Three dry mornings! and food allergies.

Three dry mornings and without using pullups!  This is a HUGE milestone for my soon to be 5 years old son C.    Potty training for him was NOT easy.  We would have him totally trained and then he would totally relapse and  wet himself every time, and this happened several times.  We tried everything we could think of, even using homeopathic bedwetting drops last summer.

I began reading a book about ADHD (he was diagnosed by a pediatric neuropsychologist January 2010 - right  before he turned 4) and it discussed several things I hadn't though of, including hidden food allergies.  We had been very careful with his foods as an infant, and he had never reacted to anything.  As a toddler he reacted once to peanuts (SCARY) and several times to cinnamon.  But in three different allergy tests, he was negative for anything.  But the food allergies and ADHD had me wondering - was it a food dye or something in everything he ate?  We had no clue and no idea where to start.  Last summer, just a few weeks after the tornado destroyed the hospital that we use, C broke out in hives.  I wasn't initally too concerned - he always breaks out in hives when we stop/switch his allergy meds.  We were switching him
so that we as a family could all be on the same thing - only ONE to buy.  But these hives were different.

They kept spreading.

Eventually it got to the point that I got really worried.  We had done the benedryl and bathed him in oatmeal.  And that didn't help.  So we went to the hospital.....the TENT hospital, as it was called.  The ER was ten or so beds with barely any privacy.

C is a super skinny kiddo and he has my veins, meaning drawing blood or hitting a vein for IV's is difficult.  Mix with that an intelligent 4 year old who was hurting (his feet were so swollen by that time that he wouldn't stand), no soundproofing, and it was past bedtime.  They had to stick him more than once, and I can still remember him screaming, "Don't poke me!!" over and over at the top of his lungs.  Still hard to remember that!!  Eventually they got all the meds in him and we were able to go home, after I bought him an Ironhide transformer.

He looked much better the next morning, but the hives started coming back later in the day.  So after a trip to his pediatrician's new office we had an appointment to see an allergist.  We saw that allergist at his temporary office at Memorial Hall and got C's blood drawn before we left the building.  Then we  w..a..i..t..e..d....  The doc had to wait until he had his new office before the blood could be tested.  Then we found out his machine had sustained more damage than initially thought, so we waited some more.
We found out C has minor allergies to wheat and egg whites, and he reacted to several other foods (chicken, chocolate, beef, and a few others) but they were all under the "allergy" limit.

So, MAJOR diet change ensued.  No more wheat or egg whites.  Which meant no more flour, which is used in EVERYTHING and can be found in trace amounts in many foods.  C has now been wheat and egg white free for about three months and wow have things changed!!  He no longer has accidents (except for a very occasional one from playing too hard) and his ADHD symptoms have greatly decreased!!  We do know when he gets wheat because he will become more defiant and have more tantrums, but I am determined to keep the wheat away (see my 2012 "resolution").  Bedwetting hasn't happened in over a month, and we officially stopped wearing pullups as a backup.  It is amazing what food allergies can do to our bodies (and NOT in a good way)!!

Since all this happened with C, I got my allergies retested.  I am no longer sensitive to soy, corn, or tomato (yay), but have a slight allergy to wheat.  My 6 year old daughter K is allergic to egg whites only, when she was retested.  Our allergist told us allergy tests can be unreliable in kids under 4 years, which is why we got so many negative tests with C.  My two year old L can't have pears or pineapple, which we discovered through elimination diets.  He gets nasty diaper rashes from them.  And our 8 month old R can't have corn.  There is only ONE formula that is guaranteed to be corn-free, and it's $10 per day....

All that being said, there's power in knowing what makes us not feel well and I would encourage others to not give up finding out the root cause of ailments.  We could have medicated C for his ADHD, but it wouldn't have fixed anything.  We know the cause and he is improving without any meds - none for ADHD and none for his allergies!



Oh, I want to welcome my FIRST follower too!!  Thanks for coming by my humble blog!

This is the month

This month, January, is seen as a time of new beginnings.  And it definitely could be that for my family.  We have been waiting for this month for almost a year; ever since we found out that J's job could be cut.  Even with the tornado, things are still progressing as we had been told.  J is up against four other people, including one co-worker, for the ONE job spot here.  He is interviewing for several other spots within the state.  Aaaand, several OUT of state.  He has had one interview where they want to meet him in person before they give him the job, but it's half the country away, and is NORTH.  I am content with the amount of winter here, so not sure how I would handle more of it...

And there's one south, only about three hours from where we are now, and we would have family close.  Currently our closest family is over an hour away.  We should be hearing from them any day!!

But, there's the moving.  The packing, the selling the house, the finding a new house, changing schools, and so on.  When we moved in October 2010, just over a year ago, we said we were NEVER moving again, unless God said otherwise...

God has definitely been working in our hearts.  I am now okay with moving, and have started *trying* to get the house in order.  And that's hard with four kids six years and younger.  Oh, and R, the 7 month old, just became mobile this week!!

I am going through and getting rid of a bunch of stuff in preparation.  I know it's not 100% certain, but stuff needs to go anyways!!  I have ten plastic tubs worth of outgrown clothes, and oodles of unused toys!!  I am trying not to stress about everything, and I generally have done well with that.  The verse I keep close to heart is "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."  Philippians 4:6.  I know worrying gets me nowhere, and I am very thankful that the details are already planned!!

2012 resolution

I never do resolutions because I never follow through, so what's the point.  However, having found out that C is allergic to wheat, I will actually be making one.  Right now I am sometimes making up two versions of meals - one normal one and one wheat (gluten)- free for C.  I really don't like doing this because it gets time consuming and uses a lot of dishes!!  I have been toying with the idea of going gluten free as a family, but was convinced this weekend after reading http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/gluten-what-you-dont-know_b_379089.html about the effects gluten has on everyone's body.  You remember always being told "pizza gives you acne"?  But it's not the grease.....

So my 2012 resolution is to be completely gluten free as a family.  No "normal" flour, no "normal" pasta, no "normal" nasty wheat anything!

1st or 20th

Losing a baby is never easy!!  Seeing how the world has responded to the loss of Jubilee Duggar reminds me that we are in this world, but not to be part of it.  We lost our first baby Sept 11, 2004, and although we were only 6 weeks into the pregnancy (and way too early to find out boy or girl), the loss of our precious Morgan is still difficult.  Yes, we have had four successful pregnancies since then, but that doesn't make the loss any easier. For some, a baby that age is just tissue, but for (most) mothers, a baby is more than that.  God knit us together in an amazing way, and to not see life as life is tragic.

When we lost Morgan, we had lost of comments from well-meaning family and friends.  "You can always try again" to "must've been something wrong" to "I'm sorry."  I work with special needs kiddos under 3 years old, and I would have traded anything for Morgan to be alive - even if there was something "wrong."

But, when you get downright malicious on purpose, that is unacceptable.  So many people dislike the Duggars for one reason or another - not being able to spend adequate time with each child (what about parents that have to work until 6 or 7 and kids go to bed at 8), to too big of a carbon footprint (so many people with smaller families do worse than they do), to whatever.  The Duggars are following God's will and that will always make people mad.  But to get upset about having so many well-cared for children?  (Oh, and if you look to our parents or grandparents generations....families of 12-15 weren't uncommon - so why is 2.1 kids the "perfect" number - we have been called "Duggars" with our four children....).  And then to be HAPPY that a child dies??  And now there's the outrage about the pictures from the funeral.  Get over it people!!  Would you not take photos of a dying family member, so you can have the last few photos?  So what that her photos were after she left this earth.  I would have loved to have had any pictures of my little Morgan!

Duggars - I am sorry from the bottom of my heart for your loss of little Jubilee!!  I pray God's comfort for you and encouragement to not be discouraged by comments of people.  It's God's opinion that matters, and you all are good role models for other believers.

Easy as PIE??

So, it's the Monday before Thanksgiving, and I am locked IN the house with all four kiddos.  We have a dense fog advisory, I woke up late, had a hard time getting things around this morning, and at 7:30 (when we normally are walking out the door), the younger two were still asleep!!  So twenty minutes later, we are all ready to leave and I look to the hook where I hang my keys.....and they weren't there.  Ugh.  Which meant they were out in the van in our bag with our bag for church.  This was further complicated by the fact that our garage is technically unattached to our house.  We have a breezeway between the house and garage, so there are two doors, both locked, between me and my keys.  Oh, and our locks are the ones where you have to have the key for both sides of the lock!

We have lived here a little over a year, and I haven't yet found a good place to put spare keys.  I searched and searched looking for the spare house keys, and couldn't find them!  During this time, my two older kids were wanting to get to school and the younger two were grumping!  So I gave up, called the school and put the younger two back in bed.  C was upset that he wasn't going to get to eat his special pumpkin pie at school today, so we had pie at 9 AM!

C is allergic to wheat and egg whites, so cooking can be difficult at times.  But, his ADHD symptoms have improved dramatically since we have removed the allergens from his diet.  I try to make snacks for school for him so he doesn't feel "left out."  But being 4 years old, he understands that he feels better eating special food and so he doesn't feel left out.  They were going to have pumpkin pie at school today, so I set out to find a recipe over the weekend.

I found several recipes, but many included ingredients I don't have yet, or included egg, and I don't think egg replacer would have worked.  Then, eureka!!  I found a dairy-free, egg-free coconut-pumpkin pie at http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/11/gluten-free-tuesday-dairy-free-egg-free-cocon.html !  And it's NO BAKE!!  Wow!!  And I had all of the ingredients, some just needed a little help.

I had bought a coconut last week just to try.  I found an awesome tutorial at http://thenaughtyvegan.com/how-to-open-a-coconut.htm on opening the coconut and http://thenaughtyvegan.com/how-to-shred-coconut.htm for shredding the coconut.  Super easy and yummy!  I did this last Thursday and wasn't sure how I was going to use it, so I put the shredded coconut and the coconut water back in the fridge.  And the coconut halves are by my craft area for something in the future.

So fast forward to last night and this pie recipe...  It calls for coconut MILK.  Hmmm, didn't have any, but I had remembered seeing how to make it.  I couldn't use the recipe on thenaughtyvegan.com because I didn't have a young coconut, but figured I could find another recipe, and I did.  http://nourishedkitchen.com/how-to-make-coconut-milk/  Again, super easy, and that's great.  Now I still have the pulverized coconut for later use...

Now I had all my ingredients.....almost.  Ugh, no pumpkin pie spice.  http://www.food.com/recipe/substitution-for-pumpkin-pie-spice-107059 came to the rescue.  So I scaled the amount for what the pie needed and realized I had no ginger.  Hmmm.  Well, no ginger then.  So I just added a little extra of the allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg and made the pie.  And the pie was done quickly.  I poured a little into several small bowls with lids and tossed them into the fridge.

So, how did the pie taste?  Fabulous!!  It tasted just like normal pumpkin pie without the crust (which I don't really like anyway...)  It was a hit!!  And now we have several mini pumpkin pies for all of our Thanksgiving get-togethers later this week!

Been almost five months.....

It's been almost 5 months since the tornado ripped through Joplin, less than 10 miles from our house.  Almost every day we drive through part of the devastation on our way to church, Wal-Mart, or the kids' school.  Things are progressing, but there's still a long way to go.  Our usual Wal-Mart will be open soon, as will Aldi.  Walgreens and Chik-fil-a have both been open for over a month.  Some commercial properties look as if they still haven't been touched.  It is still very eerie to drive down Rangeline at night, what was once lit so well people could drive without lights and not realize the lights weren't on.  It is so heart wrenching to look where thousands of homes and hundreds of businesses once stood.  And to see St. John's hospital from Rangeline, something I never thought would be possible.  My youngest was born at St. Johns's two weeks before the tornado, and to hear the stories from St. John's is incredible.  Many people lost their lives and went to meet their maker, but I am in awe of how things could have been so much worse!!  Our tornado warnings are usually after dark, often 10 pm or later, so for this one to happen at 5:41 is unusual.  Graduation for Joplin High School happened that day, but the ceremony was held at Missouri Southern instead of the high school, which was destroyed.  The tornado hit on a Sunday evening, as graduation parties started and churches were preparing for evening services.  Had this tornado hit at the "normal" time for warnings, many people would have been in bed and not watching the weather.  Many schools and daycares were in the path.  Had this been a Monday, parents would have been driving from work to get pick up their children, and that is hard to think about what could have been...

All that being said, we were "unaffected."  Well, that's not entirely true.  We physically still had our home, vehicles, etc, and had no repairs to make.  We didn't have any funerals to attend of family or friends.

But, it has taken a toll on our kids (and us too.)  My 4 year old son came home from preschool with a dot-to-dot and it said "I used to be a square, now I am a __________."  C's said "a tornado on a house.  Driving through Joplin, the kids always point out the damage and are sad every time.  Today on our way to school, we saw some pretty amazing cloud to cloud and cloud to ground lightening, and K's first words were "I hope there's no tornado today!"  She is six.

A friend of mine had posted on facebook a devotional scripture from that day.  Jeremiah 17:17  "Do not be a terror to me; you are my refuge in the day of disaster."  Wow!!