Once more

I have left it too long between posts.  Life tends to make that happen; one minute it's Christmas, then in a whirlwind of presents, indigestion, birthdays, frosty mornings, working, sleeping, cleaning, playing, and more working, whoosh it's already almost the end of February.

T's blood sugar level has been on the up again.  He thinks that he is lacking exercise and that even with his diet slippage, he would probably be okay if there were just a few more hours in the day into which to fit exercise and possibly more sleep.

We have a toddler; sleep is naturally high on the agenda.

I have been baking a lot recently; B's second birthday is coming up and I felt the need to practise before inflicting bakery disasters on unwitting, but hopefully polite family members.  And so I decided to experiment on those most benign of critics; my colleagues,  The feedback has been generally favourable, but I haven't  taken in any of my Splenda / Stevia creations yet.

The problem with Splenda / Stevia is that although they taste sweet, sweetness is not the only reason that sugar is added to a cake mixture.  Without sugar, I just can't seem to get cakes to rise properly.  There is only so much air you can beat into a batter before the structure cannot support itself any more and collapses back before the heat has set it.  The same goes for baking powder and sodium bicarbonate; too much has the opposite effect.  Sweeteners are lighter than sugar, so although they add volume, they don't add mass; I wonder whether that is part of the problem? I will investigate.

Investigation has been going on left, right and centre recently.  B has got a Balance Bike coming for his birthday; it is a bike with no pedals, brakes, or chain, and it is supposed to allow a toddler to learn how to control the bike's stability without having to learn how to pedal at the same time.  It is red, and I am sure that he will love it!  He will be made to wear a helmet though.  No helmet, no bike. Until he's at least forty.

Whilst T has been working in the evenings, the genealogy bug has bitten me once more.  A colleague and I may share common ancestry, so I have been looking into that for few days, but am getting nowhere quickly.

In short; life is pretty much carrying on.  It is easy (for me) to forget about the diabetes, and there is definitely a danger in becoming complacent about it.  Ultimately, it is T who has to make sure that he does the right things as far as his body is concerned, but forgetting to be supportive if he is more lax than usual is very, very easy.