Food Allergy Re-Test Time :(

 When out of nowhere, Tommy's lips starting swelling up every time he ate peas, we decided it might be time to have him retested.  We met with the allergist.

 Tommy knew going into this appointment that there would be either a needle to draw blood or a bunch of pokes in his back.  He had decided he wanted the needle because it was one poke and then he was done.  He didn't want to deal with tons and tons of pokes in the back from the scratch test.

When the doctor decided the scratch test would be best, he let us all know how he felt about it. :)

Charlotte was with us and she really didn't know what to think.

 The nurse was very gentle and it really wasn't bad at all .  Tiny little scratches that hardly hurt at all.

 The part we forgot about it that REALLY sucked was the part where the hives grow and become EXTREMELY itchy. :(  
He was PISSED.  In this picture on the left side, you can see the seasonal allergies 1-25.

 TN stands for all the tree nuts below it.  I think 26 is milk.  The rest on the right side is all the foods in which he is allergic. Still milk, eggs, and nuts.  It showed his reaction to milk being the highest, which we know not to be true because he is consuming some foods with some milk in it.  But if he has anything with eggs, it's bad news bears.  And yes, it said he was allergic to peas a little bit.  Sounds about right.
Tommy was sooooo glad to get out of there.

However Charlotte had a mini meltdown on the way home.  How was she in the worst mood out of all of us? 

If you were worried that he continued to be miserable the rest of his night, his welts seem to clear right up.  By the end of the night, it looked like this.
So I guess it was a successful doctor's visit but I didn't feel like we left with any new information that we didn't already know. He told us we didn't need to come back for a few years.  Boo.  But hopefully we'll be doing better when we go back for the next visit.  Wish us luck! :)

Nice Little Saturday

We haven't done much lately but we have had a great time with our everyday tasks.  We really enjoy running errands on Saturday.  We always have to go to the grocery and take recycling.  We usually try to go out to lunch too.  On this particular Saturday, we went to Firehouse Subs and stopped by Gigi's to see if they have any vegan cupcakes.  They don't offer them in the case unless there was an order that ended up with extras.  We asked if they had any and this week, they had carrot cake! 

Tommy was excited to try it so we grabbed it to go along with Charlotte's frosted sprinkled pretzels and our chocolate chip cookie sandwiches with chocolate chip cookie dough filler.  Yeah, they exist and they are amazing.  

 Tommy really liked his cupcake.  One thing I did not think about was the fact that carrot cake sometimes has nuts in it.  FART.  There were walnuts in it.  He only took one bite of the actual cake and then ate the cream cheese icing (vegan cream cheese icing, whaaaa??? so good!).  But I don't think he is allergic to walnuts. I need to put out his listing of freaking nuts that he is and is not allergic to.  We normally just stay away from all of them but this was a rare situation.  Anyway, he was pleased he got to chow down on yummy icing so it will still a win.  Plus I got to eat the crap out of the cake and it was AWESOME.  Yum.

 After the cupcakes, we headed to Target... of course.  Charlotte was a big hit with everyone we passed.  She decided to stay in her jammies and then throw a mermaid princess dress over the top. Fashionista.

 She really rocked the look.

Seriously, these are the best days.  Fun little outings doing whatever, wearing whatever, eating fun foods.  Like sands through the hourglass, am I right? :-)

2017: Interesting So Far

 2017 started off with our furnace having trouble keeping up and then totally going poo.  We were without heat and our house got down to 50ish degrees.  We thought we might try to stay and just use space heaters.  But I couldn't take it so we ended up heading to Renssy and staying at my parents' house while they were away.

Even though we were in Renssy, we still came back every day because Tommy had a birthday party on Saturday.  His buddy Cooper was turning 6 and they were going to the trampoline park.  This was going to be Tommy's first big boy birthday party where we leave him and come back to pick him up.  I was excited for him.  He actually said on the way to the party, "I have a feeling like I'm scared to go to this party."  I figured it was just excitement/anxiety.  Well, maybe he knew more than we realized...

 There were just a few of them and they had a great time... until... Tommy ate the cupcakes at the party. I had talked to the birthday boy's mom about how Tommy can eat vegan cupcakes as long as they are nut-free.  She was really excited to order them for him because she knows he never gets to have the cupcakes at the party.   There was some sort of mix-up in communication either between me and the mom or the mom and baker.  I don't know what happened but the cupcake he ate started an allergic reaction.  We weren't there but they said he started sneezing and getting really phlegm-y.  Then he got really quiet.  He wasn't acting normal.  He didn't say anything to anyone.  They opened presents and then they went upstairs to play.  It wasn't long after that when he started vomiting all over their house. They called us and we raced back there.  He was done vomiting by the time we got back but he was still a mess.  The mom was crying and everyone felt so bad.  I felt especially bad for Cooper. :(  Tommy couldn't stop blowing his nose and feeling awful.  He still wasn't quite right but I was hoping he was recovering.  We packed up everything and headed out.  Since we were staying in Renssy, we decided not to leave town and instead we just headed toward hospital because he still wasn't acting normal.  His mouth was open like the last time when his tongue swelled but he kept saying he was totally fine.  By the time we got to the parking lot of the ER, he started vomiting again.   Ah yes, time to go inside.

We checked in very quickly.  You can still see how he does his mouth weird when he's in the middle of a reaction. I don't know if it's his lips or tongue that bothers him but he can't shut his mouth.  I kept asking him questions in the car about how he was feeling and what his mouth was doing to try to figure out if we needed to use the epi-pen or go in the ER.  At one point, he said, "Which one is the right answer?"  Poor kid.
For a Saturday evening, there were not that many people there.  We got room #1! They gave him anti-vomiting medicine, benadryl and a steroid.  No epi this time AND no shots! Whoo hoo!! It was a great ER visit, if you can call it that. Ha! He really recovered very quickly and they sent us home within a couple hours.  Awesome!

 Middle fingers up to food allergies!

Since he vomited all over his clothes and Andrew took Charlotte home to clean up the car and get new ones, he had nothing to wear.  So while we were waiting for them to come back and pick us up, I put him in my coat and hummed the Imperial March while we walked around. He just needed his Vader mask and he would have been complete!

So we learned a major lesson with all of this.  We should never let anyone be responsible for feeding our kid like that.  We can't put that liability on them.  It's just too complicated.  Plus everyone thinks it's gluten because that's the new big popular thing.  So now we know we should just continue to bring our own food for Tommy so we can be sure it's safe.  Lesson learned.

Back to our furnace issues... we came back to Lafayette on Sunday because the kids needed to go to school on Monday and we needed to meet the "furnace fixers" as the kids called them.  So we used Andrew's points and got a room and the Ho-tel, Mo-tel, Holiday Innnnn, say what? Check out our gorgeous view! 

 The kids were totally stoked about using the pool.  Too bad when we went down there, our key wouldn't let us in.  We know the pool is open, folks, so let us in! The manager finally let us in and swim we did!

 Pool time selfies! The pool was so warm.  It was awesome! We called and they said they warmed it up for us.  AWESOME!

Family pool selfie! Sweet goggles, Dada! 

 It was finally time to get out.  The kids were not excited to stop swimming but we had to eat dinner. Do you like our workout room mirror selfie? Ha!

We finally had a working furnace at 6:30 on Monday night.
I couldn't get close enough to the fire.  So cold. I sat in the living room in my winter coat drinking hot tea.  What a wimp! :)
But our furnace is working like a champ now! It actually heats the whole house and not just the downstairs.  I guess they are normally supposed to do that.  Good to know. :)
January 2017 is definitely the time we made lemonade out of the many lemons we were given this month.  Here's to the rest of 2017! It's gonna be great! :)

Catch Up Post for Tommy T

 Tommy T.  Oh my dear sweet boy.  He loves his little sister like she's all his. She is definitely his favorite person right now. 

He is so sweet with her. 

He loves doing things for her, like reading books! She has complete and total trust in him too.  She loves everything he does, even when he's poking her in the eye.  It's hilarious.  Just a huge smile whenever he's around. 

It ain't easy being cheesy! I have a feeling there will be many more pictures like this in the future!

 Tommy went to a Purdue game recently, just him and Dada.  They had a great father/son night.
 

Did you know the double chocolate Ghirardelli brownies have no milk or eggs in them unless you add them? So I substituted applesauce for the one egg and VIOLA! Brownies for Tommy! They're not exactly the same but they're so close!! He had so much fun stirring the bowl and licking the spoon. First time I've ever had him do that.  It was exciting!

Tommy's new fave movie is Hercules, or as he calls it, 'Perkalee'.  Tommy was singing one of the songs from the movie and said, "I can make my wayyyyy. I can go to the dentist!" HA! Distance, that is.  But dentist works too. 

He's starting to learn and recognize his letters.  He knows D is for Dada.  M is for Mama and Morgan.  W is for upside down Mama (Hey however he wants to remember these letters, we encourage it!).  He knows C is for Charlotte.  T is for Tommy T and T Rex.  P is for Purdue Pete.  J is an upside down candy cane.  V is for Vulture.  H is for Helicopter.  He recognizes N but I can never remember any words for that besides No.  O is an easy one for him, probably since they just learned it last week.  He also knows some of his months and the days of the week.  It's amazing the things he's learning and retaining.  I can't believe it won't be long before he's reading!!! Time is going so fast!

Always an Adventure with Tommy T

So Tommy developed a nasty cold recently.  He had a barky cough two nights ago and his breathing sounded bad so I made the assumption it was croup.  I called the doctor today to see what they thought and they said bring him in.

I took him to the doctor after the second night of rough breathing but his cough had improved in sound.  It wasn't as barky.  When I took him outside in 7 degree weather, it didn't improve his breathing like it should for croup.   When we went to the doc, we saw the nurse practitioner for the first time.  She checked him out and wanted a chest x-ray.
Oh boy.

They have an x-ray department in the building so that was nice.  We went to see 'Marilyn' in x-ray.  I don't think Marilyn had ever dealt with a child before even though she worked in a Pediatrics/Obgyn.  She asked what the patients name was from across the room.  I said Thomas.  Tommy yelled to her, "My name is Tommy T!" Sorry I didn't clarify, little man.

As with any chest x-ray of a child, they have to strap him into a horrible medieval contraption with his arms over his head so they can get a good picture.
It looks like this.

So this woman tries to strap Tommy into this thing.  This is not Tommy's first rodeo.  He knows what's coming and he is none too pleased.  He is screaming bloody murder and fighting it every inch.  He's much stronger than the last time he had to do this and he showed it.  She brought in another woman but she was a frail older lady and she was no help either. With all the finagling she was doing to get him in it, she said he must have somehow broken it because she couldn't get it to turn to get him out.  So she wasn't very happy about that.  So finally when she got the pictures she needed, we pulled him out of it.  He had gotten himself so incredibly upset that.... oh, just wait for it... yes he threw up all over the x-ray room, all over himself, all over me.  It was kind of awesome.  Marilyn was, again, not happy about this and she left us in the room soaking in barf.  I'm looking around the room for something to clean us up.  She finally comes back in with two hospital sheets.  I use those to clean up while she leaves again.  She then comes back with a dry towel and wet towel.  I finished up all the cleaning and plopped the whites into her red biohazard bag.  Tommy was crying during all of this saying, "I wanna go take a nap in mama and dada's bed."  Poor guy was ready to get the heck out of there.

All I can say about this part of the story is thank the good Lord that he didn't throw up IN THE CONTRAPTION.  Can you imagine??

I made the mistake of saying I was going to take Tommy's picture after his 'torture pictures' from the x-ray. He was not happy. 

So then we meet with the nurse practitioner again and she says everything about Tommy looks great.  No croup, no pneumonia, nothing like that.  It is apparently an asthma flare up with his cold.  So I think it's time to finally accept that he does officially have the triple whammy (eczema, allergies, asthma).  We had hoped that he would only have the eczema and allergies ('cuz two out of three ain't bad) but oh well.  He can still grow out of all them.  He grew out of the eczema so there's definitely a chance.

(By the way, did you know some very famous athletes have asthma? Jerome Bettis, Juwan Howard, Dennis Rodman, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Greg Louganis, Emmitt Smith, Dominique Wilkins, Kristi Yamaguchi and many gold medal winning swimmers who I haven't heard of but am super impressed with! Yeesh grammar.)

Tommy was super excited about the Curious George pic in the office but that didn't improve his mood. Poor sick boy. 

Anyway, so while we were finishing up with the nurse practitioner, I mentioned that Tommy didn't enjoy the x-ray.  She mentioned that it didn't sound good (she heard him from down the hall).  I told her that Tommy may have broken the contraption and he puked all over the x-ray room.  The NP burst out laughing.  She said, "Oh my, I bet Marilyn was in a real tizzy."  She loved it. She must know her pretty well.  Really put the cherry on top for the appointment.

So if you have a chance, send some good thoughts/vibes to Tommy that he recovers quickly.  I hate to see my little guy so sick.  Plus I think he misses school and his friends.  Come on, Tommy! Get well soon!

Adventures in Eating Part 2398429729

Let me preface this by saying, it's ALWAYS an adventure when eating at a restaurant with Tommy with his milk, egg and peanut allergies.  But we found a new restaurant that's near us that has an allergy menu.  Whoo hoo! It's TGI Fridays.  I read online that they have an allergy menu available inside so I went in and asked to see it.  I looked through every single damn menu item to see what Tommy could have.  He could have TWO things in the entire restaurant.  Spaghetti from the kid's menu and a half rack of ribs.  YAY! It's something! So we decided to eat there.  Tommy loved the "flair" on the walls.

 Once he got bored with the crayons and the kids menu, he asked to use my phone to take pictures.  I'm not kidding when I say the kid took 30 pictures... of himself.  Mostly just his forehead.  Maybe it's bad that the iPhone 5 has a way faster shutter. :) (Heehee, look at that little smirk smile.  Cute.)

Then he wanted me to take pictures of him.  I took a few but the flash is out of control bright.  None of those turned out.  

 Then the spaghetti came.  Holy moly, it was a complete and total MESS. But he LOVED it.  He also loved the fresh fruit.  YUM.

Awww, little spaghetti man. Such a cutie pie.

So now our restaurant list for Tommy (places that have allergy menus) is:
TGI Fridays
McAlisters
Burger King
Firehouse Subs
Chipotle
Chick-fil-a 

Places we haven't been to yet that do have menus:
Red Lobster
Ruby Tuesdays (this menu sucks because it's separated by allergen. What if someone has more than one? Too much work. Plus we don't have one here.)
Culvers

I just found this link to tons of restaurants links.  Looks like we have lots more to try! Sweet! Can't wait!

Tommy's Grover Party!! Part Two

Let's get back to Tommy's party.  Before we do that, we need to talk about what lead up to the party.  On Friday morning, I took Tommy to daycare.  He had a little bit of a rash on his face.  It wasn't terrible but it was spreading.  I got a call from Tommy's daycare.  They said they were concerned because the rash had spread to his diaper area and his legs.  I said, OH CRAP and called the doctor.  They said that they should probably see him and just in case he was contagious, bring him in the back door.  The doctor checked him over and said, "I don't see any signs of infection. I think it's just an allergic reaction."  We said, "Are you sure? He has never had a crazy rash like this spread to his diaper area."  I mean, come on, we are the Rash Experts, remember? "Also, we're having a huge birthday party on Saturday with lots of little kids."  He said the same thing again so we believed him and went on with the party plans.  

Friday night he slept pretty well but when he woke up, he looked a little worse than this... 

We were not very pleased.  His rash wasn't getting any better.  Plus it was his first birthday. Waaaahhh! :( His diaper area and legs looked wayyyy worse.  Poor kid. :( So we racked our brains trying to figure out what he had to eat.  We came up with the margarine that I had put in the first recipe of the cupcakes I had made in preparation for his birthday.  (It didn't make sense that margarine would affect him so badly but we went with it.)  

So let's talk about allergy-free baking for a second.  

I searched and googled and yahooed my way through truckloads of recipes trying to find one that sounded decent for a birthday cake (you gotta have CAKE). I finally settled on two.  One recipe uses vinegar to make the batter rise and the other uses cornstarch, sugar and milk (or a milk substitute).  

So I tried the first recipe with vinegar.  It was the one that everyone told me to try and it's all over the Allergy Free Network website.  It is a Depression era recipe which uses no milk or eggs due to the rationing at the time.  

I found the second recipe on a girl's blog (blogs are the BEST).  It was an eggless yellow cake.  I substituted almond milk for regular milk.  

Question: At this point in the story which one do you think tasted better?? :-) 

 So in this picture the corn starch recipe is on the left and the vinegar recipes is on the right.  I made six of each.  Each recipe calls for a stick of butter.  That's a lot of butter in 6 cupcakes.  I used margarine but there's still milk in margarine.  Sorry for that, Tommy.  I was still learning.   Also, I incorrectly thought that I had cocoa powder for the Wacky Cake.  Whoops.  So I added extra vanilla extract to try to make it sweeter.  Just a small mistake.  :-)

 Even the batter looks different (cornstarch bottom, vinegar top).

 I popped them in the oven.

 They began to rise.  Cornstarch was rising a little better than the vinegar.

 Hey, did you fill those cupcakes a little full??? Just a LITTLE.

 Not too shabby!

 I was going to make my own icing until I found that Wilton's chocolate frosting had no milk, eggs or peanuts in it.  SWEET! But, um, what the heck is in it if there's no milk? Yikes.

Mmm, warm cupcakes!

Andrew and I tried both recipes with the frosting.  The cornstarch cake was like a super sweet corn cake. It was pretty tasty! The Wacky Cake tasted like Play Doh.  It apparently really needed that cocoa in it.  BLARGH.

 So the yellow cake it was! Tommy gave it a try sans icing and ATE IT UP.  He LOVED it! He couldn't shove it down his gullet fast enough!

Mmm mmm good! 

So the day of his party, we chose the yellow golden eggless cake.  But Tommy needed to eat his lunch first.  (You may or may not notice that I removed all the rash I could from each photo.)

Peaches?? WHERE'S THE CAKE?? :-)

 There it is!

 He needed a little help blowing out the candles.  He thought about it though. :)

 Then it was time to DIG IN!

 YUM! First time having frosting! Especially CHOCOLATE! MMMM!!

 He didn't go full force with the mess on his face.  I was surprised.

He did make a mess out of his high chair though.  The cake was pretty crumbly so that was easy to do.

 Time to stop for a drink.

 Then back to it!

 Maybe I should try smashing it?

What do I need this plate for anyway?? 

So let's take a step back and talk about the rash again.  We thought it was just an allergic reaction right?? We took Tommy in for his 12 month appointment the Monday after his party and our doctor told us that it was Hand Foot and Mouth Disease.  Double Awesome!! The doctor also said he was probably most contagious Friday and Saturday at the party.  So Tommy probably infected everyone that was there.  Awesome times ten! So I contacted everyone with kids at the party and apologized profusely.  I think the saying is s**t happens.  Well it definitely does.  But it's a fast moving disease and the doctor okayed Tommy to go back to daycare on Monday.  He's scabbing up and healing pretty fast, thank goodness.  Poor poor kid.  

Did I mention he had 3 shots on Monday for his 12 month appointment?  Now we think he's sprouting some more teeth.  Once again, he WILL catch a break... very soon.  Say it with me now... very soon.   

Oh and don't worry.  There are still tons more pictures from the party.  Continue to stay tuned...