Greatlly. And Allergy Alert Cards!

I just think this is a greatlly <---- OMG. Do you see that? I'm not correcting it so you can see this. Greatlly. It's a combination of really and great. I think at the last second, I decided to with "Really Great" instead of just "Great". My hands are faster than my brain. Or not as fast, or just as fast? Or maybe I just can't explain it! I love when that happens. I do pride myself on my fast typing skills ~ I am one fast b.i.t.c.h. when it comes to typing because I used to like "playing" Mavis Beacon. I am a NERD. Thanks, Mavis! Hahahaha :)

Okay. So back to the original topic at hand. {At hand, ha. I'm so funny. It must be my new hairdo.}

I saw these really great allergy alert cards on TinyPrints today. I am their FB Friend and they posted a link and that's the only reason why I'm bloggin' about it. TinyPrints in no way sponsored this post.

{However, if someone from TinyPrints is reading and would like to sponsor a giveaway/review for my blog ~ I'd love to get some of these and see if they are as great & useful as they appear to be! If you're here on my blog for the first time, Snowdrop has a peanut allergy AND a milk allergy. It'd be great to be able to pass these out when we go to restaurants or to my parents house!}

{Picture courtesy of TinyPrints.Com} 

ANYWHO, I think they are super cute, and a really great idea! :) {See that, I got it right this time. Really. Great. Two separate words!} Part of me feels like it's a little... forward (?) to just hand the waiter this card ~ but the other part of me thinks, WOW! This could save my daughter's life someday! (It might!) Having a physical reminder might help our waiter/tress/chef remember easily that they need to be cautious with our food. I know how BUSY it can be in the restaurant/food industry and from that viewpoint ~ this could be useful! :)

Okay. That is all for now! Time to clean-up the girls ~ they had the LONGEST lunch EVER today. It's already 1:26pm! They started eating like an hour ago! :)

Ch-Ch-Changes

Getting used to this peanut and milk allergy has not been easy. We try to feed our kids mainly organic food ~ always when it comes to Meat or Milk, and more often than not for processed foods, and as much as we can for fruits & veggies. Organic Food? Not super easy to come by ~ not terribly hard either, we just don't have a large selection here. Organic Food that's Peanut-Free? Organic Peanut-Free Milk-Free Food? Yikes. I had a pretty difficult time at Whole Foods the other day. We also have a Trader Joe's but they didn't seem to have much themselves. Someone mentioned to me that there might be a small market here that caters to Peanut-Free. I need to check that out.

Hubby & I feel so badly for Snowdrop. We feel so guilty. For so long, like since she was a few weeks old, she had this terrible eczema. It was so bad. She sucks her thumbs a bit and they would always look SO raw, cut up, just gross and grosser every day. And her cheeks were always red, her arms covered in a dry rash... and now that we've cut out all these things from her diet (peanuts and milk, other than actual drinking milk) it's improved so immensely... it's just so unbelievable. The eczema is all but gone from her body. Amazing! We feel so guilty though, especially me. All the PB I used to eat for extra nursing calories... I feel so stupid. So responsible for this. All those times we gave her crackers, or bread, or cereal, or oatmeal, all laced with peanuts... I just feel terrible.

Did she feel sick all the time? Did she hurt? Was her common wheezing and general stuffiness actually her unable to breathe from a mild reaction to the traces of nut in her food? Will she grow out of this? Please God, let her grow out of this. For her own sake. Can she go to baseball games? Can we take her to other sporting events? Can she go to the grocery store? Do I need to Clorox the cart if she does? Instruct people not to touch her? Do I need to worry about kissing her if I ate a Resees while I was out running errands? When will this start to feel like normal?

I'm going to bed before I start thinking too much. :)

Allergies & Home Improvement Stuff

Allergies, allergies... Snowdrop's blood-work came back as positive for peanut allergy AND for a milk allergy! I guess it was a good idea to get her tested after all. ;) But I was right about the peanuts! OK so now we've been going through all the food items in our house that contain peanuts, or might contain peanuts, or was manufactured in a facility that also has peanuts, etc. I'm trying to get everything together in one spot. We don't want to throw everything out ~ that would be wasteful. At the same time, we're being SUPER diligent that our Little Peanut Lady, as she's come to be known around here, doesn't get any contact with that stuff. So we're eating off our peanut products as fast as we can, confining consumption of these products to our kitchen. Sometimes Snowdrop stands at the closed gate and looks in so sad eyed. Poor thing.

I'll be going grocery shopping this week and I'll definitely be reading every label, thrice.
{Thrice.} We took a look at cereals just to see and I can't remember if we found one cereal that didn't have peanut product in it! I know this is going to take a lot of getting used to. My mother-in-law is such a wonderful person. She has already outlawed peanuts in shells from the house {I think she secretly is pleased she won't have to pick up shell pieces from her floors! And I'm okay with that!} I know she has already cleaned their house twice since we found out ~ there will be nary a trace of peanut there. It's such a relief to know that I don't need to worry {which of course I will anyways...} about when we go over there. Obviously we'll always have our Epi-Pen on us in case of an emergency. My mother seemed a bit "burdened" by the fact that they'll need to avoid peanut stuff when we're in town... she's just going to need to get used to that.

I'll try to remember to bring my camera when I go to the store. It would be fun to post pictures of what I ended up being able to buy... and maybe of what I couldn't buy. I don't know. Would that be interesting to anyone? :) It's certainly going to be a change; Hubby thinks we'll end up spending more money. I'm not so sure. I know we'll be eating healthier because more processed foods are exposed to nuts than fresh foods and more "whole" foods. {This is from what I can tell. If anyone has information to contradict that, I would love to know! :)} So the silver lining, in my eyes, is that we'll be able to eat a little healthier and that will be very good for us.

So about the milk allergy. She always spat up as a baby ~ but that was never considered something abnormal, I mean, babies spit up right? So we never thought she'd be allergic to milk. She DOES have bad eczema but I never thought (neither did the the doctor) that it was allergy related. Anyways, so the doctor recommended we try a one week elimination of dairy products. So cheese, butter {ha, I don't feed them butter!}, yogurt, etc. Anything dairy related, except of course her actual drinking milk. This is to see if there is any effect on the eczema.

When we cut out peanut related products we noticed an immediate decrease in her eczema so I think cutting out most of her dairy intake will too. We just started that portion of it, I'll post about it again.

In Home Improvement News, we are adding open shelves into my kitchen. I'm very excited about this, and if I get my way we'll be adding them tonight! {Fingers crossed!} I'll post Before and After pictures of that. Our Dynex brand memory card reader is working out really well, in fact, it's actually less work to set up than the Handycam stuff. Score! That thing breaking was a blessing in disguise. :)

I guess that's it for now. Thanks to all of you who have linked up to Project365! Sometimes it's not easy remembering to take a picture every day! And it's great when others acknowledge my work, and share their work with me! So thanks! I sure do appreciate it! :)