Vacations

It takes one to realize how much you really need it... And once you have it, it can be pretty tough to go back to your pre-vacation state, at least that's how things are for me. But regardless of the location or time length of the trip, there are several common features in all of my vacations;
1. It starts with thinking of taking some time off. It always seems like I am asking for too much but then, deep into the vacation, it always seems too short and I always ask myself why I hadn't asked for some few days more.
2. For me the hardest part of going on vacation has to do with packing, yes I even prefer unpacking. When I pack I have to decide in advance what I am going to wear and what items I might need during the whole trip, and not only for myself, I need to make those decisions for my kids, and since my husband shares the same mixed feelings about packing, I usually make some of those decisions for him too. This totally eliminates spontaneity. I am not the kind of person who enjoys planning everything through, especially not when it comes to clothes with a dynamic weather like the one we have here. Luckily my daughter is now old enough to pick her own clothes. Unlike me, for her this is a very simple task and within less than 5 minutes she has her clothes ready, organized by days and outfits and laid on my bed, ready to go into our bag. My son on the other hand could bring along his whole closet if we had enough space to fit it in our travel bags.
3. Now the final part is deciding on the location. One of the problems with spontaneity is the reluctance to book vacations too long in advance, and when I say too long I mean more than a week or two before. Luckily in the U.S there are plenty of places not yet traveled (by us) and as long as you are willing to be flexible with dates and locations you can live in peace with not booking your next vacation a year in advance. But one has to keep in mind that most of the good places might be already taken though. And be prepared to explore some off season destinations.
4. Now the last, but not least, and very much common feature to all of my vacations is the trouble with going back. Yes, it's good to be back at home, but usually I feel that I could use a few (additional) days off to adjust back to the day-to-day life. Yes, routines had never been one of my passions. And so, just to help myself and my crew set our minds off the trip we start planning the next one. Not the location, of course, that might break the spontaneity laws, but we go through our calendars and mark possible future dates to take some more time off. Just to make sure we don't forget again how much we really need vacations!

Another one of those nights

Another one of those nights when I long for the moment I'll close my eyes and move directly into deep sleep, elegantly skipping through all the other sleep stages, to make the most out of those 5 hours left until my alarm clock beeps... I take a quick look at my sleeping angels, cuddled in their beds, and my (somewhat noise) puppy, that opens one eye and gives me a tired look. I check my daughter's blood sugar, like I do every night before I go to sleep, it became my new habit about 3 years ago. It doesn't wake her up and sure helps me sleep better, I usually just correct high blood sugars with a press of a few buttons on her pump, and try to avoid those cases of low blood sugar that are harder to fix. But then it strikes me and just sheds away my sleepiness at once... 55. Sometimes low blood sugars wake her up, sometimes it wakes me up. I was hoping it will wake our dog up but other than starring at me from her crate, she doesn't seem to be too worried. Low blood sugars, especially at night, can be dangerous and in most cases are not really expected and therefore not always avoidable. So I rush into the kitchen and make some extra sweet chocolate milk. A cup of juice could have been helpful now but even when asleep my daughter just doesn't like juice. I have abandoned the 15 rule long ago. Basically you need to give 15 gr of carbs to correct a low, then wait 15 minutes and recheck blood sugar. Still too low? Repeat the previous steps, wait again 15 minutes and so on. I prefer solving late night issues of this sort faster, especially when I want to have some spare time left to sleep, some people need that from some reason. And also, I believe that having a high blood sugar for a short period of time is way better than having a low blood sugar for too long, and so Over-treating a low blood sugar is my middle name, right after Over-protective mom. And so I let her have her chocolate milk, she is fast asleep but since she likes chocolate milk so much, especially from a sippy cup and especially in bed, a short cue like:"honey, here is your chocolate milk" just automatically brings her to a sitting position, take the sippy cup out of my hands and drink. But since a 55 might be hard to bring up I have a small bag of gummy candies for her, her favorite. Now waking her up to eat candies in the middle of the night might be almost every child's dream, but she sits up and falls back asleep after chewing on the first candy, still some more candies to go... There might be an easier way to bring her blood sugar up but those candies just do it the fastest and so are the best next thing after a juice box, since sliced bread would just not do. Then I wait for some time and recheck her blood sugar; 200... I sigh with relief, mildly high but can easily be corrected with yet another press of the button. Now I can finally go to sleep. So until there's a better solution, a one that will not pose the risk of hypoglycemia, we will have to settle for a bedtime blood sugar check and keep the chocolate milk and candies handy.

Multi-movie watching

While I am well aware of the fact that today's kids are way more technologically advanced than what we used to be, my son has taken the idea of multi-tasking to a whole new level. He has been trying to watch two different movies at the same time; One on TV and one on the ipad.
Growing up I remember enjoying the TV in the background (no flat TV, LCD or LED of course) while trying to do my homework or studying for exams. Somehow the noise and movements in the background inspired and motivated me to keep going and continue whatever boring task I was doing, with a false notion that I was not missing on the fun. Although doing all that with the TV on surly took me a significantly longer time.
"How can you watch two movies at the same time?" I asked my 5 year old that was deeply into his two movies. I can understand watching a movie and playing an ipad app at the same time but even a super multi-tasker would find multi-movie watching rather challenging. My son takes his eyes off the screen for a moment and with a serious look he says:"I have two eyes you know!"