The Pancreas

The pancreas. An often overlooked organ in our bodies that balances the sugars with insulin. Not much attention is paid to this little guy until he starts getting attacked by his former best friends, the immune system. Being too weak, or too lazy, to really fight back, it slowly dies off and in it's wake opens up a whole new world to the people it affects. It has become a very popular topic in our house lately and here are some of my favorite comments/questions that have come up in the past month.

1. "When your pancreas dies, will it go to Heaven?" Livie asked. I told her that it doesn't have a soul, so it wouldn't go to Heaven. "But," she said, " it's a special part of our inside, so things that are special go there." Never thought of a special place in heaven being reserved for pancreases. Wonder what THAT'S like? Think pancreases (or should it be "pancreai"?) like mansions and sidewalks of gold (or golf courses as Pete and my dad seem to think exist up there)?

2. Instead of having tummy aches, Livie now has pancreas aches. The other day she was sad and grabbed her belly and said it hurt. I asked her if she had a upset tummy and she said, "No. My pancreas hurts."

3. At Bible Study on Sunday, when we were asking for prayer for Noah, our pastor told us that they are doing great things with pancreatic transplants. He said, "Hey, if I die, I'll make sure that Noah gets my pancreas. Wouldn't that be a hoot?! Noah could say that he has Pastor's John's pancreas." We reminded him that he would actually have to die to have that happen, so maybe it wouldn't be a TOTAL hoot. ;-)

4. When discussing names for our new puppy, the kids all decided if it was tan, it would be named "Pancreas". Makes sense, right?

Until Diabetes came along, this relatively unknown organ was living in obscurity in our bodies. Now, good 'ole pancreas (lazy though it may be) is front and center in our lives, both in the form of questions and, apparently, possible pet names. Thanks, Pancreas, for opening up a whole new world to us in which you are the shining star.

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Only 3 articles left! But, I have none in reserve, so I guess I'd better get writing!

The Countdown is ON!

We are counting down until next Friday, the 18th, when the newest member of our family joins us!

This picture is of our new puppy (or one of his brothers or sisters). They all look alike, so even if this isn't him, it will look just like him. :-) Many of you know I've been wanting a dog since before we got married. I talked to him about getting a dog before I ever mentioned wanting children! So, yeah, the doggy fever has had me for quite a long time. I realized that this was the year to do it. Livie's finishing up preschool soon, so for now, I'm still a stay-at-home mom and I can devote the time necessary to train a puppy. And, if we got him in the spring, I would have all spring and summer, with the kids, to get him used to our family and give him the attention he needs from all of us. So, after much persuasion, Pete finally agreed! I think it was the picture above that did it too. He fell in love with this little guy and said, "I want HIM." So, I called the breeder, found out that she had a litter available on the 18th. We sent in our deposit and are just waiting on a phone call to set up our appointment to come up and pick out our new puppy. We're thrilled to pieces! We have the crate all set up, a bin full of doggie toys, and everything else he could ever want. Now, we're just waiting for our little guy. We even picked out a name. His name will be "Darth Tater Sock Frog Trolinger". I know that's quite a mouthful, but everyone wanted one part of naming him. We call that his "show name". But, in everyday life, we'll just call him "Tater". We even scoped out a Cubs collar for him and plan to take him to the store once we get him and let him pick it out himself. Who knows? Maybe Tater will bring some luck to the Cubbies this year and we'll go all the way! So, to everyone who's been wondering about my not-so-cryptic message about the puppy - YES - we're expanding our family! Since Cara and Em are both having babies, I thought I'd join in and have a furry baby of our own. ;-) So, the countdown is on until you get to see our sweet Tater here with his new forever family. Hope the next week flies by!

Any Guesses?

This can only mean one thing .. either

1. The kids were driving us crazy, so we stuck them in here.

2. Couldn't find anyone to babysit and felt this was the best option.

OR

3. We're getting a PUPPY!!!

Sock Monkey Madness Festival 2011

Today was the day. The day we've been looking forward to for at least 6 months. And, it did not disappoint!!


Many of you voted. Arygle WON! With Original right behind for 2nd place. BUT, in the final hours, there was an upset. Noah decided AGAINST taking argyle sock monkey in favor of the one that his Nana made him. So, Madie swept in and kept the rioting at bay by taking the argyle one herself. Giant sock monkey rode with us in the car, but wasn't allowed to enter the fest. I'm sure it was difficult for him to sit on the sidelines, but we could only carry so many and a 3' tall sock monkey just wasn't going to be part of that picture. Maybe next year, Giant Sock Monkey. Maybe next year. Livie opted to step outside the box a little and take her sock FROG instead. The characters were in their place and we were ready to go!

After a quick hour for Livie's dance class, we were on the road. Look at the excitement in their faces!

Even sweet Livie was ready for the Fest!

I was surprised, honestly, that the sock monkey was so loved! I expected to go to the museum and see a decent amount of people there, but it was much bigger than I imagined! We had to park a couple blocks away and catch a shuttle to get to the event. A shuttle! For Sock Monkeys! Once we got there and paid the admittance fee, we stopped in to hang up our coats and let the kids watch a couple of the Sock Monkey short films. They were pretty funny!

Noah could barely contain his excitement! He was walking into the world of the sock monkeys! He has never felt more in his element than he did today. He was surrounded by sock monkeys and a sock monkey lovin' crowd!

Of course, we had to take our pictures by the "stick your face in the hole" sock monkey people!

There were lots of sock monkey displays, showing all the sock monkey paraphernalia there is, as well as a history of the sock monkeys. Did you know sock monkeys made their start in Rockford? That's why the fest is held there.

They had these sock monkeys dressed up as different characters. Check out the Wizard of Oz set. So cute!!

Because this is also a museum, we walked through and looked at lots of the cool stuff they had. You'll notice something on top of this really tall bike...

It's a SOCK MONKEY! They had these sock monkeys around the museum and had a scavenger hunt thing with clues, so we could find them.

They had a sweet lady read stories to the kids about sock monkeys. We only stayed for one book, because there were more kids coming in that wanted to hear her read.

Then we entered an L-shaped room of magic! This place was jam-packed with sock monkeys galore! Vendors from all over the area showed up to sell their sock monkeys. This was our very favorite room!

I loved these interesting sock monkeys in the foreground. Thought they were really cool, but the kids all lean more towards the traditional. You see them in the back there looking at some sock monkeys.

They had several activities set up in this room. This one was sock monkey stampin'. They got to make family trees using sock monkey stamps. Really cute! They also had a make-your-own sock monkey, where you bought an eyeless sock monkey and could add eyes and hats and make clothes and more. We did that towards the end of our time there, because that's what Noah chose to spend his money on. I tried to talk him into making it an outfit and everything, but he just wanted to make "the blind sock monkey see again", so we just added button eyes. We visited the hospital and had Argyle get a small procedure done on his arm where the seam came loose and Noah made sure his blind sock monkey could now see. Everyone checked out A-OK.

We walked away today with 2 t-shirts for Noah, a knit sock monkey hat for both of the girls (Madie shared hers with mine, you'll see in some of the upcoming pictures), the blind sock monkey, an outfit for sock monkey, and Madie got her very first sock monkey. Not to mention all the crafts and activities we had as well. Really fun!!

I had the kids stand by the sock monkey statue and get their picture taken with a real live sock monkey. Yes, he looks a little scary, but he was a very nice sock monkey and even, later was best man at a wedding! You'll see more about that later. Notice, the girls' hats. :-)

They had lots of fun games, like this one. This one was called "Throw the sock monkeys through the holes". :-)

This one? "Catapult the sock monkey through the ring". Their favorite, by far, was throwing their sock monkeys on a parachute and making them fly in the air. I have a video of that I'll post later.

I looked over and saw Pete carrying all the sock monkeys and it made me laugh. :-) I had to take a picture.

Here I was helping Noah make a sock monkey scrapbook.

Everyone made a scrapbook and they all turned out to be unique and really cute. Livie drew sharp teeth on her sock monkey. She seems to make everything dinosaur-like. ;-)

Time to catapult the frog!!

While Pete, Noah, and Livie did more of the scavenger hunt, Madie decided to step out of the sock monkey box and take her picture in clothes from the 1800s. Madie LOVES her history, so this was a fun diversion.

The kids got their silhouettes done with their sock monkeys. They were so funny and so cute!

Livie started getting overwhelmed and tired towards the end, so she and I went off and got a small snack and sat on the floor for a breather. Don't you love the hat?! The gal that sold them took a picture of her in it to use for advertising. Did the same thing for Madie and so many people asked us where we got them. :-)

Had to get our picture taken with the Biggest Sock Monkey Ever!!

When Noah saw this sock monkey, he said, "I bet this sock monkey must cost like a million dollars!!" ;-)

Now, about that wedding. Yes. There were a few weird things we saw at the fest today. Isn't there always a few weird things at events like this? First was an older lady pushing her large sock monkey in a stroller and we later caught her making it dance to the movies that were playing and talking to it. Yeah. Um, ok. But this wedding was the cake topper! I actually thought it was hilarious! Notice the sock monkey garb that she's sporting. Everyone gathered around to take video and pictures. They passed out bubbles for everyone to blow that had a sock monkey label on it with their names and date of the ceremony. The scary-looking sock monkey from the earlier picture was the best man and carried that giant sock monkey in the pictures above with him and had him be a groomsman as well. Cracked me up!

We left about 4pm and everyone was so thrilled about the day. The kids walked away with huge smiles and a big thumbs up for the fest! Looks like this might become an annual tradition. :-) As Noah said, "This was the funnest day of my life!"

So. Much. Information

These are my notes from yesterday's Peoria trip. The last of our education classes. Ugh. I was so overwhelmed when I left yesterday, because yesterday was all about the ugly side of diabetes. Noah's doing so perfectly right now, because he's in the "Honeymoon stage", which means his pancreas is still working a bit, so his numbers have nearly all been in the 70-90s. Absolutely perfect! So, when I hear about what could happen when his pancreas totally dies and we don't have it helping us, it can get a bit scary! Last session we learned about how to treat low blood sugars. That was a big overwhelming, but we've had a couple in the lower range of the 70s and have been fine. I think we'll know what to do when that happens. Yesterday, however, we learned about how his sugars can get all crazy if he's sick or something and by "sick" I mean, things as simple as scraping his knee can send his sugars into weird ranges. I think the worst situation would be if he gets the flu obviously, so I'm not looking forward to him getting sick EVER now. You'll notice a drawing on the top sheet. This was the nurse's way of trying to show us what happens to his body if he's sick. She wanted to teach us about keotones and ketoacidosis, which involves the word "death" which immediately sends me into a panic! Now, she says that's nearly 100% preventable, but it doesn't stop the crazy thoughts that pop into my head! Basically we learned if he gets sick we have to make sure he's not getting keotones, so we'll have to test for that. Long story short, there will be sugar readings every 2-3 hours and crazy new insulin ratios and equations. Just a lot of monitoring and intervention to make sure we keep his sugars in the normal range. I seriously thought my head was going to pop from all that information. I couldn't process it all. Thankfully I have a brilliant and scientific-minded husband that seems to understand it all. But, gotta be honest, I'm just hoping for a decade-long honeymoon period and a lifetime free of sickness. Is that too much to ask? ;-) She tried to give us a scenario of how we would react if we saw him wake up with nausea and a headache and find out his number is unusually high. I think every decision I made in his "pretend" treatment was wrong, so imagine if I have to do it for real! I'll either be making a lot of phone calls to the center or make Pete stay home from work to help me! Anyway, we learned a lot more - most of it was scary, but we have to learn the scary parts too. The more we're educated the better we'll be at keeping up his care and helping him learn in the process too. Again, just hoping for this "honeymoon stage" to last like the energizer bunny. Going on and on and on and on!