In Which I Am the Parent of a Boy Scout, a Cub Scout, and a Girl Scout (Despite Only Having Two Kids)

Scouting has been a wonderful experience for our family. In this post I've included a picture that Squirrelboy managed to take of himself at sunset, while backpacking across Isle Royale National Park (it's in Lake Superior and it's the least visited national park in the continental U.S., look it up) this past summer with his Boy Scout troop.

Mr. Engineer is an Eagle Scout. My scouting experience was not nearly so monumental. I participated in Indian Princesses (apparently the equivalent now is Adventure Princesses) through the YMCA with my Dad through most (maybe all, I honestly don't remember) of elementary school, which was scout-like. I was also a member of a Brownie troop at my school for at least one school year (maybe two), but I didn't actually continue in the troop after crossing the bridge to Juniors. Scouting just wasn't my thing, especially the outdoor parts of scouting. Mind you, I enjoy the occasional hike through a beautiful natural area, even a long hike that takes a large portion of the day. However, my ideal outdoor activity is to lie outside in a hammock and read a good book. I also really like my bed, and it's too big to fit into a tent.

It's a good thing I wasn't totally set on my kids having the same view of the outdoors that I do, because otherwise married the wrong man. He got Squirrelboy involved with Cub Scouts as a Tiger in first grade, the first year he was eligible. Squirrelboy went all the way through and earned his Arrow of Light, the highest honor in Cub Scouts. He then dove right into a Boy Scout troop in the spring of 5th grade. In addition to providing him with lots of great campouts and backpacking opportunities, scouting has grown Squirrelboy as a person and as a leader. He has spent quite awhile now in the position of troop quartermaster. That puts him in charge of making sure the right supplies make it to every outing. For an ADHD kid who struggles with details you might think this job would be a nightmare, but he thrives in it. When it comes to on the ground experiences, Squirrelboy's learning and attention differences don't hold him back one bit in scouts. In fact, according to Mr. Engineer (I have to take his word for it since I've never been on a Boy Scout campout), Squirrelboy is the best version of himself on campouts. Somehow his brain focuses in just the right way in that environment. Badges that require a lot of writing are a whole different story, but I like to think they're teaching him to persevere and pursue what he wants even if it involves some things he doesn't like.

Kittygirl, having watched her scout brother from babyhood, knew she wanted to be a scout as soon as possible. When she was in kindergarten there were two choices: Girl Scouts or American Heritage Girls. We visited an American  Heritage Girl troop that met at the local Catholic cathedral. They did some cool stuff and we enjoyed the meeting, but it was just a little too Catholic for us. Though they were very welcoming to us as protestants, I decided scouting didn't also need to include regular lessons in Catholic prayers and theology. We then attended an interest meeting for Girl Scouts, where we learned that a new Daisy troop was being started at Maxwell. A girl from her class and her mom were at the meeting as well, and we both decided to sign up our girls. Kittygirl is still in this troop, now in her second year as a Brownie. The troop doesn't do a lot of outdoor activities, but they do all kinds of other amazing things, including service projects, coding, and more. All the girls in the troop are from her school and they've all become friends. None of them bat an eye when Kittygirl has to get insulin for snack at meetings or treat a low blood sugar. Originally Kittygirl attended Girl Scouts on her own, but, after her T1D diagnosis, I started attending meetings with her to take care of any diabetes needs during the meeting. At this point, I spend very little time one Kittygirl's needs and my role has morphed into more of an assistant leader, though all the planning is done by the amazing troop leader and all I have to do is show up. I've really enjoyed getting to know some of Kittygirl's classmates in a different environment.

Before I experienced Kittygirl's awesome Girl Scout troop, I often lamented that Cub Scouts wasn't open to girls, because I thought that Kittygirl would really enjoy it and I was sure the program was better than the Girl Scout program (turns out it's not better, just different). Well, lo and behold, as Kittygirl's second grade year began Cub Scouts was opened up to girls. She wanted to join, but didn't want to leave her amazing Girl Scout troop behind. I originally told her that she could do both for one year and then she had to choose. Not surprisingly, she adored Cub Scouts. She and the one other girl in her den (dens are officially divided by gender) became fast friends. She loved all the activities and especially the campouts. Interestingly, campouts are a great thing for her disability as well. Due to all the activity, her blood sugar is the best version of itself at campouts. It's usually in range over 80% of the time on campout weekends no matter what she eats with very little work on our part, except for giving her food without insulin when she starts to go low. Keeping her blood sugar in range 80% of the time on a normal day is possible, but a whole lot more work than it is on a campout day. Mr. Engineer is Kittygirl's den leader, and all the events are aimed at the whole family, so it's not weird that, for instance, one of us needs to be with her on overnight events for diabetes care, because all the other kids are with at least one parent for overnight events as well.

As you probably figured out, in the end we have let Kittygirl continue with both scout organizations for a second year. It makes her schedule even more insane (I'll write a post about her insane schedule some other time), but she has gained so much and learned so much through both her troop and he pack that it makes the insanity worth it.

I can't swear that scouting is right for your kid, of course, but, whatever brand of scouting fits your family best, it's absolutely worth trying.

In Which I Unabashedly Praise My Children's Schools

Yesterday I wrote about the many things I didn't like about Squirrelboy's early public school experience, so it's only fair that I also take some time to write about what I love about the schools my kids are currently attending. Since both of them have/had special events going on today, it's the perfect day to praise them.

Kittygirl attend a Spanish Immersion elementary school. The students have two main teachers, one of whom teaches language arts and social studies in English, and one of whom teachers math, science, and a little Spanish language arts in Spanish. They also three of their specials classes in Spanish: music, art, and library/technology. I was excited about Kittygirl learning Spanish, since that's what the two degrees I don't really use are in, but somehow I didn't realize that, in addition to being immersed in a second language, she'd be immersed in a culturally rich environment.

The majority of the Spanish speaking teachers at her school hail from somewhere in the Spanish speaking world, and they pass on their cultures to their students. In addition to this informal transmission of culture, the whole school studies different cultures of the Spanish speaking world throughout the school year. Last year, each grade gave a presentation about a different Spanish speaking country every month at the monthly assembly. The second graders presented on Equatorial Guinea, the only country in Africa in which Spanish is one of the official languages. Many people don't even know that there IS a country in Africa in which Spanish is spoken.

The school doesn't stop there, however. During Hispanic Heritage month (September 15 - October 15), the school hosts a Parade of Nations, which highlights the many nations of the world with which the students and staff of the school have a connection. Students can sign up to represent a country of their heritage, whether it's a country that they or one or both parents were born in, or a country from which their ancestors emigrated generations ago. In our case, our ancestors hailed from a variety of European nations, but we know what they all are and feel some kind of connection to them. The first year  of the parade, in first grade, Kittygirl represented Lithuania. That's the heritage with which I identify most strongly because it's the origin of my maiden name. In second grade Kittygirl really wanted to represent Sweden because her first name is Swedish, but we don't actually have any ancestors from Sweden. However, Mr. Engineer came to the rescue when he told her about his ancestors from right next door in Norway. This year's parade was today, and Kittygirl proudly represented Poland, which is the land from which our family  name originates. I always get a little teary eyed watching countries from all over the world (all continents except Antarctica and Australia were represented this year) being represented by these students and staff. There's a lot of division in our nation right now, and many people are suspicious of those who are different from them in some way. Watching this celebration of the diversity within a united, loving school community is a rare and precious thing.

Even outside of special events, I've been pleased so often with Kittygirl's school. As I mentioned yesterday, the school staff stepped up after her T1D diagnosis. I'm never nervous about sending her to school or worried that the staff will encounter something they can't handle. I have encountered so many parents who have experienced pushback when they asked that their child's medical needs be accommodated in school, I know that this kind of relationship with a school is not something to take for granted. In addition, every teacher I have encountered at her school seems to really love what they're doing and care about the kids and the mission of the school. Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated. This can at times lead to teachers who are just putting in their time until they retire or find another job. Thankfully, there are no teachers like that at Kittygirl's school.

Squirrelboy has only been at his new high school for 9 weeks so far, but I'm also incredibly pleased with it. He has commented that all of his teachers seem to love their jobs. We have also had personal experience, thanks to a stressful incident of mistaken identity last week, with how much the administrators care about the students and the effort they put into getting to know them. Squirrelboy's English teacher alone, however, might make sending him back to school worth it. As you might imagine, English has never been a favorite subject of Squirrelboys, what with the combination of his dyslexia and his ADHD. It was like pulling teeth to get him to write and to read literature when I was homeschooling him. However, his teacher has gotten him excited about learning how to communicate well, even though that includes writing. If I could have personally created an English teacher to help Squirrelboy thrive I would have created someone almost exactly like this man. He share Squirrelboy's passion of mountain biking, he does web design on the side, and he's also very interested in photography and videography, which are Squirrelboy's two main passions aside from biking at the moment. The first day of school, he told the students the story of how he left a corporate job and took a 60% pay cut to become a teacher. He's clearly passionate about his job and about helping students succeed.

Said amazing English teacher invited Squirrelboy to join the radio and journalism club, of which he is the adviser. Through that, Squirrelboy was given the opportunity to be the producer for the school news show. Since he's interested in pursuing such a job professionally, it's a perfect way for him to experience some of the things such a job entails before he makes any serious choices about his future.

Today, Squirrelboy is on the videography team covering his school's participation in the climate strike. Though most climate strikes were held a week ago, apparently this whole week has been designated at Climate Strike Week, and Squirrelboy's school decided to offer the students a chance to participate today. They aren't forcing the students to participate, of course. Those who don't choose to participate will have a supervised study hall at school, but the majority of both staff and students have chosen to participate. As I write this, they're out on a major road near their school holding signs about climate change and doing their part to raise awareness of the urgency of this issue.

I could go on about either school, but this is already getting long. Both of my children attend magnet schools, but I know it's not only specialized schools that contain caring, competent, and innovative teachers and staff. My overall experience with the public school system has been mixed, but I'm very thankful I currently have the opportunity to partner with two amazing schools in the education of my children.

In Which I Have a Complicated Relationship with the Public School System

When I was young, idealistic, and childless, I was certain that I would never consider having my children educated anywhere other than the public schools. In principle, I believe very strongly in the American public school system.  Historically speaking, it's a provocative and amazing thing that a nation would provide, free of charge, an education for all the children (both boys and girls) residing within its borders. This even applies to non-citizen children and those without legal residency. It is a revolutionary idea, looking at history, and even many parts of the world today, that, by law, even children with special needs are guaranteed a free and appropriate public education.

Sure, I knew that the system was not problem free. I knew there was a focus on testing that I didn't like. I knew that not all schools were high achieving like the affluent suburban school system from which I graduated.  However, I figured that any minor problems we might encounter could be overcome by good parents who were committed to being involved in their childrens' education. I figured, if my hypothetical children had any problems at all, they would be social, not academic, because I figured my children would be like me - bright but not particularly socially adept.

My rosy view of the public school system was not tested at all by Squirrelboy's first encounter with our local public school. He was behind in speech and qualified first for state provided early intervention and then (starting on his third birthday) public preschool at our local elementary school. He loved every minute of it. His teacher and his speech therapist were both amazing, and I was confident that he would continue to thrive there in kindergarten and beyond.

Then Squirrelboy started kindergarten and it all went downhill. Despite the fact that we had done everything we were supposed to do to build "prereading" skills, he wasn't learning letters at the rate he was expected to, let alone associating them with sounds. I looked up the signs of dyslexia, and he had every single one. I shared my suspicions wit his teacher, but she assured me that he was too young to be diagnosed with dyslexia. She said that for some kids, especially boys, iti just takes a little while for reading to click. She assured me that, after Christmas, a key would turn in his brain and he'd suddenly take off in reading. Even when it didn't happen right after Christmas, his teacher continued to dismiss our concerns. This happened consistently right up until the spring conference, at which she told us that reading just wasn't clicking for Squirrelboy and she thought he would benefit from "an extra year of primary" (eduspeak for repeating kindergarten). It was at that point that we sought and outside evaluation for dyslexia and then started tutoring after school two days a week. We insisted that Squirrelboy be moved on to first grade, not believing that another year of the methods that failed to teach him to read the first time around would miraculously have a different effect the second time.

About a third of the way into first grade I first started looking into homeschooling. Squirrelboy was miserable. Every Sunday at bedtime he would cry because he had to endure another week of school. In addition to not reading at the level he was expected to (despite making steady progress with the tutor), he had a very difficult time living up to the behavior expectations. He was constantly being told to "move his bee down to yellow" for various minor infractions, and it broke his heart that he never got to participate in the special experiences given to students who were easily able to meet the behavior expectations. We brought up with his teacher that we thought he might have ADHD, but, just like with his kindergarten teacher, our concerns were dismissed out of hand. He wasn't excessively disruptive, so surely he couldn't have ADHD. Some kids, especially boys, we were told, just take a little longer to mature. Just give him time, he'll learn to manage his behavior.

Had it been up to me, I would have pulled Squirrelboy out of school to homeschool during, or, at the latest, after first grade, but Mr. Engineer was not on board at the time. He made a reasonable point that it would be difficult to concentrate on homeschool with a toddler underfoot (Kittygirl was one at the time). He is the son of two public school teachers, and his commitment to the public school system was even stronger than mine. So we continued. After first grade, things in improved a bit. Squirrelboy was reading on grade level by third grade and finished the tutoring program by the end of fourth grade. He still had problems focusing and struggled with any subject that involved lots of details, especially math, but his teachers consistently dismissed us when we brought up ADHD as a possibility.

During his 5th grade year we had to make a decision about middle school. We knew we didn't want to send him to our local middle school. It consistently has one of the lowest sets of test scores in the district. While I am among the first  to say that tests don't mean everything, it does mean something if the large majority of the students at a school can't achieve even basic competence on them. The school also has a lot of behavior problems and some of the students are even involved in gangs. Though it would have horrified the young, idealistic version of me who wanted to teach in an inner city school, I knew I could not put my child in that environment. He got a spot at a magnet school. It was better and he might have done okay there, but the strict dress code and strict discipline would have been stifling to him. Mr. Engineer, to my surprise, agreed with my point of view and told me to move forward with plans to homeschool him for middle school.

Homeschool as not all butterflies and roses all the time. After an initial honeymoon period in which Squirrelboy was ready to do anything I said because he was so happy not to be in public middle school we started to butt heads fairly often and there were moments when I seriously wondered if putting him in that school I had so wanted to avoid would really be any worse than the daily torture we were enduring. Things started to improve when we finally decided to have him formally evaluated for ADHD. When he was constantly distracted while sitting in a quiet house at the kitchen table with just me in the room I realized that it had been silly of me to let his teachers push off my suspicions for so many years. To the surprise of no one who knew him well, he was diagnosed with moderate ADHD, combined type. It was quite a journey finding the right medication and the right dosage for him, but, once we did, it was a revelation. I could actually read a page to him without him interrupting me every other sentence. He could read and answer questions in his history book without forgetting the question halfway through his answer. It was amazing.

Homeschool continued to get better in 7th grade when Mr. Engineer took over as math teacher. It turns out that I'm a really pathetic math teacher. The one thing that bothered me about homeschool, in fact, was other homeschoolers. I endured so many conversations about how horrible our local public schools (or just public schools in general) were. Some were from parents who had pulled their children out of school after bad experiences, but other parents had never sent their children to public school. They were just certain that no child could every possibly be decently educated in a public school. Or, at the very least, they MIGHT get an acceptable education, but they would certainly be subject to evil influences and grow up to be horrible people. This was from people from all over the religious spectrum - conservative Christians all the way to avowed Atheists.

I normally kept my mouth shut about the fact that, all the time I was happily homeschooling Squirrelboy, I was also having a great experience as a public school parent. Kittygirl started kindergarten the year Squirrelboy started middle school. Even though she's a very different child and might actually have had a good experience there, I was adamantly opposed to sending her to the elementary school that Squirrelboy attended. After all of his struggles there, the idea of sending another child left a bad taste in my mouth. Happily,  Mr. Engineer was sensitive to my feelings and didn't insist that we send her there. We gave serious consideration to a fairly new private school that was affordable and followed the same education philosophy as her preschool, which we adored. But then we got notice that she had won ah highly coveted lottery spot at the Spanish immersion elementary school.  We didn't immediately  decide to accept it, but, after reflection and (a little bit of) prayer, we decided it couldn't hurt to try kindergarten at the free school that so many people wanted their kids to get into. After all, the private school wasn't going to turn away our money if the Spanish immersion school was a bad fit for Kittygirl and we sought to enroll her there for first grade.

Kittygirl thrived, and continues to thrive, at that school. I was terrified of sending her back after she was diagnosed with T1D during presidents' day weekend of her kindergarten year, but the school stepped up and has provided great care. It's not always the same care I would provide, but she's safe and healthy and doesn't miss out on anything due to her diabetes.

If Squirrelboy had been my only child I might have eventually become one of those homeschooling parents who denigrate the public school system, but the fact is that public school has been nothing but a good experience for my second child.

That catches us up to today, when I've recently laid my homeschooling parent identity aside and Squirrelboy has started high school at another magnet school. He did not want to go back to public school. He grudgingly agreed that the small magnet school would be better than our gigantic local high school if he HAD to go back to school, but he really didn't want to go back. The monday before school started (for some odd reason our school year always starts on a Wednesday) he asked me if we could go shopping - for homeschool curriculum. I was expecting he would have a bumpy transition and his grades might be less than ideal for awhile as he got used to working for someone other than mom and dad. I expected that he would say the first day was tolerable, at best. To my great surprise, he declared the first day "great," and his school experience has remained almost entirely positive. He complains about some assignments and he says Civics class is boring, but overall he's amazingly positive about school. The school was also amazingly receptive to setting up a 504 plan for his ADHD and gave him every single accommodation I asked for.

For the moment, I have a mostly positive feeling about public school. Both kids are in schools that are good places for them, with teachers and staff who love their jobs and do their best to help the kids succeed. However, I'm no longer that idealist 20-something who thought public school was the only acceptable choice for socially conscious parents. Even the best school isn't a good fit for every kid, and, for some kids and families, homeschool or private school is simply a better choice. The American public school system is flawed, yes, but, in the right circumstances, it has a lot of things going for it.

In Which Both My Kids Are Certain I Love the Other One More

I imagine that parenting an only child has its own challenges. I did get a small taste of that since Squirrelboy was nearly 6 years old by the time Kittygirl was born and desperate for a sibling. However, I contend that parenting multiple kids is its own special version of torture that parents of only children never come close to experiencing. And I only have two kids. I can only attempt to imagine what the people I know who have up to six kids are going through.

It's the duty of every good parent to love all of our kids and do our best not to play favorites. However, from the point of view of our kids, it can all too frequently appear as if we're playing favorites even if all we're really doing is following the schedule that our children's activities set for us. If one or more kid has some type of special need this can get even more complicated.

When Kittygirl was a baby this wasn't so bad. Squirrelboy was going to a tutor on the other side of town 2 -3 afternoons a week for his dyslexia, but she was a pretty mellow baby and didn't mind. When he was still going by the time she was 3 years old it was wearing on me. The place had some toys in the waiting area, but she was tired of all the toys by this point and really wanted to go do something fun. We made the tour of nearby parks, but I was always dragging her away to go get brother when his session ended, usually right after she had made a new friend or found something super awesome to do, so it wasn't nearly as much fun as she wanted it to be. Plus, she was dragged to his ballet classes first once, and then twice a week. When she was old enough to start classes I always tried to find a class that overlapped with one of brother's if possible, which meant she didn't always get her first choice of class time or teacher. She simply did not understand why Squirrelboy took precedent over her.

Fast forward a few  years, and Squirrelboy is the one who is often overlooked, or at least feels like he is. He finished up the tutoring program in the spring of 4th grade, and stopped dancing midway through 5th grade, so his only committments left were scouts (which is Mr. Engineer's territory) and a free homeschool Ultimate frisbee team starting in the spring of 5th grade. Unfortunately for him, the fact that the team was an activity we hadn't paid any money for meant that it occasionally had to come second to one of Kittygirl's activities for which we had paid a lot of money. He could often get rides to and from practices with a neighbor who was also on the team, but occasionally that would fall through and I would have to decide whether to call on Mr. Engineer's help for transport so Squirrelboy could get picked up at practice halfway through Kittygirl's ballet class or tell Squirrelboy that he couldn't attend practice that day. If the latter, he would inevitably rage that it was unfair and that I clearly prioritized Kittygirl's activities over his.

This fall, Squirrelboy  had no regular commitments lined up other than Boy Scouts. He has gotten really into mountain biking, and he said that he would like to be taken to the trails (which are on the other side of town) to ride once a week if possible. The day was totally flexible, and I figured that surely we could work it in some afternoon after school. Kittygirl was "only" going to do gymnastics (one evening a week), girl scouts (twice a month after school), and Cub Scouts (one evening a week). Then I proceeded to make two mistakes (at least from Squirrelboy's point of view). First, I brought Kittygirl to the Open House at the new location our longtime ballet school just moved into. She fell in love with it and decided that she did want to continue ballet after all. She was already signed up for gymnastics and loved it, so I reluctantly agreed to do both. Second, deciding it was my duty due to having more time now that I'm done homeschooling Squirrelboy, I told the Cubmaster of Kittygirl's pack that I was willing to step in as a den leader if they needed one. These two decisions meant that a) Kittygirl has a commitment after school and/or in the evening every weekday and b) I am now busy on Monday evenings, a time at which previously Squirrelboy and I could do something together while Kittygirl and Mr. Engineer were at Cub Scouts. Just to throw in another commitment, I agreed to let Kittygirl sign up for the Girls on the Run program, which has her staying after school until 4pm two days a week. One of those days was, of course, the day we had decided worked best to bring Squirrelboy to the mountain bike trails. Also, due to the schedule from hell for which I have only myself to blame, Kittygirl has ballet at 4:45pm that day. Last week we tried having me pick up Squirrelboy as soon as his school got out, drive him to the other side of town, circle back to Kittygirl's school by 4pm, drive back to get Squirrelboy, and then drive to ballet. That would be an ideal solution, if only it didn't result in Kittygirl being 10 minutes late to ballet. As of this writing, we still haven't found a solution that makes everyone happy.

Balancing kids' schedules and time with kids is difficult in any family. It's extra difficult when there are special needs in the mix. Kittygirl's diabetes sometimes makes us late to stuff. If she has a low or high blood sugar that needs to be addressed just as we're about to walk out the door it can make us late, which really makes Squirrelboy mad. Plus, while I would probably leave a typical 8 year old in ballet class long enough to go pick up her brother at a park 20 minutes away, I'm loath to leave an 8 year old with diabetes just on the off chance she has some kind of diabetes emergency during the 40 minutes I'll be gone. All of this has me frequently attempting to reassure Squirrelboy that I really don't love him less or care about his interests and passions less, I just have to make his sister's health and safety a priority. This reassurance is not generally well received. Partly due to his ADHD and partly due to his personality, Squirrelboy has really big feelings and lets them gain control of him pretty often. My brain is very similar to Squirrelboy's and it happens to me too, so I can sympathize, but it's not the least bit helpful for both of us to get angry and slam doors when the intention is to reassure him that he really is important and loved.

When it comes down to it, I think that deep down both of our kids know that we love them and do our best to give them opportunities to pursue the things they're passionate about. However, that does not stop them from telling us just how we're ruining their lives by prioritizing their sibling at that particular moment.

In Which Our Challenges Are NOT a Gift from God (And Not a Curse Either)

Sometimes it's interesting being a Christian in the diabetes community. Because diabetes can happen to anyone, there are, not surprisingly, parents from all walks of life that belong to diabetes parent Facebook groups. However, I always find myself paying particular attention to people who talk about the Christian faith in their posts and/or comments. Christians who post in these groups frequently fall into one of two camps. Camp 1 is what I like to call the Angry Doubter camp. These people are on the verge of losing their faith due to their child's diagnosis. They simply can't believe that a loving God would allow their child to get such a horrible disease and, therefore, God either doesn't exist or is a massive jerk who is not worthy of their worship. Camp 2 might be called the Divine Gift camp. They believe that there is a divine purpose behind their child's diagnosis, and that God gave diabetes to their particular child at this particular time to fulfill a particular purpose. Sometimes they even think they know what that purpose is. Which camp do I belong to? Neither, and in fact I find both equally troubling and weirdly similar in that they both begin with a flawed view of God and of God's purposes in the world. Let me tell you why.

The Angry Doubters seem to be completely unaware of the fact that, the moment before their child was diagnosed with diabetes, the world was full of suffering and evil. Somehow it didn't shake their faith the least little bit that there are girls being sold into sexual slavery, boys being trained as soldiers, storms destroying whole villages, or any of the other myriad tragedies and evils that happen in our fallen world every day. Yet the fact that their child was diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune condition with which many people have lived happily and successfully for decades and for which new and better treatments are in near constant development is simply too much for their faith to overcome. Have they been taught that God protects believers and will never let anything bad happen to them? If so, they've been taught wrong. The lives of the apostles and the martyrs of the early church should be enough to make it clear that God does not protect His children from all harm. However, since American Christianity is all too often found in an ahistorical vacuum, they might be unaware of this example. I can have a rational discussion with someone who wants to argue against the goodness or the existence of God based on the evil in the world. However, if your reason for leaving your faith is that that evil touched your own family, it was likely never much of a faith at all.

People in the Divine Gift camp, I think, make the opposite mistake.This is where my Calvinist friends are going to take issue with me. I don't think God looked down at my daughter, or any other person, and thought, "I'll give this one type 1 diabetes. It will be an incredible gift and she'll accomplish great things because of it." I also don't think God looks down on particular parents to be and determines that they are the best possible people to "bless" with a child with special needs of any kind. If we attribute these things as direct actions of God, where do we stop? Did God also give diabetes to the child of the mother in the Angry Doubter camp who has now abandoned whatever faith she had since her child's diagnosis? Did God give diabetes to the young adult who couldn't afford his insulin after going off his parents' insurance and died a month later? Is God pulling the trigger of every gun that kills an unarmed young Black man (or anyone at all)? Is God behind the wheel of every car that causes a fatal accident? Following along this track can lead to a very dangerous view of God.

Now, before you start preparing the fire to burn me at the stake as a heretic, listen to what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that it's not okay to be angry with God because your child has an incurable disease or for any other reason. You do not want to know how often I have raged at God for this reason and others. I find it incredibly unjust at times that our family was given the challenges we were given while other families seem to waltz through life with no serious problems. However, in the end, God is big enough to listen to my angry tirades and continue to be with me. In the end, I believe that God weeps with us over own tragedies and the tragedies of the world (big or small) and is with us when we're ready to get back up and move forward in this messy world. Someday God will bring a new heaven and a new earth. Kittygirl will have a new, perfect body. She will be able to feast at the heavenly banquet table without counting a single carb. In the meantime, God will be with her, with me, and with anyone else who calls on Him. I'm also not saying that God doesn't, at times, use our challenges to bless us and to bring glory to Himself. Our family has met some amazing people because of diabetes. It has made us stronger and made us more observant, conscientious parents. However, when it comes down to it, we could have learned the lessons we've learned in different ways and at different times if not for diabetes. We have allowed God to work in our lives through these challenges, but that doesn't mean we believe He ordained this particular set of challenges for us. It just means He's strong enough to bring redemption through them.

In Which I'm Glad I Got My Birthday Dinner Out of the Way Yesterday

Today is my birthday. Our family has a tradition of going out to a restaurant of the birthday person's choice to celebrate birthdays. Sometimes, however, schedules get in the way and we need to celebrate the birthday a day or two before or after the actual day. Since Kittygirl has an evening activity EVERY.SINGLE.WEEKDAY this fall (this is all my fault and I'll probably post about it later), we determined that Sunday was the best day to go out.

I was initially disappointed that going out on my actual birthday wasn't an option, but, upon reflection, I realized it wasn't all bad. You see, when you have a child with T1D, every meal is potentially a stressful event. Meals out of the home are potentially even more stressful.

Remember how I posted a few days ago about how every snack that Kittygirl asks for produces an existential dilemma? Meals can be even worse. I can, on occasion, say no to snacks, but the kid has to eat three meals a day. Even if everything has gone wrong and her blood sugar has been out of range for most of the day, I still have to feed Kittygirl dinner. If we're home I might be able to find a low carb option that she'll eat and give me a less stressful evening, but that's not usually an option when we go out.

When you hear a basic outline, T1D doesn't seem so bad. You just have to count your carbs and take the appropriate amount of insulin via your insulin pump or an injection and, unless you calculated the dose wrong, your blood sugar will stay in range, right? Wrong. Sometimes that's the result. Other times the food digested quicker or slower than you anticipated and you ended up with a surprise dip into low blood sugar, or a surprise spike up to high blood sugar, or, just for fun, both. Even when you're at a restaurant that has nutrition information available, that information doesn't tell you all the factors that will go into how your body processes those carbs. And there's very little information available to help you  figure out how your body will deal with any protein or fat in the meal.

Plus there's the question of when to dose for the food. Some people dose right after ordering at restaurants, giving the insulin a headstart. This is often advisable, but, with a picky 8 year old, we can't usually do that at a restaurant because, with a few exceptions, there's no guarantee Kittygirl will eat the food she has ordered. At home we use this strategy frequently because we can always hand her something else if she decides she's not eating whatever we dosed for. At a restaurant that's a lot trickier.

The good news is, Kittygirl didn't eat anything super difficult last night. She didn't like the breading on her chicken, so she ate a little bit of chicken with the breading scraped off (which actually makes it easier to deal with), about half her fries, and a bunch of chips (we had Mexican, one of the few categories the whole family enjoys). All of this meant that I only had to deal with one fairly easy high blood sugar after she went to sleep, as opposed to a ridiculously stubborn high blood sugar that refused to go down despite having insulin shot at it from a cannon.

Other birthday dinners, for me and other family members, have produced much more stressful results. And don't even get me started on evening birthday parties. Cake and ice cream after 5pm produce an unequalled overnight blood sugar monster.

So why do I let this stress into my life? Why don't I stop going out for my birthday and instead cook a meal at home that I know how to dose for? Why don't I say no to the evening birthday parties, or say yes to the parties but no to the cake and ice cream? Why? Because, when Kittygirl was diagnosed, I promised myself that T1D would not control our lives. The thing is, getting rid of birthday dinners out, evening birthday parties, or anything else that adds extra diabetes stress, will not take away T1D. It's always there in the background. It would be there even if our whole family switched to a paleo or keto diet. We'd have less food stress on the average day, but instead we'd likely have food resentment and a kid who hated diabetes because it took away the food she loved.

Our goal is to raise a healthy kid who doesn't look back on her childhood and think that diabetes ruined it. My hope and prayer is that, by the time Kittygirl has reached young adulthood, there will be (if not a true cure) a revolutionary new treatment that takes away all or most of the burden of living with diabetes. However, if that doesn't happen, I want her to go into young adulthood with an attitude that T1D is a part of her life that she has to take care of, but not the boss of her life.

In the meantime, I'm having a somewhat less stressful birthday without anticipating dosing for an unknown dinner. That is, if I ignore the fact that breakfast acted in a way I didn't anticipate and Kittygirl is now starting lunch with high blood sugar.... at least I'm not the one in charge right now. I'll do my best to ignore that and enjoy my birthday lunch with a friend, at which I will not have to count a single carb and for which my amazing pancreas will produce exactly the right amount of insulin. I never realized just how astounding this is until I had to try to take over its job.

In Which I Lament the Fact That My Kids Love Books but Not Reading

I adore books. Like, really, really adore them. Before I started letting my smartphone take over some of my free time, it was not unusual for me to read 200+ books a year. Books were my escape and my salvation in a shy, somewhat lonely, childhood. It wasn't so bad that I had few friends because the characters became my friends. I always assumed that my kids would share my love of reading, despite the fact that I married a man who doesn't share that love.

I read to my kids regularly from the time I brought them home from the hospital. I read favorite books over and over again (I can still recite the entire text of IS YOUR MAMA A LLAMA?). I did everything the experts say you should do to raise readers. I read to them. I filled our house with books. I read a lot myself and they observed me reading. I bought books for them and took them to the library regularly. I encouraged them to choose books that were interesting to them and didn't force them to read particular classic books. Still, I have somehow failed to raise even one voracious reader.

Squirrelboy kind of has an excuse. His brain isn't naturally built for reading. For me, reading is relaxing. For him, reading is hard work. He only chooses to read if it's something that's really interesting to him. Most of the time it's an article about technology as opposed to a book. He does love audiobooks and still asks me to read to him, so I don't feel like a complete failure. It seems likely he'll be like his dad as an adult, who only reads books if they're about something really important to him. I really didn't understand that until I watched Squirrelboy painfully learn to read and realized that his dad's brain works in a very similar way. For most dyslexics, reading something you're not very interested in is simply more trouble than it's worth. I do still have a little bit of hope. My dyslexic brother turned a corner in his view of pleasure reading sometime in high school and really enjoys reading as an adult, so it could still happen for Squirrelboy.

Kittygirl is only 8, so I'm hoping against hope that there's still time for her to turn into a bookworm. She's a natural reader and can read well above grade level. She is, however, drastically different from me when it comes to the way she relates to people. She prefers spending time with people over anything else. I would come home from school and lose myself in a book. Her philosophy is, "Why bother with books when there are people on hand to play with or talk to?" She would seriously rather sit in the kitchen and talk to me while I make dinner than read a book. She only reads on days off or over the assigned number of minutes for reading log if she has literally exhausted every single other option. The one exception is the rare occasion she discovers a book she really loves. A couple weeks ago she devoured the graphic novel REAL FRIENDS by Shannon Hale. She carried it everywhere with her and it was actually hard to tear her away from it. If I could discover a few thousand more books she loved that much, I might be able to shoehorn her into the bookworm club after all :).

In the meantime, I'll keep buying books for my kids, making trips to the library, playing audiobooks in the van, and inviting them into the world I love so much.

In Which Every Snack Is an Existential Dilemma

Raising kids is hard. Raising a kid with a chronic health condition is a whole new level of hard. In case someone who's not a Facebook friend of mine and therefore fully educated in type 1 diabetes (hereafter referred to as T1D ) thanks to my daily posts every November (diabetes awareness month) reads this at some point, I'll take a moment to explain what T1D is. T1D is an autoimmune condition wherein, for reasons scientists don't yet fully understand, the immune system treats the insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas as foreign invaders and begins attacking them. Eventually it incapacitates enough beta cells that the body can no longer produce enough insulin to turn food into energy, and to function in general. The first written record of diabetes stretches all the way back to ancient Egypt, and it's probable that it was present well before that. Before the discovery and manufacture of insulin in the 1920's, diabetes was invariably fatal. When I was growing up, kids with T1D (then called juvenile diabetes) had to eat on a strict schedule and were told to avoid sugar. Thanks to advancement in both insulin formulations and diabetes technology, people with T1D can now live almost normally. They key word in that last sentence is ALMOST.

When Kittygirl was diagnosed just over 2 1/2 years ago now, we were given a crash course in diabetes care in the hospital. There were a whole lot more details, but the basic outline is that we were told that we needed to carefully calculate the total carbohydrates in all the food she ate and then give her an insulin shot based on a complicated formula including her carb to insulin ratio plus her correction ratio if her blood sugar was above the target level. Because she was still fairly young (6 years old) they recommended giving her the injection after she ate. We were to check her blood sugar before she ate and two hours after eating. If her blood sugar was high two hours after eating, that meant that her ratios might need to be changed.

That all sounded complicated, but totally doable. Little did we know that was just the tip of the iceberg. It turns out there are at least 42 factors that affect blood sugar. Some of them are related to what's happening inside a person's body (for instance, growth hormones will often cause a child's blood sugar to spike overnight). Others related to external factors acting on the person, such as stress or excitement. Vigorous exercise that occurred yesterday can affect a person's reaction to insulin today. And then there's the fact that, contrary to what we were told in the hospital, not all carbs are created equal.Some digest quickly and it's best to give insulin 10-20 minutes before you eat them. Others digest slowly and only part of the insulin needs to be given before they're eaten. In fact, I've found that, in Kittygirl's case, there are a few foods that don't raise blood sugar until many hours after they're consumed.

Just a few months into our diabetes journey Kittygirl started wearing a Dexcom continuous glucose monitor (hereafter known as a CGM). That gave us a startling window into what was happening with her blood sugar in between the times we had been pricking her finger.  As a general rule, what was happening was that her blood sugar was spiking really high between meals. There are endocrinologists and others in the diabetes community who insist that this is unavoidable and totally fine, just part of living with T1D. However, we weren't willing to accept that. We discovered a method of dynamic diabetes management known as Sugar Surfing and began to experiment with timing insulin and trying to minimize blood sugar spikes and keep the CGM graph as smooth as possible.

Fast forward two years, and we're still living in a science experiment while trying to make our daughter's life as normal as possible. In theory, Kittygirl can eat like a normal kid. She can eat anytime she wants to and eating sweets is totally permissible. In practice, we're walking a tightrope between trying to make sure she doesn't hate diabetes and trying to keep her blood sugar in range as much as possible. At this point, most days we stay on the tightrope more often than we fall off it, but there are still plenty of times we fall off. Every single bite of food that goes into her mouth involves a calculation of how many carbs are in the meal or snack, how fast or slow the carbs will digest, and what her activity level has been recently and will be in the near future. This is particularly tricky when it comes to snacks. Sometimes I've messed up the bolus (insulin dose) for a meal and Kittygirl's blood sugar is high an hour afterward but she's hungry again. Do I make her eat something low carb that she doesn't really like, or do I give extra insulin along with insulin for a regular snack and hope her blood sugar doesn't go significantly higher? Either choice has potential pitfalls. Even if her blood sugar is in range, I need to carefully evaluate how that snack is likely to affect it and what impact it could have on the rest of the day (or night in the case of afternoon or evening snack). I could just say no to anything that I know is hard to dose for, but then I'm afraid she'll hate me and hate diabetes, and as a teenager she'll rebel and stop taking insulin altogether (this is a thing that happens sometimes, unfortunately).

A perfect example of this dilemma happened yesterday after school. There's a little coffee and ice cream shop a block from Kittygirl's school, and we've made a deal that she can get a snack there once a month. Her favorite thing to get, which is, of course, the hardest thing to bolus for, is an orange shake. I have so far never once succeeded in dosing that shake correctly. No matter what I try, her blood sugar always goes high and stays high for hours. I tried to convince her to get something else, but she really, really wanted the shake. Her blood sugar had been in range all day and I figured, "Well, maybe today will be the day I succeed." Spoiler alert: it wasn't. Her blood sugar climbed really high and stayed high all afternoon and evening long, despite a dinner with easy carbs and multiple correction doses of insulin. First I got angry. Then I made myself calm down and told Kittygirl that I was done trying with the particular food for now, and that I would find an alternative way to make her an orange shake at home with ingredients I understood better. She was willing to settle for that compromise for now, but we'll see if she still agrees next month when it's time to get a treat at the ice cream shop.

The majority of scientific evidence tells us that, if a person with diabetes has good average blood sugars (which Kittygirl does), and if the standard deviation is 1/3 or less of the average blood sugar (which Kittygirl's usually is), that person is very likely to avoid serious diabetes complications and an occasional extreme blood sugar spike is not a big deal. However, we've chosen not to be satisfied with meeting the minimum threshold to probably avoid serious complications. We want to give Kittygirl the brightest future possible, and we believe that one of the ways to do that is to control her blood sugar as well as we can during this phase of her life when we have a lot of control over what she eats and what she does. We're attempting to do this in a way that's not super restrictive and doesn't make her intensely resent us or resent diabetes. Our hope and prayer is that she will emulate our methods more often than not as she gets older and takes more control of her own diabetes care and faces her own existential dilemmas about what snacks to eat and when.

In Which I Tell You What I Miss Most About Homeschooling (Spoiler Alert: It's Not Doing School in Pajamas)

Squirrelboy attended our local elementary school and is now in his first year of public high school, but in between those two I spent three years homeschooling. Our reasons for choosing homeschool for middle school were myriad and aren't directly related to this post, but I'm likely to cover them some other time.

There were many things I loved about homeschooling. The relaxed schedule was great. The ability to teach to my child's learning style was great. The lack of the social pressure that most middle schoolers seem to experience was great. For the record, since people ask Squirrelboy about this all the time, I always  made him change into regular clothes for school, except for an occasional previously schedule pajama day, so there's nothing to miss in that realm.What we both really miss is the way we started almost every day of homeschool: Storytime.

When I started homeschooling him I had all sorts of grand plans based on my many years of reading and posting on a homeschooling forum. One of those plans was having a daily "morning time." This time was going to include scripture reading, poetry reading, musical appreciation, and readalouds. Consistent scripture reading, to my chagrin, quickly went out the window, though we did manage to keep a short devotional reading. Poetry reading never really took off and it got moved to occasional poetry teas (more about that some other time). Musical appreciation never happened. However, reading aloud was a huge hit. I tried vainly to keep the name "morning time" for awhile despite the failure of my initial plans, but Squirrelboy insisted on calling it storytime and eventually I gave in.

We usually had two books going: one related to one of our school subjects (usually history, occasionally science) and one just for fun. We traveled through time and around the world with the books we experienced together. Because Squirrelboy has a particular fascination with the world wars, I now know more about them, from the perspectives of many countries, than almost anyone who isn't a historian of that period. I also made a concentrated effort to read books written by or at least chronically the experience of people outside of our white, Christian, middle class bubble. Through that, he has come to recognize his privilege and think about how his life would be different if he had been born into a different place, a different time, a different culture, or a different family.

Thanks to many years of after school tutoring, Squirrelboy can read well despite his dyslexia. However, reading is not and never will be a natural activity for him. His brain has to work significantly harder than mine to decode print. I always set aside a time for him to read silently, but I knew that that time was not what was going to get him to fall in love with books. Even without all the historical and cultural knowledge he gained through storytime, it would have been worth my time because it helped him fall in love with books. He already enjoyed books and being read to, but three years of daily storytime brought that love to a new level. I don't think he'll ever relax with a book in his hand the way I do, but he's discovered digital audiobooks, and one of his favorite ways to wind down is listening to a favorite audiobook. He prefers to fall asleep while listening to a book. He has practically memorized most of the Anne of Green Gables series, and is working his way through all the Agatha Christie ebooks available through our library.

The best news of all: even now that he's back in school, Squirrelboy wants to keep storytime going. We haven't been able to establish a routine so far, unfortunately, but we've squeezed in a few storytime sessions. Our current read: Fatherland by Robert Harris. At our current rate, it may be Thanksgiving before we finish this, but that's okay. I'll keep up this special time with my teen as long as he'll let me do it.

In Which I Attempt to Explain What I've Done to NOT Screw Up My Kids So Far

When wasting time on Facebook instead of doing something useful like dusting my house (don't ask me when I last did that), I often run across articles detailing how hard it is to raise good, honest kids these days. Society has gone downhill, they say. There are so many temptations and opportunities for kids to grow up way before their time. There are 8 year olds running around with smartphones and accidentally happening upon porn. It seems that often the conclusion is that you either need to homeschool your kids, never give them phones, and keep them away from those things for as long as possible or you need to give in to the inevitable and try to minimize the damage. We've managed to find a middle way with our kids (at least so far), and an incident that happened regarding Squirrelboy last night and into this morning has compelled me to write about that. Even in this fairly anonymous space I don't want to share the details of this incident. The basic outline is that it was communicated to Squirrelboy's principal that he was the instigator of an event of which he was actually the reporter. The incident took place outside another high school, to which Squirrelboy takes a bus in the afternoon to transfer to a bus to our neighborhood. Thanks to a lot of phone calls made by both me and Mr. Engineer last night and by Squirrelboy's principal this morning, the truth was sorted out by 8am when his principal had scheduled a meeting with all of us. Squirrelboy received a fervent apology and the principal is committed to finding out how the message was transmitted so badly and what needs to happen districtwide so that another good kid doesn't end up getting blamed for something he or she bravely reports. What really struck me during the meeting, however, was that both the principal and the vice principal told us that, when they heard the allegation, they knew Isaac was not the kind of kid who would do that. This is his first year at this school and school has been in session for just over a month, so I think the fact that the administrators of his school already know he's a person of good character says a lot about him. I know he's a good kid, of course, but I'm his mom. I'm biased. We're not done raising him yet, but I think the fact that we've gotten him all the way to 14 and both people who know him well and people who are just getting to know him comment on his good character is an accomplishment worth noting.

So what did we do? I'm actually going to start with what we didn't do. We didn't let him watch whatever movies and TV shows he wanted to watch, even if it seemed like all of his peers were watching them. We have always carefully curated the media both he and his sister are exposed to. And by that I don't mean we decided upon a particular rating level we wouldn't let him watch. When he asked about watching something, we would read about it and, if we were still unsure, we would watch the first episode with him. For example, he started watching Downtown Abbey, which is rated TV-14, at 11 because he was very interested in this historical aspect and we decided the positives of what he could learn through the show outweighed the negatives of the occasional mature content. However, the rule was that either I had to have watched the episode previously or we had to watch it together. That enabled me to talk through the mature content with him either as we were watching an episode or before he watched it. He's watched a carefully curated selection of R rated movies with a parent (sometimes with a scene or two skipped over) because we believe those movies held an important lesson for him. However, there are some popular PG movies that he hasn't seen and will have to wait until he's an adult to see and can make his own media choices because we don't think he needs that garbage in his brain. Another thing we didn't do was let him play a lot of video games. He went through a brief obsession with Minecraft, but even then we tightly controlled how much time he could spend on Minecraft and made sure it didn't supersede his other interests. He is now completely baffled by the fact that so many of his peers are obsessed with video games. We also didn't get him a phone until he was in 8th grade. Even then, we didn't give him internet access on the phone until he could make a good case for needing it for a practical reason. We still only let him use preapproved apps and don't let him watch YouTube or other videos on his phone. We haven't let him get any social media accounts, even though most of his friends have had them for years, well before the official internet age of consent of 13. Keeping him off social media takes away one potential bullying space as well as one potential space for being exposed to content we believe is inappropriate for his still developing brain.

Our parenting hasn't been all about negatives, however. One important thing HAVE done is spend a lot of time with him. That's easy for me since I've been a stay at home mom his whole life, but Mr. Engineer always makes spending time and making memories with the kids a priority (often to the detriment of projects around the house getting completed). We've instituted a family culture in which honesty and integrity are valued. We read to him (even now that he's a high schooler) and we talk about what we read. Sometimes characters in books have a lot to teach us, either because they made the right decisions or because they made all the wrong decisions. We also talk to him about why we aren't letting him watch or listen to or play some things his friends have told him are totally awesome. We talk to him about the kind of man we hope and pray he grows up to be and how we hope the way we're parenting will help him become that kind of man. We also take him to church and Sunday School, but we don't leave his religious education to the church alone. We read scripture with him and pray with and for him. We talk about how our faith plays a role in the decisions we make. His good character isn't only due to what we've done, however. Another important aspect is what he has learned through his involvement with the Boy Scouts of America. Mr. Engineer is an Eagle Scout, and the values he learned through scouting stay with him today. He wanted the same for Squirrelboy, and Squirrelboy joined a Cub Scout pack (with Mr. Engineer as his adult partner) in first grade, the first year he was eligible. The BSA motto includes a promise to keep oneself "physically fit, mentally awake, and morally straight." The BSA law states that, among other things, a scout is trustworthy and loyal. Unfortunately, there are people who go all the way through BSA and even sometimes people who serve as leaders who don't truly live these principles. However, Squirrelboy has had an amazing experience with adults who really want the boys to understand and live the motto and the law. I think with our family dynamic Squirrelboy could have turned out just as honest and trustworthy as he is without scouting, but his scouting experience is a wonderful complement to what we're doing and has helped him learn to live out principles we believe in even when he's not around us.

Poor Kittygirl has been basically ignored in this entry. She's only 8, and there have been fewer opportunities in her life for us to see what we're doing right. However, the thing I'm struck with about her is that she's a really good friend. We must be doing things mostly right with her as well when I hear from other parents at her school that she's kind to everyone and everyone likes her. We're raising her in about the same way as we raised to her brother, though, to his chagrin, we've loosened up a little bit on the media part, due in large part to the fact that she's not as sensitive to scary or violent elements in movies as he was at her age. It's also due, frankly, to the fact that we've wanted to see the new Star Wars movies with the whole extended family as they came out and we couldn't exactly leave her back at Grandma's house on her own :).

My kids aren't perfect, and I've made plenty of mistakes as a parent, some of which I may detail in later entries, but there's a lot of evidence stacking up that it really is possible to raise a good kid in this day and age without keeping said kid in a bubble.

In Which I Explain Why This Post Was Almost Never Written

This blog almost died right after the first entry. Why? Because my logical husband made me question if what I'm doing, in writing about challenges my kids have, is ethical. Why do I have a right to post publicly about people other than myself? I thought I was doing the right thing to protect their privacy by not sharing their names or pictures, but then the pointed out that I had shared my name and picture, and that, with that info, someone could fairly easily identify them. I understood his point, but I was also annoyed that, when I shared that I had finally taken a step to do something I'd been dreaming about for years, his first reaction was to question if I was doing the right thing. This is especially important for Squirrelboy, since he is at an age where he's very sensitive to the way his peers view him, and he's not so many years from applying to schools and/or jobs, to which he may or may not want to reveal his disabilities.

Ultimately, since I'm writing this second entry, you can probably figure out that I decided to press on. I did, however, remove my  name and picture from the blog. So I ask that, if you're reading this and know me (which is everyone who reads this at this point), please feel welcome to share this blog widely, but remember not to share our names. I feel it's acceptable to continue in part because I've also cleared it with my family. As long as I keep them anonymous, they're okay with being written about on this blog.

This does bring up an interesting point about our society. When I was growing up in the 1980's, as a general rule, only people you'd actually met in person and saw fairly often knew about your day to day activities. You might tell your best friend or neighbor about the funny  or weird experience you had in the grocery store, but you wouldn't write something about it for hundreds or thousands of people to read, some of whom you'd never met. That is, however, how many of us (myself included) use social media. I don't think this is all bad. Facebook has allowed me to maintain relationships with people I would otherwise have completely lost touch with. However, it has also created a weird category of people I know slightly (fellow church members, for instance) and would normally not have a close relationship, but whose lives I know a surprisingly large amount about. I might not ever hang out with Sally from Sunday School, but I know her sister in law came over for a barbecue last weekend, she's looking forward to a trip to Disney World in October, and she supports universal background checks for gun sales. Sally is, in case it isn't obvious, not a real person, but Facebook "relationships" like that are very real. It's weird to have a window into what people are doing and what they feel strongly about when in any other context you don't know them well and they'd be unlikely to share that information with you.

Reading a blog written by a stranger or an acquaintance is like that too. This person you don't know or hardly know is giving you a window into their thoughts and/or lives that previously only have been given by a tiny subset of people who write memoirs. I have considered writing a blog for a long time, however, because I think there's at least as much potential good as potential bad in this somewhat strange circumstance that our society has created. During various points of my life, reading blogs related to a struggle or challenge I've been going through has been immensely helpful to me. Sometimes because the blogger had things to teach me and other times because it was helpful just to know that I wasn't the only one who had ever had these experiences or felt these feelings. I'm writing this blog in large part for myself, because I'm seeking a new way to express myself. However, I also hope that my thoughts and experiences can be helpful to some of my readers, whether they give practical advice or strategies or they just give reassurance that you're not the only person who has these feelings and these experiences.

In Which I Attempt to Explain Why the World Needs One More Blog Plus the Origin of This Blog's Title

I've been thinking about starting a blog for over a decade, almost as long as I've known blogs were a thing. I fancy myself a writer, though I've only had a handful of magazine pieces published, and I figured, even if no one ever read it, it would be a good exercise for me to write somewhere regularly other than in my journal. That was back in the day when I actually wrote regularly in said journal, as opposed to my current habit, which involves an entry every six months or so if I'm feeling particularly  inspired. So now that I'm not even journaling regularly I have an even better excuse for starting a blog. Of course, everyone and her sister and cousin and maiden great aunt has a blog these days, so why should you read mine? If you're looking for a blog that focuses on just one specific topic that interests you, go ahead and look elsewhere. If you're looking for a blog with advice on how to be an ideal parent, you can look elsewhere. However, if you're looking for a kindred spirit who also doesn't have all the answers but wants to spend time reflecting on parenting, marriage, spirituality, and living a good life amidst challenges, you've come to right place. I'd invite you to metaphorically sit down with me with a cup of coffee if it weren't for the inconvenient fact that I hate coffee. Perhaps we can share a metaphorical cup of tea, or maybe a cherry coke. You can even have some coffee, just don't expect me to drink it.

So where did I come up with the name? It's been in my head for years, ever since a post I made in an online discussion forum once upon a time. My daughter, who will be known as Kittygirl, had turned six years old just three weeks previous, and had just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Since I'm an average 21st century person, one of the first things I did after my daughter fell asleep in her hospital bed that first night of our new reality, I searched Facebook for groups of parents of type 1 diabetics. There are about 5,000 of them, give or take a few thousand, and an awful lot of them include posts that are terrifying. Type 1 diabetes is weird. On one side, it's a very serious, even scary disease. Simultaneously, it's a chronic medical condition that can be managed quite well with the medicine and technology available these days and people with  type 1 diabetes can do anything people without diabetes can do, with some extra prep and extra steps in many cases. I joined every Facebook group I could find initially, and I was quickly overwhelmed with information, much of it from parents who were terrified and never wanted to let their kids out of their sight. I knew I couldn't live like that, and I turned for advice to the chat forum on the Well Trained Mind site. This is mostly partly of a set of forums for discussion of homeschooling materials, methods, and more, which I had spent several years browsing and sometimes posting on while dreaming of homeschooling my son, who will be called Squirrelboy and who was 11 at this time. Ironically, this school year I was finally homeschooling him for the first time, and I'd been so busy I hadn't spent much time on the Well Trained Mind forums. However, I figured that, with the many thousands of parents represented, there had to be some who were more experienced parents of kids with T1D, and they might be able to give me a less crazy perspective. I was not disappointed. Many people commented and reassured me that we would find a way to live well with this new challenge. People also encouraged me to leave diabetes parenting groups that I didn't find helpful and one person in particular, whose name I have long since forgotten, encouraged me to consider looking for smaller groups in which I might find my tribe, as opposed to the gigantic easier to find pages. Maybe, she said, a huge general group with a name like "Parents of Type 1 Diabetics" (there's probably a group with this name, but I'm not referencing a particular group) wasn't my style. Perhaps, she wrote jokingly, I'd instead find my tribe in a group with a name like, "Misfit Parenting with Cupcakes."  I still haven't completely found my tribe in the diabetes online community 2 1/2 years on, but I really appreciated that advice and the name has stuck in my head every since. I did spend way too much mental effort deciding whether I should modify it to "Misfit Parenting with Cupcakes and Jesus," thus identifying it as a blog written by a Christian. In the end, I decided not to, in large part because I don't want to scare away people who belong to a different religion or none at all. The fact is, my faith and my Christian worldview are going to influence what I write, but I'm not going to fill it with Christianese, and I hope it's interesting and helpful to those who share my worldview and to those who don't.

To conclude, I'll briefly introduce myself and my family. I'm currently a stay at home mom, with an unused MA in Spanish literature and experience as a teacher in a variety of venues. I've lived in Kentucky for almost half my life now, but I'm originally a Michigander. I love books, especially books written for middle graders, and I like to eat cupcakes a little too much. I'm not officially diagnosed with any invisible disabilities, but I suspect that I have mild ADHD. I'll tell you why in some future post. My husband, whom I'll call Mr. Engineer, has also lived in Kentucky for almost half his life and is originally a Wisconsinite. We had to move to Kentucky to meet each other, presumably because there's a big lake in between Michigan and Wisconsin :). He works as an engineer (hence the nickname) and also thinks like an engineer and wants to make every decision logically, which can drive me crazy. He also has never officially been diagnosed with a disability, invisible or otherwise, but he diagnosed himself with dyslexia, and it's pretty obvious when you get to know him that he could easily get an official diagnosis if he wanted one. Our son, whom I've already introduced as Squirrelboy, is 14 and has official diagnoses of dyslexia and ADHD (moderate combined type). Our daughter, previously introduced as Kittygirl, is 8  and has no attention or learning challenges. Just to make life interesting, sometime in her 6th year of life, her immune system decided to attack the beta cells in her pancreas to the point where her body produces almost no insulin and she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I hope you're able to enjoy and maybe even learn something from the view into our lives that this blog will offer.