The Life & Times of Finnegan Buckley The terribly exciting and ever expanding world of me, myself

So y’all know that Monday was a total bust, but then Tuesday rolled around and things started to improve a bit.  Mom and I went to Marbles Museum in Raleigh to meet up with Joanna and Truman.  They had a really cool Mr. Potato Head exhibit set up this week that was awesome.  We got to make our own Mr. Potato Heads.  We had a total blast and got completely worn out.  Can’t wait to go back next week and do it again!

Me & Truman packing up the truck

Mr. Potato Head

On Wednesday we went over to Isaac’s house for a playdate and lunch.  Isaac had this cool new cardboard box playhouse that we got to play in.  Then we basically just ran around and played with all Isaac’s cool cars n’ stuff, and we even made our own tent and hid out underneath it.  Nobody knew where we were….soooo fun.

I lost my contact

Mom & Isaac

Thursday I got to have a playdate at my house.  Aaron came over to hang out for a bit.  We spent the whole time playing with my Hot Wheels and making big piles out of the pillows, and then diving on top of them.  Right after Aaron left to go home though, I started feeling a little lousy and my nose started running.  Oh no…not good.  By Thursday evening it was a full blown cold.  And I feel like absolute crapola.  Poor Mom…that means she gets to miss out on her morning off tomorrow morning.  I was supposed to go to Aaron’s house for a playdate on Friday morning but now that I have a cold she gets to stay home and take care of me.  But on a plus note, Daddy let me make some brownies for dessert tonight because he felt so sorry for me.

Who wants a brownie?

So Friday I just hung out in the house all day…..with my nose running down my face and my head being all stuffy.  Crappy beginning and a crappy end to my week.  But everything in the middle was fun at least.  And oh, I almost forgot.  When Dad was finished with work on Friday he took one side of my bed off, which turns it into a toddler bed.  So now I have a big boy bed.  And I made it through the entire night without getting out!  Yeah for me.

TrialNet

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d call today a 4 so far.  We started off bright and early and went to LabCorp.  Dad even came with us so I thought we were going to do something really fun.  He said he was going to go into work late so that he could go with us.  Oh boy.  Little did I know what was going to happen once we got there.

Mom sat down in a chair and I got to sit on her lap.  But then the mean lady held my arm out and tied a Really Tight elastic on it.  Youch!  I tried to kick her but she wouldn’t stop.  From there things went further down hill.  She took out a big giant needle and jammed it into my arm.  Can you say “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  So Not Fun!  No matter how hard I tried to get away I couldn’t.  I think she may have been trying to drain all the blood in my body.  Thank god it was over in a minute or so.  Well at least Mom gave me a Dum Dum pop for being such a brave boy.  Hooray!

So the whole reason Mom and Dad subjected me to this torture was because Mom put me in a study called “The Natural History Study of the Development of Type 1 Diabetes.”  I heard Mom telling Dad that she lives in fear every day of me developing Type 1 at some point.  So the point of being in this study is that there’s a way to tell if I carry an autoantibody that would increase my chances of  developing it.  It doesn’t mean that I would definitely develop it….it would just increase the risk.  Right now my risk is 10-15 times greater than everyone else’s.   And if I come back as negative for the autoantibody, that doesn’t mean that I’m out of the woods…it would just decrease my chances.

The goal of this study is to learn more about how Type 1 Diabetes develops in “at risk” individuals.  Participants in the study are offered the opportunity to enter into prevention, or early treatment studies when available.

So if the test comes back positive for the autoantibody, then we’d move on to Phase 2 of the trial.   Phase 2 is the Baseline Risk Assessment study.  It’s used to determine what my risks are of developing T1 at some point during the next 5 years, based on having the autoantibody.

From there we’d move on to Phase 3 which is basically the follow-up study.  But the key to all this is that by participating in this study we’d be offered enrollment into the prevention study which is now working to preserve insulin-producing cells.  That would help to manage the disease and lessen the chances of complications in the long run.  That’s the part that Mom is really most interested in.

So now the wait begins.  We should know the results in roughly 4-6 weeks.  So stay tuned!

And if you want to learn more about this study, please read this Fact Sheet.

Get screened

If you have a family member with Type 1 and you, or other family members would like to get screened, follow this link to see if you’re eligible for the study.

If you want to help out, by donating to researchers in this field, follow this link to the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation)!

UPDATE:  We received our letter on Friday, with the results to Finn’s test.  It’s NEGATIVE for autoantibodies!!!!! Yeah.

Look Ma, I can brush my teeth!

Today was a big day.  Mom brought me to see Dr. Taylor today to check out my teeth and make sure everything is the way it’s supposed to be.

The hygienist was not very…hmmm….kid friendly I guess would be a good way to put it.  He kept switching back n’ forth between baby talk and telling me to not touch anything.  The countertop was littered…and I mean littered with toys and fun stuff, yet he didn’t want me to touch any of them until after he looked in my mouth.  Ok, fine, take a peek.  Here you go.  Aaahhhh…

Apparently everything looked good in there.  He said I have 19 of my 20 teeth, and the 20th is starting to come through as we speak.   He also said there’s a chip in my front tooth from when I busted my lip open (and went to the hospital).  No surprise there.

After he finished checking out the goods I got to sit and play with the video games while we waited for Dr. Taylor to come in.  At least they had a Cars game….that was pretty cool.  And I got some really groovy DeWayne Wayne glasses.

When everything finished up checking my teeth they gave me a token to put in the giant gumball/prize machine.  Out popped a tattoo.  It was a little girly (a hummingbird and a flower), but hey, it’s still a tattoo.  Girls dig guys with tatts right?  Makes me even more manly looking.

My girly tatt!

Helping Grammy water the flowers

So we just got back from an awesome vacation with Grammy and Grampy in Massachusetts.  10 whole days.  Mom and Dad were going up to help Mom’s friend Diane renovate her kitchen so they decided to make a vacation out of it and stay a little while.  Plus, we had to bring my brother Patrick back home to see his Mom so the timing worked out great.

We arrived on Thursday night and went straight to Grammy and Grampy’s.  And much to my surprise there was a big ol’ pile of Hot Wheels awaiting me.  And on top of that, there was a motorized Tonka bulldozer/excavator too!  Grampy you rock!  Some Hot Wheels and some snacks and I’m set for a week (or two!).

Then, first thing on Friday we packed up the car and went to Plum Island in Newburyport.  We met up with Mom’s friends Nanci and Charlie and their little girl Jordan.  She’s 2.5.  We had a blast running around in the sand, building sand castles, and jumping in the water.  The water was a little bit cold, but not too bad for dunking.  And I liked that Jordan likes playing with trucks too, just like me.  If it hadn’t started to rain at noon we probably would’ve stayed much longer.   So instead we headed home for naps and snacks.  Fun day!

On Saturday me, Mom, Dad, Grammy and Grampy took a drive up to Kittery, ME to do some shopping at the outlets.  Mom and Dad broke off from the group for a while, to do their own thing, so I decided to let Grammy and Grampy chase after me at the playground for a little while until they got too hot.  After that I let them chase me around in the Kittery Trading Post.  That’s where we met up with Mom and Dad again.  They both got some cool tshirts there too….they said “Wicked Big Sox Fan” across the chest.  And coincidentally, I picked out a Life Is Good tshirt (which Grammy promptly bought for me) that had a baseball on the front.  And strangely enough, Dad bought himself (unbeknownst to me) the EXACT same tshirt.  Copycat.   –  Saturday night we all piled into the car and drove to Merrimac, MA for dinner.  Cool place called Skip’s Hamburgers.  Really yummy.  They make awesome curly fries.  And you can sit and eat outside on the picnic table too, which is pretty neat.  Not that Grammy and Grampy were digging that…but hey, I was.  ;o)

On Sunday Dad and Mom finally left me alone for awhile with Grammy and Grampy.  They took off to go start the demo at Diane’s house.  And of course they wouldn’t let me help with that because I might get hurt.  Blah blah blah…what-ever!  I have skills!  I had fun without them anyway.  We had lunch, played with my cars, and got to swing outside for awhile too.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty similar since Mom and Dad were back at Diane’s house working on the kitchen.

Wednesday Dad actually had to go back to work.  He was working from home for a few days while we were in MA.  So while he was squirreled away in one of the bedrooms, Grammy and Mom went off shopping somewhere.  That left me and Grampy to do some guy stuff.  I’ll just let you figure that one out….

Wednesday night we all went over to Auntie Linda and Uncle Tommy’s house for a 2nd, 2nd birthday party for me.   Yeah me!  We got chocolate cake and ice cream.  Eeee……  And lots of cool presents – some clothes, some Mega Bloks, and a kick-ass book called First 100 Machines.  I can identify just about every vehicle in there already.  Yes, I’m that smart!  And Mom’s good friend Trish was there too.  She was nice enough to give me a Target gift card, which I promptly used on a Mack Hauler semi truck, from the Cars movie.  Wicked awesome!

So let’s see….that brings us to Thursday.  On Thursday me, Mom and Grammy & Grampy took a drive up to Freeport, ME to visit the LLBean store.  We left Dad behind again to get some work done, in peace and quiet.  That was fun…NOT.  Bo-Ring!  Mom was acting like someone shot her out of a cannon….trying to get through the store as fast as possible, before I started to melt down, I suppose.  And after all that driving, all she ended up with was a big LLBean tote bag.  She was acting like she’d won the lottery though, so I guess it’s all good.  When we finally left there we stopped at the Day’s Crabmeat & Lobster Shack just south of town, in Yarmouth, ME.  Soooo good.  I highly recommend it to anyone who’s up that way.  Mom even got a whoopie pie from Cranberry Island Kitchen.    I was going to say that it wasn’t nearly as good as my Mom’s homemade whoopie pies, but I wouldn’t be able to verify that since I was asleep when she ate it.  Nice huh?  And it’s shaped like a mussel shell, which is pretty neat too.

On Friday, me, Mom, Grammy and Grampy drove to Lawrence, MA to go to the New Balance outlet to get me some new sneakers.  Yes folks, my feet have grown AGAIN.  I’m now in a size 10.5-11, for those of you who were wondering.  This time I got 3 new pair.  An 11, an 11.5 and a 12.  All wide!  You know what they say about boys with big feet.  ;o)  –   On the way home from Lawrence we drove to Kingston, NH to see Marci Marciano, my Mom and Grammy and Grampy’s old neighbor.  Well…she’s not old…I guess I should say ‘former’ neighbor.  She used to live in the house across the street.  I got to play with her kitty cats for a while, until Grammy’s eyes turned red and started to close up.  That was the sign that it was time to go home.  And since we were driving right by Skip’s Hamburgers we got to stop for some more curly fries.  Yahoo!

When I woke up from my afternoon nap on Friday I got to see Donovan and Sophie, Auntie Sarah’s twins.  They came all the way from CT just to see me.  We walked down to the end of the street and played at the playground for a little while….had a few nice photo ops too while we were there.  After playing for a while Mom and Dad had to run off to Diane’s house again for some touch-ups so I hung out with Grammy and Grampy for the rest of the night.

Saturday morning was fun.  We followed Sarah, Donovan and Sophie to Maudsley State Park in Newburyport, MA.  Took a little hike through the woods and played in the field for a while.  But even better than that we went to downtown Newburyport after that and had ice cream at Gram’s.   And then later that night I hung out with Grammy and Grampy again so that Mom and Dad could have a date night….their last, I’m sure, for a long long time.  :o)  They ended up going to The Upper Crust in Newburyport, which they said was awesome, by the way.

So that’s it in a nutshell.  Had a blast…wish we were there for longer.  So much to see, so little time.  Next year, Santa’s Village!

So the world’s worst coffee shop finally got the hint and closed down a few months ago, and in it’s place is Pelican’s Sno-Balls.

Me and Patrick eating sno-balls

My brother Patrick is here this week and he really wanted a sno-ball, so Dad took us there this afternoon.

Just in case you are part of the uninitiated, sno-balls are kind of like a sno-cone, only even more awesome because they come in flavors like toothpaste and pickle.

We had a small problem with the kid behind the counter, he was a Yankee’s fan, but I guess even the mentally handicapped need work. He was a really nice guy, for a Yankees fan, and I’m pretty sure he gave me an extra squirt of orange in mine.

Packy Joe ordered lemon-lime and the guy offered to top it off with some sort of marshmallow goo… YES PLEASE!

Everything seemed to be going well, I was eating mine, Packy was eating his and we were getting most of it in our mouth. Then I decided to mix my little bit of orange in with Packy’s lemon-lime.

Good Lord, you’d have thought I stabbed him with a hunting knife! I mean, sure I spilled about 1/2 of it on his lap, but I think the new flavor would have rocked!

Dad decided that we had eaten enough “frozen sugar water” and packed us into the truck all sticky… did I mention my brother was all pouty? Pffft, old kids are so up-tight.

Look at the rain!

We had a terrible rain storm come through the other day. Lots of pounding rain, accompanied by tons of thunder and lightning. AWESOME!!!  And perfect for dancing!

So today was a big day.  Me and Mom went to check out the special preview of the dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Life & Sciences in Durham.  It was way cool.  Huge, life like dinosaurs everywhere.  You could even walk right up and touch one of them.  They’re even going to have a real fossil dig site, once the exhibit is complete.  Unfortunately it wasn’t finished yet, when we were there.  Kind of a bummer.

After we finished up with the dinosaurs we played with the dump trucks for a while, then moved on to the play structure.

Yippee! Today’s the day that Dad comes home from NH.  He had gone up there, to the resort he used to visit as a kid with his family.  He went with Nana, Papa, Auntie Chris and Uncle Rick.  But me and Mom stayed behind in NC and went stir crazy. It definitely didn’t feel like a weekend without Daddy around, that’s for sure.  I don’t know how we made it through 3 whole days without him.  And for that matter, I don’t know how he made it through 3 whole days without US!

We started off our day by going to Walmart with Auntie Brett and McKenna.  Mackie was picking out a new chair an ottoman for her bedroom.  She wanted a chair to read in, so we helped her pick one out.  This is what she got, except in bright purple – Mackie’s Chair.   And she got a little ottoman to go with it, in green.  Totally cool.  After that Mom dropped all of us off at Auntie Brett’s pool, while she went off to do some errands.  YIPPEE!!!!  I got to go swimming with Cali and Mackie.

After swimming me and Mom went home, had some lunch and then had a nap.  Well, I had a nap…Mom was doing God only knows what.  Zzzzz…..

When I woke up we decided to go for a long walk around the neighborhood and then stop at the playground to do some swinging. (see pics above!).

Around 7:30 we packed ourselves into the car and headed off to the airport. He was landing around 8:10 and we wanted to make sure that we got there in time. We ended up having about 20 minutes to kill, once we arrived, so we spent it running around in the terminal and watching the planes land.

Today started off bright and early. We woke up around 5:15 so that we could drive Daddy to the airport. He’s going to be gone for 3 days. He flew up to NH to see Nana, Papa, Auntie Chris and Uncle Rick. They’re having some sort of mini family reunion at the same place that they used to go when Daddy was a little boy. I just hope it doesn’t rain the whole time he’s up there. The forecast wasn’t looking too promising.

When we got home me and Mom laid around and watched a little TV, and then around 9:00am Mom decided that we needed to get up and do something. We got dressed and went off to Target. Since I was being such a good helper she let me play in the toy aisle for a while. I dragged the big, giant sandbox wagons up and down a few aisles, then moved on to the Hot Wheels and Tonka trucks.

After about 15 minutes of playing we went off to get our groceries. BO-RING! But I was good. I sat there and played with my new Hot Wheels Volkswagen Bus and let Mom do her business.

When we got home it was only about 10:30. We played with my Little People Barn, and then stacked up some blocks. I was starting to get hungry though so we made some lunch. It was earlier than usual but hey, we started our day at 5:15 today! Whadya expect?

After lunch we were both starting to yawn a lot. Mom asked if we should go lay down upstairs and I wholeheartedly agreed. We snuggled under Mom’s quilt and we both fell asleep instantly. Aaahhhh……zzzz…..so good.

Dad was working from home today – hooray!  So me and Mom decided to get out of his hair for a while so that he could get some work done.  We went to the Marbles Museum again.  I love going early in the morning because this place can get really crowded in the afternoons.  At 9am we practically have the place to ourselves…at least for an hour or so.

We spent some time buying groceries in the supermarket.  Then off to the train depot to drive some trains.  After that we made our way through the duck pond to rescue some ducks that couldn’t swim.  Oh, and I stopped to make a phone call to Dad to make sure he was doing ok!  He tends to have a little separation anxiety so I wanted to let him know I missed him.  Brownie points for me!

When we got home Mom made me sit on the potty again.  No biggie.  But mission accomplished if you know what I mean.  Wink wink nudge nudge.

2 M&Ms and 1 Junior Mint !!!