The Week of Kai- Day One

 This week is someone very special in my life's 2nd Birth Day, so we are going to celebrate her this week!
Who she is, how she has grown this past year and the things we love and sometimes don't love about her!

Happy Birth week my sweet baby! These past two years have been amazingly wonderful!

Today!

Today was such a great day!

It started off with Kailie freaking out when Jared went to leave for work, then much to her pleasure he came back to get something. Here she is trying to convince him not to leave again. She has been way into daddy lately and looks for him every morning. She cried pretty hard today when he really did leave for work!

The weather is absolutely awesome right now. Each day I have been out putting up christmas lights and each day I have worn less and less warm clothes. Today was a t-shirt day!! Gotta love that in November!

I love this vine I noticed on the side of our window, the colors are so pretty right now!

Then we chased this poor kitty around!

Rode on all our fun toys!

And even had a picnic out side. 

Ironically enough, last year when I was hanging christmas lights outside our Apt in Hawaii, I kept thinking to myself "man next year I am going to be freezing my butt off when I hang these."  When I noticed that it was going to be good weather I busted out the lights. I think I will make this a tradition every year. It just makes it so much more pleasant when you aren't frozen. But don't worry I won't turn them on for at least a few more weeks!

 Peas were on the menu today much to Kai's pleasure. On Sunday evening we had dinner at a friends house. I brought peas as a side dish, Kai has always loved peas but lately she is way into them. Anyways, we had rootbeer floats for desert and Kai had a few bites of my float and then picked up the left over pea bowl and went to town!! Silly girl!!

And yes, I still have my Halloween Decor on my front door!! I just don't have anything to hang there for thanksgiving and don't want to put up a christmas wreath yet so yep I am the house that has christmas lights and halloween up together!!

Favorite Things!

Oh we love this girl!

She is great albeit crazy sleeper!

I love her cute little pigtails. They look like two little pom poms on her head. 

So adorable!

So tuckered out she feel asleep while at the store and took a nice little nap in the cart!

 She locked herself in her bathroom and she kept calling out for Daddy. Daddy didn't know she was in there and couldn't find her for a few minutes.

At nap time or bedtime  she always has to read the same songs and tell us that the chipmunks are taking a nap. She is silly!

She loves to make messes!

Love her big beautiful blue eyes!

She loves to give kisses and loves!

Story time with Mommy!

She loves big slobbery kisses!

She always makes this exact face whenever she is laying down and is trying to get up. I just had to capture it!

She loves to play dress-up!

Some of our favorite moments with Kailie! 

Fall Fun with Grandma and Grandpa!

The east coast truely is amazing in the fall time! We have tried to enjoy it as much as we can!

This was taken on our favorite rollerblade path! Don't let my short sleeve shirt fool you, it was COLD so I gave my sweater to Kai to keep her warm!

A bunch of girls from church all went out to this fun pumpkin patch so we tagged along. This was a toy pit made of corn kernels instead of sand! 

So fun and cold on the toes!!

Picking out her first pumpkin!

Definitely Kai's favorite part was riding in the wheel barrow to and from the pumpkin patch!

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Helping mom pick out some big pumpkins.

I got the best pumpkin to make my pumpkin casserole in. I was so excited and spent forever looking for one that was the right size. Well when we went to carve out it 

on halloween it had gone moldy!! 

I was so sad! No pumpkin casserole this year!

Now I know to buy it right before I need it!

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I love spending my days with this cute squirt!

 

Funny old blue chair! Kai is in a phase where she won't look at me while I am taking photos of her!

Little stinker!

Grandma and Grandpa Theler or Papa and Nana as Kai says arrived.
 It was so fun to spend a few days with them!

We went to Critz farm on Columbus day! What a fun place for kids old and young! The weather was nice and we all had a blast except for Jared who had to work!!

By far the cutest thing there was this adorable cow train and the cute old farmer who drove it! 

Kai riding Daisy!

Video of said Cow Train!

Not happy about having to get out of the cow train!

But never fear animals are always to the rescue!

Ahh how cute!

The second favorite activity were the awesome slides. They had about 6 from small for really little kids to these bigger and much faster ones. Kai liked this one okay!

But she LOVED this one and went on it a billion times with Grandma and Grandpa's help!

The whole place minus the corn maze which we never made it to!

Tinkle Tinkle

A couple of weeks ago, this little boy Dash was over here, he is newly potty trained so when he went to the bathroom Kai of course followed him and ever since then she has been obsessed with sitting on the toilet. Her new favorite bath time activity consists of playing the in the bath then getting out and going to the "potty" or poppy as she says it or just sitting there, wiping and then the best part flushing then back to the tub just to do it all over again and again. 

Well I have been waiting for two things to happen 1- her falling into the toilet and 2- actually going to the bathroom while sitting on the toilet. 

I guess today was my lucky day cause they both happened. 

 

First she fell into the toilet and was fine at first but got really mad when I ran out to get the camera without helping her first! 

 Then a few minutes later she actually went tinkle! 

So cute!

She was so proud of herself and literally sat there for the next 30 minutes trying to go over and over! Which she did! 

She definitely isn't ready to be potty trained yet but hopefully this will help her train faster when she is ready!

Life with Diabetes!

A couple of weeks before Kai was diagonosed I had the opportunity to go to girls camp! It was an amazing experience as always but I also learned one thing while I was there, that Diabetes is a HORRIBLE disease. One of our young women has type one, previous to camp and I hadn't really seen it effect her at all. At girls camp my eyes were opened to how much diabetes rules your life. Her numbers were all over the place, she had to call her parents every night and they were very worried and concerned with her numbers and were going to come get her if she couldn't get it under control. Well I who knew NOTHING about the disease kept asking her "What do you have to do to keep your numbers in the target range?" I asked her over and over and she just looked at me and never gave me an answer. I was so confused about this disease and a few of the other leaders there who thought they knew alot about diabetes kept saying she needs to do this or do that. All I knew is that I was literally horrified at how much it effected her life, she had to stop whatever she was doing ever two hours and check herself, she could only swim for a certain amount of time, etc. I remember telling my friend Cameo that I was so shocked seeing how this disease really worked. It really affected me.

Then a few weeks later I took Kai in to the doctor because she had some weird stuff going on like drinking water like it was her last chance to drink and peeing all over herself. As soon as they or actually Jared said she had Diabetes all I could think of was my young woman and how horrified I was about diabetes.

Well it turns out my horrifiedness was correct. This disease RULES your life. We really try not to let it control us and what we do but it definitely rules.

It has now been about 7 months since she was diagnosed and I think there is only one word that describes this disease and that word is "Sucks!" That is what the diabetes specialists kept telling us while we were in the hospital after diagnosis and it is sure is true.

We have learned alot about this disease in these past months. I have learned the answer to the question that I kept asking my young women, and the answer is .........................................................................................................................................................

there is NO WAY TO KEEP YOU IN A TARGET RANGE, at least not while you are young. There are too many factors affecting blood sugar: exercise, food of course, some food affects you right away and other's like pizza take hours to affect you, hormones, sickness, and even the air temp changes your sugar.

I also have learned that most people think they know about diabetes but mostly they are wrong.

Probably the biggest misconception: that diabetics shouldn't eat sugar!! Yes sugar affects the blood sugar but it is not the sugar it is the CARBOHYDRATES! So any food with carbs in it affects you. Therefore pasta and bread, vegetables, fruit, milk, yogurt, etc all need to be counted.  Kailie can eat as much Sugar as she wants as long as we keep track of how many carbs are in it and then give her the right amount of insulin to cover those carbs. Of course I try to limit her sugar, I didn't even let her eat the stuff until after her first birthday but Ironcially enough she has had alot more sugar since being diagnosed.

How to do we attempt to keep her in a good range. We count all of the carbs that she eats, which can be tricky and takes a lot of work. We use alot of measuring cups everyday! 

The most frustrating part is that what works one day usually doesn't work the next day!

For me I have to take Diabetes just one day at a time. I cannot even think about the future. Thinking about it overwhelms me. It kills me to think that Kailie will never ever get a  break or "vacation" from this disease! Jared and I never will either even if at some point down the road we do take a trip without her, I will probably just be stressed about her the whole time.

Every night I stay up late to check her that check is what really affects the me the most. It kills me that she has to have this disease! She is so little and so sweet and  has a long life ahead of her and now she has the burden of this stupid disease! You know how when they are little babies and every night you worry about Sids and in the morning you are so relieved. I have that feeling every night. I can't imagine that it will ever go away. Night time is the scariest for me. During the day we check her every two hours so we know nothing to bad can happen but nighttime is when she can go low and die.

A typical day in the Theler house:

5:00-7:00 am- Jared checks Kai's blood sugar

8:30-9:00-Kai wakes up, I check her blood again and then give her two shots of insulin

Wait twenty minutes before we can eat

Eat-having measured everything

Wait an hour after shot to take a shower

11:00 Check her again-give her a snack

1:00  Check wash her hands everytime and then check her blood again

Then give her another shot of Insulin

Wait 20 minutes-eat

Make sure she eats enough plus a little extra because her blood sugar almost always drops when she naps

2-4 take a nap-I usually have to check her at least once during her nap. If she sleeps really long that usually means she has gone low

*When she is low she is super shaky- I hate it. Today as soon as I picked her up from her nap I could tell she was low because she was super shaky! It is scary and sure enough she was 60!

4-wake up check her numbers

6-Check again-give insulin shot

Wait 20 minutes-eat dinner-wait 1 hour before taking a bath

9-check again-give snack go to bed

11-12- I check her and give her another Insulin shot if needed. 

Depending on her number- one of us will wake up in the middle of the night and check her again and sometimes even give her another shot!!

That is a very basic description of our day, then add in the usually stuff plus having to record everything she eats and how much insulin she gets and it makes for a very busy day!

Pretty much most of my posts on this blog are all happy and how much fun we are having but I don't really show the reality of how much diabetes effects our daily lives. It is overwhelming and stressful but at the end of the day we don't really have a choice. 

The only thing we can do is just take it one day at a time!!

The most amazing part about all this is how good Kailie is! We are so blessed to have a mostly good natured little girl who although she hates and says no no no no everytime I go to give her a shot, she still allows me to give them to her. Poor thing, I can't even imagine what she must be thinking every time her momma or daddy goes to give her a shot that causes her pain! I just hope it doesn't cause her to not like us!