Little Aggie

In preparation for the first Fight'n' Texas Aggie football game of the season (this Saturday against the Citadel), we had our first yell practice with Rebecca. Here she is wearing her first Aggie T-shirt, given to her by the couple who was in charge of the Navigators campus ministry there while we were students (where Rebecca's Mommy and Daddy met each other).

So close...and yet so far

This evening we went to a technology open house at the diabetes center. I got to see in person a new piece of technology that I had only heard about for the past five years. I would have given anything to have had it while I was pregnant. It is a small device that is worn (like a pump) that automatically measures blood sugar every five minutes and sounds an alarm when your sugar gets either too high or too low. It just became available to the general public in May, right after Rebecca was born.

I still would love to have one…in the past week I have had a low of 40 mg/dL and a high of 460, as well as many highs and lows in between. (For those of you who might be unfamiliar with diabetes, the normal range for blood sugar is roughly 80 to 120). However, some stupid powers that be that work for health insurance companies have decided not to cover this amazing, extremely helpful technology that does wonders to head off long-term complications (heart disease, kidney disease, eye disease, and neuropathy, to name a few of the big ones) that come from high blood sugars, as well as short-term dangers that come from low blood sugars (unconsciousness being the most severe). It costs $1000 up front, and $350 a month for the sensors that have to be changed out every three days. Yes, this is a large amount, but not as large an amount as it would cost to replace an organ or two later on down the road. And who can put a price on having a healthier pregnancy? Yet it is a large enough amount that we simply cannot afford it.

I suppose I should be grateful that we even have health insurance, and that it covers as much as it does…but it is still so frustrating to know that technology exists that would vastly improve my quality of life, and the only thing keeping me from having it is money.

Countering Pessimism

One of the things I really don’t like about myself is that I am so inherently pessimistic. I must remind myself multiple times a day to look at the positive side of things, and often I need reminding from others to do so. (I am so glad that Philippians 4:8 is on one of the children’s CDs we have!) Here are some examples of negative thoughts I regularly have and how I attempt to displace them with happy thoughts.

I wish I didn’t struggle constantly with two chronic diseases.
At least my diseases are somewhat treatable and aren’t nearly as painful or terminal as they could be.

I wish we lived closer to all our relatives, especially our parents.
At least many of our relatives, including our parents, live within driving distance.

I wish it didn’t take me so long to develop deep friendships.
At least I have a few close friends.

I wish we didn’t keep making friends that ended up moving away.
At least we can still keep in touch through email.

I wish that all of my friends who wanted to be pregnant could be.
At least I can pray for them…and share my baby.

I wish pregnancy hadn’t been so unimaginably difficult for me.
At least I could be pregnant.

I wish we lived in a smaller city.
Our city has the best church, medical care, and job that we could ask for.

I wish we lived closer to the meeting place of our church.
We are so blessed to be able to worship freely and be a part of a fabulous church.

I wish we could afford to go on nice vacations like so many of our friends.
Much more importantly, we can afford to live in our own house in a safe neighborhood, and I can stay home with our baby.

I wish I had more time and energy to make a difference in the world by spreading God’s love and truth.
The primary way I can spread God’s love and truth right now is by teaching my daughter.

I wish the world wasn’t so messed up, scary, and sinful.
At least it won’t be that way forever.

I wish I wasn’t so pessimistic.
I am so grateful that I have a husband who is so patient with me!

Making new friends and trying to keep up with the old

Most of the friends we have we met at church. We love our church for many reasons and wish only that it was closer to where we live. But it is worth the 30+ minute drive, at least for now. This past Sunday we met a new couple with a baby girl two weeks younger than ours. They just moved here from North Carolina. We also found out that another couple we know is expecting, which is very exciting, but we're disappointed they're moving to Nevada. They are the seventh couple we have made friends with and then had to say goodbye to in the two years we’ve been a part of this church. Others have gone to Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Kazakhstan for new jobs or further education. Thankfully, most of them are pretty good about emailing, and we have been able to keep up with them so far. But it's not the same as seeing them in person every week.

Good naps make baby happy

This one I wrote on Sunday afternoon.

Our sweet baby girl, Rebecca, just woke up from a 3-hour nap, and is playing with Daddy while Mommy types. Long afternoon naps are a new thing for her. Yesterday is the first day in at least a couple of months that I can remember her sleeping for more than two hours at a time in the afternoon. Usually it's less than one hour. But she has not been going to bed quite as early at night as she used to (we think because she is teething), so maybe she is just catching up. She used to go to bed between 7:30 and 9:00, and last night it wasn’t until 11:00, which has been more typical of this past week. We skipped Sunday School this morning to let her sleep in more, and we still had to wake her up at 9:30 to leave for church at 9:45. This was the second Sunday we left her in the nursery, and she seemed to do much better this time, being much better rested, and being in the nursery for only half the time she was before. I never know when to put her need for rest above our desire to go places (especially Sunday School), and when to just take her and go and hope she survives the day without being too unhappy. My Tuesday morning Bible study will be starting up again in a couple of weeks, and I hope that it won't be too chaotic messing up Rebecca's sleep schedule two mornings a week. At least this year I will get to use the HOV lane. :)

Delayed entry into the blogging world

I wish that I had been introduced to the world of blogging when I was pregnant. It would have been a nice distraction to read about what was going on in other people’s lives when I didn’t feel like doing much more than staying at home in bed. And I think it would have been therapeutic for me to publicly post all of the frustrations of my relatively difficult pregnancy for everyone to read. And then maybe I would have gotten lots of nice sympathetic messages from people. A couple of different people actually encouraged me to keep a pregnancy journal for my own benefit, but I never did since I felt so absolutely yucky the whole time. Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t blogging. I’m sure I would have become so negative and repetitive that no one would want to read me anymore.

The challenges of being a night owl

I wrote the following early Saturday morning, before we had set up our blog. Now I’m finally getting around to posting it.

It’s two in the morning and I can’t sleep…again. I’ve always been envious of people with normal circadian rhythms, which is most of the people I know. They don’t know how grateful they should be that they can go to sleep and wake up at the same times that most everyone else around them does. It can be quite challenging having to adapt to other people’s schedules. It is also frustrating to need so much more sleep than most other people do. I feel like I never accomplish anything of value because I spend my only few productive hours doing monotonous things that have to be done over and over again, like cooking, eating, cleaning, and running errands. Although, I must admit that I have enjoyed the recent addition of another activity that must be done several times a day…feeding and caring for my sweet baby! (Thank the Lord that she takes long morning naps!)

This would be a great time for me to go grocery shopping. I was too tired to do it earlier today, and now I’m wide awake. Super Walmart is open, but I don’t feel safe going there at night by myself. It was so nice when we lived in a small college town where everything was open late, I could satisfy a late-night craving for my favorite pizza rolls, and it was quite normal to see lots of people…nice people…at Super Walmart in the middle of the night. But alas, we live in the big city now, and I must exercise a certain amount of caution. And there’s also the fear that my baby would wake up while I was gone and her daddy, being the world’s heaviest sleeper, would not hear her. But I think her track record of sleeping through the night is good enough now that I would be willing to take the chance of leaving, if it weren’t for the safety issue.

Being a night owl also is somewhat limiting on one’s social life, at least in this culture. Most Mommy groups meet in the mornings long before I’m coherent. And it’s kind of difficult to have friends over for dinner on a weeknight, when commuter traffic is bad and everyone else has to get up early to go to work the next morning. And it seems like most weekends end up getting spent catching up on everything that didn’t get done during the week…like sleep, for example. Oh, to live in the Latin American culture, where household labor is cheap and the party is just beginning at midnight!

Here marks the beginning of the Rizzotti family blog. We hope this will provide a way for us to stay better connected to all of our loved ones. Please check back soon for more entries!