Tanika Stimpson
Bio
My name is Tanika im a single mum to a beautiful boy. My blogs are about mine and my son’s life. My son and I are currently doing this while fundraising for JDRF by doing the JDRF One Walk.
We will be sharing updates on my son’s service dog.
Stories (12)
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Smartpup for Jaxon
At the beginning of this year, we had officially finished fundraising the 20 thousand dollars for my son Jaxon. We were supposed to visit Smartpups in August to meet the pup and the pup’s trainer working with my son Jaxon. The dog will be learning how to sniff out his diabetes low sugars and save his life from hypoglycaemia that can lead to serious health problems. Hypoglycaemia can cause seizures, unconsciousness, coma and even death. Due to Covid, we were unable to cross state borders due to lockdown, so we could not meet this pup; we then rescheduled for March 2022. The dog will either be a Labrador or a Golden Retriever breed. I’m not sure which puppy will be just yet as nobody picks the puppy they need to meet before a match is made.
By Tanika Stimpson4 years ago in Petlife
Songs for Halloween
Whilst I was working in child care as an Early Childhood Education I would play different songs to match each month or holiday for example, for Easter, I would play any Easter or bunny songs. Around the month of December, I would play all kinds of Santa music, including Australian Santa Carols. So in October, I like to encourage the children to help decorate the classrooms up while playing some music that will go with the month. So as an educator, I want the children to still learn through this so I had the children do some painting to make their own decorations to make the classroom look spooky whilst we are learning wer also play songs that are appropriate for children to listen to, such as ones that can be educational. This includes songs that have mathematics and numeracy in it but I do also play ones that are fun for the children to use their imagination skills and pretend to be things like a witch, skeleton, warewolf, monster or a zombie. When I played these kinds of songs in the past children would dance, run around, and pretend to be scared like in the songs and then laugh, they would then ask for me to play the song again.
By Tanika Stimpson4 years ago in Families
Birthday
People grow older by a year, and each year people like to celebrate in some way. Since 2020 a year after my son was diagnosed with diabetes, I have been cautious about what he eats. When I was celebrating my birthday, I bought a small cheap chocolate cake from the store my son was so excited to have—some cake with his mummy, he was so excited to share some cake. After celebrating my birthday, we then celebrated my son's 1st diabetes anniversary, which is also known as a diaversary with a moist chocolate cake. This cake tasted so delicious it was also in a shape of a spiderman head with lots of colours, mainly red, black and white; he was able to take it to preschool to share with his friends, he and his friends were able to have a small piece of the cake each. To celebrate a diabetes anniversary is to celebrate we accomplished the year with diabetes. A few months later, in August, it was his birthday, so we were able to celebrate with candy and his favourite chocolate cake, which we had custom made with Mickey Mouse and his pals. My son was so happy to have a day where we just counted extra carbohydrates to put into the insulin pump; I was able to make it extra special for him by allowing him to go nuts and eat whatever he wanted to eat as it was a once a year thing.
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Feast
New home on the farm
In the Summer a family of four, with a mother named Jannet who is thirty years old and a teacher, a father named Bob, thirty-five years old and an engineer and their two children son named James ten years and in school and daughter named Sarah, eight years in school and loves gardening. The family had gone on their road trip to a new home they started moving from the city to the country; they saw this as an adventure. The family was excited to move somewhere different out of their comfort zone. On their road trip, the family sang songs, played games to keep each other occupied, and bond as a family. The father then asked the family a question "what do we expect our new home to be like?" Everyone had stated what they expected from their new home; Sarah said she would like lots of animals and an old barn-like in her favourite story, Charlotte web. Sarah's family all smiled and said, that sounds beautiful.
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Families
Mindfullness diamond painting
Being a single mum has been hard work, while doing everything for a child sometimes we just need some time to figure things out about ourselves and to bring our stress levels down and allows me to focus on things other than diabetes, court, house stuff and study.
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Families
Keeping Children Safe!
When a working parent or carer sends their child or children to child care, they hope and expect their children will be safe, well looked after, and well educated. No one would ever expect something so horrible happen to their children in care. This is one experience I would never forget nor would I ever forgive.
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Criminal
Our small garden
At the place where I live, I don’t have a yard to have a nice big garden or grass for us to run around on, so I created a small garden perfect for my balcony. My garden has many different types of plants and gardens. I have four different carnivorous plants that are growing beautifully. They like to drink filtered water every day and they have been flowering. With their flowers, they have dropped so many seeds to the point my carnivorous plant's pot is full of bug-eating plants. These beautiful plants have eaten so many bugs and spiders, not only did they eat some spiders but some spiders have made these plants a home by creating a web over their mouths.
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Lifehack
Sickness and diabetes
In the two years of learning about diabetes to help my son Jaxon through diabetes. I have learnt that sicknesses can mess with sugar levels whether it will go high or low. Just recently Jaxon ended up getting sick without me knowing he was sick until his sugars kept rising and no matter how many corrections I had given him he wouldn’t come down. I then changed his insulin pump lines and still couldn’t bring it down so because his sugars are high his ketones went up to 3.7 overnight. Jaxon then got up in the night vomiting and urinating more because of the high sugars and high ketones. I then had to take him to the hospital for them to help me they then had to put in a temporary basal and increase his insulin rate at the time as he continues to go up even without food. We spent all day at the hospital trying to help this beautiful 4-year-old boy. Jaxon was then needed to be persuaded to drink as he was scared it was going to come back out of his mouth (his words).
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Families
What a diabetes assistance dog can do
It’s tough being a diabetic or having a diabetic child, things change everyday so not everyday is the same. One thing may work one day the next could be a different story. My son (Jaxon) is the first in the family to be diagnosed with diabetes, so when Jaxon was diagnosed I went into shock! I had to learn fast and on the spot, some days I felt like I was a lousy back up pancreas. During this Jaxon has learnt so much even tells people that his pancreas is broken.
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Petlife
Our Adventures fundraising
In May 2020 my son and I were accepted by smartpups to get an assistance dog for my son. An assistance dog for his diabetes is amazing they can smell diabetics sugars dropping before the Continuous Glucose Monitor does. An assistance dogs not only save the diabetics life but they can become the diabetics best friend who they can count on.
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Families
From the start
Hi, my name is Tanika, I became a mum on 30/8/2016. Since my son was born he struggled to breathe properly in his sleep. While going through this I was so scared my first thoughts as a new mum was shouldn’t this be so much easier, this boy would snore like an old man and I mean it was really loud. I kept taking him to the Drs and the hospital as he would have a very high temp, a rash and would choke on his breastmilk.
By Tanika Stimpson5 years ago in Families
