D Blog Week: I got the moves like SWAG-ger

Today's prompt asks us to be totally conceded and tell everyone how great we are at something in regards to our children's diabetes care.

How am I supposed to spout out how great I am at something?

I mean, really?  For someone like me it seems close to impossible...

Because I'm really not great at something...

...

I'm AH-MAZ-ING at something!

Great doesn't even begin to cover it.

(lol!  I made a funny!)

Today I am going to talk about one of my super powers.  SWAGing.

For the newbies out there, SWAG is a acronym for Sientific Wild A** Guess.

I do this "SWAGING" thing when I am counting carbs. 

Which honestly, I think I do more than anything else in life.

I'm so good at it, I've got my kids convinced that I am magic.  They will often eat a plate of food in one room, and then come into the other room where I am and say, "How many carbs?"

"ummmm...let me look in my crystal ball.  Seriously?"

Just as outrageous is the phone calls I get every day at lunch.  My two littles call me before lunch to get their lunch insulin.  This means I have to GUESS what they are going to eat.  Luckily, I pack their lunches and learned the oh so smart trick to give them VERY little lunches.  1/2 sandwich.  1 yogurt or 1 cheese stick.  Crackers or pretzels or chips.  They eat the fruit I pack them for snack.  This means they eat what I give them.  Then, when they get home they have a big snack.  

Calling from school for me to count birthday treat carbs is another example.

"It's so and so's birthday...we are having cupcakes...how many carbs?"

"How big?  How much frosting?  Is there candy on top?   Is it homemade or from a store?"  (Sadly, this conversation is the story of my life since it is the last days of school and party-pa-looza.)

Now I know what you are thinking.

"Meri, why don't you create a website where we can download pictures, and you can SWAG for everybody all the live long day!"

Alas, I cannot.  Because sadly, there is a caveat to my super power. 

It only works for my boys.  No one else.

When I meet up with other T1 families, I'll often get asked the question, "How many carbs do you think?"

But I've found that carb counting is very individually specific.   My boys are true examples of that.

Subconsciously, and within milliseconds of seeing a plate of food,  I'll adjust carbs to the situation, taking into account past highs or lows at certain times of day, past effects of food on blood sugars, and activity of the day...so on and so forth.  Case and point.  All three of my boys get different carb counts for the same bowl of cereal in the morning.

My endo and nurse hate that I do that.  (Waving our diabetes team in SF right now!  HI GUYS!)  They hate it because it provides more work for me...but honestly there are like 50 variables that go into how I SWAG a meal, and I can do it in seconds of calculating.  No other human can do it for my boys like I can.  (Except my SIL and my husband. They are almost as good as me, but they are good at everything, so it isn't fair to compare.  My husband wants to me to add here that they are my Scottie Pippen to my Michael Jordan, but this is my blog, and no sports analogies are allowed....wait... )

Anyway, my system works for us.  I can SWAG in the most unlikely of conditions in just a glance. 

It's been 14 years.  It is part of me now.

But there is a humbling factor to all of this.  J has been SWAGing for himself for a good two years now,

and he is better than I am.

Poo.

I don't know how that little sucker does it, but he gives me a run for my money.  I think he was sent here to keep my ego in check.

So yeah, my head won't blow up from swagging self adulation.

 It is probably for the best...my brain is swelly enough as it is.

This concludes day 2 of D Blog Week, masterminded by the incomparable Karen at Bitter Sweet.  Want to see who else posted on this topic?  Check it out HERE.