Growing Up!!!

After Emily's birthday, I started looking at pictures of her as a baby. Boy, time sure does fly by way too fast. It made me want to put together a slide show of some of the pictures I love so much from the first few years of her life. Enjoy!!!!

Happy Birthday Emily!

It is hard to believe that it has already been seven years since I had the most precious, sweet little girl enter our lives. Over the past week, we have had a great few days celebrating her birthday.

It started with a life changing experience of getting her ears pierced. For years, Emily has been asking to get her ears pierced and I told her when she turns seven she can get it done. She was soooooo excited to be FINALLY getting to do this. Because of her diabetes, the Dr requested us getting it done in a STERILE place. I had gone and talked to several places and finally found a place that I thought would be best for Emily and her situation. I made an appointment so there would be two people working that day so that they can each do an ear and Emily would not have to endure the pain two different times. So, we went one day last week after school. I have not seen Emily so excited about something in a long time. It was so refreshing to see her so happy! Well, as many of you moms know, this is a life changing event for little girls , so daddy, brother, grandmother and of course mommy were all there to watch this glorious event taking place.


So, Emily sat down and the owner starting explaining what she would be doing. She got her little marker out and marked the spots on Emily's ears were we wanted her ears to be pierced. She called the other girl over to help do the other ear. They both got their piercing guns and prepared to start to pierce her ears. THANK GOD my mother was there. I was so caught up in the moment and thinking about all that goes with this that I had not realized that the owner had not STERILIZED ANYTHING. My mother stopped her and commented on it. The owner started wiping off her ear in all of the places EXCEPT where the earring was going to go. So, I asked her to clean that area as well. She did not want to because it was going to wipe off the marker and she was not going to be able to see where to pierce it. I told her that area had to be cleaned, it was the most important area. She really did not like it, but too bad. So, they now were ready to pierce her ears. They counted to three and pierced her little ears.

One girl took her hand away, but the owner could not because she had PIERCED HER LATEX GLOVE TO EMILY'S EARS!!! Yep, not only did Emily have a new earring hanging on her ear , but she also had a nice latex glove hanging from her ear. How in the world could this happen??? So, the owner got some scissors (I am sure they were not sterile) and attempted to cut away at the glove. She could not do it, so she handed the scissors to Jeff and asked for him to try. How bad is this???? Well, Jeff finally was able to cut it away.

Unfortunately, the owner missed her spot and did not pierce her ear on the right spot. She had pierced Emily's ear too close to her face. So, needless to say it was not great looking. It was just horrible. This was something that Emily had wanted for so long, why could it not just work out? After much thinking, I knew something had to be done. I called the pediatrician and he said we needed to have her take the earrings out , let her ears close up and then pierce them again in about a month. Emily was heartbroken, but she agreed she did not want them to be that crooked her whole life. So, if she is still interested in a month, we will give it another try. (If you look close, you will notice her new little earring studs.)

On the actual day of her birthday, we took her Chick-Fil A and ate lunch with her at school. This year the first graders are not allowed to celebrate their birthdays at school. You can bring a treat for all of the students to take home and enjoy it after school. I made chocolate covered pretzel sticks. It was the first time I had ever made them. Some were covered with white chocolate then rolled in pink and green sprinkles and some were covered with white chocolate that I had colored with pink food coloring. They were really pretty easy to make.

After school, we went and got ice cream. Then later at gymnastics, the girls on her team have this tradition for the birthday girl. Everyone but the birthday girl chalk up their hands and get in a line from shortest to tallest. Then one of Emily's coaches grabbed her, lifted her into the air and spun her around about 10 times. Needless to say, she was beyond dizzy. Then Emily had to crawl between the legs of all of the girls. As she did that, each girl chalked her bottom by patting her bottom as she crawled through. EMILY LOVED IT! She was all smiles! (Sorry the picture is blurry. Emily is the one in the blue leotard being spun around by the coach.)

This year Emily had an ice skating party. We had about 25 kids there and I think most people had a great time.

Most kids had been ice skating before and could skate rather well. Emily has been one other time and loved being out there on the ice.

This year Emily wanted an ice cream cake. It was delicious!!

After the party, Emily said it was her favorite party she has ever had!! Other than the ear piercing tragedy, it was a great few days. Happy Birthday Emily!!! We love you so much and can not wait to see what great things you will do in the next year of your life!

Update on Luke

I wanted to give all of you an update on our last dr. appointment we had for Luke. As most of you know, Luke was diagnosed soon after Emily for being in the early stages of diabetes. One of the first tests that they did on Luke showed he had some of the antibodies that attack your pancreas which in turn eventually make you become a diabetic. But fortunately the antibodies have not yet attacked it enough that he would need the care and attention that Emily requires. Thank God!

Anyway, we went last week to meet with our new pediatric endocrinologist. Our last dr has moved and we were really not too sad to see him leave. He was not the most positive or hopeful doctor. When you are dealing with something like diabetes, you need hope and receive care from a dr. that offers you hope in a situation that sometimes is anything but hopeful. Our new doctor that we met with on Wed. was really positive and really seemed to care what would be best for our children. We were meeting to see if we wanted to repeat the IV glucose tolerance test that we did on Luke back in May. It was the worst thing that we have yet had to do with him. They put an IV in each arm and shoot large amounts of glucose in one IV while drawing blood out of the other IV continuously for about 45 minutes. Well, Luke HATED it and did not respond well to it. It is important for us to do the test because it gives us information on how well his pancreas handles such large amounts of glucose. The last time they did the test, the results were not good, not good at all and it showed that he would probably be needing the same care that we are doing now with Emily sooner than later. Well, of course that is not what we wanted to hear.

Well, it is time to do the test again to see now more than six months later, how his pancreas responds to the glucose again. We talked to the dr about our concerns and just did not want to make Luke go through all of that again. We wanted to see if they could do anything for Luke that would make this not such a traumatic situation for him. The dr said that we could wait until this summer to do the test again to see if Luke would do better because he would be a little older. I told him we could wait thirty more years and Luke would never calmly want to go through that test again. So, the dr. said that they would put him in ICU in Temple, put him to sleep and repeat the test under the superivision of the staff at the ICU. I know that it may seem a little extreme, but this is the best thing for Luke. Hopefully, we will get to be in the room with him and he will not have to endure what he had to last time.

I wanted to share something very positive that the dr shared with us. He said that Luke could stay in this phase he is currently in right now from anywhere from 6 months to 20 years. We are already past the 6 month part! :) So, please pray that he will have many, many years free of diabetes. Unfortunately, he has two out of the four antibodies that make you have diabetes, AND has a sibling with diabetes. So, that is why he thought it is a good idea to repeat the test so we can see how he is doing. The dr. said that his numbers could have gotten better , stayed the same or have gotten worse.

We are planning on doing the test in a couple of weeks. We will let you all know when we schedule the test and what the results are once we receive them.

So, please be prayer that Luke's body can tolerate the glucose and that his numbers are better than the last time or at least have stayed the same. I know that God can do anything! I know that he can heal Luke and allow him to never have a life filled with the stress and problems that comes with diabetes.