First Christmas with Diabetes

What a relief - the holidays are over. We're normally a pretty festive crowd in this house, and we certainly didn't hold back, but Mia was running a fever over the last couple of days. We've been learning more about Diabetes, enough to figure out that for all of the medical advances of the present age a lot is still unknown about the problem.
Mia was not wanting to eat anything during the holidays, so she kept running low. Grouchy, not hungry, and having daytime readings in the 50's to 60's - scary stuff for parents newly exposed to the finer points of the process.
We've now got her feeling better and sleeping well at night - a little readjustment to nap time and a creative menu has kept everyone pretty happy here. The trick it seems (for now, could change) is keeping her active, getting her out to play several times a day, and making sure that she's eating enough. And of course, checking, rechecking, and rechecking the rechecking. Mia has figured out that what was a new interesting routine of having a relatively painless prick is not going away, and she's not happy about it. You can tell she's just fed up, and tired of it, but she generally has a good attitude about it still.
I've found myself in a daily ritual of coming back into the office after working for the day and digging through whatever I can find online. I've been doing a lot of research on pumps, being the ever over analytical guy that I am have developed several databases for tracking glucose levels and carbs, and finally just decided to buy a piece of software built for transferring the information directly from the meter. I will find a way to incorporate gadgets into everything, regardless of the situation. Marisa picked up a great book 'The Everything Parents Guide to Children with Juvenille Diabetes' by Moira McCarthy. A good read - pretty high level, but reassuring and sombering at the same time. This is a serious illness, a life threatening one, and the sad reality of it is that even with great care, it is killing my daughter, reducing her life expectancy by 5-10 years by some estimations. That being said, we're an incredibly stubborn family, and we're up to the task of keeping her levels in check, teaching her how to live a healthy lifestyle, and never taking anything for granted.
As for how we're doing? We're fine. For all the heartache of the last few weeks, and there has been a lot of heartache, we're all still together. When you look further into this condition, and see how quickly things can go wrong in undiagnosed cases, we're just fine with having the changes to our routine. Diagnosed, it's something you may not (today) be able to overcome, but you can not just survive, but thrive. Mia is still a happy kid, playing around, she just gets annoyed with her parents several times a day. Which really is pretty close to normal after all.
Best wishes to everyone, and here's to great new year.