Our introductions

New blog, new names :)  I asked the kids to pick new ones and they have surprised me by picking actual people names!

My son, Ike, is 9 years old. He's this hilarious kid that cracks me up. He's thoughtful, kind, giving...unless you are his sister. ;)  He's got a gift for being social and friendly and can walk into any room and make a friend. He's always on the go and can't even sit still at the dinner table. Instead, he sort of fidgets and perches and wiggles around. We laugh because he's like a mini-DJ. In fact, his red hair and blue eyes, combined with a tall, thin frame even make him a physical mini of DJ. Like his father, he's all about sports. Playing them, watching them, playing video games of them...he knew more teams and mascots at 6 than I know now. He's also our family homebody - when given a choice, he stays home. In fact, on our last date night, instead of wanting to go somewhere, he opted to send DJ and my daughter out of the house so we could hang out here. Yes, our date was too send them on one :)  He's into movement and music and spends him time singing and dancing. He already knows the lyrics to more songs than me. As a baby, he was this happy, laid back little guy. He'd stare at ceiling fans for hours, smile and wave at everyone he met and carried a toy in each hand for the first 5 years of his life. First 2 pacifiers, then 2 balls, then 2 cars...even now he's happier when he has something to play with. He never thinks past today and completely lives in the moment.

My daughter, Ana, is 7 years old. Like her dad and brother, she has red hair and blue eyes. She's also the one that inherited DJ's and my freckles - she's got this spotted face and tons of missing teeth - looks just like a typical 7 year old that loves being outside :)  She started life as a colicky babe that needed a specialized formula in order to eat. She was known as "the Banshee" as a babe and it took us 5 years to calm her down. She was fearless as a baby - by her first birthday she was scaling everything and we'd find her on counters if we turned our backs for a second. She's the one that wants to skydive as an adult and loves roller coasters and is counting the years until she can be a goth teen and has already planned her first tattoos. At the same time, she is this loving child that takes care of her babies, makes us presents, plans parties to celebrate everyone she knows and is fiercely loyal. She's more reserved than her brother, taking a long time to warm up to people. She's as devious as Ike is guileless and her mad scientist laugh is so cute you almost forget that she's planning something sneaky. She's so like me it's scary. I can see her thinking and know exactly what she's going to do next  because it's exactly what I would do. She's so similar in appearance to me that my parents marvel at it. They've taken pictures over the years of her holding pictures of me at her current age and the similarity is scary. Except for hair and eye color, she could be my clone.

I talk about them quite a bit on my blogs. Sometimes it's just regular life but other times it's about specific things. Right now, Ike is being evaluated for ADHD and dyslexia. He struggles with reading and it impacts everything at school. He's also our most-often-operated-on family member with five surgeries under his belt. He had hypospadias correction at 13 months and then had three surgeries at 5 and 6 to correct unilateral microtia. One of those required a rib graft. Through them all, he was happy and cheerful. He had us in tears (from laughing!) during the last two because he was hilarious on anesthesia. Surgery never got him down.  Ana's most common post topic is her diabetes. She's developed Type 1 diabetes when she was 2 years old. We did MDI (multiple daily injections) for several years and switched her to an insulin pump just before her 6th birthday. Just this morning she commented, "I never forget to check my number because I've done it about a thousand times!" I agreed and told her it was way more than a thousand and it made her curious. We calculated it out and figure she's around 16,425 finger pokes so far. Further math suggests 7,665 insulin injections just in the MDI time. She's had approximately 250 site changes. I am curious what her totals will be by 90 but I'm too afraid to calculate it because I think I'd cry! As a bonus from diabetes, she also gets every crazy, weird, rare disorder that could possibly come her way. She had skin issues professionals had to work hard to diagnose; infections that sunk into her joints; mono; etc. Her and Ike are also crazy-addicted to scarlet fever, apparently opting to be so asymptomatic to strep throat that we don't know about it until the scarlet fever rash appears.

I'll talk more about myself another day. It must be a mom thing - it's always kids first ;)