Winter Wonderland

 

A1c

 

I have diabetes.  Every six months, I go in for an A1c check, which is a roughly 3 month average of my blood sugar levels.

I find that getting a higher A1c number helps me be better about eating well, so I shelled out $75 or so to Amazon and purchased a kit for testing A1c.  It has 4 tests total so only $20 apiece, which isn't bad.

Last night I managed to test myself successfully (after watching a video online) and came up with A1c= 5.6!

Yeah!

My last one was 5.9 so according to this, I have come down a bit.

I work so hard on this stupid diabetes. So stinking hard.  This encourages me to keep avoiding wheat and white rice, and to keep exercising at least some, even though I am not too enthused about exercise.

Thankful and proud today!

Cultures Get Squirrely Sometimes

 So this is something I think about a LOT!

Cultures get squirrely.

What do I mean by that?  I mean that sometimes most people in a culture heartily embrace something as sensible and wise and good and healthy when we can see, from our current perspective, that it is not.

Here is a very obvious example: foot binding.

In China, for many generations I believe, baby girls from wealthier families had their feet bound to prevent them from growing large.  Having tiny feet was considered beautiful.  Naturally, it hurt a lot for these girls to have their feet bound so tightly that their body couldn't grow normally. When they grew up, they were partially crippled and had to be assisted to do everything.

But it was normalized totally. It was accepted as good!  In fact, when the Chinese government forbade foot binding, there was a lot of pushback from families to the point that parents would try to hide their girls from the "foot police" so that they could continue binding their girls' feet. It was SO entrenched in the culture that they couldn't see how bad it was!

I would say corsets are similar; seriously, what kind of insanity is it when girls have their waists pinched so tightly they can't breathe well?

A bunch of our children are in orthodontia.  It is expensive.  Frankly, it is painful at times.  Angela had a major adjustment last week and for several days, her mouth and teeth were really sore.

And I found myself thinking -- Ok, we are spending a lot of money to straighten her teeth, which hurts.  Are we so different from parents who bound the feet of their girls?

The answer is, I think, a strong yes.  The reason she has orthodontia is because she inherited the genetics of some members of my family; narrow face, big overbite.  The result is that IF she didn't have orthodontia, her teeth would probably wear away over time and she would have tooth problems in middle age.  Also, her jaw might get messed up from the teeth not meeting properly.

However, it is also true that in American culture, straight teeth are considered attractive.  Even without the medical issues, there might be a strong argument for having orthodontia because it is easier to get jobs and even spouses if one has even, straight teeth.

But really, that kind of sucks.  I mean, if one's teeth WORK fine, and are a crooked, should it matter?

Should we spend tons of money to straighten teeth for merely cosmetic reasons?  Should we hurt our children for cosmetic reasons?

I find myself having a little more sympathy for crazy parents who encouraged corsets and foot binding. I still think it was bad, but when an entire culture embraces something it is hard to swim against the flow.  One worries, as a parent, that their children will have trouble if they don't act.

In our case, the decisions have been easier because there is a medical issue involved.  

By the way, I saw our orthodontist today and he said when he was done caring for Kendigs, he would retire.  It was a joke, but seriously, we have been very, very lucrative for him!

So far, we have had four children in orthodontia, and Miriam is starting soon, and Sarah will need it, and probably Rose as well.

We have vague hopes that Daniel will not. We will see!

Wow.

This Week

Lydia had a friend visiting from California for a couple of weeks. We had a good-bye pizza party for her.  

Jet adored my fuzzy robe as a baby.  He still loves to suck on it and knead it with his now fairly big paws.  A couple of days ago, he managed to squeeze his large body into the sleeve, where he crouched for a good half hour, just enjoying the coziness. This is him squirting out the end!

There was a major winter storm that hit south and east of here. And I guess west as well. Anyway, we just got the northern fringe of it. The children were very excited to have some snow to play in!  

It is beautiful.  You can see we didn't get a ton of snow.

In other news, I was pretty sick on Sunday.  I was very tired, had a sore throat, and a headache.  I have several friends who have gotten COVID twice now so naturally it occurred to me that I might have Omnicron.  Yesterday I felt better and today I feel better still, so if I DID have another bout, it was super mild. Probably it was just some stupid virus that wasn't COVID.  

Kevin made plans for us to go to St. Croix in a few months.  Yeah!  We will have fun. This summer is our 25th wedding anniversary which is frankly CRAZY!  Hard to believe!

Isaac and Joseph are back in the saddle of taking college classes.  Isaac has quite a heavy load of engineering courses.

Lydia spent the last month or so without a job.  She currently has a short term, well paying nannying job and is also interviewing for other positions.  It is hard as a parent not to worry about my offspring who need to earn money, but I keep TRYING to give it all to the Lord.  We would never let Lydia starve, of course.  She is smart, a hard worker and very young still; she has to figure out exactly what she wants to do full time.  Life rarely provides a straight path forward and I am getting better at embracing that reality.

Rose and Reading

 

Rose is still not reading fluently. She is seven and a half and is making steady progress, but hasn't made the leap to fluency.

One of the things I have learned through years of homeschooling is that it is helpful to find books that the kids like.  Rose does like certain books, though she needs them read to her. She is particularly fond of Smurfs and Dog Man.

So Smurfs are fine EXCEPT that for reasons I CANNOT fathom, the Smurf books have tiny, tiny print.  My eyes are good for a woman of 52 years, but tiny print is not my friend.  I have trouble reading a lot of Smurfs to her without getting a headache.

Dog Man is better. They are graphic novel type books about a cop who has the head of a dog and the body of a man, because of an explosion which killed the body of the dog and the head of the man. So they sewed the head of the dog onto the man.

Hence, Dog Man.

Yes, it is silly and delightful.  There are themes of friendship, and growth. The print is big and I can read it to Rose easily. The stories have some easy words so I can point at certain words and have Rose sound them out. 

So all is well and beautiful EXCEPT that the author has included a lot of bathroom humor.  Some of it is egregious and annoying.  I don't want Rose singing about bodily functions like some of the main characters in Dog Man.  

So ... I bought seven books for Rose for Christmas, and went through them all with a black Sharpie and crossed out the offensive stuff.  Now I am sure some people are horrified by that, but hey, I don't want my seven year old singing about unpleasant things.  I don't.  And she probably would, because Rose is strong willed and a CHARACTER.  A glorious, wonderful, charming, amazing, energetic character, but not a mellow person, and she would enjoy singing annoying songs, I am sure of it.

She'll get there on reading.  She'll get there.  

Pictures!

 

Kevin with Opal, who is getting HUGE

Our three sons

Sarah, post hot tub.  Joseph, who runs cold.  Daniel, who likes to run barefoot even in winter