New Traditions

It's weird how having a child with a chronic illness can creep not just into your lives and habits, but also into the lives and habits of those around you.

Case in point: birthdays.

I have blogged in the past about cake. I hate it. It seems to be cake, above all, that M's body and insulin together cannot handle.

And yet it is everywhere.

But not in our family.

In our family, we have a new tradition: ice cream cake.

This tradition began with M's birthday.

Since she cannot eat cake without having uncontrollable bg numbers for 24 hours, we began looking for other fun options. We tried ice cream cake. While it still has huge numbers of calories and carbs, the carbs seem to seep into M's system at a more steady rate than regular cake, and are therefore easier to manage over the 24 hour span that follows.

When we first figured out M's cake issues, she simply ate the ice cream at birthday parties, with no complaint from her, nor from me or Bill.

It wasn't until my father's birthday that I realized that ice cream cake was the new family tradition.  Grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews all shared ice cream cake at Papa's birthday without even a question. No reference to regular cake was made. It was as if we had eaten ice cream cake at birthday parties all along.

Which leaves me with a few thoughts. A) I have a very cool, thoughtful, and supportive family, B) Everything changes when you have a kid with diabetes, C) Diabetes can't stop you from having fun unless you let it. and D) Change, while sometimes annoying and unwelcome, can be good.