"Does that coke have sugar in it?"

“Does that coke have sugar in it?” Lavinia asks Ophelia’s teacher Mrs. Yarbrough just after she sat down at our dinning room table with her soda from Sonic. “I’m pretty sure it does” is Mrs. Yarbrough’s reply. “You’re going to get diabetes if you eat sugar” says Lavinia, her eyes huge as she looked at Mrs. Yarbrough’s cup as though it was going to attack her and give her diabetes. Jeremy and I hid in the kitchen smothering our laughter ineffectively. What have we done?

Ophelia ran in the Pumpkin Run through School Walk for Diabetes today and did a mile and a quarter. The school sent home information to share with your child about diabetes, which we did. This had a huge impact on Lavinia and she seems to be convinced that all sugar is bad now and going to kill us as soon as we put it in our mouths. It would be ok if she just kept that information to herself and choose to refrain from eating sugar but she believes it’s her personal responsibility to inform everyone that any time they put a piece of candy in their mouth they are, in fact, killing themselves. Of course, this has done little to limit her own usage of sugar, she seems perfectly fine with eating a piece or two every now and then but if any body else uses sugar she raises the diabetes alert right away. She even argued with me about putting sugar in the pumpkin bars we made together but I finally convinced her when I said that if she stopped arguing with me I’d let her lick the beaters. Obviously the double standard doesn’t bother her.

Ophelia raised $150 for research for Diabetes with her run today by personally asking people to sponsor her. For those of you that did, thank you very much, you added a lot to this experience. Ophelia ran for Mr. Scott, her Tae Kwon Do instructor who has type 1 diabetes. We are very proud and impressed by her drive and ability. I spoke with her gym teacher today and learned that Ophelia was the first girl in the primary grades to complete the 5 mile run and has been working on her 10 mile mark next which Mrs. Baker thinks will happen before the end of this grading period. And next week Ophelia tests for her orange belt in Tae Kwon Do and should pass with flying colors- she’s hoping she’ll actually get to her green stripe before Christmas since she’s already started learning that kicking drill, form and new kicks. As I write this I’m watching the clock because I have to pick her up from sparring. Her goal today was to be in 5 fights and remain standing for all of them. With her height Ophelia is often paired with students several belts higher than her so she gets a good work out. She was very excited to have been in 4 fights last week but was frustrated that she got knocked down in two of them (by blue belts). And here I am thinking, wow, you kick your leg above your head! Guess I better get my running shoes on… just as soon as I finish my coffee and cookie…