Where has the time gone?

It's been three months since I posted here last. Mostly things have been good.

My daughter's Kindergarten teacher has been awesome about her food allergies, and another girl with nut allergies joined our Girl Scout troop, so now I'm not alone.

My son's progressive dairy challenge has been going so well that I think by July I will have to close this blog. It's been a wild ride. He finished up his baked dairy trial the last week of January, and we're on to cooked milk.

The end of this week he'll be doing straight melted cheese in a few foods. I have to admit that I'm still pretty scared. So far he's had milk, butter, and even cheese mixed into things baked, or cooked in a recipe. I will own up to the fact that the first time I sat and watched him like a hawk. It is very surreal to see him eating this stuff.

So, we'll be doing this until his 5th birthday in July, and then move on to regular milk, not-melted cheese, yogurt, ice cream, etc. Scary!!!

Ice Cream Turkies, remix

We went to Girl Scouts with our home made ice cream cake Monday. It was a non-issue. I explained to the girl scout troop leader what I had found out (nothing) and that I'd just made my own instead. I explained it to the woman who was bringing the "turkey". Everyone was cool with it, and DD enjoyed her time! Yay!!

Girl Scouts and Ice Cream Turkies

Girl Scouts is a culinary nightmare.

DD is in girl scouts again this year, despite it being a disaster last year. For our meeting right before Thanksgiving everyone has decided it would be "super fun!" to get an ice cream cake, shaped like a turkey, from Baskin Robbins.

Their website has no information on the cake. They gave me the "anything could be cross contaminated" speech, and I'm not in charge of choosing the flavor, so who knows what is going to happen.

The other moms DO know that DD has a peanut allergy, but they're so sadly uninformed, and every time I try to educate them they look at me like I'm insane. The woman who thought up this idea basically barked at me"It doesn't have peanuts" without showing me a shred of evidence.

So, I'm not skipping this party, DD would be very upset if we did. Now I'm calling Baskiin Robbins tomorrow to be 100% sure, but it looks like I'm going to be trying to make a turkey from ice cream Sunday night....

Cashews- Passed! (and a mini Halloween vent)

I should have posted this a few weeks ago, but it's been hectic!

We trialed both kids with cashews, and it went perfectly!

It seems we're rapidly running out of allergies, but not fast enough. Halloween is right around the corner and I'm gearing up for more tears and frustration and disappointment, especially from my daughter now that she's old enough to care more about what the other kids are doing.

There is a costume party, with food, at Girl Scouts. Plus probably some party at school, and of course traditional trick or treating. I hope those nice elderly people still live in town. Every year they give out apples, chips, and pretzels. Things the kids can eat!!

This is probably the first of several Halloween vents. Tune in next time!

Almonds- Passed!

This week we went on a search for a tree nut that wasn't contaminated with peanuts. We found one. We'd been putting off this at-home trial for almost two years, and it really needed done.

So while I was in New York City having a good time with my girlfriends, my husband was at home meeting out tiny doses of almonds to both kids and monitoring to signs of an allergy.

As it turned out both kids tolerated those almonds very well. That's not to say we're completely out of the tree nut woods, but it is a start in the right direction.

An Update on Preschool Crafts

The craft thing went well. At least health-wise.

Unfortunately I shouldn't have offered to let the class share my kids' supplies. My kids made their crafts first, and then the other kids were allowed to use their food supplies by scooping from the bags with little scoops. This created serious cross contamination issues. The teacher at least did warn me when I cam eto pick up the kids.

I couldn't take that food home, so I tried to get the other parents to take it. None of them wanted any of my "weird" food, which kind of made me laugh because it was in their kids' crafts! The teachers couldn't keep it because they hadn't purchased it, but somehow it was alright to let everyone use it for the craft.

I ended up having to throw it all away, even though it was mostly full boxes of perfectly useful food. I was nauseated and had nightmares about it all that weekend. The guilt was eating at me big time, I do NOT like wasting food.

Preschool Crafts Anxiety

So, my kids are in preschool. They go full day 5 days a week. My daughter's been at this preschool 2 years, and my son one year so far. The teachers are WELL aware of their food allergies. They have "scary" food in the classroom every day, but adding in more to do a craft just seems crazy to me. I know I'm probably over-reacting.

They're doing a Father's Day craft using chocolate chips (nut, milk), butterscotch chips (milk), cheerios (oats, possible nut cross), and M&Ms (nut and milk). The teacher asked if I could supply the kids with their own stuff, and I can. I told her this is completely outside my comfort zone, and she asked what I would do if I were doing this activity, and I told her I wouldn't do it, but if she was confident about it and felt she had a good plan that was up to her.

Meanwhile I'm going to be freaking out at home all day long. Which might be overkill since I know they have milk and dairy stuff and things crossed with nuts and oat-based things every single DAY in the classroom.

BTW- I am sending mini marshmallows, pretzels, raisins, and little teddy bear shaped crackers. If ELF products were sold closer to home I would have picked up their chocolate chips and maybe their "trail mix" if it was safe, I'd have to check.

Is it really that hard to care?

Today my daughter went to a salon party for her girl scout troop. Now, I'm aware we only started girl scouts a few months ago, but I have made it very well known that my daughter is allergic to peanuts.

Sensing some resistance to that, I always bring her food along, just in case. Well, the mother in charge of snacks for this party actually brought every peanut-containing snack *I* could personally think of, and I was pretty upset. Bakery items, cookies with Reese's pieces in them, pretzels make with peanut flour. The woman said "I remembered about her peanut allergy, so I skipped buying the peanut butter cookies." I wish she'd actually looked at what she was buying, but I can't expect that from anyone.

DD was really good about it, but I can tell you she wasn't happy that the only thing she could have that the other girls were having was Sunny D (which she didn't like, poor thing!).

I'm aware that life isn't fair, I'm aware that she needs to get used to being different. But it is still heartbreaking to see my daughter excluded.

So, I share with you the picture of my daughter, sitting at a seperate table with her home made lunch. E-mail me if you want to know where I got the lunch box from!

The High Cost of Food Allergies

I wanted to take a minute to discuss this article that I read today. It touches on things I don't think people really consider when thinking about food allergies. I'm sure people think how hard it must be to cook, to eat out, to be constantly vigilant when around others, but I'm not so sure they know the cost of food allergies.

So, here where we live a gallon fo milk is $3.38 right now. A gallon of soymilk is anywhere from $5-$7, depending on the type and where you buy it. A jar of peanut butter costs around $2, a jar of sunbutter is more like $6. A tub of regular margarine is $2, dairy-free margarine is $4. A small container of ice cream costs $2, whereas a pint of dairy, nut, and coconut-free costs $4-$5. Dairy free sour cream and cream cheese are $4 each for a small container. Dairy free vegan cheese (without casein) is about $5 for 10oz.

In essence you're spending about $16 for all that, and I'm spending $32, exactly double.

Now factor in the 4 Twinject pens and 2 Epipens I have (Total of about $300 after insurance), and the 3 bottles of Benadryl ($8 each), and the allergy testing (Have not got the bill for this yet, but it's typically a couple hundred bucks), and the trip out of state to see said allergist(2 tanks of gas at about $3 a gallon, bringing two meals with us, copay of $35, etc).

And then the cost of sending food to school when there is clearly a lunch program that would cost us less (especially since in preschool it's 2 FREE meals and a free snack daily, and in elementary school we'd qualify for reduced lunch, which would amount of $0.40 per day per child). And the fact that I have to send in snacks. And they're required to be store-bought and pre-packaged. You'd think that'd be easy because you could just grab some fruit snacks and a box of 100 calorie packs and call it a day for $5. Except I can't exactly get away with that, so I end up spending about $20 to your $5 because the more pre-packaged the specialty food is, the more it costs.

Yes, food allergies are expensive! I've learned to make them less expensive by avouding as many specialty items as I can manage to avoid and hunting relentlessly for mainstream items that fit our needs. Grocery planning/shopping/management takes about 3 hours out of my day once a week. Yes, three HOURS. If I got paid minimum wage for that I'd make about $21 before taxes just figuring out our groceries for the week. Sadly, that's not enough to buy much considering the price of speciality items.

Girl Scouts and Peanut Allergies

Rosalie had her first ever girl scout meeting yesterday. I reminded her before we even got there not to eat anything unless I had checked to make sure it was safe first. I was sure that they would have a snack, and I wanted her to be prepared.

She loved her first meeting, and that was encouraging. There was a snack there she could eat too, although I had something in the car just in case. We decided we are going on an overnight with the troop this Friday.

I got a range of responses from mentioning her allergy. The leader knew what I was talking about and understood the severity of it, although the assistant leader had never heard of someone being allergic to food before. We discussed what foods would be at the overnight, and what I would want to bring myself.

Some of the mothers were really sort of nasty about it when I mentioned it. I have yet to really talk to moms about my kids' allergies, so I was a little surprised. It's not like I asked them to do anything different or change anything, but one lady was downright mocking me about it. I used my nasty sarcastic side. She spent the rest of the meeting giving me nasty looks. She's going to be the one who brings peanut butter snacks on purpose to exclude and bully my child. I can feel it coming now.

So, this is what it is like when you branch out and your kids start getting involved in school age stuff. I better develop a tough skin and some better comebacks in a hurry!