you off in traffic.  If he noticed, maybe it made him feel bad.  But, the fact that he cut you off can ruin the rest of your drive, can't it?  Only took him a few moments to ruin your day.  We all do things like this throughout our days and we don't even realize it most of the time.  I've been trying to take a few moments to think about things that I do lately and to try to change the nature of what I'm doing, to take a few extra minutes to improve the nature of someone else's day.  I'm not always very good at it, but I figure even a little bit of effort is so much better than doing nothing and just continuing as I am.  So, I have a few examples to share with you.....

1. At the grocery store the other day, I happened to notice a frazzled mom with a toddler screaming in her cart.  My heart went out to her.  We all know it's like to have a screaming child in the cart and to see all the dirty looks directed at us for having that screaming child.  I passed by the woman a little later, after her son had stopped crying.  I made a point of telling her what a great job she'd done in not giving in to her son (and not yelling at him or threatening to "smack him" as I've heard too many moms say).  She immediatley teared up, told me she'd been having an awful day, and thanked me for the comment and making her feel like she was doing something right.

2. I noticed a very pregnant woman at the library earlier this week.  I could tell from looking at her she was at the point where she wasn't sleeping anymore and was uncomfortable and tired.  But she had the cutest "just swallowed a basketball" belly.  And I told her so. 

3. At Costco today, I was frazzled...the kids tend to drive me a little crazy when we're there because they want every sample, every Cars or Mickey Mouse-themed book, pillow, towel, blanket, etc.  Lily begs for flowers and Leo demands candy.  We got to the checkout finally, with our cart filled with every berry under the sun, diapers, numerous sources of caffeine, and whatever else we generally buy in bulk.  A lady stepped in line behind us, no cart, just one single item.  I let her go ahead of me.  Only takes a few moments longer, my kids stay confined in the cart instead of running around like heathens, like they generally do.  Not a big deal, but it made her feel grateful. 

Those are just a few examples.  And let me just say....for every one of those "good" moments, I've probably had another 10 bad ones.  But, I'm trying to change that.  I want to make people feel good and I hope by making other people feel good, they'll have the desire to pass that on to more people.  It only takes a minute and a little bit of effort and who knows where it ends....

Would you believe there's a topic I haven't touched on yet?

In the last couple of weeks, I've seen some posts here in there in the DOC about being overwhelmed with diabetes and all it entails.  I try to keep a mostly up-beat attitude in my writing on here in regards to the diabetes stuff especially.  I don't want the parents out there reading my blog to get the idea that I'm angry or upset or have horribly negative feelings about diabetes.  The truth is, most of the time, it doesn't even occur to me to have negative feelings about it.  It is what it is and it's a part of my life.  I just keep on living.  But, I don't want to paint it all rosy and pretty either, because it's definitely not that.  So, here's a little tidbit I haven't yet shared....I get overwhelmed too!  Diabetes burnout comes around for a visit every now and then.  When Meri posted a little while ago about giving her youngest son a "break" from diabetes, a part of me was phenomenally jealous!  Seriously, how cool would that be?  To have someone bringing my meter to me, doing my calculations for me, saving me from having to think about it at all.  That would be AWESOME!  And while they're at it, why don't they just take on Lily's d-care too?  For me, there's an added difficulty to diabetes burnout.  I don't mind letting my own d-care slide a little bit when I'm feeling overwhelmed, but even when I let mine slide, I can't bring myself to compromise on Lily's care.  I can't let her down.  I have to keep going, no matter how overwhelmed I am with all of the food calculations, insulin adjustments, the exact measurements that have no room for error.  I'd say that I don't know how Meri does it, managing 3 diabetic boys.  But really, we all know how she does it, don't we?  She does it with the grace and beauty that is part of Meri and all she does.  And with a little help from her swelly brain.  And she does it because really, is there any other option?  So, diabetes burnout...those wonderful feelings of being overwhelmed, of falling beneath the surface again and again....they come and they go and we just keep on going.  Because there really isn't any other choice.  We come through the other side of them and are immediately grateful to have made it through another episode, to have crossed another bridge.  We're immensely relieved that we didn't give in and throw in the towel like we wanted to.  And our lives are made more beautiful and more phenomenal for having gone through it. 

On a happier note....I snapped a picture of Lily wearing her birthday present before her party last weekend:

And no post would be entirely complete without one of my little man too:

Oh, how I love them!

So very grateful!

D-blogging has been sidetracked.  I promise I'll get back to it soon, but tonight, I have something else on my mind....

We had a birthday party for Lily tonight.  My mom drove down this weekend for a visit and her visit just so happened to coincide with the party's date.  For my mom, "visiting" means we join her as she shops.  It's torture, really.  I have a hard time with spending money that I shouldn't spend and so while I'm out with her, it's hard to keep myself from spending what I shouldn't.  But it's torture in a different way too.  My mom is extremely uncomfortable with her weight.  She bases a great deal of her self-value on her weight, which means she just doesn't value herself much at all.  It's difficult to clothes-shop with her for that reason.  She tries things on.  They don't fit.  No matter how beautiful the clothes are, she never considers going up a size.  She squeezes herself into clothes that don't fit, just so she won't have to say she's a size bigger than she already wears.  During our "visit" on Thursday, we had a conversation.  She complained about her husband offering to take her out to a dressier dinner event.  She refused the opportunity to go out on a date with her husband.  Because she doesn't have any dressier clothes to wear to the dinner.  And she refuses to buy dressier clothes until she loses weight.  I've lost count of how many times I've heard that excuse from my mom.  "I don't want to buy new clothes until I lose weight".  She would rather deprive herself of new clothing, of dates with her husband, than buy herself clothes that look good on her body and make her feel good about herself. 

Back in October, my husband said something profound that woke me up from the path I was on to becoming just like my mom.  I was complaining about needing to buy a new winter coat and not wanting to buy one because of the size I was.  His profound comment...."why don't you just buy some jeans and Disney sweatshirts a size or two too small while you're at it?"  I know, it probably sounds harsh.  His tone of voice was gentle and teasing at the time.  He's always loved me and found me attractive no matter what my size has been.  That one single comment was exactly what I needed to hear!  I woke up and I set myself off on a different path.  I threw myself whole-heartedly into my efforts of changing my lifestyle so that I could teach our children a better way of life than what I learned from my mom.  I did not want to share that lifestyle with my kids.  If my husband hadn't said what he did, I'd still be on that path of destruction.  Spending time with my mom the other day brought all of that back to the surface.  I left her, feeling saddened in many ways, but also, feeling so incredibly grateful!  I came home, hugged my husband, cooked him dinner, and told him how profoundly grateful I am for him and his support and encouragement while I've made these changes.  He has been my biggest cheerleader, my greatest friend, and my most valuable partner in this journey.  He let me come home and unburden my mind by telling him what had been said and how I was feeling about it all.  And then, he helped me come to one very important, uplifting realization....There will be no turning back for me!  Now that I've been down both paths and seen what goes along with them, I will never be able to go back to what I was.  What hope that gives me for my future, the future of my family and the lives of my children!

Wild Card! What's your super-power?

My blog week posting was hijacked.  Blogger didn't want to let me back in.  Totally not cool!  I was all set to sit down and talk about all the things I hate about diabetes.  And then Blogger wouldn't let me.  And to tell you the truth, tonight, I'm just not in the mood to be negative.  I have something else I want to share tonight....

With Minnesota's weather being what it is, my family ends up spending a lot of time indoors.  One of our retreats when we're feeling cooped up and need out has been the play areas that most of the shopping malls have here.  I had the pleasure the other day of observing a mother and her 3-year-old daughter at one of these play areas the other day.  Her little girl was laughing and smiling and happy and giggly.  She was running around with this incredible smile pasted on her face, blonde curly pigtails bouncing along as she ran, beautiful bright blue eyes shining.  This little girl was AMAZING!  I think her smile was bright enough to light up the room.  She was gorgeous and happy and such a joy to watch.  And you could tell, just by seeing her mom's responses to her, just how treasured this child was to her mother.  This beautiful, amazing, wonderfully happy little girl, it just so happens, was born with Downs Syndrome.  Oh, what an amazingly precious, beautiful child she is!  Not "in spite of", but more "because of". 

A few months back, there was some talk in the DOC about how many of us PWDs let our A1Cs dictate our self-worth.  If we have a good A1C, we value ourselves more.  I'm doing the "walk of shame" right now...my A1C is currently at 8.5.  It's taking a little bit of a hit from all the exercise and adjustments I'm trying to make with all of it.  I'm trying to not let it influence how I feel about myself though.  In fact, my A1C has dropped down on the list of things that I allow to influence my self-worth.  Right now, my activity level is near the top.  My behavior towards my children, the care I take of my family and my value to them are far more important than anything else.  My A1C?  Not nearly as important anymore.  But....when all this talk was going on, it occurred to me that I do not want Lily to pick up on the idea that her value to me or to herself is based on her A1C.  Or even the fact that she's diabetic.  Her value to me is phenomenally and it has nothing to do with diabetes.  If anything, her having diabetes enhances her value to me because I know what I could lose at any given point if her insulin levels are too high. 

So how do these two things connect?  The little girl with Downs Syndrome and my little girl with diabetes?  It's all about value.  Many people would look at that little girl with DS and think about how tragic it was that she was born with DS.  Those same people would look at my little girl and think about how tragic it is that she has diabetes.  The little girl's mother looks at her daughter and sees her only as a blessing.  There is no tragedy there.  The fact that her little girl has DS doesn't make her any less valuable.  She looks at her daughter and she thinks about all she can learn from her.  There's this beautiful thing about people with DS.  If you've ever had the pleasure of spending any amount of time with a person with DS, you quickly become aware of the pure, unfiltered emotion that comes from them.  I'm not trying to make a "blanket statement" here; there are always exceptions.  But many of these amazing people show emotion in such an outright, vulnerable, and beautiful way and they're so amazing to see.  This little girl's mom quickly learned the value of that feature, the beauty of that ability.  It's the same with our CWD.  They may not have that pure, unfiltered emotional response to life, but they have other features.  They endure in the most difficult of situations.  They fight when they need to.  They know when to let things go.  They're tougher than tough and sweeter than sweet.  Diabetes may not be a beautiful thing, but the abilities and features it brings out in our CWD.  Our children learn things about life and about struggle that other children don't learn.  Part of the problem with being a mom to a CWD (or any child with an illness) is that we want to protect our children and we become frustrated with feeling helpless.  We drown in that feeling and we lose track of the beauty that is life with an illness.  Here's my take on all of that....God has very special things in mind for our children and diabetes is going to be part of what shapes them and prepares them for those amazing lives He has planned for them.  Our kids will touch people in ways that normal people cannot.  They will lead lives that are amazing in ways that we cannot begin to imagine now.  Living with that knowledge in mind makes it easier to not let the harshness of this life, the struggle that is life with diabetes, get you down.  You keep on going and your children learn by your example that we do what we need to do and keep on going.  They are amazing, wonderful, incredible children.  And they are so phenomenally beautiful!

One last thing before I head to bed, just because I'm dying to share this.  I'm super-proud of it.  Lily's birthday was Wednesday.  My baby girl is four years old now!  Yikes!  Her birthday party is tomorrow and she picked out a cute little tutu to wear for her party.  Since weather in Minnesota is a bit unpredictable, I decided to make her this to go along with her cute little tutu:

She hasn't seen it with all the flowers attached yet and I can't wait to show it to her in the morning!  I'll have to post some pictures of her in it after the party tomorrow.  In the meantime, I'm sending up a prayer that all the parents of CWDs have a great night of sleep tonight and a fantastic weekend ahead! 

Post #2...a letter

I'm late.  Sorry!  I just couldn't make it back to the computer for a post yesterday.  The kids and I have been avoiding the house as much as possible so we can all stay out of the way.  I'm happy to say that the demolision phase of our bathroom remodel is just about complete.  Yay!  Wow, was that a fun one!  Turns out that the person who built our house more than 40 years ago cut some interesting corners.  There are no support boards under the subflooring.  Instead, the builder compensated for the lack of support by laying a half-inch-thick layer of concrete over the subflooring.  Yikes!  And the icing on that particular cake?  The five feet of shower tiles on the walls around the bathtub were adhered to said walls with chicken wire and more concrete!  I have to give my husband and his dad a ton of credit for managing to rip all that out! 

Anyway, back to the posting.  My "letter" is really more of a memo to my daughter's endocrinologist.  It's short and sweet:

Dear Dr. A,
I would like to steal you.  You could be my family's personal endocrinologist.  Won't you please consider branching out into practicing your magic on adults with type I diabetes too?
Sincerely,
Cindy

Now, I feel like I should explain this for those of you who choose to read it.  I was debating this post, trying to decide what I should write.  I could have written a long letter to Lily, apologizing for her developing diabetes, for passing that one thing on to her that I never wanted her to have.  The guilt that goes with that is incredible sometimes.  But, that doesn't really do anyone any good.  And that it occurred to me....I have a unique perspective that comes from dealing with endocrinologists all my life.  Many of you will be lucky to escape this fate, because your children will eventually be dealing with endocrinologists on their own.  But, that doesn't mean it won't help you to hear these kinds of things!

I love Lily's endocrinologist!  I adore her!  Dr. A is awesomely fantastic and fifty different kinds of wonderful.  She's amazing.  Her goal in the care of all her patients is to teach them and lead them through their journey to the finish line.  That finish line is titled "SELF-MANAGEMENT".  She understands that each of her patients is unique, each is at a different point in life, each has a unique way of living and accomodating diabetes in his or her life.  Each child she works with is an individual!  It is an incredible thing for a doctor to realize that!  For that reason, I seriously would love to steal her for my own endocrinologist!  Want to know what the one single very big incredibly enormous problem is with her?  She's a pediatric endocrinologist.  She doesn't treat adults. 

That leads me to the flip-side of this.  I have yet to find an endocrinologist that I want to trust with my own treatment.  Part of the problem is me.  I'm a bit of a hostile patient.  I don't like them messing with my things.  Don't come into my exam room and tell me what changes to make to my basal and bolus settings.  I am an adult.  A reasonably intelligent one too!  For that reason, I expect to be given the courtesy of a doctor discussing my care with me and not making decisions without me.  Chances are, I've probably made several adjustments in my own care in the last few weeks and you won't know that until you talk to me.  Also, I'm not a textbook.  I may have the same disease as the guy in the next room, but we're not the same patient.  Don't try to treat us with the same regimine.  The results will be different.  Because we are individuals and how dare you ever forget that!  We're both going to make mistakes and have problems now and then.  Your input is appreciated, but don't ever forget that the ultimate decision on what is going to be done to accomodate diabetes in our lives is going to be made by us, the patients. 

I have one last big beef to add to my complaints with endocrinologists.  And really, this is doctors in general.  All doctors, not just endocrinologists.  The lack of plain talk and honesty is APPALLING!  Seriously, it is.  Doctors, as a group, should not be held to the same expectations of using PC bullcrap to talk to their patients.  I'm tired of them pussy-footing around.  Instead of telling me I'm overweight, which I'm perfectly aware of, maybe you should start looking at lifestyle and tell me instead that I'm not leading a healthy enough life, my style isn't incorporating enough activity.  I'm lazy.  Seriously.  I'm tired of doctors talking about weight in hush-hush, don't-want-to-offend tones.  Come on out with it!  You can tell us the truth.  If we don't like it, too bad!  But the only way positive changes can happen is if we address the root of the issues and face things head on.  My weight was never the problem, in my eyes.  It was a result of me being phenomenally lazy!  I'm not saying that hearing that from a doctor would have changed things for me, but imagine what a jolt it would have been to be told to get up off my ass and start moving before I gave myself a heart attack.  Who know, maybe that would have done the trick!

I have a ton of cement and drywall dust to remove from my home, so I think I'll end my rant there for the night.  And I'm a day behind in the posting already!  Wonder if I can find the time to clean up and then start on post #3?  We'll have to see....

Blog Week: Admiring our differences

I think when I signed on for this, I must have spaced everything that's going on this week!  Lily's birthday is Wednesday.  I can't believe she's turning four already!  My husband is on vacation from work, but not vacation from home.  In fact, he's supposed to be demolishing and rebuilding our bathroom.  So far, I've pulled every teeny tiny little thing out of our bathroom and pried a dozen or so tiles off of the walls.  That's as far as we've gotten.  My father-in-law is coming bright and early tomorrow morning with the idea that he'll help my husband rebuild the walls.  Let's hope he doesn't mind helping tear them down first!  Anyway, with all that going on, I'm going to make a huge effort to try to keep up with this blog week thing.  I may not be posting until later in the day, but I'll be posting!

When I first thought about this topic, I had a hard time figuring out where to start.  I thought...how am I going to talk about learning from someone from a different diabetes perspective when I'm both a person with diabetes and a parent of a diabetic?  And in the middle of thinking about that, I noticed from my peripheral that there was a bit of a to-do in the DOC.  I won't pretend to know what was going on because I'm still not sure what happened or who said what, but apparently someone offered up a comment that seemed to judge, quite harshly, how a parent was choosing to manage their child's diabetes.  It occurred to me that even here, among the other type-1 bloggers and parent-of-a-type-1 bloggers, there are so many differences!  So, I thought I'd give you a few examples of some of the differences I've noticed....

1.  As a parent of a teeny tiny diabetic, I find myself most comfortable with Lily's A1Cs staying in the 7.4-8.5 range.  I don't like it when they go higher than that and I'm not a fan of when they go lower either.  I want her body to have enough to grow on and not run her so tightly that we have lows left and right.  I hate lows in my child!  I don't particularly like them for myself.  I know other parents are happier with A1Cs in the 6-7 range.  That works for them and their child and I'm totally cool with that.  They're obviously doing a fantastic job when they get numbers in that range!

2. As a diabetic myself and one who is trying to be active, I've chosen to let my own numbers run just a tad bit higher.  I used to try to keep them in the 70-110 range.  With exercising so much and the subsequent lows that come with that, I've chosen to adjust my range to 90-140.  It's not a ton higher, but it cuts down on how many bad lows I get.  Other diabetics choose other methods of avoiding the lows.  I heard from a fellow type-1 diabetic that another type-1 diabetic told her that she chooses to use 10u of glucagon before a workout in order to avoid a low and so she won't have to eat a snack first.  I do not recommend that one!

3. I hate setting temporary basals for myself with my workouts.  I do it, occasionally, but I manage to deal with it in other ways.  Tony Cervati, the type I diabetic rider (find him on Facebook!), posts all the time about what temporary basals he's got going.  I don't know how he finds the energy and brain power to figure all that out!

4. When Lily was diagnosed at the ripe old age of 27-months, I pushed to get her on an insulin pump ASAP.  It's what works for us and it was so much better than MID.  It's a lot of work, but it's worth it for us.  Joanne from Death of a Pancreas manages her little girl with MID.  She gets fantastic A1Cs for Elise and it's what works for them. 

There are a whole plethora of other differences.  I could go on and on about how different we all are and it would be for many of us to fall into a funk and lash out in judgement on others who see things differently than we do.  But the fact is, when it comes down to it, no judgement is needed.  No matter how cranky and addle-brained we get from all the thought and effort that goes into managing diabetes in its many forms, we're all the same in our intent.  It all boils down to doing what we feel is best for our own health, for the health of our child, for the health of our family.  We're all muddling our way through, trying to make the best decisions possible.  And for that reason, none of us has the right to judge anyone else's methods or choices.  Instead, we embrace the differences, the different paths, the different choices.  We're all headed for the same destination, the Health and Well-Being of our Families, and just taking different paths and detours to get there!

I never share pictures of myself!

I hate pictures of myself.  I'd much rather share with you pictures of my children, because they are just so much cuter and more beautiful than I could ever be!  But, for a change, I thought I'd share a few of myself....a progression through pictures:

That's me on the right, behind our beautiful dog, Sleb.  I was maybe 2 or 3.

Again, me on the right.  I was 14 or 15 in this picture.

My husband and I, not long after we started dating.

I'm in the back, in the blue sweater.

A few years later.....

On our wedding day.

 With a newborn Lily.

 Christmas before Leo joined us.

 With a brand-new Leo.

 Nine-or-so months later.

Just the other day...cutest part of this picture is the little goof-ball on the right!