Charlie turned 8 yesterday. Can you believe it? He was 4 when I first started blogging about him. My very first blog was our fundraising letter for the Walk to Cure Diabetes:

"On the outside, Charlie has the appearance of a normal, healthy, mischievous 4-year-old boy, content in smashing cars, squishing bugs and embodying Luke Skywalker. But inside, his body is waging a war 24 hours a day, every single day."

The weekend was fine. Well, before our furnace stopped working on one of the coldest nights of the year. That was fun. Charlie asked if this meant his birthday was a terrible day.

I said, "yes."

A type 2 dad came over on Saturday to pick up his daughter who was hanging out with Maeve. He asked how Charlie’s numbers were. We told him about the recent 32. He told us he had never been below 85. We told him that he was also over 400 that day. "That’s nuthin’," he said. "I was 800 last week."

That was weird.

Charlie chose Macaroni Grill for his birthday dinner. After telling him they don’t sing happy birthday at that restaurant, he was surprised and embarrassed to find himself standing on his chair and waving a red napkin around like a lasso in the middle of the dining room while a waiter sang happy birthday to him in Italian. It was a hysterical. They brought out a monster piece of chocolate cake for him and blood sugars behaved.

To keep the birthday celebration going, tomorrow Charlie gets to go to Children’s Hospital to have his stomach examined by a gastrointestinal doctor and have blood drawn. Charlie continues to feel like he’s going to throw up all the time. It’s time we got to the bottom of this.