My Big Sister, My Hero

Jessi is 4 years old.

Ally is her big sister and her hero! Sure they fight like cats and dogs, but in the end they are best friends. I hear them tell each other that and it melts my heart.

Just today I overheard Jessi saying, "Ally, you are my bestest friend."
And on another recent day I heard Ally, "Hey, Jessi, Do you want to play best friends?" I'm not sure what 'play' best friends is exactly, but I love it anyway.

Jessi looks up to her big sister; she wants to be just like her. I have known this for a long time. That's what little sisters do right? I know that I have looked up to my big sister my whole life. (Although there is no need to go telling her that and giving her a big head or anything!)

Well, when I say Jessi wants to be JUST like her sister, I mean it. Today she came out wearing one of Ally's pump pouches. She had some sort of little video game in there as her makeshift pump. She had also packed a little backpack. Contents of the backpack sure did resemble Ally's diabetes bag. Meter (we had an old one in their toy doctor kit)-check, notebook for recording her BG-check, and don't forget the Smarties for treating low blood sugar-check! She had separated the smarties by color. I overheard her saying that if she was high she needed to eat the yellow ones, but if she was low she needed to eat the pink ones. Hmmmm....guess we still have some educating to do here, good thing she is my non-D kiddo!! She even wore the pump pouch when we went out to dinner last night and played the part by "checking her sugar" before we ate, asking Daddy how many carbs her dinner was, and pretending to enter it into her pump. It was so cute.

(While this was cute, I am thankful that she is not JUST like Ally and I pray that she will never need to copy Ally's routine.)

And I think Ally loved every minute of it! Was it because she felt important? Or maybe loved? Or was it because she felt comfort? In the restaurant I watched Ally as Jessi was pretending to check her sugar. She was beaming. It made me wonder....was she happy because her little sister thinks she is so cool and wanted to be just like her? Or was she ultimately happy because someone else was like her - She was not the only one checking her sugar before dinner. I think it was the latter.

A few weeks ago Ally told me that Jessi said she wished she had diabetes too. Then Ally said, "I kind of wish she did too." I gasped! Oh no, honey, we don't! But then as she was talking to me about it, I realized that she just wanted to be like everybody else...like ANYbody else! She feels different in our house. She feels different in her classroom. She feels different around her cousins, her friends. She IS different everywhere she goes. I take this for granted.

Thanks to Jessi, for making her feel a little less different today!