My name is Lesley, I'm 32 years old. I've had Type 1 diabetes for 21 years.....imagine! I'm happy to say that I'm fairly healthy for someone with a chronic illness, I manage my diabetes with an insulin pump and check my bloodsugars about 3-4 times a day. I still have highs and lows and bad days but they are much fewer and far between than before I was on the pump. It truly saved my life! I don't have any lasting complications from the disease and my life insurance actually dropped my risk catagory, which is great since it's now cheaper. I work for the family business which is community care home for seniors, I've been working there for 8 years minus 3 one year maternity leaves so 5 years. I'm very lucky to have my parents as employers since they realize the stress of having a family of three and the toll that Diabetes can have on my day to day life. 
My husband Curtis is 36 and right now he's off work taking care of our children. I was off for 15 months on maternity leave last year and just came back to work in January 2010. We needed to have someone home while things started taking place for our son and to watch over our smallest baby since the childcare costs of putting two in daycare take up quite a chunk of our salaries. This is working for us now, but we're hoping that Curtis will find work during the summer. He's a Scaffolder and goes to Fort McMurray for work but the recession destroyed quite a bit of jobs out there this past year so nothings for certain, if not he'll find work somewhere, he's very adaptable and could work at anything I think. He's a good dad, takes care of our children and often tells me what to do for these kids. 
Amy is my 9 year old girl, she's my daughter from a previous marriage. In October 2008 she was diagnosed with ADHD. She's a beautiful girl full of imagination and wonder. She's naturally curious about everything and is a very smart girl, loves to read and is a social butterfly. Unfortunately, she's having trouble in school and is starting to hate school because of the negative vibes. She used to love it, now it's such a challenge for her to stay focused on her tasks and do her work. She has a math tutor and is in Brownies once a week. That's all I have her in right now because our life is busy enough without dragging her from one thing to another, in time I'll put her in different extracurricular activities but for now, I'm happy with the way things are. 
Ian is our 3.5 year old son and I must say he's a gorgeous boy. Blue eyes and light red hair with a few freckles dotted across the bridge of his nose and on his cheeks. Nobody would ever look at him and say he's Autistic until they talk to him and he doesn't respond. Ian was diagnosed just a few months after Amy's ADHD was diagnosed in January of 2009. We took him to a private psychiatrist to get him assessed and diagnosed because if we had waited, he would've just been diagnosed this past fall and then have to wait another year on the list for IBI therapy. Luckily, because of his earlier diagnosis, Ian has started his IBI just last month and it's looking promising. He's a very good natured boy, very seldom has tantrums and lets us know in his own way what he wants.
Lyla is our baby, she's almost 15 months old, she was born just 2 weeks after Ian's diagnosis. When she was two months old she was diagnosed with having Strabismus in both eyes, meaning her eyes are crossed. She had corrective surgery in October of 2009, just 9 months old. The surgery did dramatically improve her eyes but they're still crossing which should be corrected by wearing bifocal glases. How do you get a 15 month old to wear glasses? If you can tell me, please let me know. She's a beautiful baby, loves to get into everything and is starting to try to talk and imitating sounds, she's still not walking yet but I believe that has to do with her eyes. She's in an Autism Sibling study at the IWK in Halifax because she has an older brother with Autism.
We also have two cats and a puppy. We got Maggie, a yellow lab, to train to be a service dog for Ian. It'll be a long time training her but will be worth it, we have a local registered dog trainer helping us with this process and we're hoping everything works out.
