Adventures in Food Allergies

Ever since we've moved to VA, Mickade's allergies have been awful. Per testing last year in Florida, he has severe allergies to dust mites and mold, and some other milder allergies to various trees and grass, and also sesame. We had them fully under control with some dust mite bedding, weekly laundering in hot water of all his bedding (including the quilt), and a couple Austin Air purifiers. Here, however, despite flooring the downstairs and his bedroom, he has been miserable. It got to the point where even Zyrtec wasn't making much of a dent in it for him. We finally saw our Dr here, and he said he wanted us to look into food allergies that could be affecting him and making his enviro allergies worse. We eliminated dairy, wheat and citrus, replacing the dairy with soy. What we got out of that week was NOT what I expected...it turns out Lucy is allergic to soy! She completely flipped out...tantrums, crying for literally hours, biting, unable to control herself in any fashion. It was awful. I finally realized after a few days what had changed, and what had happened. So, she is now completely soy-free. We also discovered Mickade is allergic to dairy, and gets a runny nose within minutes of a glass of milk, is stuffy all night, and also, gets gas (which explains why he has always been so gassy, even as a newborn!).

I finally had Mickade and Lucy's IgG reactions tested. Most allergists do an IgE test. This type of reaction is what most of us know as an "allergic reaction" -- hives, itchiness, anaphylactic shock, etc. IgG tests what are more commonly known as intolerances. The IgG test isn't the most accurate, but it gives a good starting place for most and helps identify odd foods, like pineapple or green beans, that might not be discovered otherwise. Mickade reacted to corn, baker's yeast, and brewer's yeast. Lucy reacted to wheat, gluten, gliadin (both parts of wheat), orange, yogurt, and brewer's yeast. We have eliminated corn now for Mickade, and Lucy and I are gluten-free since she is still nursing.

I don't know if you've ever looked at your food labels, but the pervasiveness of cheap ingredients is frightening and frustrating if you have allergies. Soy is in everything...soy lecithin, soybean oil, msg, 'natural flavors', it goes on. Then corn....there is a whole website dedicated to corn allergies, since it's not one of the "Top 8" designated by the FDA (soy, fish, shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, dairy) so it's not stated on labels. You should look here to see what ingredients can mean corn!
We've started a number of supplements to help, too. Mickade has gotten more relief from 3000mg of vitamin C and 2-3000mg of methyl B-12 than he got from Zyrtec, and there are no side effects! Some other interesting things are that his sleep has improved. As you all know, he has never slept very well. It turns out that the body uses methyls to fight off allergens. If you are fighting all day, you have little to none left at night, which is a problem because the body uses methyls to combine with serotonin to make....melatonin!!!! Ever since he has been taking methylB12 during the day, he has been falling asleep much, much easier, and been a little bit less restless in his sleep. We are also taking lots of probiotics in order to try to heal everyone's guts, since the imbalance of gut bacteria is what lets the food proteins out of the intestines and into the bloodstream, causing the reactions.

Even with all this, Mickade's eczema still hasn't quite left him, and Lucy is still very volatile and poops only once a week without magnesium supplements (This week with supplements and epsom salt baths though, she has already gone 4 times since Monday....a miracle around here). We've turned now to salicylates, a naturally-occurring chemical in many foods that some people are sensitive too. In fact, it's such a big sensitivity, that a program called the Feingold Diet is 30 years old. It turned out to be a huge factor in helping kids with ADHD, and many other issues. Feingold also removes artificial food colors, flavors, and preservatives. There's a lot of data to back it up too, and the more I've read, the more I see my oldest and youngest. We are following a very strict version for this week, to see if it makes a difference, before adding in anything else. For an idea, you can look here and see what has negligible or low levels of salicylates to see what our food choices are this week (In case you're too lazy to click, our fruits this week are bananas, pears, and limes, with some veggie choices like green beans, peas, brussels sprouts, potatoes. Tomatoes, berries, apples, ketchup, cinnamon, cumin, peppers, to name a few, are out.). So, here's to hoping this one does the trick and kicks the crap to the curb. I'd like to have a sweet little girl more often. I'd also like to see Mickade's eczema stop and his sleep improve. I've had Lucy on it for 2 days now, and I think I am seeing some minor improvement already. I would the THRILLED if this works, even it means we can't enjoy a lot of the food we are used to. I'll take my kids happy and healthy anyday!

This is the much shorter version of our lives these past two months, but I know people are wondering exactly what is going on over here...hope this helps some!

First Day of School

Ah, the plans we make! Today was our first day of school. We were supposed to get started at 9am this morning. That was my goal. Of course, best laid plans and all, Lucy had her own ideas. She went to sleep all nice and sweet by 8pm last night, yes! Or so I thought. One of the disadvantages of our amazing new house is that I don't hear when she cries if we are watching TV. What's that you say? Use a monitor? Yes. I know. I have it right here on the counter. Or most of it. I'm too stubborn to buy a new one. At any rate, it should turn up. Somewhere. So, I didn't hear her fast enough and she was awake. Yes, my baby had now taken a 2 hour nap. At night. Awesomeness. After a Wonder Pets marathon, at 1am I told her I simply had to go to bed. We could watch in my room (and I could doze). After some convincing, she came up with me, settled, and we watched more Wonder Pets. She curled up in the rocker at one point to sleep, but didn't. Then asked me for a pillow. Then she made a bed on the floor. Then, finally, at about 3am (!!) she crawled into bed next to me. I slept til 8:45 (so no school at 9 lol) and she slept til...10:45!!!

We sat down to start around 11am, and it went pretty well. We are excited to study early American History, especially because we are living so close to the actual locations for our early history. In case anyone is interested, we will be studying the following this year:

Together:
American Story 1
La Clase Divertida Spanish
Song School Latin
Handwriting Without Tears Cursive

Lillian, first grade:
First Language Lessons 1
Handwriting Without Tears, print
All About Spelling
Rightstart Math B

Mickade, third grade:
First Language Lessons 3
All About Spelling
Math Mammoth 3
Writing With Ease 2

We also have an awesome homeschool coop we're going to start attending once a week called Renaissance School of the Arts for art, music, and other creative classes. It's going to be a great year!!!

I presented the kids with some Native American "crowns" to kick off the new school year. We will have a big focus on Native American history this year.





Rocking out with La Clase Divertida, as they act out and sing along learning los vocales in Espanol (the vowels in Spanish.)

The Big Cut

Baseball season has begun! Mickade and Lillian are both playing, and having a lot of fun. Mickade is especially excited because he gets to play his dream position....catcher!!!! He loves it, and between that and being the oldest kid on the team (actually, in his whole division....he missed the cutoff by 9 days), well, he thinks he is hot stuff. He's having a bit of a rough time because he is pretty much ready to move up, but they changed the age groupings this year, and he is playing with kids from his age of just about 8 to kids who are still 4...you can imagine the ability spread on a team like that!!! He looks darn good out there in that padding though, doesn't he?



Speaking of the padding, it lead to a new problem: the face mask pulls his hair. Mr. Competitive (Yet Highly Sensitive to Irritation) couldn't have something in the way of being the best, and decided he had to make the ultimate sacrifice: his hair. Yes, everyone, much to my chagrin, Mickade wanted to shave his head, and I had to oblige. It's his head, not mine, so who was I to say he needed to just suffer through it? I LOVED his long hair. It sort of defined him. We thought of a hat of some sort but honestly, in a month or two when it's 95 degrees out, who wants to wear a uniform, padding, mask, and a fitted hat under a hat??? So here's the before and after for you. It takes a while to get used to looking at him with hair like that, I feel like someone else's kid wandered into my house!

Who are you and why did you eat Mickade?!

Making Gum

Gum, natural gum, as you may know, comes from the sap of the chicle tree in the rainforest. It's a really cool process we learned all about. We read all about it here before we got started. It's really neat if you've never read about it, I highly recommend it! Anyway, we ordered a kit from Glee Gum and had a blast!!! We made peppermint and cherry (the peppermint was our favorite). The kids LOVED the process, and now we understand where gum comes from (though a lot of the gum we buy now is man-made). One of the ways we can help preserve the rainforests is by buying gum like Glee Gum, since the chicle tree only grows there.

Melting the chicle.

The powdered sugar to mix in the chicle

Mixing

Rolling it flat

The finished product!! Delicious!

Oops!

Obviously, I have been a huge slacker. I hate it when people don't update their blogs, and lo and behold, I have become one of them. If it's any consolation, I write awesome entries in my head all the time while I brush my teeth. If only I would take the time to put my genius in "print"!!!!

I'm going to see what I can do to slowly get updated here. I'll probably just pick up where we are now....it would be a log to fill you in completely on the last ten months in our household.

For homeschool this year, we have been studying animals using Winterpromise's Animals and their Worlds, and having a good amount of fun with it. We studied the Savannah, the Rainforest (and we even made our own gum with chicle from the chicle tree), the desert, and are currently working on the woods. We are using Rightstart C for math for Mickade. Lillian is learning to read really well, and recently has begun to be able to read some Dr. Seuss books. :) Lulu is just along for the ride. I'm hoping to make a trip to Busch Gardens soon to see all the animals from Africa. It will be really cool for the kids to see the animals they have studied in person.

We will be leaving Key West this summer for the Portsmouth, VA area, actually maybe sooner. We are kind of done with tiny Key West, as beautiful as it may be. We are ready for some more activity, and a lot more living space. 5 people, a dog, and a cat in 1050 sqft of living space is growing old. Really old. I will really miss having a dock out back though!!!