We must have fifty toddler board books scattered on our living room and bedroom floor. I try to keep them all on the bookshelf, but it's just so hard to find the one you're looking for when you're 21 months old and your very nature abhors tidiness.
Our most recent favorite is a book called Turn & Learn Colors. It must be savored at least twice a day - particularly the page with the green items, which are listed in this order: "brochkkk-brochkkk" (broccoli), "pah-pah" (caterpillar), "tah-tor" (dinosaur), and pay-pay (parrot).
We're in that phase where there must be 3-5 new words a day added and I've given up with keeping up.
Needless to say, with her growing love of books, I'd love for her to see me reading more.
The problem with that idea right now is that leaving books out for Daddy and me puts them at risk for major destruction, so if we want to read, we're relegated to our cell phones, our tablets, or our laptops. Which is probably going to make her think that staring at small rectangular objects is THE ultimate entertainment. (She already thinks that, actually; there are more apps on my phone for her than for me!)
But I have managed to have one book out for me lately, exposing it to the elements of toddler sippy cups and frequent "where is it now - oh the laundry basket, oh under the bed, oh in the bathtub." Cheryl Alkon's fabulous book Balancing Pregnancy and Pre-Existing Diabetes: Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby was released a few months after Sweetie's birth. Though I benefitted greatly from Cheryl's experiences through following her blog, Managing the Sweetness Within, I've yet to sit down and read the published book from cover to cover.
Regardless of the fact that portions of it remain untouched, I recommend this book to every woman with diabetes with whom I come into contact. It's a treasure trove of anecdotal evidence about managing fertility concerns, pregnancy, childbirth, and newborns while dealing with your pre-existing diabetes. Not to mention that there are at least two quotes in it from yours truly. :)
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| Sweetie in Chicago at 20weeks old with Kristin's copy of the book |
I'm in the thick of it, smack-dab (as my mother would say) in the middle of this journey again.
The reason that I didn't get this blog posted until Sunday was almost over is because of that thick.
Because I kept reading, immersing myself in the stories of women managing their insulin resistance in the late second and third trimesters. I read for twenty minutes - in between rocking Sweetie to sleep for a nap and bounding up (after glancing at the clock) to make myself look halfway presentable so that I could teach a voice lesson, attend another student's senior recital (low blood sugar coincided beautifully with reception goodies), stop by the grocery store for our week's shopping, visit a friend just home with her newborn (where I also asked her paramedic hubby to do a quick blood pressure check on me), and come home to prepare dinner, bathe the pizza-sauce covered toddler, coax her to bed, and then be poked repeatedly by my husband to wake up and go post my blog. (Thanks, Hubster.)
It's so thick sometimes that I have trouble enjoying any given moment or pausing to think about how my insulin needs may have changed since yesterday. But those few minutes of reading made me stop to think about my health needs in a different way today. And I put an extra unit on board after Sweetie's bath. I took that moment out to think about what I'd learned.
I hope Sweetie knows how much Mama and Dada learn from books, too.
This post was written as part of NHBPM - 30 health posts in 30 days: http://bit.ly/vU0g9J.
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