All in all, it was a lot of fun watching the kids grow and taking part in all their activities. We tried to be as involved as possible in their lives and did the best we could, even when one or both of us were out of town. The kids seemed fine with that though, they had a huge variety of aunts and grandparents to look after them and come to their respective events when Al or I were away, which we tried to be as little as possible.

When we were, though, we stayed in touch. I would call every night when I was out of town for some kind of engagement and Al would do the same, and the kids were usually able to watch me on TV if the match was anywhere near important. I think they missed Al when she was gone more than they missed me, and I think it had a lot to do with how permissive she was with them when I was out of town. I came home several times to find the house filled with cupcake wrappers and McDonald’s bags, but it wasn’t as if I could really hold it against her. The kids ate really healthily the great majority of the time.

When Alice was away, we still ate the way we usually did, but I made a lot of allowances for their behavior that I would normally never have done while Al was home. They were able to stay up an hour past their bedtimes on school nights to watch TV and play video games with me, and on the weekends I let them have friends over whenever they wanted. Alice wasn’t strict by any means but she liked to have them on a routine, which I broke every time she was out of town. It didn’t seem to hurt them any, though.

Kallie’s diabetes was always in the back of our minds, but we tried not to let it affect her life much. Of course we wanted her to be careful and showed her how to care for it as well as she could, and by about third grade she was fully in charge of her injections and blood glucose tests. We helped her with meal planning but since she ate so healthily anyway it wasn’t a big chore. Alice would bake her cupcakes and things with Splenda in them when I was out of town, since Lenore and my mother had showed her how, and that was really the extent of it for her early childhood.

We did try to take a family vacation at least once a year even with everything going on, just us and the kids. It wasn’t always anywhere tropical, although we did do the Hawaii thing. We just tried to be a family away from all the obligations and events and meetings and everything else and have some fun together. The kids seemed to love going with us, and when we got back home they always seemed to be a little closer to us than before.

And so it went throughout their elementary school careers. It was a great time in our lives with no real worries aside from the constant nervousness over Kallie’s health, and while the rest of their time in our home wasn’t awful it was never as simple as those happy days.