Peaks and Valleys

Penny had Monday off from school, so I worked from home with her in tow.

When she checked her blood sugar for lunch, it was crazy high, and I was about to curse the gods of random happenstance... when I remembered that around 9 in the morning, I'd chased Penny out of the kitchen, where she'd been "looking at" the bag with her Easter candy.

To make a long story short... yep, she'd been sneaking candy. And not just Monday, either. Apparently, she's been sneaking chocolate chips and cupcake sprinkles from my baking shelf in the pantry for some time.

Which puts the last couple of weeks' worth of random, unexplainable blood sugar highs in a whole new light.

So I moved the baking stuff up to the top shelf of the pantry, and I put all the candy away in a cabinet she'll need a stool to reach -- none of which guarantees she'll stop, but at least it's harder for her now. I tried to explain to her the damage that high blood sugars do -- we hadn't been very explicit about that before, not wanting to freak her out unnecessarily... but apparently it's now necessary.

But I don't know what else to do. The poor child has inherited my horrible metabolism and my horrible and inaccurate food processing abilities (by which I mean we're both always hungry, even if we've just eaten) and there's a lot more at stake for her than there is for me. How do you expect a seven year old to have the willpower to say, "What I've just eaten should be enough, and therefore I will stop now, even though I still feel like I'm starving," when I myself have trouble with that same thing? How do I discipline her for sneaking candy when my share of Easter candy is already almost gone and I had to make Matt take the rest of it out of the house so I wouldn't eat that, too?

Oh, well.

Diabetes camp is this weekend. I'm waffling between hoping we have a good time and dreading it. I'm trying to hide the "dread" portions of my thoughts from Penny, though, because if she gets even a whiff of lack of enthusiasm from me, it'll color her whole attitude, and the very last thing this needs is for her to be a whiny brat all weekend over things neither of us can control. (I do wish the camp had sent me a schedule of events or something, though. I really don't do well with "wait and see". I'm so freaking anal. Also, I really want to correct the grammar and typos in the info sheets they sent me.)

But on the plus side, I'm taking Friday off from work to pack, so at least there's that, right?

(Oh, don't mind me. I'm PMSing and sleepy.)