Got Milk?

One word to describe this past week would be ‘Overwhelming’. I realize this may be a bit of an exaggerated response to something that people face every day, but really, I’m allowed to feel whatever I want, so that’s the word.

Lars’ allergy tests came back late Thursday and he is moderately allergic to peanuts and severely allergic to dairy. Unfortunately, that’s about all he eats. Peanut butter on graham crackers are out. Peanut butter sandwiches, out. Chocolate, Crackers, processed meats, deli meat, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, granola bars, pudding, ice cream, lactose free goodies, cake, sweet breads, donuts, cookies, commercially processed foods of almost every variety, all out of the question. After two years of life, we’re quitting, cold turkey. Did you know almost every variety of hot dogs are made with a form of dry milk? That’s out, too.

I checked a website with 990,000 foods and, after checking the box “dairy free” and “peanut free”, it shot me back 337 foods that he could have. That’s comforting. Really.

Being not quite two, he’s got to feel like he’s being punished for something and it’s really awful to take the yogurt container from his death-grip and say, ‘No, Lars, you can’t have this anymore”. It’s awful.

My first thought was, “Call Laura, get an announcement put in the bulletin: Nobody give any food to that adorable little pastor’s kid.”

My second thought was, “What am I going to do for pot lucks?!” “What are we going to have for Eden’s birthday next week?!” “What am I going to do for our picnics in the park?” The whole point of a potluck is that you have no idea what’s in the food or who made it, it’s all a surprise. Who doesn’t have cake and ice cream on a 4 year old’s birthday party? And what else do you take on picnics but sandwiches, yogurt & cheese and crackers, NONE of which he can have!?!

So, yes, I guess ‘overwhelming’ is maybe the right word to use.

After 24 hours, things seemed to look up a bit. We went to the local grocer, and, as a bonus to living in a small town, talked to the manager who immediately looked in his catalog for the only kind of soy milk Lars can drink. He caught me downtown later that evening and said, “I got it ordered, it will be here Monday.” I was so relieved and so thankful that he took the time to do that for me.

Also spent today looking on the store shelves for foods that he can eat. With all the food allergies that people have now, food producers have to list whether or not dairy (along with 8 other common allergies) is an ingredient in the product. This makes it so much easier to spot, and, after about 30 minutes of shelf reading, we came away with about nine milk free items including a Mexican biscuit, apple cinnamon rice cakes, pancake mix, pumpkin granola bars from Kashi & a kosher form of Saltine crackers from Shurfresh.

This coming week, we will spend time with the speech therapist from the school district that will evaluate his speech, and figure out where to go from here to get him talking. Wish us well!

The rest of the week was fairly normal. I taught Monday and Wednesday night and he had a couple meetings on Tuesday night. The church building project is coming along nicely, with the glass doors and cross window put in Friday afternoon. It is beautiful and I’m so happy to see all the natural light that’s going to be in the new portion.

The preacher and I took Thursday night to ourselves. We got a sitter and grabbed the scooter to tool around the lake and around town, then went out to supper before going to Mark & Laura’s to pick some yummy sweet corn.

Eden and Daddy went to the race track on Friday night and watched till the end. Eden reported back to me that ‘the girl’ didn’t win the go-kart race, therefore, she didn’t go to the pits to hold the trophy. It’s cute to see that a near 4-year-old already has favorites on the playing field. More devastating to her was the fact that her Capri sun didn’t have a straw, so she had no way to drink it.

In other news, I’ve been so busy with life around here that I failed to empty the bag on the vacuum cleaner and, apparently, that’s a problem. It got too full, back filled and froze the motor. Al took the whole thing apart, but it was no dice, my 8 year old Hoover found its way to the dumpster. We salvaged all the nuts & screws, as well as the cord & a few other odd parts, but had to dip into our pockets for a new one. I haven’t tried it yet, but for $150, it better be good to me for another 8 years.